My solace was my pre-dawn walks to the sea. I’d wade in up to my waist, until I was standing on tiptoe, feeling the tug of every retreating wave. Often, mist would roll in from the sea, sometimes thick enough to blind you. Shrouded like that, invisible to anybody who happened to walk past, I was at peace, or as close to peace as I could get. My brothers, whose unburied bodies must, by now, have been reduced to fragments of gnawed bone, seemed to gather round me. That strip of shingle at the water’s edge which, as the tides swept across it, belonged sometimes to the sea and sometimes to the land was our natural meeting ground. My brothers had become liminal in their very nature, since they belonged, now, neither with the living nor the dead. Which I felt was also true of me.
Though shrouded in mist and invisible, I was not alone. Achilles swam every morning before dawn, though there was never any contact between us. Either he didn’t see me or he chose to ignore me. He had no curiosity about me, no sense of me as a person distinct from himself. When, at dinner, I put food or drink in front of him, he never once glanced up. I was invisible except in bed. In fact, I’m not sure how visible I was there, except as a collection of body parts. Body parts, he was familiar with: they were his stock-in-trade. I felt the only time he’d actually seen me was that one brief moment of scrutiny when I’d been paraded in front of him—he’d certainly looked at me then, though only long enough to make sure the army was awarding him a prize commensurate with his achievements.
He didn’t speak to me, he didn’t see me—but he sent for me every night. I bore it by telling myself that one day—and possibly quite soon—that would all change. He’d remember Diomede, the girl who’d been his favourite before I arrived, and send for her instead. Or better still, he’d sack another city—god knows, his appetite for sacking cities seemed to know no bounds—and the army would award him another prize, another shocked and shivering girl. And then, she’d be shown off to his men, flaunted in front of his guests, and I’d be allowed to sink into the obscurity of the women’s huts.
Things did change—they always do—but not in the direction I’d been hoping for. I don’t know how long I’d been in the camp, probably about three weeks. Like I say, it was almost impossible to keep track of time in that camp, I seemed to be living in a bubble, no past, no future, only an endless repetition of now and now and now. But I think perhaps the change started in me. The numbness began to wear off, to be replaced by a pain so intense I could neither stand nor sit still. Up to this point, I’d been both passive and abnormally vigilant, but curiously lacking in emotion. Now, there were frequent moments of desperation, even despair. When, on the citadel roof, my cousin Arianna had stretched out her hand to me, before leaping to her death, I’d chosen to live, but if I’d had that choice to make again, now, knowing what I knew now…Would I still have made the same decision?
One night after dinner, instead of going to sit with Iphis in the cupboard, waiting to be summoned, I went down to the sea. Generally, once the men had finished eating, the women would snatch a quick bite, but I was sick to my stomach, I couldn’t bear the thought of food. I walked down the path between the dunes, each step scattering soft sand. At times, as I thought of my brothers, I felt something like exhilaration. As long as I lived and remembered, they weren’t entirely dead. And I wanted to live long enough to see Achilles sizzling on his funeral pyre. But such moments were brief and always followed by the realization that this was it, from now on this was my life. I’d share Achilles’s bed at night until he grew tired of me and then I’d be demoted to carrying buckets of water or cutting rushes to spread across the floors. And when the war was over I’d be taken to Phthia—because the Greeks would win, I knew they would, I’d seen Achilles fight. Troy would be destroyed just as Lyrnessus had been destroyed. More widows, more shocked and bleeding girls. I didn’t want to live to see any of it.
When I reached the beach, I walked straight into the sea as I usually did, but this time I kept on walking until the water closed over my head. Below me, shifting beams of moonlight gleamed fitfully on ribs of white sand. I tried to make myself take a breath, but it’s amazing how the body struggles to survive even when the spirit’s ready to depart. I couldn’t force myself to take that breath and after a while the tightening of the iron band round my chest became intolerable. Involuntarily, I thrust upwards, breaking the surface with a shriek of indrawn air.
When I got back to Achilles’s compound, bedraggled and downcast, Iphis was waiting for me. I was shaking as she pulled a clean, dry tunic over my head and twisted my hair into a knot at the back so its wetness wouldn’t be too obvious. All the while, she was muttering with concern, patting my shoulders and stroking my face and doing everything she could to make me look presentable, but then Patroclus called for her and she had to go.
I went on sitting there. In the next room, Achilles was playing the lyre, as he always did at this time of night. There was one particular piece of music that finished in a sequence of notes like the last few raindrops at the end of a storm. It sounded familiar, as if I’d always known it, but I couldn’t place it; I certainly couldn’t remember any of the words. I listened, and then he stopped playing—the moment I always dreaded. I heard him put the lyre down on the table by his chair. A minute later, he opened the door and jerked his head for me to come in.
Letting my tunic drop to the floor, I stood for a moment chafing my wet arms and then slipped between the sheets. He was in no hurry, sipping the last of his wine, picking up the lyre and playing the same sequence of notes again. I lay and listened, hating the delicacy of his fingers as they moved across the strings. I knew every gesture of those beautifully manicured hands—which still, however, had blood embedded in the cuticles; even perfumed baths won’t shift every stain. Because I’d been watching him so intently—from fear, not for any other reason—I felt I knew everything about him, more than his men, more than anybody, except Patroclus. Everything, and nothing. Because I couldn’t for one moment imagine what it would be like to be him. And, during the same time, he’d learnt nothing at all about me. Which suited me, perfectly. I certainly didn’t want to be understood.
He did, eventually, get into bed. I closed my eyes, wishing he’d turn the lamp down, though I knew he wouldn’t; he never did. I felt him turn onto his side and cup those terrible hands round my breasts. I forced myself not to stiffen, not to pull away…
And then he stopped. “What’s that smell?”
Those were almost the first words he’d spoken to me. I edged further away from him. I knew it was a mistake, but I couldn’t stop myself. He leant forward, sniffing my skin and hair. I was aware of how it must appear to him, the crust of salt on my cheekbones, the smell of sea-rot in my hair. I fully expected him to kick me out of bed or hit me—the violence that was always simmering beneath the surface turned on me at last.
What he actually did was far more shocking.