Warrior’s Prize

“O Patroclos! Best beloved of my unhappy heart!”

—Briseis, Iliad, Homer, Book XIX,

(Rouse’s translation)

A pounding on the door tore me out of sleep. “Briseis!” It took me a moment to recognize that peremptory call—to remember what he wanted me to do. Stumbling to my feet, pushing the hair out of my face, I reached the door just as Achilleus flung it open. He was dressed in battle gear but bare-headed, his helmet tucked under his arm.

“I’m going. See to him. Follow all the instructions I gave you last night.” Behind me, I heard the other women stirring. He lifted the helmet onto the back of his head and held it there for an instant. “Don’t fail!” He snapped the helmet down over his face, turned, and tramped through his hut, closing the outer door hard behind him.

The women were watching me when I turned to face them. Diomede said, “We’ll do your chores, Briseis, and whatever else you need.” I must have looked astonished, because she added, “We’re grateful, because nobody else wants this task. If anything goes wrong, you’ll bear the brunt of Achilleus’s rage.”

To my surprise I did not fear him. What I feared was Patroklos dying.

Iphis said with a smile, “We’ll do anything for you! We’ll bring you breakfast.” That smile grated. She doesn’t care about Patroklos at all, I thought.

I gave a small shrug. “Thank you for your help. I’ll do my best. I just hope he gets well.”

I straightened my hair, washed my face quickly, and went to Patroklos. When I saw the form on the bed, I stopped. He lay on his back, rigid and still, face pale, eyes closed, right hand resting limply on the bandaged wound. I took several steps forward before I saw the faint rise and fall of his chest in the dimness. I let out a sigh, realizing that I’d been holding my breath. He opened his eyes and gave the faintest of smiles. I knelt beside him.

His wound had bled during the night, soaking through the bandages. When I had cut the bloody strips away, my stomach did a queasy flip at the sight of the deep gash. I cleaned it and applied a poultice and a dressing of herbs. As I bandaged it, Patroklos tried to help by lifting the tired weight of his shoulder.

He dozed most of the day. I gave him water and barley gruel every time he awoke. Toward afternoon he seemed stronger. During one of his periods of wakefulness he looked at me and smiled. The light in his eyes told me he was glad of my presence.

A glowing warmth lit the darkness in my heart. He had helped me in my need, and now he needed me. I remembered the story of his childhood. As he lay on the bed, his face slack in sleep, I could almost see the young boy who had stood, exiled and homeless, in the strangers’ courtyard. Pity stirred in me. I would care for him, and he would live.

I fixed him a draught of warmed wine with healing herbs and held it to his lips as he drank. Then I sat by his side as the hours passed, until the shadows in the room deepened. The light through the opening above the hearth had a coppery glow, and I heard the sounds of horses and men returning from battle.

Achilleus opened the door, entered the hut. His helmet was off, his face begrimed with dirt and sweat. He went straight to the bed and crouched by his friend. I did not wait for a glance or a dismissal from him. As I let myself through the connecting door to the women’s quarters, I looked back to see him smiling down at Patroklos as he bent to examine the wound.

The next morning, after Achilleus had summoned me and gone, I found Patroklos weak but immeasurably better. He greeted me with a smile and sat up to take breakfast. After dressing the wound, I sat by his side with a spindle. The motion of my hands seemed to soothe him. As the thread flew from my fingers, there was an easy silence between us.

The fighting on the Trojan plain was hot and fierce and took Achilleus daily from the camp. But here in the hut, where I spent every day tending Patroklos, the war seemed far away. He relied on me for his most immediate physical needs. Yet care of him was in no way burdensome. He was patient and cheerful and made light of his wound, turning the smallest, most humiliating details of his recovery into an occasion for jest. One day as I helped him to the privy, he said, “Alas, the mighty warrior cannot attend to this matter without the help of a woman! Don’t tell the Trojans!”

Another time, using his good hand to bring a cup of warmed wine to his lips, he fumbled and dribbled down the front of his tunic. “I’m like a little child who doesn’t know how to drink properly!” He laughed, and I found myself laughing with him. I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed.

One day when he was strong enough to walk around the room on his own, he fetched a square board and a small sack of stones from a shelf. He returned to his bed and set them on a low table between us.

As I stared, puzzled, he explained, “This is a game we play, Briseis. The object is to move your stones across the board and outflank your opponent’s stones.”

I was baffled, but he laid out the pieces and explained the rules. After a few abysmal tries, I caught on. We spent hours at this, sometimes squabbling like children. He always won, but I managed to make it harder and harder, and when at last I beat him, I crowed aloud.

“You are vicious and merciless, Briseis! But how good it is to hear you laugh!” he said.

Often he talked, telling tales of his boyhood, his travels, some of the lighter incidents of life in the camp. As he grew stronger, there was a sparkle in his eyes. Seldom in my life had I enjoyed such companionship. Never, save with Laodokos, and at times with Mynes, had I known a bond like this.

However, there was one subject we never brought up. It was the only barrier between us. Sometimes Patroklos would start to speak his friend’s name, then recollect himself and fall silent. Those silences pierced me like a thorn. And each night when Achilleus returned, constraint would fall over us. Unless he had instructions for Patroklos’s care the next day, Achilleus never spoke to me, save to utter a terse dismissal.

At last the day came when the wound had knit enough for Patroklos to get out of bed for an extended time. Achilleus, before going to battle, suggested we take a short walk along the shore. After I had served Patroklos breakfast, I helped him to his feet and pulled his good arm over my shoulder so that I could ease his walking. His touch seemed as natural as that of a brother. His brown eyes were merry. As we went down to the shore, I bore his weight lightly, matching my steps to his. He seemed filled with wellbeing, glad to be outside and away from his bed. I knew that part of that gladness came from our growing friendship. I realized with wonder that I had brought him happiness as well as healing.

The ways of the Fates were strange. Achilleus didn’t want me, and Iphis, Patroklos’s concubine, was no companion to him. When Patroklos and I stood together on the shore, it was as if the strands of our lives had become interwoven threads that bound us: his need and my care.

Or perhaps it was my need and his care.

We walked slowly down to the water, then strolled a short way southward to a bare expanse of beach, where we sat on the sand looking out to sea.

Unexpectedly, Patroklos said, “Briseis, you’ve been so good to me. I owe you everything. My health—maybe even my life.”

I smiled. “I’m glad you’re mending.”

I thought we would subside into one of our companionable silences as we gazed at the water, but he said, “Tell me of yourself. Are you healed now?”

A darkness fell on me. His probing brought things to my mind I had tried to forget. “Healed? How could I ever be?”

He did not retreat. “Perhaps it would ease you to speak of it.”

At first I made no reply. In all this time we had not mentioned Achilleus. Now his name shouted itself into the silence between us. “Achilleus—” I began, then could not go on.

Patroklos said, “He never told me. What happened?”

“When I lost everything…” I smudged away tears with the heel of my hand. “I tried to be resigned to my fate. But then…” Against my will, a gasping sob stopped my words.

“You lost the baby,” Patroklos finished for me.

“My heart was hard against him after that. He wanted to console me.” A knot constricted my throat. My fingers clenched around a fistful of sand. I drew a shaky breath. “I knew I should accept his comfort, his offer to give me another child. But I couldn’t. When I rejected him, he was finished with me.”

Patroklos gave me a look of sympathy and was silent for a moment. “I can guess you’re wondering if this can ever be mended. Maybe with time, but I doubt it. Where his pride is involved, he can be hard as adamant.”

Patroklos’s words drove a cold shard through me. I got to my feet and walked away, fighting tears, gathering in lungsful of air. At the water’s edge I picked up rocks and began heaving them at the sea. Gradually, as my breathing calmed, I felt for the flatter rocks and skimmed them along the surface, as I had done in childhood with my brothers.

Laodokos could make a stone bounce five times.

My hands fell to my sides. The tears broke through.

“Don’t weep!” Patroklos came to stand next to me. He picked up my left hand and gently prized out the remaining stones. “My poor Briseis!” he said. “Your lot has been a hard one. Yet you’ve been such a friend to me.”

When I glanced at him, his expression was full of compassion. Then for just an instant something else flickered in his eyes. I stopped breathing. But the look was gone so quickly I was left thinking it hadn’t been there at all. He bent to pick up his cloak and, with quick gestures, brushed the sand from it. Carefully avoiding my eyes, he said, “I’m tired and hungry. Let’s go back.” When I went to support his weight, he stepped away. “I can walk on my own.” He softened the words with a smile. “Thanks to your care, I’m much stronger now.”

I walked by his side in silence. My heartbeat stirred up my blood so that I could hear it in my ears and feel its heat on my skin. That look. What did it mean? Or had I just imagined it?

That night in a dream I walked along a dark shore where dogs bayed and carrion birds wheeled over my head. In my terror I tried to run but couldn’t move. The hounds and flying harpies gained ground. Suddenly Patroklos stood before me, and in those steady dark eyes was the look I had seen or imagined on the beach. He put out his arms to embrace me. But when I went toward him, it wasn’t Patroklos but Mynes, his face cold and gray in death.

I awoke wondering what the dream signified. It was surely a message from the gods. Did they mean for Patroklos to take Mynes’s place? How could that be when I was Achilleus’s slave?

I twisted and turned and worried in my bed. Then it came to me in a blinding flash. My heart jumped. What if Achilleus were to give me to Patroklos?

I lay still in an effort to quiet my breathing. Surely Aphrodite had sent me the dream. Patroklos had come to mean everything to me. I had staunched his lifeblood, saved his life perhaps, and it had become as dear to me as my own. I knew his thoughts, felt his joy and pain. I felt a kinship with him. He had taught me to laugh again.

But did he care for me? I strove to see again that look in his eyes. Tenderness, compassion—and surely something more. Desire? Love? And why not? Always subservient to Achilleus, he deserved his own chance at happiness. Perhaps someday we could create a home together to replace the ones we each had lost.

Suddenly I was certain of it. But how could it come about, if neither man thought of it?

I sat up in the darkness. Patroklos must be made to see it. He must be persuaded to ask for me. Achilleus would surely deny his friend nothing, especially after Patroklos had been so near to death.

But would Patroklos’s honor forbid him to ask, because I belonged to his friend?

I needed Aphrodite’s help. As a young girl in Lyrnessos, thinking I would never be wed, I had given her an offering of doves, and right after that I had met Mynes in the marketplace. I flung back the covers. It was still early, and the shore would be deserted. I could go there to pray to her. A sacrifice was needed, but I had nothing of my own to give. I got up, straightened my hair and my gown, and went in search of something to offer the goddess. Outside in the courtyard stood a bin of grain. Dipping my hand in, I filled a cloth with enough barleycorns to make her a pleasing gift. Then I went down to the shore.

The sun had not yet risen. A rosy mist floated over the sea. I squatted on my heels and smoothed the sand to make a flat space, an altar. Looking out at the horizon, I tried to see Aphrodite in my mind—not the graven image in the temple in Lyrnessos but the real deity. I recalled the story of her birth: how she rose out of the sea’s foam and was wafted on the west wind to the island of Kypros.

“Aphrodite!” I called softly. “Beautiful golden goddess of love, born of the sea and the wind, please hear my prayer!” I spread some barley grains over the makeshift altar. “Forgive my neglect, and accept my poor offering now. Make Patroklos love me.” Sure that I felt her presence, I gazed into the mist, now tinged with gold. If Patroklos did care for me, then this prayer was already granted. But more was needed. “Make him ask Achilleus for me,” I prayed.

Yet would Achilleus, with his accursed pride, relinquish me?

I sprinkled more barley across the sand. “Lovely Aphrodite, make Achilleus give me up.” But the mist was fading, burned away by long beams of sunlight. I felt a sad ebbing in my mind, as if the goddess could do no more for me. A last handful of barley remained. I cast it onto my altar and looked up at the sun.

Apollo. The archer. A man’s god. Patron of Troy and Prince Hektor. And no friend to Achilleus.

“Far-shooting Apollo, god of Light and Truth!” I rose onto my knees and lifted my arms to his sunbeams. “Accept this grain, and make Achilleus give me up.” I closed my eyes and felt the silence and darkness within me as the sun shone on my skin, brazen, hot, assertive. “Lord Apollo,” I repeated fiercely, “make Achilleus give me up. Make him give me up!”

After a time I opened my eyes. The barley grains lay scattered in the sand like tiny pebbles. The mist and magic were gone, and the sunlit beach looked quite ordinary. Then, just offshore, I saw a small ship sailing toward the center of the Achaean camp—a six-oared vessel propelled by brawny rowers and a breeze-filled sail.

The sight of that sail took my breath away, for it bore a large, bold, painted design: a bow with an arrow across it. The insignia of Apollo.

Surely it meant that my prayer would be answered.