Andromache looked from his face to his hand and back to his face and said nothing at all—a rabbit mesmerized by a stoat.
“I stole it!” Amina shouted.
Pyrrhus spun round and hit her again. This time, she put her hand to her nose and brought it away covered in blood.
Turning back to Andromache, Pyrrhus said: “We-ell—did you?”
“I don’t know what happened. I had it in the morning, and in the evening, it was gone. Sorry.” She was sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Andromache was looking at Pyrrhus as she spoke, but I felt the words were meant for Amina.
Amina said, “She didn’t give me the ring. I stole it.” Blood still dripping from her nose, she stared straight at Pyrrhus. “Neither of them helped. I did it—and I don’t regret it for a minute.”
She turned away from him then and, of her own accord, walked to the door, while the guards followed along behind her, transformed into what looked more like a royal escort. There was silence after the door had closed after her.
Alcimus picked up one of the oil lamps and handed it to me. “Make sure she keeps that.” The guard, a Myrmidon, nodded.
“All right.” Pyrrhus was speaking to Alcimus. “We’ll talk later. And you”—jabbing his finger at Andromache—“GET OUT!”
20
Outside the storage hut, the guard stopped and began unlocking the door. Three locks, an indication of the value of the armour kept inside. When he’d finished, he stood aside and politely indicated to me that I should go in. I recognized him as one of the men who’d touched my belly as I’d served wine in the hall, a sign of loyalty to the bloodline of Achilles. Well, gestures like that weren’t going to help me now. And it was Achilles’s son who’d sent me here.
I stepped over the threshold. The guard closed the door behind me and fastened the locks. They didn’t really need locks to keep me in. Where would I go? The lamp cast a circle of pallid light around the hut and I caught the gleam of polished bronze. At first, I squatted down next to the lamp and gazed at the thin line of light under the door. My hands were trembling; I put them up my sleeves to warm them, but I couldn’t stop them shaking. All around me was the cold, heavy smell of metal and oiled cloth that seemed to settle onto my stomach and lie there like a stone. I think, at that moment, I understood how fragile my position really was. As Alcimus’s wife, I’d started to feel secure in my new status, but standing there in a storage hut with a locked door behind me, I knew I’d never been more than an inch away from slavery.
My whole life, years, weeks, days, hours, had led me to this moment in this place. And one day in particular: the day my own city, Lyrnessus, fell. I’d gone up onto the roof of the citadel to watch the battle raging far below. I’d watched Achilles kill my youngest brother with a spear thrust to his throat. Before pulling the spear out, he’d turned and stared up at the citadel. I knew I had the sun behind me, I knew he couldn’t see me—or only as a dark smudge looking down—and yet I felt he was looking straight at me. Gradually, in twos and threes, the other women had drifted up from the floor below and together we’d waited for the end. As the Greek fighters had pounded up the stairs, Arianna, my cousin on my mother’s side, had grasped my arm, saying without words: Come. And then she’d climbed onto the parapet and, at the exact moment the fighters burst in, she’d leapt to her death, her white robes fluttering round her as she fell—like a singed moth. It had seemed to be a long time before she hit the ground, though it could only have been seconds. Her cry had faded into a stricken silence in which, slowly, stepping in front of the other women, I turned to face the men who’d come in.
Arianna said: Come…
But I chose to stay—and everything else, everything that had happened between then and now, had followed on from that choice. From my first hours in the camp, I’d been wary, alert, single-mindedly focused on survival—right up to the moment when I saw Priam’s hand lying dishonoured on the filthy sand. Did I regret helping to bury him? Yes. Yes!
And, no.
It seemed to me, crouched by the door of the storage hut, that I’d merely blundered into it. I had gone out to try to stop Amina, I had tried to persuade her to come away, to leave the task unfinished, but then I’d seen Priam’s hand and suddenly there I was scrabbling like a dog in the sand. I’d said the prayers, I’d drunk the wine, forced the stale bread down my throat…I’d buried Priam—and less than twenty-four hours after I’d heard Pyrrhus say the penalty for doing so was death. I’d thrown away all the gains I’d made in the past dreadful year. I really thought it possible that Pyrrhus would kill me, or have me killed. Amina would go on lying to save me—or to save her concept of herself as the only person brave enough to defy Pyrrhus and obey the gods. But I didn’t think they’d believe her. Why would they? When I’d shown Pyrrhus the dirt under my fingernails.
I closed my eyes, and gradually—this was a slow process—I felt a presence growing in the darkness behind me. “Presence” is the wrong word, but I don’t know what the right word is. Opening my eyes, I forced myself to lift the lantern high above my head—and cried out with shock. Because there, lined up along the far wall, stood Priam, Hector, Patroclus, Achilles. The cry died on my lips—because of course they weren’t there. Of course not. What I was seeing were suits of armour, not stacked in corners, as I’d thought they would be, but fastened to the walls, each piece in its proper place, so that together they formed the shapes of men. Men, instantly recognizable. Here was Priam’s armour, which Hecuba had begged him not to put on. Blood all over it—you never wipe off an enemy’s blood. Beside it, Hector’s armour, his famous plumed helmet glittering in the light—but no shield with it. Andromache had begged Pyrrhus to let her baby son be buried inside his father’s shield—and he’d agreed, though he’d regretted his generosity later. I could imagine how furious he would be, every time he looked at the empty space. Finally, Achilles’s armour. The shield was missing from this too, but only because Pyrrhus kept it close by him in the hall, polishing it obsessively, as Achilles himself had done.
Raising the lantern higher, I looked up at the helmet. Whenever I moved my hand, light and dark chased each other across the metal, creating—or revealing—movement behind the eyeholes in the mask. I heard two people breathing where only one had breathed before. No words spoken; none needed. I don’t know whether this meeting—and it did feel like a meeting—lasted minutes or hours, but it changed me. On the day Polyxena died, I’d stood by Achilles’s burial mound and told myself that Achilles’s story had ended at his grave, and that my own story was about to begin. The truth? Achilles’s story never ends: wherever men fight and die, you’ll find Achilles. And as for me—my story and his were inextricably linked.
A sound of somebody outside the door. It opened and a widening arc of daylight cut a slice out of the dark. The light hit me like cold water, bringing me out of my trance. Alcimus said, “Briseis!” and as I walked towards him, he stood aside to let me out. All the way across the yard, I felt him rigid with fury at my back. Evidently the moment of reckoning was upon me, and that was confirmed when I entered the living quarters and found Automedon waiting there.
Alcimus sat down at the table. “All right. Let’s start at the beginning.” He pointed to a chair and I sat down. The light was dim, so he lit a candle and set it down beside me, close enough for me to feel the warmth on my skin. Automedon slipped into the chair at the head of the table—and I remember thinking that was odd because Alcimus always sat there. So far, Automedon hadn’t even glanced at me. I resented his presence, while at the same time knowing I had no right to resent anything. But I felt I couldn’t have a proper conversation with Alcimus with him sitting there. I wondered—for the first time, which is stupid, I know—if Achilles had hesitated over which he should give me to—and how long it had taken him to decide. I knew what he thought of them; he’d never made any secret of it. Alcimus was a decent man, kind-hearted, a good fighter, but young for his age and a bit of a fool. Automedon—you could trust him with your life, totally honest, no sense of humour, a self-righteous, intolerant prig. But both brave, both loyal—both completely devoted to him.