Odysseus pounded his fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘No, no, no! The man is a Trojan! Put your trust in no man born to an enemy woman in an enemy country when you are fighting on his own soil and likely to win.’

‘You’re right, Odysseus,’ said Achilles.

I made no comment, but I wondered. For years I had championed Kalchas, but something inside me had turned this morning, quite what I didn’t know. He had been at the root of things which had done much harm. It had been he who had forced me to sacrifice my own daughter and thereby create the breach with Achilles. Well, if he was in truth not to be trusted, it would be evident on the day when I quarrelled with Achilles. For all its careful blankness his face would betray his inner pleasure – if indeed he felt any. After so many years, I knew him.

‘Agamemnon,’ came the plaintive voice of Menelaos from the door, ‘we’re boarded in! Would you kindly give the order to let us out?’

22

NARRATED BY

Achilles

Dreading having to face those I loved and keep my counsel from them, I returned to the Myrmidon stockade with a dragging step. Patrokles and Phoinix were sitting on either side of a table in the sun, playing knuckle bones amid much laughter.

‘What happened? Anything important?’ asked Patrokles, and got up to throw his arm about my shoulders. Something he was more prone to do since Brise had entered my life, and that was a pity. It couldn’t help his cause to lay public claim to me, and it irritated me into the bargain. As if he was trying to put a burden of guilt on me – I am your first cousin as well as your lover, and you can’t just drop me because of a new plaything.

I shrugged him off. ‘Nothing happened. Agamemnon wanted to know if we were having difficulty in curbing our men.’

Phoinix looked surprised. ‘Surely he could have seen that for himself if he’d bothered to tour the camp?’

‘You know our imperial overlord. He hasn’t called a council in a moon, and he hates to think his grip on us is slackening.’

‘But why only you, Achilles? I pour the wine and see to everyone’s comfort at a council,’ said Patrokles, looking wounded.

‘It was a very small group.’

‘Was Kalchas there?’ asked Phoinix.

‘Kalchas is out of favour at the moment.’

‘Over the girl Chryse? He’d have done better to have kept his mouth shut on that subject,’ said Patrokles.

‘Perhaps he thinks that if he pushes hard enough, he’ll get his own way in the end,’ I said casually.

Patrokles blinked. ‘Do you honestly think so? I don’t.’

‘Can neither of you find anything more significant to do than play at knuckle bones?’ I asked, to change the subject.

‘What more pleasurable thing could one do on a beautiful day which won’t see the Trojans come out?’ asked Phoinix. He looked at me shrewdly. ‘You’ve been gone all morning. A long time for a trivial meeting.’

‘Odysseus was in fine form.’

‘Come and sit down,’ said Patrokles, stroking my arm.

‘Not now. Is Brise inside?’

I had never seen Patrokles in a rage, but suddenly it was flaring in his eyes; his mouth shook, he bit it. ‘Where else would she be?’ he snapped, turned his back and sat down at the table. ‘Let’s play,’ he said to Phoinix, who rolled his eyes.

I called her name as I stepped inside, and she came flying through an inner door to land in my arms.

‘Did you miss me?’ I asked fatuously.

‘It seemed like days!’

‘Half a year, more like.’ I sighed, thinking of what had gone on in that boarded-up council chamber.

‘No doubt you’ve already drunk more than your share of wine, but would you like more?’

I looked down at her, surprised. ‘Come to think of it, we drank no wine.’

Laughter brimmed in her vivid blue eyes. ‘Absorbing.’

‘Boring, I’d say.’

‘Poor thing! Did Agamemnon feed you?’

‘No. Be a good child and find me something to eat.’

She busied herself about the task of waiting on me, chattering like a hedge bird while I sat and watched her, thinking how lovely her smile, how graceful her walk, how swanlike the turn of her neck. War carries a perpetual threat of death, but she seemed oblivious to any impending doom; I never spoke to her of battle.

‘Did you see Patrokles outside in the sun?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you preferred me to him,’ she said with satisfaction, proving that the rivalry was not merely one sided. She handed me hot bread and a dish of olive oil to dip it in. ‘Here, fresh from the oven.’

‘Did you bake it?’ I asked.

‘You know perfectly well I cannot bake, Achilles.’

‘True. You have no womanly skills.’

‘Tell me that tonight when the curtain is drawn across our doorway and I’m in your bed,’ she said, unruffled.

‘All right, I concede you one womanly skill.’

The moment I said it, she plumped herself down in my lap, took my free hand and slipped it inside the loose gown she wore, covering her left breast.

‘I love you so much, Achilles.’

‘And I you.’ I put my hand in her hair and lifted her face so she had to look at me. ‘Brise, will you make me a promise?’

Her wide eyes betrayed no anxiety. ‘Anything you ask.’

‘What if I should dismiss you, command that you go to some other man?’

Her mouth trembled. ‘If you so commanded, I would go.’

‘What would you think of me?’

‘No less than I think of you now. You would have sufficient reason. Or else it would mean that you had tired of me.’

‘I’ll never tire of you. Never in all the time left to me. Some things can’t change.’

Her colour returned in a flood. ‘So I believe too.’ She laughed breathlessly. ‘Ask me to do something easy, like dying for you.’

‘Before bed time?’

‘Well, tomorrow, then.’

‘I still require a promise of you, Brise.’

‘What?’

I twisted a lock of her amazing hair between my fingers. ‘That if there should come a time when I seem a fool, or stupid, or coldhearted, you’ll continue to believe in me.’

‘I’ll always believe in you.’ She pressed my hand a little harder against her breast. ‘I’m not stupid either, Achilles. Something troubles you.’

‘If it does, I can’t tell you.’

Whereupon she left the subject alone, and never tried to bring it up again.

It was beyond any of us how Odysseus went about the tasks he had set himself; we knew his hand was there, yet we could see no sign of it. Somehow the whole army was buzzing with the news that the bad blood between me and Agamemnon was coming to a head, that Kalchas was being aggravatingly persistent about the affair of Chryse, and that Agamemnon’s temper was fraying.

Three days after the council meeting these interesting topics of conversation were forgotten. Disaster struck. At first the officers tried to hush it up, but soon the men who fell ill were too many to hide. The dread word flew from tongue to tongue: plague, plague, plague. Within the space of one day four thousand men succumbed, then four thousand more the next day – there seemed no end to them. I went to see some of my own men who were among the stricken, and the sight of them had me praying to Leto and Artemis that Odysseus knew what he was doing. They were feverish, delirious, covered in a weeping rash, whimpering under the onslaught of headache. I talked to Machaon and Podalieros, who both assured me it was definitely a form of plague.

Not many moments later I encountered Odysseus himself. He was grinning from ear to ear.

‘You have to admit, Achilles, that I’ve created something of a landmark when I can fool the sons of Asklepios!’

‘I hope you haven’t overstepped yourself,’ I said dourly.

‘Rest you, there’ll be no permanent casualties. They’ll all rise from their sickbeds well men.’

I shook my head, exasperated at his self-congratulatory glee. ‘About the moment Agamemnon obeys Kalchas and yields up Chryse, I suppose. A magnificent, miraculous recovery at the hands of the God. Only this time it will be the god out of the machine.’