The Song of Troy Read online

  ‘Never again,’ he said, white-faced.

  ‘Patrokles, I’m not important, I mean nothing to anyone! Let me do it! Let me!’

  ‘No, never again. Your fate matters to him. Never again.’

  Mysteries. Who? What? Never again?

  It took a full seven days to reach Assos. Once we rounded the corner of the peninsula opposite Lesbos, the oars proved useless; the winds blew fitfully, pushing us to within sight of the beach, then blowing us away again. Most of the time I sat alone in a curtained off alcove on the afterdeck, and whenever I emerged Patrokles would drop whatever he was doing to hurry to my side. I saw no sign of Achilles, and finally I learned that he was on board the ship of someone called Automedon.

  We managed to beach on the morning of the eighth day. I wrapped my cloak about me to shut out the bitter wind and watched the operations with fascination, never having seen anything like them before. Ours was the second ship mounted on its chocks; Agamemnon’s preceded it. As soon as the ladder was down I was let descend to the shingle. When Achilles passed within a few cubits of me I put up my chin and prepared for war, but he didn’t notice me.

  Then the housekeeper arrived, a stout and cheery old woman named Laodike, and led me to the house of Achilles.

  ‘You’re rarely privileged, little dove,’ she crooned. ‘You’re to have your own chamber within the master’s house – which is more than I do, let alone the others.’

  ‘Doesn’t he have hundreds of women?’

  ‘Yes, but they don’t live with him.’

  ‘He lives with Patrokles,’ I said, striding out.

  ‘Patrokles?’ Laodike grinned. ‘He used to, until they became lovers. Then, a couple of moons later, Achilles made him build his own house.’

  ‘Why? That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Oh, it does if you know the master! He likes to own himself.’

  Hmmm. Well, perhaps I don’t know Achilles either, but I was learning fast. He liked to own himself, did he? The pieces of the puzzle were there to be picked up, just as they had been when I was a child. The real problem was putting them together.

  Which kept me occupied all through that long winter, a prisoner of the cold. Achilles was always out and about, quite often dined elsewhere – sometimes slept elsewhere too, I supposed with Patrokles, who, poor man, seemed more agonised by his love than happy in it. The other women were prepared to hate me because I lived in the master’s house and they didn’t, but I am able to deal with women, so we were soon on good terms; they fed me all the gossip about Achilles.

  He had periods of illness culminating in some kind of spell (they had heard him refer to this spell); he could be strangely withdrawn; his mother was a Goddess, a sea creature named Thetis who could change her physical form as quickly as the sun went in and out of clouds – cuttlefish, whale, minnow, crab, starfish, sea urchin, shark; his father’s grandfather was Zeus himself; he had been taught by a Kentaur, a most fabulous being who had the head, arms and torso of a man, though the rest of him was a horse; the giant Ajax was his first cousin, and a great friend; he lived for battle, not for love. No, they didn’t think him a man for men, despite his cousin Patrokles. But no, he was not a man for women either.

  Occasionally he would summon me to play and sing, which I did with gratitude; my life palled. And he would sit, brooding in his chair, listening with only half his mind, while the other half went somewhere unrelated to the music or to me. No flicker of desire, ever. No indication as to why he kept me. Nor did I manage to find out what lay behind the things Patrokles had said when I tried to jump into the sea. Never again! Who? What had happened to kill desire in Achilles?

  To my sorrow I found that Lyrnessos and my father were gradually fading from first place in my thoughts. I was becoming more and more caught up in what was going on in Assos than in what had happened to Dardania. Three times Achilles dined alone in his house, and on those three occasions he commanded that I should wait on him, that no other woman was to be present. Silly Laodike would primp me and perfume me, convinced that I was to be his at last, but he said nothing, did nothing.

  In late winter we moved from Assos to Troy. Phoinix went back and forth countless times, gradually all the warehouses, granaries and barracks were emptied, and finally the army itself sailed north.

  Troy. Even in Lyrnessos Troy ruled, for Troy was the centre of our world. Not to the taste of King Anchises or Aineas, yet a truth for all that. Now for the first time I laid eyes on Troy. The restless wind swept its plain clear of snow; its towers and pinnacles, ice-festooned, glittered in the sun. It was like a palace on Olympos – remote, chill, beautiful. Aineas lived inside it with his father, his wife and his son.

  The move to Troy burdened me in some way I didn’t begin to understand; I became prone to fits of depression and bouts of weeping, unreasonable ill temper.

  This was the tenth year of the war, and the oracles all spoke of an end at last. Was this why I moped? Knowing that when it was over Achilles would take me with him to Iolkos? Or fearing that he intended to sell me as a fine musician? I seemed not to please him in any other way.

  In earliest spring the raiding parties began to come out of the city; with all the Greeks in one enormous camp, provender had to be found to eke out what was stored in vast quantities. Hektor lurked in wait for foraging expeditions, while Greeks like Achilles and Ajax lurked in wait for Hektor. By this time I knew how desperately Achilles wanted to meet Hektor in combat; the desire to kill the Trojan Heir all but consumed him, the other women said. All day and half the night the house rang to the sound of masculine voices. I came to know the other leaders by name.

  Then spring filled the air with drenching, heady scents, the ground was starred with tiny white flowers, and the waters of the Hellespont grew bluer. Small skirmishes occurred almost every day; Achilles was even hungrier for Hektor. His bad luck continued to dog him, however. He never did manage to encounter the elusive Heir. Nor did Ajax.

  Though Laodike deemed me too nobly born for menial work, I would set to with a will whenever she disappeared. Working was better than picking at some unnecessary scrap of embroidery with a dull and uninspired needle.

  One of the most intriguing stories about Achilles concerned how he had finally taken Patrokles as his lover after so many years of friendship having nothing to do with the pleasures of the body. According to Laodike, the transformation had taken place during one of Thetis’s spells. At such times, she said, our master was peculiarly susceptible to the wishes and desires of others, and Patrokles had seen his chance. I thought that too trite an explanation, simply because I had seen nothing in Patrokles to indicate such unscrupulousness. But the ways of the Goddess of Love are passing strange: who could have predicted that I too would suffer the Spell? Perhaps the truth was that Achilles armoured himself so effectively he had no vulnerable chinks under any other circumstances.

  It happened one day when I sneaked off to do the work I liked best, polish the armour in the special room where it was kept. And was caught. Achilles came in. His pace was slower than usual, nor did he see me, though I stood in plain view with a rag in one hand and my excuses ready. His face was tired and drawn, there was blood sprayed up his right arm. Not his own! I relaxed. The helmet came off, was dropped on the floor; he put both hands to his head as if it pained him. Frightened, I began to tremble as he fumbled with the ties on his cuirass, managed to shed it and the rest of his paraphernalia. Where was Patrokles?

  Clad in the quilted shift he wore beneath all that metal, he stumbled towards a seat, blank face turned to me. But instead of sinking into the chair he collapsed to the floor, began to shake and twitch, drool copiously, mumble. Then his eyes rolled back; he went stiff, all four limbs extended, and started to jerk. The drool became great drops of foam, his face went black.

  I could do nothing while he moved so violently, but after that ceased I knelt beside him.

  ‘Achilles! Achilles!’

  He didn’t hear me; he lay grey
-faced on the floor, arms moving aimlessly. When his hands encountered my side he groped until he managed to transfer them to my head, rocked it back and forth gently.

  ‘Mother, leave me alone!’

  His voice was so slurred and altered I hardly knew it; I began to weep, terrified for him.

  ‘Achilles, it’s Brise! Brise!’

  ‘Why do you torment me?’ he asked, but not of me. ‘Why do you think I need reminding that I go to my death? I have sorrows enough without you – can’t you be content with Iphigenia? Leave me alone, leave me alone!’

  After that he lapsed into a stupor. I fled from the room to find Laodike.

  ‘Is the master’s bath ready?’ I asked, breathless.

  She mistook my state of distress for anticipation, began to tee-hee and pinch me. ‘About time too, silly girl! Yes, it’s ready. You can bathe him, I’m busy. Tee-hee!’

  I bathed him, though he didn’t know me from Laodike. Which freed me to look at him, and so taught me what I had refused to admit: how beautiful he was, and how much I wanted him. The room was steamy, my Dardanian robe clung to me because I sweated, and I scorned my own foolishness. Brise had joined the ranks. Like all his other women, Brise was in love with him. In love with a man who was neither a man for men nor a man for women. A man who lived for one thing only, mortal combat.

  I dipped a cloth in cold water and wrung it out, stepped onto the stool by the bath to sponge his face. Some semblance of awareness entered his eyes. He lifted his hand and put it on my shoulder.

  ‘Laodike?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, lord. Come, your bed is here. Take my hand.’

  His fingers tightened; I knew without needing to look that he had recognised my voice. Slipping from his hold, I picked up a jar of oil from the table. When I glanced quickly at his face he was smiling at me, the smile which almost gave him a proper mouth and was unexpectedly gentle.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘It was nothing,’ I answered, hardly able to hear what I was saying above the beating of my heart.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  I couldn’t lie to him. ‘From the beginning.’

  ‘You saw me, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So we have no secrets.’

  ‘We share the secret,’ I said.

  And then I was in his arms, how I do not know. Save that he didn’t kiss me; afterwards he told me that, lacking lips, kisses gave him scant pleasure. But oh, the body did. His and mine both. There was not a fibre of me those hands couldn’t make sing like a lyre; I hung inarticulate, feeling the blinding intensity that was Achilles. And I who had hungered vainly for so many moons, not knowing I hungered, knew at last the power of the Goddess. We were neither divided nor consumed; for a sliver of time I felt the Goddess move in him and in me.

  He loved me, he said afterwards. He had loved me from the beginning. For though I wasn’t like her, he had seen Iphigenia in me. Then he told me that terrible story, content now, I fancied, for the first time since she had died. And I wondered how I would ever have the courage to face Patrokles, who out of the purity of love had tried to work the cure, but failed. All the pieces were together.

  20

  NARRATED BY

  Aineas

  I brought a thousand chariots and fifteen thousand infantry with me to Troy. Priam swallowed his dislike and made much of me, took my poor, demented old father into his embrace and gave Kreusa, my wife (who was his own daughter by Hekabe), a warm welcome; when he saw our son, Askanios, he beamed and compared him to Hektor. Which pleased me a great deal more than if he had likened my boy to Paris, whom he resembled greatly.

  My troops were billeted around the city and I and my family were dowered with our own little palace inside the Citadel. I smiled sourly when no one was looking; it hadn’t been a mistake to withhold my aid for so long. Priam was so desperate to be rid of the Greek leech sucking the lifeblood out of Troy that he was prepared to pretend Dardania was a gift from the Gods.

  The city had changed. Its streets were greyer and less well kept than of yore; the atmosphere of unlimited wealth and power was missing. So too, I noted, were some of the golden nails in the Citadel doors. Delighted to see me, Antenor told me that a great deal of Troy’s gold had gone to buy mercenaries from the Hittites and Assyria, but that no mercenaries had come. Nor had the gold been returned.

  All through the winter between the ninth and tenth year of that conflict, messages arrived from our allies down the coast, promising what aid they could muster. This time we were inclined to believe that they would come, the rulers of Karia, Lydia, Lykia and the rest. The coast was razed from end to end, Greek settlers were pouring in, there was nothing left at home to stay and try to protect. The last hope Asia Minor had was to unite with Troy and fight the Greeks there. Victory would enable it to return home and throw the interlopers out.

  We heard from everyone, even some we had abandoned all hope of. King Glaukos came with word from his co-ruler, King Sarpedon, to inform Priam that they were acting as marshallers of the forces remaining; twenty thousand troops scraped together from among those once populous states from Mysia to far Kilikia. Priam wept when Glaukos told him the full story.

  Penthesileia the Amazon Queen promised ten thousand horse cavalry; Memnon, Priam’s blood relation who sat at the foot of Hattusilis, King of the Hittites, was coming with five thousand Hittite foot and five hundred chariots. Forty thousand Trojan soldiers were already ours; if everyone came who said he was, then we would outnumber the Greeks comfortably by the summer.

  The first to arrive were Sarpedon and Glaukos. Their army was well equipped, but as I cast my eyes over its ranks it was easy to see how deeply Achilles had struck at the coast. Sarpedon had been obliged to include raw youths and greying men feeling their years, rough peasants and shepherd lads from the mountains who knew nothing of soldiering. But they were enthusiastic, and Sarpedon was no fool. He would mould them.

  Hektor and I sat over wine in his palace, discussing it.

  ‘Your fifteen thousand foot, twenty thousand coastal troops, five thousand Hittites, ten thousand Amazon horse warriors, and forty thousand Trojan foot – plus ten thousand war cars all up – Aineas, we can do it!’ Hektor said.

  ‘One hundred thousand… How many Greeks do you estimate are left to face us?’ I asked.

  ‘That would be difficult to estimate, except for some of the slaves who’ve escaped from the Greek camp over the years,’ said Hektor. ‘One in particular I’ve come to love – a man named Demetrios. An Egyptian by birth. Through him and others I’ve learned that Agamemnon is down to fifty thousand men. And all he has is a thousand war cars.’

  I frowned. ‘Fifty thousand? That seems impossible.’

  ‘Not really. They numbered only eighty when they came. Demetrios told me that ten thousand Greeks have grown too old to bear arms – and that Agamemnon has never once called for more men to join him from Greece – they’ve sent everyone to the coast to colonise it instead. Five thousand troops died in an epidemic two years ago. Ten thousand members of the Second Army have either died or been incapacitated, and five thousand sailed back to Greece out of sheer homesickness. Thus my estimate. Not a man more than fifty thousand, Aineas.’

  ‘Then we ought to make mincemeat out of them,’ I said.

  ‘I agree,’ said Hektor eagerly. ‘You’ll back me in assembly when I ask Father to lead our army out?’

  ‘But we haven’t got the Hittites or the Amazons yet!’

  ‘We don’t need them.’

  ‘You ought to weigh their experience against our inexperience, Hektor. The Greeks are battle hardened, we’re not. And their troops understand how well they’re led.’

  ‘I admit the inexperience, but I can’t agree about their leadership. We have our fair share of famous warriors – you, for instance. And there’s Sarpedon, a son of Zeus! His troops adore him.’ Hektor coughed, embarrassed. ‘Then there’s Hektor.’

  ‘It’s not the
same,’ I said. ‘What do Dardanians think of Hektor, or Trojans of Aineas? And who outside of Lykia knows the name of Sarpedon, son of Zeus or not? Think of the Greek names! Agamemnon, Idomeneus, Nestor, Achilles, Ajax, Teukros, Diomedes, Odysseus, Meriones – and more, and more! Why, even their chief surgeon, Machaon, fights brilliantly. And every Greek soldier knows every name. He could probably tell you what a particular leader likes to eat, or his favourite colour. No, Hektor, the Greeks are one nation fighting under a King of Kings, Agamemnon. Whereas we’re factions, petty rivalries and jealousies.’

  Hektor looked at me for a long moment, then sighed. ‘You’re right, of course. But once battle is joined, our polyglot army will think only of driving the Greeks out of Asia Minor. They fight for gain. We fight for our lives.’

  I laughed. ‘Hektor, you’re an incurable idealist! When a man has his spear at your throat, do you stop to rationalise that he fights for gain? They fight for life as much as we do.’

  Not caring to comment on that, he refilled the wine cups.

  ‘So you intend to ask to lead the army out?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hektor. ‘Today. To think that I look at our walls and see them as barriers, my home as my prison!’

  ‘It sometimes happens that the things we love the most are the very things which destroy us,’ I said.

  He smiled, though he was not amused. ‘What a strange fellow you are, Aineas! Do you believe in nothing? Love nothing?’

  ‘I believe in myself and I love myself,’ said I, me, myself.

  Priam wavered, commonsense warring with his overwhelming desire to drive the Greeks out. But in the end he listened to Antenor, not to Hektor.

  ‘Don’t do it, sire!’ Antenor begged. ‘It would be the death of all our hopes to meet the Greeks prematurely. Wait for Memnon of the Hittites and for the Amazon Queen! If Agamemnon didn’t have Achilles and the Myrmidons it might be different, but he does have them, and I fear them greatly. From the day of his birth a Myrmidon lives only for the fight. His very body is fashioned from bronze, his heart is stone, his spirit as dogged as the ant he’s named for! Without the Amazon warriors to deal with the Myrmidons, your van will be cut to pieces. Wait, sire!’