14

Achilles’ Rage

ASTYNOME CAME TO MY tent the next morning, after Orestes had gone to join Agamemnon. She sat down wearily, her eyes heavy with sleep, and yawned. “I didn’t rest well.”

“The baby?” I asked.

“No, the baby’s fine. I had another dream. It was about Achilles’ mother, Thetis, the sea nymph. When she heard that Hector had stripped Achilles’ armor from Patroclus’s body, Thetis came to comfort Achilles. She promised to get him a new set of armor.”

I fetched Astynome some bread and a bowl of cheese mixed with nuts and honey. She always seemed to be hungry.

“She’s on her way to visit Hephaestus, the god of fire,” Astynome said between mouthfuls, “and he’s creating invincible armor for Achilles. That much was in the dream. The rest I learned from Agamemnon. Achilles has promised to return to fight. He went to the trench where the Trojans were struggling to get Patroclus’s body away from the Greeks, and he gave his fierce war cry. It was so ferocious that the Trojans left the body and fled behind their walls. Achilles leaped into his war chariot and chased the fleeing men, slaying any who failed to reach safety. They’re terrified of him.”

“With Achilles back in the battle, the war is truly almost over.”

Astynome rose clumsily and helped herself to more bread and cheese. “I’d like to think so. But something else in the dream bothers me. I saw Achilles lying dead.”

“But Achilles is invulnerable! He once told Hippodameia that his mother had dipped him in the River Styx when he was a baby, and that would make him immortal.”

“Maybe. But maybe not,” Astynome said. “All I can tell you is what I dreamed.”

 

PATROCLUS’S BODY, RESCUED FROM the Trojans, was laid out in Achilles’ tent. The mourning began, Achilles’ wails louder than anyone’s. I went to stay with Hippodameia during this difficult time.

“He sits by the body night and day, sobbing and wailing,” she told me. “His mother came to him. I heard them talking. She warned him that, if he insists on seeking revenge, he’ll certainly be killed. But he won’t listen to her. His mind is made up.”

I remembered Astynome’s dream of Achilles lying dead, but I decided not to tell Hippodameia about it. If that was what Fate had decreed, it was useless to discuss it.

Hippodameia took me to the shelter where the Myrmidons’ weapons were kept. “Thetis brought him this shield and armor made by Hephaestus.” Here was what Astynome had dreamed about: a massive bronze shield, a breastplate that gleamed like fire, a helmet of burnished bronze with a bristling golden crest, and a pair of greaves made of flexible tin. Every piece was magnificently wrought, but Hephaestus’s shield was a masterpiece, elegantly engraved with scenes of war and peace.

Hippodameia pointed out the scene of men with their scythes in a king’s fields, bringing in the harvest, and the scene with a circle of girls carrying baskets of grapes while a young boy plucked his lyre. But my eye was drawn to a wedding party, where the bride walked through the streets by torchlight while choirs sang and young men whirled and young girls joined hands in a graceful dance. I gazed at this scene and felt that I was part of it.

“That’s what I wish we were doing now—singing and dancing,” Hippodameia remarked wistfully. “You and I and the men we love.”

There were scenes of war and killing, too, on the gorgeous shield, but we weren’t interested in them. We already knew too much of it.

We left the armory and found a place to sit beneath soft white clouds adrift in an azure sky. Hippodameia’s caged birds twittered merrily nearby, an odd contrast to the wailing of Achilles and his Myrmidons. We took out our spindles and wool and began to spin.

“I’m not sure I bring Achilles any comfort,” she confessed. “I thought I could heal him, but I was wrong—his grief is so deep and his feelings of guilt are so overwhelming. But he also blames me! Achilles insists that if only I had died when he was taking me prisoner, Agamemnon would not have demanded me as his prize, his own honor would not have been insulted, and none of this would have happened. And so it really is my fault!” Her lip trembled.

“Don’t believe him. It’s not your fault, Hippodameia! It’s what men do!”

Hippodameia tried to smile. “I know. Still, it’s easier for him to blame me, isn’t it? And now Patroclus is dead, and I mourn him as well. He promised that he would take me to Phthia and see me married to Achilles.” The thread twisted through our fingers. “Now that will never happen.”

 

I TOOK HIPPODAMEIA BACK to Menelaus’s camp with me, unwilling to leave her alone with the Myrmidons. Astynome joined us. We three women clung to each other, knowing that our lives, too, hung in the balance.

Achilles vowed to avenge the death of his beloved Patroclus. Nothing would satisfy him but taking the life of Hector. We couldn’t be present on the battlefield and didn’t want to be; nevertheless, we craved to know what was happening. We found spindle-legged Calchas, with his wispy beard and hairless skull, and begged him to use his second sight to tell us. We sat on the ground in a circle with the old seer, his hooded eyes focused on a point in the far distance, and we strained to catch every word.

“The Trojans have fled behind their wall. Hector stands alone, shackled by his deadly fate, but holding his ground against Achilles. Hector begins to run. Some will say that he runs from fear. Others will say that he hopes to tire Achilles, who has sat stubbornly in his hut doing nothing for so long. Achilles gives chase.”

Through Calchas’s eyes we watched Achilles pursue Hector around the walls of Troy, once, twice, three times, and each time Hector tried to reach the Trojan gates, Achilles prevented it. Hector had no choice now but to stand and fight.

“Hector knows he is doomed. He pleads with his arch-enemy. ‘Promise me that you will not defile my body but will return it to my people.’ But Achilles, in his rage, denies him. The fight to the death begins.”

So powerful was Calchas’s description that we saw the duel as if we were actually present. We listened with our hearts pounding. We scarcely dared to breathe.

“Achilles hurls his spear. Hector ducks, and the bronze tip flies past. But the goddess Athena, hovering above the pair, snatches up the spear, and sends it back to Achilles! Hector takes his turn, hurling his spear. It strikes Achilles’ shield with full force but drops away harmlessly. The two warriors grab their swords and race toward each other. Achilles, teeth bared, stabs Hector in the neck. Hector falls.”

Calchas was silent, and we waited.

“Hector is dead.”

We sighed, relieved that it was over. But Calchas held up his hand.

“Wait! Achilles hasn’t finished taking his revenge. He strips Hector’s body of the armor. He is bent on shaming Hector. He slits the tendons in Hector’s heels, threads leather straps through the slits, and fastens the straps to his chariot. Now he whips his stallions into a frenzy, and they plunge headlong, dragging Hector’s lifeless body through clouds of dust.”

Hippodameia screamed and fainted. Astynome caught her. I grabbed Calchas’s sleeve. “And Hector’s people? Have they witnessed this?”

Calchas nodded. “They have. King Priam, mad with grief, vows to beg Achilles to return his son’s body. Hector’s mother tears her hair and cries pitifully. His people wail . . .”

And what about my mother? I wondered. Is she crying too? Does she blame herself? I imagined Helen there in all her loveliness, and for once I did not envy her beauty.

“Hector’s wife?” I whispered. “Does Andromache know?”

“His lovely wife sits in her chamber and weaves at her loom. She has heard nothing and orders her women to prepare a bath for her husband for when he returns from battle.” Calchas paused, and a troubled look crossed his face. “Now she hears the wailing, and she knows.”

I imagined that I could hear Andromache’s anguished cry: “Oh, Hector, I am destroyed!”

 

HECTOR WAS DEAD, AND now Achilles turned his attention to the rituals that would guarantee Patroclus’s safe delivery to the House of Death. All of us attended. As the body was placed on a pyre and consumed by fire, Achilles led the singing of chants that sent chills down my spine. The Myrmidons organized traditional funeral games, contests that would continue for days.

But still Achilles’ hunger for revenge was not satisfied. Not content to let the body of Hector lie in peace, Achilles continued to abuse it. Every day for nine days he ruthlessly dragged Hector’s body three times around the tomb in which Patroclus’s ashes were buried. We marveled that Hector’s body did not decay but remained perfect. Astynome knew why. “Apollo and Aphrodite are protecting it,” she said.

Astynome, whose time was near for the birth of her baby, wanted to return to Agamemnon’s camp, but Hippodameia begged us to stay with her for a little longer—“until Achilles loses his madness,” she said—and so we did.

That was how we happened to be present when King Priam arrived at Achilles’ camp. Somehow the old king had managed to avoid the guards—Astynome whispered that Zeus had sent Hermes, the messenger god, to protect him in his perilous mission. Achilles and those closest to him were gathered in his hut when the Trojan king entered unannounced, hobbled straight to Achilles, knelt painfully and clasped Achilles’ knees, and pleaded for the return of Hector’s body.

Everyone, including Achilles, was thunderstruck. Pyrrhus took one long step forward, his sword drawn, but then he seemed to hesitate and sheathed his weapon. I doubted that he had halted out of pity for Priam; more likely, one of the merciful gods had stopped him.

Achilles found his voice. “What have you to offer me, King Priam?”

“I bring a priceless ransom, a cart loaded with the gold and jewels in my treasury equal to the weight of my beloved son,” King Priam answered, his leathery old cheeks wet with tears. “Now I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son.”

Achilles’ stony heart was softened by this sorrowing old king. He called for his serving women to wash and anoint Hector’s body and wrap it in a brilliant purple cape while his men unloaded the treasure. Achilles himself lifted Hector’s body onto King Priam’s cart. He ordered a sheep slaughtered and bread and wine brought out for a meal. He had a bed made up for Priam and provided him with thick fleeces and warm blankets. He promised a truce until Prince Hector had been buried in Troy.

“Nine days to mourn him, a tenth to bury him, the eleventh to build the mound above him. On the twelfth we’ll fight again,” Achilles told Priam.

Astynome, Hippodameia, and I witnessed the whole scene. When it was finished, Achilles took Hippodameia by the wrist and led her off to his own sleeping quarters. She went with him without a backward glance, leaving Astynome and me to find a place to sleep in her tent. I lay awake, knowing that Pyrrhus was lurking somewhere nearby. I didn’t trust him.

During the night, Astynome’s labor began. I sent for Marpessa, who—old and crippled as she was—still served as midwife for women unlucky enough to give birth on the beach of Troy. Toward morning Agamemnon’s son was born. Astynome named him Chryses, in honor of her father.