Salamis (43 page)

I might have wept, but neither dead girl was mine.

He had Briseis by the hair, and he had one of her arms pinned, because it had a long curved knife. His hand held a sword – a kopis such as I had used in my youth. It was red to the hilt and for a long moment I could not tell if her throat was cut or not.

‘Stop!’ he commended me. ‘Or I kill your whore.’

I was still moving forward.

‘Kill him, Achilles!’ Briseis said.

‘Shut up, you bitch!’ he said. His grip must have hurt her terribly, but she still had the knife and he could not make her drop it – she was a dancer, fit, and flexible, and the grip that would have broken a man’s arm was hurting her terribly, but she still had the knife. And her struggles made him unable to just cut her throat.

His two men were opening the doors to the women’s yard beyond. He tried to drag her feet from under her, so that he’d have her arm and the knife, but she moved with fluid grace, despite his grip.

I saw it all, the last act of a tragedy older than me. Before I threw my spear I knew that wherever it lodged, Briseis would be the victor – alive, my bride, or dead, avenged and unbroken. Like it or not …

All her will passed to me in one glance of those eyes. When she told me to kill him, she told me all.

I turned my head slightly, as if tracking his henchman, who raised his spear to threaten me.

And then, without looking, I threw. My throw had everything behind it, and my right foot went forward, making me as vulnerable as the man I’d killed a moment before in the portico. And Diomedes’ man threw at me.

And all the gods laughed and oaths were fulfilled.

Archilogos’s shield snapped forward – and the brother and owner of my youth deflected my death.

And Diomedes stood.

Briseis was on the floor.

Diomedes stood

because

my

spear

pinned

him

to

the

door

Blood fountained over his chest from his throat, and his face distorted against my shaft. His mouth moved like a gaffed tuna, and no sound emerged.

Briseis had fallen to her hands and knees. In truth, my spear ripped along her scalp and blood flowed – but she was
alive
.

As fast as I could reach her side, my people butchered Diomedes’ remaining men, and Briseis was raised from the floor – I had one of her hands, and her brother had the other.

‘I came as best I could,’ I said.

Archilogos looked at me across his sister.

‘My hate for you burned hot,’ he said. ‘But now I find only ashes. Heraclitus, ere he died, told me that you tried to save my father.’

Briseis’s eye caught mine. Fear, despair, elation – they left almost no mark on her, and one eyebrow went up despite the blood. Indeed, Archilogos must have been told many times that I had tried to save his father – that I had only killed him in mercy, never in anger. But … time passes its own messages.

Brasidas said, ‘Arimnestos! We must go.’

I looked over my shoulder at him, and then at Briseis and Archilogos. ‘Briseis,’ I said. ‘Come and be my wife.’

Then she smiled, the same smile she always had when she put the knife in.

‘I want nothing else, my love,’ she said. ‘But I must have a moment, or I’ll come to you with no dowry.’

‘I would take you in your chiton,’ I said, or something equally foolish.

Archilogos shook his head. ‘She’s right, and don’t be a romantic fool. All our fortune is in this town. If Artaphernes is coming for us – we need to do some selective removals.’ He grinned.

‘Archilogos,’ I said. ‘Artaphernes will kill you. And Xerxes will do nothing to stop him. Come with me and be free.’

Archilogos paused. ‘My oarsmen will kill me,’ he said.

And he smiled.

‘You saved my life,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘So help me carry my fortune down to the ships.’

The Wedding

Χορός

ἀλλά, θεοὶ γενέται

κλύετ᾽ εὖ τὸ δίκαιον ἰδόντες:

ἥβᾳ μὴ τέλεον

80δόντες ἔχειν παρ᾽ αἶσαν,

ὕβριν δ᾽ ἑτοίμως στυγοῦντες,

πέλοιτ᾽ ἂν ἔνδικοι γάμοις.

ἔστι δὲ κἀκ πολέμου τειρομένοις

βωμὸς ἀρῆς φυγάσιν

85
ῥῦμα, δαιμόνων σέβας.

Chorus

But, gods of our race, hear, and regard with favour the cause of righteousness; if you refuse youth fulfilment of its arrogant desires, and readily abhor violence, you would be righteous toward marriage. Even for those who flee hard-pressed from war there is an altar, a shelter against harm through respect for the powers of heaven.

Aeschylus,
Suppliant Women

The trip home had adventures of its own and I will only mention a few. We took food in Ephesus – stripped it from a town still unaware how few we were. In fact, I confess that we stripped Diomedes’ palace and left his wife and children destitute – but un-raped and alive. We stripped the house of Hipponax, and took aboard a number of family servants and slaves. And then we sailed into a setting sun and landed a few hours later, after heavy rowing, on the beaches of Chios. Before night fell, Harpagos had gone to his sister, who looked at him dry-eyed.

‘He lived longer than I expected,’ she said. ‘So have you.’

She was never one for soft words.

And when we’d arranged for his funeral pyre, and we walked away, Briseis – her head wrapped in a bandage – took my hand in the darkness.

‘She loves you,’ Briseis said.

I shook my head. ‘I have been the death of her brother, her husband and her cousin,’ I said. ‘She loved me once.’

Briseis shrugged. ‘It is no easy thing, being the lover of a hero.’

I lacked the strength to laugh. But I caught her shoulders and kissed her.

‘It is no easy thing, to be the lover of Briseis,’ I said.

She broke off our kiss. ‘Why should it be easy?’ she asked. ‘Why should anything good be easy?’

And when I tried to be insistent in my advances, she put a hand on my chest and pushed hard.

‘Marry me,’ she said. ‘Until then, no.’ She laughed at me, in the darkness. ‘Listen, Achilles. My head looks like the Gorgon and my courses are on me, and I have never desired a man more, or less, at the same time. Wait and be a groom so that I may, once more, be a bride. I swear, who has been Aphrodite’s tool, that I will never know another man. Indeed, long and long have I awaited this day.’

I knelt. ‘Lady, I have a wedding prepared in far Hermione.’

She laughed. ‘What barbarous place is that? Is it near Plataea?’

‘Oh, my love, Plataea is destroyed by the Great King. Hermione is a town in the Peloponnese that has taken in the survivors.’ I could hear my crew, drinking wine on the beach. I didn’t like the sound of the wind. The time of storms was upon us – it was late for anyone to sail the ocean.

‘And you? Are you now destitute?’ she asked.

I sat on a rock and dragged her down beside me. ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I won’t really know for weeks and perhaps longer. Until I see how many of my ships survived the autumn.’

She nodded. The moon was high and I could see the signs of age on her face.

Not that I cared.

‘I was a fool,’ she said. ‘I was a fool to aim at worldly power when I might have spent my youth with you.’ She looked me in the eye and shrugged. ‘But we are what we are. I never wanted home and hearth. I wanted to sail the earth and sea as my brother did.’ She shrugged.

‘Where are your sons?’ I asked her.

She leaned closer to me. A chill wind blew across the sand. ‘They went as horsemen with the army, thanks to Artaphernes. My husband, not the viper his son.’

I nodded. I had a hard time imagining that – if they were indeed of my blood – they loved horses.

‘I was a fool,’ I said. ‘To want the life of the spear and ship when I could have been a bronze-smith in a shop, and been happy. But only with you.’

We sat in silence.

‘We are not so old,’ Briseis said. ‘I almost feel I might be beautiful, in the right lighting.’

I laughed. ‘Lady of my heart, truly, I never fought better than I fought today. So I am young in the midst of being old, and I invite you to join me. Tomorrow, the aches and pains—’

‘Hands off, improvident suitor!’ she said, quoting Homer. She leapt up. ‘My mother warned me about boys like you,’ she said. ‘Don’t follow me.’

And she walked off into the darkness.

And I drank wine with my people and Archilogos, who I found drinking with Seckla, of all people.

Early the next morning, Harpagos’s funeral pyre lit the dawn and we shared wine and poured more on the fire. And as if the fire was a beacon, Artemisia’s ships joined us on the beach of Chios one by one – the Red King, and her own swift ship. Archilogos we already had by us.

We met them on the beach. I was crowned with laurel from the funeral, clad only in a himation, without arms, and Brasidas the same. But the rest of our marines – thirty of them, at least – were full armed.

Artemisia was not in armour either. She was dressed like a slightly outlandish matron, in purple and saffron peplos and chlamys, and her clothing was beautifully embroidered, with her magnificent red hair as an ornament, so that one could easily see she was a queen. And she, despite being tall, floated over the sand and didn’t seem to stumble or wallow as many of the rest of us did.

Briseis was by me. She was, of course, a priestess of Aphrodite, and Harpagos, like many men of Chios, was a devotee and an initiate, so that Briseis had said the rites and sung the hymns. She was very plainly dressed in a dark chiton, long and slim as a dark flame, with a single stripe of brightest white.

We all came together from our opposite ends of the beach.

I had an olive branch, as did the Red King, for all that he was in full armour and had a sword on.

‘I have your son,’ I said.

‘And I yours,’ Artemisia said.

But she was looking at Briseis.

It struck me – in a moment of wonder – that they must know each other, as they were of an age, from the same social class, and from cities not so very far apart.

Briseis laughed. ‘Artemisia!’ she cried. ‘You!’

She turned to me. ‘We were at Sappho’s school together as girls,’ she said.

And the other woman shook her head. ‘The circle of the world seems vast,’ she said. ‘And yet, the compass sometimes seems very small.’

I had her son and his military tutor brought down the beach. ‘I release your son and his ship as well,’ I said. ‘And I have done better than my part of the bargain. I include two sons of Xerxes I found on the beach at Ephesus.’

To be fair, Seckla took them prisoner while Brasidas and I were racing up the hill.

The Queen of Halicarnassus laughed like a man and kissed both my cheeks.

‘You are the most honest Greek I have ever met,’ she said.

‘Foolish, more like,’ the Red King said. He had my son Hipponax by the elbow and he gave him a gentle shove. ‘I hope, Plataean, when next we meet, that we do not have all these women and children between us.’

I looked at him. His old-fashioned Corinthian helmet gave me little of his face. ‘Are we enemies?’ I asked. ‘Do you owe me some vengeance?’

He laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But men say you are the best warrior of the Greeks. You are too old to hold that title. I will strip it from your dead hand.’ He bowed. ‘Do not think I do not honour you, Arimnestos of Plataea. But I will be the best spear in the world.’

He nodded, helmet still firmly on his head, turned, and stalked away with a dozen scarlet marines at his back.

As we prepared to leave the beach at Chios, a fishing smack brought us word that Artaphernes, son of Artaphernes, had come into Ephesus with a regiment of Lydian cavalry and found us gone. The fisherman told us that Artaphernes rode his horse into the sea, looking towards Chios, and cursed my name.

It’s good for men to know who you are. Powerful enemies show that you haven’t wasted your life, don’t they?

The next evening found us on the beach at Tenos. Now, you may recall that the ships of Tenos came over to us just before the fight at Salamis and the island had declared for the League of Corinth. So we found Megakles safe and happy enough, with a mountain of food ready to serve out to my oarsmen.

We half-emptied the hull and ate ourselves to repletion, and then weathered a nasty day of squall after squall to pass up the west coast of Andros where we could see much of the League fleet on the beach.

I had no temptation to land and place myself at Themistocles’ service. Listen – he may have been the greatest of the Greeks, or a traitor. But I could not trust him, and it was clear to me that, having beaten the Great King, he would now go from hubris to hubris.

I wanted no part in the loot of Andros. The island was poor sand anyway. But Moire and Harpagos’s nephew Ion felt differently, and I saluted them and sent them on their way to join the League fleet.
Naiad
surprised us by declaring that they would winter with the Greek fleet, if we could feed them, and we could.

And Briseis had moved to her brother’s ship. To say I burned for her is not to do justice.

My dreams were dark, though I had Briseis, and Archilogos warmed to me, day by day. Leukas was alive, and far from dead.

I should have been with the gods – the victory, the pursuit, the accomplishment of the dream of a lifetime.

Instead, for the whole of the voyage home, I was haunted by the dreams of the past, the deaths of those I’d loved and hated. I think I feared more on the voyage home than the voyage out. A day of dark skies and low squalls all but unmanned me, so sure was I that the gods would now take from me what they had briefly granted.

That is, all too often, the way of the gods. Is it not?

Megalos, again. The last time that autumn, and my squadron limped in after a long day skirmishing with Poseidon’s winds. No man sang or drank wine on the beach that day – we fell into dreamless sleep, too tired to do more than pour libations and fall on straw. And in the morning, sore from days of rowing, we pointed our bows straight into a strong wind – and pulled.

But towards the hour when a man goes to the agora to see his friends, the winds relented of their torments and we got a light breeze from the north – cold as a woman’s refusal, but gentle enough that we chose to raise sail and run slantwise, south by west, across it. And gentle as that wind was, it lasted the day and saw us to Aegina – and the next dawn it waited for us, and wafted us, without another thought of ugly death, across the Aegean Sea to Hermione.

And there, in that lovely town which rises over a promontory with beaches facing two ways, like a proper port, I saw
Athena
Nike
beached, high above the water. And somehow, seeing Aristides’ ship there, I knew that now I could cease to worry, at least for a little while.

We were a tired crew of Argonauts when, ship-by-ship, we landed on that beach. It seemed a third of the fleet was there: Cimon’s
Ajax
and a dozen others I knew, and even Xanthippus’s
Horse Tamer.
But we landed, and from pride I landed last, allowing each of my captains to pick his place and run his stern up the beach. It was smartly done and quite a crowd gathered. They cheered, by the gods – cheer on cheer carrying out over the water, especially when they saw Archilogos’s ship, which of course they assumed was a capture.

And there was Aristides – and there Jocasta. There Penelope. There was Hermogenes, smiling as if he’d just won the laurel in a contest, and Styges and Teucer and a dozen other Plataeans. There was Hector, and, further along the beach, Cleitus, with his wife and daughter, and my own steward, Eugenios, and my daughter Euphonia.

Many times in my life, coming home has had its own perils. Or I have brought the perils home with me.

But in Hermione, which was temporarily Plataea too, and Athens as well, I landed to the cheers of my kin and friends. I leaped over the stern to the beach, and Simonides my cousin embraced Achilles his brother – and then embraced me.

I pulled away to lift my arms. Above me, Briseis looked over my head at a thousand people or more.

She smiled and looked down at me. And jumped into my arms with the trust of many years, and I put her on the sand without, I hope, a grunt.

By my shoulder, Jocasta said, ‘And this is Briseis, I make little doubt.’

I had long wondered how she might greet the woman of my dreams, who was so much her opposite – so much more like Gorgo of Sparta.

She folded her in an embrace. ‘Are you marrying him?’ she asked.

Briseis’s eyes were too bright for a mortal woman, and her look at me held too much meaning for words. ‘I cannot resist him,’ she said.

Jocasta took her hand. ‘Then we have a great deal to do,’ she said.

And my daughter came. She looked at Briseis – and took her hand and kissed it.

And my Briseis, hard as steel, burst into tears.

A few paces away Hipponax leapt from the stern of Moire’s ship. He reached for Heliodora, but she swayed like a reed and ran.

Despite his armour, he gave chase.

They were both laughing.

Hector’s Iris stood at the back of the crowd shyly. I think she wondered if he really wanted her – if, indeed, he meant the promise he’d made. I can read men, and sometimes women, and I saw her there, and the look in her eyes.

But Hector was a much greater man than his father Anarchos, and he stood on the stern of his ship, his armour burning in the sun, until he saw her. And then he leaped into the shallows and ran at her as if he was charging a line of Median spearmen.

And then she laughed from joy, and we were home.

Leukas was the last man off the ship. He didn’t leap, and a dozen of us competed to help him onto the sand.

He knelt and kissed the beach. ‘I never expected to reach here alive,’ he admitted.

Brasidas nodded. ‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘This is not the ending I had imagined for any of us.’

Styges had to hear of Idomeneus’s end – and had to weep. Many other wives came down to that beach, hoping against hope, and were disappointed. No homecoming of warriors is unmarred by this reality, but our losses might have been so much the worse – I had to content myself with that. Because amidst my happiness I was aware that I had achieved fame, victory, and the woman I loved by the shields and spears of my friends, and I had left many of them face down in the sands of time. They did not haunt me every day, but they certainly had, the last week before landing. Briseis may have brought her own dowry of silver and gold, but her bride price was paid in spears, bronze, iron and blood.

And Brasidas. I think that night he was very close to the edge.

We had a house – Eugenios had it prepared, and it was small, but so was Hermione. It had a bridal chamber, and I slept on a mat on the floor so as not to ruin the beauty of the place before the big day. But it had a beautiful garden, and that night – a few days before my wedding – I sat with Brasidas, a cup of wine, and the stars of autumn. I confess, men are difficult beasts. I wanted to be celebrating victory with Aristides, and bathing in Jocasta’s good cheer, and dandling my daughter on my knee – and watching Briseis.