Page 75 of The Song of Achilles

The small procession moved past the tents of Ajax, and Diomedes, and Nestor—closest to the agora—and then onto the dais itself. By the time Achilles and I had heard, and run, weaving around slower soldiers, he had planted himself there, staff strong. When Agamemnon and Menelaus mounted the dais to approach him, he did not acknowledge them, only stood there proud before his treasure and the heaving chests of his underlings. Agamemnon glowered at the presumption, but held his tongue.

Finally, when enough soldiers had gathered, drawn from every corner by breathless rumor, he turned to survey them all, his eyes moving across the crowd, taking in kings and common. Landing, at last, on the twin sons of Atreus who stood before him.

He spoke in a voice resonant and grave, made for leading prayers. He gave his name, Chryses, and identified himself, staff raised, as a high priest of Apollo. Then he pointed to the chests, open now to show gold and gems and bronze catching the sun.

“None of this tells us why you have come, Priest Chryses.” Menelaus’ voice was even, but with an edge of impatience. Trojans did not climb the dais of the Greek kings and make speeches.

“I have come to ransom my daughter, Chryseis,” he said. “Taken unlawfully by the Greek army from our temple. A slight girl, and young, with fillets in her hair.”

The Greeks muttered. Suppliants seeking ransom knelt and begged, they did not speak like kings giving sentence in court. Yet he was a high priest, not used to bending to anyone but his god, and allowances could be made. The gold he offered was generous, twice what the girl was worth, and a priest’s favor was never something to scorn. That word, unlawful, had been sharp as a drawn sword, but we could not say that he was wrong to use it. Even Diomedes and Odysseus were nodding, and Menelaus drew a breath as if to speak.

But Agamemnon stepped forward, broad as a bear, his neck muscles twisting in anger.

“Is this how a man begs? You are lucky I do not kill you where you stand. I am this army’s commander,” he spat. “And you have no leave to speak before my men. Here is your answer: no. There will be no ransom. She is my prize, and I will not give her up now or ever. Not for this trash, or any other you can bring.” His fingers clenched, only inches from the priest’s throat. “You will depart now, and let me not ever catch you in my camps again, priest, or even your garlands will not save you.”

Chryses’ jaw was clamped down on itself, though whether from fear or biting back a reply we could not tell. His eyes burned with bitterness. Sharply, without a word, he turned and stepped from the dais and strode back up the beach. Behind him trailed his underpriests with their clinking boxes of treasure.

Even after Agamemnon left and the men had exploded into gossip around me, I watched the shamed priest’s distant, retreating figure. Those at the end of the beach said that he was crying out and shaking his staff at the sky.

That night, slipping among us like a snake, quick and silent and flickering, the plague began.

W HEN WE WOKE the next morning, we saw the mules drooping against their fences, breaths shallow and bubbling with yellow mucus, eyes rolling. Then by midday it was the dogs—whining and snapping at the air, tongues foaming a red-tinged scum. By the late afternoon, every one of these beasts was dead, or dying, shuddering on the ground in pools of bloody vomit.

Machaon and I, and Achilles too, burned them as fast as they fell, ridding the camp of their bile-soaked bodies, their bones that rattled as we tossed them onto the pyres. When we went back to the camp that night, Achilles and I scrubbed ourselves in the harsh salt of the sea, and then with clean water from the stream in the forest. We did not use the Simois or the Scamander, the big meandering Trojan rivers that the other men washed in and drank from.

In bed, later, we speculated in hushed whispers, unable to help but listen for the hitch in our own breath, the gathering of mucus in our throats. But we heard nothing except our voices repeating the remedies Chiron had taught us like murmured prayers.

T HE NEXT MORNING it was the men. Dozens pierced with illness, crumpling where they stood, their eyes bulging and wet, lips cracking open and bleeding fine red threads down their chins. Machaon and Achilles and Podalerius and I, and even, eventually, Briseis, ran to drag away each newly dropped man—downed as suddenly as if by a spear or arrow.

At the edge of the camp a field of sick men bloomed. Ten and twenty and then fifty of them, shuddering, calling for water, tearing off their clothes for respite from the fire they claimed raged in them. Finally, in the later hours, their skin broke apart, macerating like holes in a worn blanket, shredding to pus and pulpy blood. At last their violent trembling ceased, and they lay puddling in the swamp of their final torrent: the dark emptying of their bowels, clotted with blood.

Achilles and I built pyre after pyre, burning every scrap of wood we could find. Finally we abandoned dignity and ritual for necessity, throwing onto each fire not one, but a heap of bodies. We did not even have time to stand watch over them as their flesh and bone mingled and melted together.

Eventually most of the kings joined us—Menelaus first, then Ajax, who split whole trees with a single stroke, fuel for fire after fire. As we worked, Diomedes went among the men and discovered the few who still lay concealed in their tents, shaking with fever and vomit, hidden by their friends who did not want, yet, to send them to the death grounds. Agamemnon did not leave his tent.

Another day then, and another, and every company, every king, had lost dozens of soldiers. Although strangely, Achilles and I noted, our hands pulling closed eyelid after eyelid, none of them were kings. Only minor nobles and foot soldiers. None of them were women; this too we noticed. Our eyes found each other’s, full of suspicions that grew as men dropped suddenly with a cry, hands clutching their chests where the plague had struck them like the quick shaft of an arrow.

I T WAS THE NINTH NIGHT of this—of corpses, and burning, and our faces streaked with pus. We stood in our tent gasping with exhaustion, stripping off the tunics we had worn, throwing them aside for the fire. Our suspicions tumbled out, confirmed in a thousand ways, that this was not a natural plague, not the creeping spread of haphazard disease. It was something else, sudden and cataclysmic as the snuffing of Aulis’ winds. A god’s displeasure.

We remembered Chryses and his righteous outrage at Agamemnon’s blasphemy, his disregard for the codes of war and fair ransom. And we remembered, too, which god he served. The divinity of light and medicine and plague.

Achilles slipped out of the tent when the moon was high. He came back some time later, smelling of the sea.

“What does she say?” I asked, sitting up in bed.

“She says we are right.”

O N THE TENTH DAY of the plague, with the Myrmidons at our backs, we strode up the beach to the agora. Achilles mounted the dais and cupped his hands to help his voice carry. Shouting over the roar of pyres and the weeping of women and the groans of the dying, he called for every man in camp to gather.

Slowly, fearfully, men staggered forward, blinking in the sun. They looked pale and hunted, fearful of the plague arrows that sank in chests like stones into water, spreading their rot as ripples in a pond. Achilles watched them come, armor buckled around him, sword strapped to his side, his hair gleaming like water poured over bright bronze. It was not forbidden for someone other than the general to call a meeting, but it had never been done in our ten years at Troy.

Agamemnon shouldered through the crowd with his Mycenaeans to mount the dais. “What is this?” he demanded.

Achilles greeted him politely. “I have gathered the men to speak of the plague. Do I have your leave to address them?”

Agamemnon’s shoulders were hunched forward with shame-sprung rage; he should have called this meeting himself long ago, and he knew it. He could hardly rebuke Achilles for doing it now, especially not with the men watching. The contrast between the two had never seemed more sharp: Achilles relaxed and in control, with an ease that denied the funeral pyres and sunken cheeks; Agamemnon with his face tight as a miser’s fist, louring over us all.

Achilles waited until the men had assembled, kings and common both. Then he stepped forward and smiled. “Kings,” he said, “Lords, Men of the Greek Kingdoms, how can we fight a war when we are dying of plague? It’s time—past time—that we learn what we have done to deserve a god’s anger.”