Miller, Madeline - The Song of Achilles

She erupts from the tent, past the too-slow hands of the guards, down the beach and into the sea. Behind her is Pyrrhus, tunic gashed open, bleeding across his stomach. He stands beside the bewildered guards and calmly takes a spear from one of their hands.

“Throw it,” a guard urges. For she is past the breakers now.

“A moment,” Pyrrhus murmurs.

Her limbs lift into the gray waves like the steady beats of wings. She has always been the strongest swimmer of the three of us. She used to swear she’d gone to Tenedos once, two hours by boat. I feel wild triumph as she pulls farther and farther from shore. The only man whose spear could have reached her is dead. She is free.

The only man but that man’s son.

The spear flies from the top of the beach, soundless and precise. Its point hits her back like a stone tossed onto a floating leaf. The gulp of black water swallows her whole.

Phoinix sends a man out, a diver, to look for her body, but he does not find it. Maybe her gods are kinder than ours, and she will find rest. I would give my life again to make it so.

THE PROPHECY TOLD TRULY. Now that Pyrrhus has come, Troy falls. He does not do it alone, of course. There is the horse, and Odysseus’ plan, and a whole army besides. But he is the one who kills Priam. He is the one who hunts down Hector’s wife, Andromache, hiding in a cellar with her son. He plucks the child from her arms and dashes his head against the stone of the walls, so hard the skull shatters like a rotted fruit. Even Agamemnon blanched when he heard.

The bones of the city are cracked and sucked dry. The Greek kings stuff their holds with its gold columns and princesses. Quicker than I could have imagined possible they pack the camp, all the tents rolled and stowed, the food killed and stored. The beach is stripped clean, like a well-picked carcass.

I haunt their dreams. Do not leave, I beg them. Not until you have given me peace . But if anyone hears, they do not answer.

Pyrrhus wishes a final sacrifice for his father the evening before they sail. The kings gather by the tomb, and Pyrrhus presides, with his royal prisoners at his heels, Andromache and Queen Hecuba and the young princess Polyxena. He trails them everywhere he goes now, in perpetual triumph.

Calchas leads a white heifer to the tomb’s base. But when he reaches for the knife, Pyrrhus stops him. “A single heifer. Is this all? The same you would do for any man? My father was Aristos Achaion . He was the best of you, and his son has proven better still. Yet you stint us?”

Pyrrhus’ hand closes on the shapeless, blowing dress of the princess Polyxena and yanks her towards the altar. “This is what my father’s soul deserves.”

He will not. He dare not.

As if in answer, Pyrrhus smiles. “Achilles is pleased,” he says, and tears open her throat.

I can taste it still, the gush of salt and iron. It seeped into the grass where we are buried, and choked me. The dead are supposed to crave blood, but not like this. Not like this.

THE GREEKS LEAVE TOMORROW, and I am desperate.

Odysseus .

He sleeps lightly, eyelids fluttering.

Odysseus. Listen to me.

He twitches. Even in sleep he is not at rest.

When you came to him for help, I answered you. Will you not answer me now? You know what he was to me. You saw, before you brought us here. Our peace is on your head.

“MY APOLOGIES for bothering you so late, Prince Pyrrhus.” He offers his easiest smile.

“I do not sleep,” Pyrrhus says.

“How convenient. No wonder you get so much more done than the rest of us.”

Pyrrhus watches him with narrowed eyes; he cannot tell if he is being mocked.

“Wine?” Odysseus holds up a skin.

“I suppose.” Pyrrhus jerks his chin at two goblets. “Leave us,” he says to Andromache. While she gathers her clothes, Odysseus pours.

“Well. You must be pleased with all you have done here. Hero by thirteen? Not many men can say so.”

“No other men.” The voice is cold. “What do you want?”

“I’m afraid I have been prompted by a rare stirring of guilt.”

“Oh?”

“We sail tomorrow, and leave many Greek dead behind us. All of them are properly buried, with a name to mark their memory. All but one. I am not a pious man, but I do not like to think of souls wandering among the living. I like to take my ease unmolested by restless spirits.”

Pyrrhus listens, his lips drawn back in faint, habitual distaste.

“I cannot say I was your father’s friend, nor he mine. But I admired his skill and valued him as a soldier. And in ten years, you get to know a man, even if you don’t wish to. So I can tell you now that I do not believe he would want Patroclus to be forgotten.”

Pyrrhus stiffens. “Did he say so?”

“He asked that their ashes be placed together, he asked that they be buried as one. In the spirit of this, I think we can say he wished it.” For the first time, I am grateful for his cleverness.

“I am his son. I am the one who says what his spirit wishes for.”

“Which is why I came to you. I have no stake in this. I am only an honest man, who likes to see right done.”

“Is it right that my father’s fame should be diminished? Tainted by a commoner?”

“Patroclus was no commoner. He was born a prince and exiled. He served bravely in our army, and many men admired him. He killed Sarpedon, second only to Hector.”

“In my father’s armor. With my father’s fame. He has none of his own.”

Odysseus inclines his head. “True. But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another.” He spread his broad hands. “We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?” He smiles. “Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.”

“I doubt it.”

Odysseus shrugs. “We cannot say. We are men only, a brief flare of the torch. Those to come may raise us or lower us as they please. Patroclus may be such as will rise in the future.”

“He is not.”

“Then it would be a good deed. A deed of charity and piety. To honor your father, and let a dead man rest.”

“He is a blot on my father’s honor, and a blot on mine. I will not allow it. Take your sour wine and go.” Pyrrhus’ words are sharp as breaking sticks.

Odysseus stands but does not go. “Do you have a wife?” he asks.

“Of course not.”

“I have a wife. I have not seen her for ten years. I do not know if she is dead, or if I will die before I can return to her.”

I had thought, always, that his wife was a joke, a fiction. But his voice is not mild now. Each word comes slowly, as if it must be brought from a great depth.

“My consolation is that we will be together in the underworld. That we will meet again there, if not in this life. I would not wish to be there without her.”

“My father had no such wife,” Pyrrhus says.

Odysseus looks at the young man’s implacable face. “I have done my best,” he says. “Let it be remembered I tried.”

I remember.

THE GREEKS SAIL, and take my hope with them. I cannot follow. I am tied to this earth where my ashes lie. I curl myself around the stone obelisk of his tomb. Perhaps it is cool to the touch; perhaps warm. I cannot tell. A C H I L L E S, it says, and nothing more. He has gone to the underworld, and I am here.

PEOPLE COME TO SEE his grave. Some hang back, as if they are afraid his ghost will rise and challenge them. Others stand at the base to look at the scenes of his life carved on the stone. They are a little hastily done, but clear enough. Achilles killing Memnon, killing Hector, killing Penthesilea. Nothing but death. This is how Pyrrhus’ tomb might look. Is this how he will be remembered?