I carried him to a small storehouse nearby and laid him on a stone slab the right height for the women to minister to him. But I straightened his limbs, I put my hand on his face to close his eyes. They opened again very slowly, sightless. An awful thing, to watch Hektor’s vacant husk. To think of my own.

Brise was sitting waiting for me, hunched in a chair. She glanced at me, but didn’t speak for some time. Then she said in a neutral voice, ‘I have water ready for your bath, and there’s food and wine afterwards. I must light the lamps, it’s dusk.’

Oh, if only water had the power to wash away the stains on a spirit! My body was clean again. But my spirit was not.

Brise sat on the couch opposite me while I toyed with the food, quenched my thirst. I felt as if I had been running like a madman for years.

Then she used the word too. Madman. She said, ‘Achilles, why are you behaving like a madman? The world isn’t going to cease because Patrokles is dead. There are others still living who love you as much as he did. Automedon. The Myrmidons. I.’

‘Go away,’ I said wearily.

‘When I’m finished. Heal yourself, Achilles, in the only way possible. Stop pandering to Patrokles and give Hektor back to his father. I’m not jealous, I never have been. That you and Patrokles were lovers didn’t affect me or my place in your life. But he was jealous, and that warped him. You believe he thought you betrayed your ideals. But to Patrokles the real betrayal was your love of me. That’s where it started. After that, nothing you did would have been right as far as he was concerned. I’m not condemning him – I’m just speaking the truth. He loved you and he felt you betrayed his love by loving me. And if you could do that, you couldn’t be the person he thought you were. It was necessary that he find flaws. He had to feed his own sense of injury.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.

‘Yes, I do. But it isn’t Patrokles I want to talk about. I want to talk about Hektor. How can you do this to a man who faced you so bravely and died so well? Give him back to his father! It isn’t the real Patrokles who haunts you, it’s the Patrokles you’ve conjured up to drive yourself mad. Forget Patrokles. He was no true friend to you at the last.’

I struck her. Her head snapped back and she fell from the couch to the floor. Horrified, I scooped her up, laid her down to find that she was moving and groaning. I stumbled to a chair, put my head in my hands. Even Brise was a victim of this madness, and madness it was. But how to heal it? How to banish my mother?

Something wrapped itself about my legs, plucked feebly at the hem of my kilt. I lifted my head in terror to see what new visitation had come to plague me and stared confounded at the white head and twisted countenance of an old, old man. Priam. It could be no one else. Priam. As I took my elbows from my knees he seized my hands and began to kiss them, his tears falling on the same skin Hektor’s blood had.

‘Give him back to me! Give him back! Don’t feed him to your dogs! Don’t leave him alone and unhallowed! Don’t deny him proper mourning! Give him back to me!’

I looked across at Brise, who was sitting upright, her eyes filled with unshed tears.

‘Come, sire, sit down,’ I said, lifting him and putting him into my chair. ‘A king shouldn’t have to beg. Sit down.’

Automedon stood in the doorway.

‘How did he get here?’ I asked, going to him.

‘In a mule cart driven by an idiot boy. I mean that literally. A poor creature full of mindless mumbles. The army is still feasting, the guard on the causeway is Myrmidon. The old man said he had business with you. The cart was empty and neither of them was armed, so the guard let them in.’

‘Fetch fire, Automedon. Don’t breathe a word to anyone of his presence here. Pass that onto the guard, and thank it for me.’

While I waited for the fire – it was cold – I drew up a chair close to his and took his gnarled hands in mine, chafing them. So chilled.

‘It took courage to come here, sire.’

‘No, none.’ His rheumy dark eyes looked into mine. ‘Once,’ he said, ‘I ruled a happy and prosperous kingdom. But then I went wrong. The wrong was in me. In me… You Greeks were sent to punish me for my pride. For my blindness.’ His lip trembled, the moistness in his eyes made them glitter. ‘No, it took not one scrap of courage to come here. Hektor was the final price.’

‘The final price,’ I said, unable not to say it, ‘will be the fall of Troy.’

‘The fall of my dynasty, perhaps, but not the fall of the city. Troy is greater than that, even now.’

‘Troy the city will fall.’

‘Well, on that we beg to differ, but I hope not on the reason for my coming. Prince Achilles, grant me the body of my son. I will pay a fitting ransom.’

‘I require no ransom, King Priam. Take him home,’ I said.

He fell on his knees a second time to kiss my hands; my flesh crawled. Nodding to Brise, I disengaged myself. ‘Sit down, sire, and break bread with me while I have Hektor readied. Brise, look after our guest.’

As I spoke to Automedon outside I thought of something. ‘Ajax’s baldric – it belonged to Hektor, whereas the armour didn’t. Find it, Automedon, and put it in the cart with him.’

When I returned it was to find Priam recovered, chattering happily to Brise in one of the bewildering mood changes characteristic of the very old, asking her how she liked life with me when she had been born into the House of Dardanos.

‘I’m content, sire,’ she was saying. ‘Achilles is a good man, and not ignoble.’ She leaned forwards. ‘Sire, why does he think he must die soon?’

‘Their fates are linked, his and Hektor’s,’ said the ancient King. ‘It has been seen in the oracles.’

When they saw me they abandoned the subject, of course. We dined then and I discovered I was famished, but I forced myself to a pace equal to Priam’s, and drank sparingly of the wine.

Afterwards I conducted him to his mule cart, in which lay the sheeted body of Hektor. Priam didn’t look beneath the covering, but climbed up beside the idiot boy and drove off sitting as erect and proud as if he rode in a car of solid gold.

Brise waited for me with her hair unbound, a loose robe folded about her. I went through to our bed as she lingered to blow out the lamps.

‘Too tired even to shed your clothes?’

She unclasped my collar and belt, removed the kilt and let all of them lie on the floor where they landed. Exhausted, I put my arms above my head and lay flat on my back as she lifted herself up beside me, leaning over me and fitting her knotted fists into my armpits. I smiled at her, suddenly as light and happy as a small child.

‘I haven’t the strength even to pull your hair,’ I said.

‘Then lie still and go to sleep. I’m here.’

‘I’m too tired to sleep.’

‘Then rest. I’m here.’

‘Brise, promise me that you’ll not leave me until the end?’

‘The end?’

Gone her laughter; her face hung over me, her eyes dimmed because only one lamp still burned, and it at the farthest reaches of the room. With an enormous effort I lifted my arms and took her head between my hands, holding her frail skull the way I had held Hektor’s, bringing her face closer.

‘I heard what you asked Priam, and I heard his answer. You know what I mean, Brise.’

‘I refuse to believe it!’ she cried.

‘Some things are required of a man on the day of his birth, and these things are told to him. My father would not, but my mother did. Coming to Troy meant I would die here, and now that Hektor’s dead, Troy must fall. My death is the purchase price.’

‘Achilles, don’t leave me!’

‘I’d give my all to stay, but it can’t be.’

She was quiet for a long while, her eyes dwelling on the tiny flame sputtering in the lamp’s shell, her breathing rhythmic and unhurried. Then she said, ‘You had ordered Hektor prepared for burial before you saw me this evening.’