And The Chaste Nearness Of Thy Limbs

Antilochos left his side too early, having made his peace with his dead companion and trusting that Achilles� sorrow would quickly resolve to action. Briseis is the one who stays. For the sake of her better master, not for another man who bargained her away. But there will be no more of Patroklos’ kind words for her. There will be no well-matched marriage, she will never see her father again, she will never wear another fine gown. She expects to see the brute in him come to the surface. Snarling curses, crying for vengeance, calling to the mother the men say is a goddess. (There were torrential storms the day they retrieved the body, rain pounding the water. All the while Achilles wept.) And indeed, he cries like an animal, senselessly, wordlessly. He beats the earth with his hands, his fingernails tear his breast and he bleeds. His red-gold hair is raggedly cut, fistfuls seized and sliced away, and it is dull with sweat and the dust of the earth.

The body is naked, and he kisses its face endlessly, as if waxy lips might revive to speak. When the flies land on Achilles’ skin, he does not stir to brush them away.

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Briseis watches him come and go, until she herself is taken away. The other women lead him away to his tent like a man blind, taking his hands and stroking his mighty arms, but he straightens and regains his bearing – he is a warrior again, he will – but it is not for his care that they’ve taken him now, it is for the tending of the corpse. And he comes back in the night-time, just as before mad with grief. The renewed sight of his companion drives him out of his mind. The next days he is gone, and they all know why – and does not return until Hektor is slain.

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On warm days the stink of the battlefield reaches the strong-benched vessels.

The eyes of the Trojan boys are dark, and Achilles takes the first down himself without hesitation, wrenching the youth�s head back by the hair and bringing down the blade. The boy cannot cry out, and his brown limbs jerk and kick; the blood does not run but sprays, spattering Achilles� arms and chest and face with the black drops. A great cry goes up from the gathered masses and the other sacrifices, til now white with fear and silent, give a cry to answer. Everyone must witness this, every soldier and captive maid, the gods themselves. The boy falls at unnatural angles, his bound limbs splayed, and Achilles seizes the next.

Was he once this age? So soft, flung into the underworld hairless and red-cheeked. He remembers the boy Troilos as he goes about the sacrifice, his tender body and the way he broke beneath him, but the memory is driven out of him by how much older could he have been, Patroklos the impetuous child, when he struck a companion over a bad throw. Achilles couldn�t imagine him ever having been younger than himself. And what sort of boy had he been? The blood is in his eyes and his mouth. But Achilles himself is back in boyhood, in his father�s house, while his hands and his arms which have grasped at spirits and broken sons� necks keep a tight grip on the blade.

The blood that runs down to the parched timbers is black as pitch. The wood of the pyre is slick, but it is not too slippery to climb, nor too wet to burn.

The mottled body no longer resembles the man that Achilles loves, even with the muck washed from his limbs, the blood wiped clean from each white-edged gash that marks him. The killing wound they packed with resin and cloth – it struck him between the shoulders but the ugly pit is visible from the front, having pierced him from back to bowels. Little could be done to keep out bloat and rot. But drenching his beautiful form with salts and oils left enough for Peleus� son to embrace. Achilles has a single obol pressed into his cheek and it tastes of blood. He cannot prise open his cousin�s death-stiffened jaw to see that it goes for both of them. The pyre-builders and those who dressed the body kept him back from witnessing it, but Patroklos the wise, Patroklos the gentle, will be mourned with Achilles the hero, and they both will pay their fare in that black place. Perhaps they will even be permitted to cross together.

There�s no haste any more, even as the urgency bears him onward. Achilles lies with him for the last time, pressing his face to Patroklos� shoulder. The smoke rises to sting his eyes. Perhaps he will not slit his throat, Achilles thinks with an odd and abrupt coolness; he has seen too many necks laid open today. His limbs are heavy; he is dully aware of his untended wounds and every bruise which has not had a tender hand laid to it. Perhaps he will sleep here, as he�s slept a thousand other nights, firmly nestled against broad back and long thighs, and death will seize him so violently that when he wakes they will have arrived beneath the earth. Perhaps he will burn until he is dead and go on burning.

The fire will wash away everything, blazing hot and high, and the fat will run mingled to drench the pyre.