Forget. So there was my duty laid out in front of me, as simple and clear as a bowl of water: Remember.
I shut my eyes. Bright light shone orange on my closed lids stained here and there with drifting bands of purple. The men were shouting louder now: Achilles! Achilles! Then a roar went up and I knew he was there. Howls, laughter, jokes—jokes that sounded like threats, and were threats. I was a cow, tethered and waiting to be sacrificed—and, believe me, at that moment I’d have welcomed death. I put my hands over my ears and, gathering every last scrap of strength, made myself go back to Lyrnessus. I walked through the unbroken gates, saw again its unburnt palaces and temples, busy streets, women washing clothes at the well, farmers unloading fruit and vegetables onto the market stalls. I rebuilt the ruined city, repeopled its streets, brought my husband and my brothers back to life—and smiled, in passing, at the woman I’d seen being raped as she strolled across the main square with her two fine sons by her side…I did it. Standing at the centre of that baying mob, I pushed them back, out of the arena, down the beach and up onto the ships. I did it. Me, alone. I sent the murdering fleets home.
More shouting: “Achilles! Achilles!” Of all their names, the most hateful. Again, I saw him pause in the act of killing my brother and turn to look up at the citadel—straight at me, it seemed—leaving my brother lying there, pinned to the ground, before turning back to him and, in that poised, leisurely, elegant way of his, pulling the spear out of his neck.
No, I thought. And so I walked home from the market square down the cool, quiet streets, through the palace gates and into the darkness of the hall—the hall that I’d first entered on my marriage day. From there, I went at once to my favourite place. There was a tree in the inner courtyard, a tree with spreading branches that gave shade on even the hottest day. I used to sit there in the evenings, listening to music in the hall. The sound of lyres and flutes would drift out on the night air and all the cares of the day would fall away from me. I was there now, craning my neck to look up at the tree, seeing the moon caught like a glinting silver fish in the black net of its branches…
And then a hand, fingertips gritty with sand, seized hold of my chin and turned my head from side to side. I tried to open my eyes, but the sun hurt too much, and by the time I’d forced them open, he was already walking away.
At the centre of the arena he stopped and raised both hands above his head until the shouting died away.
“Cheers, lads,” he said. “She’ll do.”
And everyone, every single man in that vast arena, laughed.
3
Immediately, two guards appeared and took me to Achilles’s hut. “Hut” probably gives the wrong impression; it was a substantial building, with a veranda on two sides and steps leading up to the main door. I was taken through a large hall and into a poky little room at the back, hardly bigger than a cupboard and with no window onto the outside world. There, I was simply abandoned. Shaking with cold and shock, I sat down on a narrow bed. After a while, I noticed my hands were touching a woollen coverlet and I forced myself to examine it. The weaving was very fine, an intricate pattern of leaves and flowers, obviously Trojan workmanship—Greek textiles were nowhere near as good as ours—and I wondered from which city it had been looted.
Somewhere close at hand was a clattering of plates and dishes. A smell of roast beef crept into the room. My stomach heaved, I tasted bile and forced myself to swallow and take a succession of deep, steady breaths. My eyes were watering, my throat raw. Deep breaths. In, out, in, out. Deep, steady breaths…
I heard footsteps approaching and then the door latch began to lift. Dry-mouthed, I waited.
A tall man—not Achilles—came into the room carrying a tray with food and wine.
“Briseis?” he said.
I nodded. I didn’t feel like anything that might have a name.
“Patroclus.”
He was pointing to his chest as he spoke, as if he thought I mightn’t understand, and I could hardly blame him for that, since I was sitting there blank-eyed and dumb as an ox. But I recognized the name. The war had been going on a long time, we knew a lot about the enemy commanders. This was Achilles’s closest companion, his second in command, but that made no sense at all, for why would such a powerful man be waiting on a slave?
“Drink,” he said. “It’ll make you feel better.”
He poured a generous measure and held out the cup. I took it and made a show of raising it to my lips.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
I stared at him, taking in every detail of his appearance—his height, his floppy hair, his broken nose—but I couldn’t speak. After a while, he gave a lopsided grin, put the tray down on a small table beside the bed and left.
The food was a problem. I chewed a piece of meat for what felt like hours before spitting it out into the palm of my hand and concealing it under the rim of the plate. At first, I thought I wouldn’t be able to manage the wine either, but I forced it down. I don’t know whether it helped—perhaps it did. So much strong wine on an empty stomach made my nose and mouth feel numb; the rest of me was numb already.
From the hall came a rumble of men’s voices, that grating roar that drowns out every other sound. The smell of roast beef was stronger now. Our beef. They’d driven the cattle away three days ago, before the city fell. An hour limped past. More shouting, more laughter, songs, the singing always ending with banging on the table and a burst of applause. Somewhere outside in the darkness, I thought I heard a child cry.
At last, I got up and went to the door. It wasn’t locked. Well, of course it wasn’t locked, why would they bother? They knew I had nowhere to go. I opened it inch by careful inch and the noise of songs and laughter became suddenly much louder. I was afraid to venture out, and yet I felt I had to see. Had to know what was going on. The poky room had begun to feel like a grave. So I tiptoed along the short passage that led to the hall and peered into the half-darkness.
A long, narrow hall with a low, beamed ceiling, smelling of pine and resin and lit by rows of smoking lamps that hung from brackets on the walls. Two trestle tables with benches on either side ran the whole length of the floor. Men, crammed shoulder to shoulder, jostled each other as they reached out to impale hunks of red meat on their daggers’ points. I saw rows of shining faces with blood and juices running down the chins gleaming in the overlapping circles of light. Across the raftered ceiling, huge shadows met and grappled, dwarfing the men who cast them. Even from that distance I caught the stench of sweat, today’s sweat, still fresh, but under that the stale sweat of other days and other nights, receding into the far distance, the darkness, all the way back to the first year of this interminable war. I’d been a little girl playing with my dolls when first the black ships came.