Achilles (6 page)

His hand fits her face perfectly; its mask. He peels it away with a sense of wonder, as if what lies beneath his palm is something he has made and never seen: like a potter when he lifts a piece from the cooled furnace, or a metal worker, brushing away sand. He peels away his hand and finds beneath it a face he could love with all his heart.

Her horse is not far away. He catches it and lifts the body of his new love across the stallion's back. When he too is on the horse he holds her body to him. He will take her to the sea – to the place she was gazing at, where the sea is clean, not churning with slaughtered bodies.

*   *   * 

T
HE DIFFICULTY
, amidst all this slaughter, is to hold on to what is distinct – catch the little gust of a dying breath, follow the brightness of one face before it is eaten by dark. Sometimes, in battle, he sees a face, the curve of a cheek, the way the light catches it, and he follows it, makes it his guide to lead him deeper into the mess.

So Polyxena's face, pale as the moon.

Always, throughout his life, bright faces moving away, disappearing behind curtains: his mother taken back in a curtain of water, Iphigeneia wrapped in flames, Patroclus' face as it speaks to him these nights, folded in darkness. When Polyxena's form is swallowed by the curtain at the entrance to the temple, he must go after. Layer on layer are here. Following this girl he follows them all – his mother, Iphigeneia, Penthiseleia, Patroclus – yes, and Hector too. He will pursue them all to the vanishing point but he must not lose sight of her.

She is going to Apollo's temple. She carries a pitcher of clean water and intends to scour and rinse the temple till there is no mote of dust for the god's sun shafts to light upon. Nothing must get in his way. Apollo's light must fill this place till it is tight with power.

Paris is in there, taking shelter. At least Apollo loves him and repairs his bruised pride. It is hard to be so hated and despised – even by Helen these days. He likes to think he resembles Apollo: young(ish), lithe, good-looking, fairly good at singing, a crack archer. Forget the healing.

The fact is, Apollo has no feelings either way about Paris. Who? Oh,
him.
Yes, amazing what looks do.

But Achilles. Apollo hates Achilles. He has every reason to; for Achilles – not even a god – excels in everything that he, divine Apollo, is good at. Achilles is the best musician, the best archer. He is also – using only mortal means – the best physician: as good at dressing wounds as making them. And Zeus, Apollo's father, loves Achilles as if he were his own.

When Achilles plunges over the threshold it is simple to take aim; simple to nudge Paris into doing the gestures – lift bow, notch arrow, release – simple to bend the flight of Paris' arrow so it no longer goes for the heart but the left heel, where Achilles' life is strangely gathered and held.

Following a face in a crowd. A face bright as the moon. The crowd closes in, darkening the way, getting between him and the face he must find and follow. The face of Thetis, Iphigeneia, Penthiseleia, Polyxena. The face of Deidamia, of Patroclus, Hector. Stumbling now, for it is dark and he's lost sight of the face in all the throng, he feels an army's worth of arrows rain down on him. His flesh is like a beach when the rain drums down in hard vertical lines, pushing its way through the sand, drenching every grain. These arrows pierce each cell of him, breaking the walls. He is carried on the river of his own blood, mighty as Scamander, storming the channels of his body. He is carried to the place where the river is sucked into a twist and the other river begins.

GONE

Urn

They fell on your carcass like jackals. Those who would not have dared to come near you in life, suddenly very brave. Everyone wanted to get a look, a feel. They plan to boast about this for the rest of their lives, which for most of them is not long.

‘You should have seen the look in his eyes. Not fear. Surprise.'

‘I touched one of his hands – twice the size of mine. Little reddy-gold hairs on the back of it.'

‘So young, his face.'

Moments after you were felled – slamming into the ground like a huge tree – there was chaos. They did not want to let you go, these Trojans who had got you so suddenly. So undeservedly. But Odysseus and Ajax arrived, wielding their broad swords.

Ajax hooked his arms under your shoulders as Odysseus, fierce as a dog, drove back the Trojan scavengers. He snarled, menacing on all sides, laying about him with the butt of his spear then twirling it round to stab. He plied it nimbly, as if it were part of him.

Then Ajax, his own great body filled with sorrow, lifted you. He kneeled to insert his left shoulder under the place where your body folds and then, with a stamp and a loud exhalation, staggered to his feet.

Yes. Great Ajax staggered under the weight of you.

Now your body has been washed. Briseis has done this, her exile's heart breaking, tears mixing with the clean water. She has dried you with her long hair and with linen. She has crushed herbs into the oil she anoints you with: hyssop, myrtle, juniper, rosemary. Maquis herbs that smell of Pelion's shrubby mountainside in the sun.

Your glistening body, healed of its single wound, is laid out on the bier.

You saw how it would be when you buried Patroclus.

One by one your Myrmidons approach you. Each man saws at his hair with his sword's edge and lays this tribute on you. Each man is weeping.

After the Myrmidons, the generals. Even Agamemnon weeps as he bows his head beside you, ashamed now of his greed. Your body under this soft piled blanket of black and brown, russet and gold. The wind detaches and lifts some of the locks. Bright hairs separate themselves and float in the air like strange insects. Sea horses of the air.

*   *   * 

A
TERRIBLE SOUND
. A great wailing. A keening that never seems to exhaust itself but which moves in waves, each fuller than the one before. The sea has altered. Where before it was one bright blue, broken only by the myriad jagged flashes of sunlight, it is darker now. Purple waves, green ones, waves of a deeper blue roll in, one on top of the other, lipping it, chasing it, waves pouring in as if to flood the beach. As if racing to drown every creature that remains on the beach.

The sudden darkening of the waves makes the men look up at the sky, expecting to see signs of a storm. They find unbroken blue. The mild wind continues to lift the locks of hair – they hang in the air like leaves on an autumn day. Yet still the sound grows and the small waves race in. Some meteorological catastrophe must be at hand: a whirlwind, a twister, or else a tidal wave once these flat little waves have gathered force. The keening must be the sound of the wind whipping in the distance. They have heard of such phenomena.

In spite of the strangeness of the sea, some men make for the ships. The instinct of sailors who want home.

Chaos on the beach: as before a storm when dry leaves swirl on the forest floor in separate conflicting eddies. The generals attempt to impose some kind of order but it is hard for them to be heard.

Only the Myrmidons to a man keep close to you. Not one of them will desert his beloved commander.

Nestor sees what is happening and has a word with Odysseus. There is no storm coming. Achilles' mother and her sisters are arriving from the sea to be present at the funeral. He speaks quietly – his old voice cannot carry as Menelaus' does – but once he has spoken calm settles again.

With calm a sense of wonder spreads. Now the fear has gone the warriors stand in silence, listening to the subtle harmonies that make up this keening.

The sound is the sound that would happen if every fish in a silver shoal had its own fine note. An intricacy of sound, a close-stitched cloth. Each fish a needle darting over and under, under and over, till the cloth is tight. Each needle a note, taking its place in the vast canopy of sound that spreads itself out over their heads. This pliant, seam-free cloth of shot silk which encloses them unfurls, interposing itself between them and the sky.

Many who are there have never knowingly met gods before. Their hearts, open already with grief, salute the marvellous happening.

The air too seems to stand to attention and within it, each mote of light moves. Each mote twirls and dances, like the bright lifted sections of hair. Each mote sings.

Then something happens which all can discern. The sea is suddenly crowded with silvery creatures. Not like fish. Bigger. More like a large colony of seals making its way up onto the shore; heaving, sliding, pulling, arcing. A flickering mass of gleaming bodies, dark as ore or mottled and luminous. Some are pale as honey. Each one in an ecstasy of movement.

As they arrive on the beach the song thickens. Soon they are all here: Thetis, her sisters, and those nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the Muses. They stand together on the shore and sing and their song burns in the veins of all who hear it. It is stronger than unmixed wine.

*   *   * 

T
HETIS HAS
been busy on Olympus, rousing the Muses; moving through the earth's salt waters in search of her sisters. As an immortal she can go wherever she likes, in any shape she chooses.

But what is the point of immortality if your child does not share it? The freedom of Heaven and earth is a small gift to one who wishes to go nowhere except into Hell where she cannot get in. It is impossible for her: the wrong density. Ordinary living mortals have more to do with the dead than the likes of her. They see ghosts; hear the dead's commands. Thetis will never hear the dead Achilles ask for Polyxena any more than she saw Patroclus when his ghost came to visit her still-alive son.

For seventeen days and nights they mourn; mortals and immortals together. If any human there doubts the reality of divine grief, the cries of Thetis set them right. Terrible to hear, they pierce the tight mosaic of the Muses' song. Those who hear feel as if the sea is emptying itself having scoured its floor. That strange creatures will be cast up on the beach.

While others sit hunched, concentrated in grief, Thetis is restless, pacing the beach as she wails, or darting forwards to break through the other mourners and get close to the bier. Nothing can tire her. She has will and energy for any quest or task. She would look for a flower in a desert or search the beaches of the world for one particular small stone. She would welcome any hard duty as easy compared with the difficulty that faces her now when nothing she can do will bring him back.

All she has is the jar.

A beautiful jar. Gold. Hammered by a god. Embossed with scenes of hunting. Hephaestus had insisted that she take it at the same time as she fetched the armour.

‘You will need this later,' he said.

She had taken it without question – not even wanting to look at it. She'd wedged it under her chin on top of the heaped armour and busied herself with the awkwardness of carrying so much metal. It took a lot of care to get it all down to earth without a scratch.

Only when she and her freight had arrived safely did she begin to examine the jar. She traced each scene with her finger, following it through, saw with a sense of building dread that every scene ended in the same way. She recognised – how could she not? – the shape of the jar. The urn. She wrapped it in lengths of protective silk and put it away.

Now Thetis, take it out. Its time has come.

Before the body is burnt it is anointed again. A thick paste of oil and honey now mantles him. The oil will make the flames burn hotter. For several days men have set out for the higher ground with axes and returned dragging wood for the pyre. The pyre now stands like a giant hive. Taller than a house; an intricate mesh of branches. At its base they have thrust fir cones to help it catch fire.

Twelve of the finest and fattest sheep have been slaughtered and lodged in the pyre. Plus ten handsome, dew-lapped steers, their large tongues lolling from lifeless mouths.

It is a delicate task to lift Achilles from the bier and carry him to the top of the pyre. Ajax – who still hopes for the armour – is the proud and sorrowing bearer. He climbs the ladder propped against the arranged wood slowly lest the whole pile topple. It has been well made, like a good dry wall, and while the odd branch gives way the whole is well knit and holds.

Automedon puts the brand to the pyre. Thetis, who once lovingly seared her sons in flame, gasps in pain as the whole thing goes up. Automedon ducks and runs from the almost instant heat. To the sea nymphs the force of the fire is like a scalding wall. Only Thetis braves it. She runs around it, screaming, her dark figure silhouetted against the flames. Some see the black gash of her mouth but the sound of her screams is swallowed by the roar of the flames; the crackings and burstings of wood and flesh and bones.

Night falls. The pyre still blazes, lighting the sky. Soldiers, dressed in their battle gear, file past, firelight burnishing the bronze of their armour. Armed Myrmidons dance with slow and warlike steps to the grave plucked note of the lyre. As they pass they smell the burning flesh. Roasting meat of cattle, sheep and man.

When daylight comes the fire has burnt down. A thick mound of pale dust remains.

Automedon is the first to wade in. Using the flat of his two-handled sword he beats down the dust then, with the blade's edge, he breaks open the last glowing parcels of cinders which exhaust themselves and expire.

When he has gone over it all and the remains of the pyre lie spread out like a field, Thetis walks in. She sets to work like a gleaner, her bare feet paddling in the soft dust, winnowing the ashes with her hands, gathering bones in the tunic which she holds in an apron before her. Some pieces are thin and dry as sycamore keys or the husk of a chrysalis when the winged creature has gone. She finds the long bones first: femur and tibia, the graceful fibula. The joints are still intact, cartilage shrunk like knobs of resin. Then she picks out the bones of the arms – humerus, radius, ulna. Not hard to find; they are so large, the bones which could move faster than a stag.