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.