‘War,’ he countered, amused, ‘was equally prevalent when women ruled under the thumb of the Mother. High queens were as avaricious and ambitious as any High king. War isn’t an aspect of sex. It’s an intrinsic part of the race.’

As that was inarguable, I changed the subject. ‘Why do you, a man of sensitivity and perception, love a man as hard and cruel as Achilles?’ I asked.

His blue eyes stared at me in amazement. ‘But Achilles isn’t hard or cruel!’ he said blankly.

‘That I don’t believe.’

‘Achilles isn’t what he seems,’ said his faithful hound.

‘Then what is he?’

He shook his head. ‘That, Brise, you’ll have to discover for yourself.’

‘Is he married?’ Why did women always have to ask that?

‘Yes. To the only daughter of King Lykomedes of Skyros. He has a son, Neoptolemos, sixteen years old. And, as the only son of Peleus, he’s Heir to the High Kingdom of Thessalia.’

‘None of which alters my opinion of him.’

To my surprise, Patrokles picked up my hand and kissed it. Then he went away.

I stood in the stern as long as there was a smudge of land on the horizon. The sea was under me, I could never go back. No escaping my fate now. I was to be a woman musician, I who had expected to marry a king. Should already have been married to a king, save that the Greeks had arrived and those men who in other days would have come to negotiate for my hand were suddenly too busy to think of marriage alliances.

The water hissed under the hull, broken into white foam by the slap of the oars, a steady, soothing sound which filled my head so subtly that long moments had passed before I realised that I had made up my mind what to do. The rail wasn’t difficult; I clambered onto it and prepared to jump.

Someone jerked me roughly down. Patrokles.

‘Let me do it! Forget you’ve seen me!’ I cried.

‘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.