For the Most Beautiful (27 page)

The walk to Agamemnon's tent was short enough, though every step I took away from Achilles' hut felt like a thousand paces across the world, an interminable distance, and every grain of sand along the shore was marked by one of my tears.

Talthybius drew aside the flap and made me a mock bow. ‘After you, Princess,' he said, pushing me inside.

Agamemnon was sitting in his chamber on a throne covered with richly woven cloth and so laden with cushions that there was hardly room for him. Others of the Greek leaders were lying on couches beside him or sitting on carved stools around a large, circular table, laughing and pulling at half-naked Trojan slave-girls. Agamemnon was drinking deep from a gem-encrusted goblet as we came in, and hardly noticed us amid all the noise until Eurybates cleared his throat loudly.

‘Ah, Eurybates!' he said, smacking his lips, his words slurring into each other slightly. He hiccuped. ‘And Talthybius. You've brought the girl. Excellent.'

Talthybius prodded me in the back with one bony finger and hissed in my ear, ‘Bow to the king!'

As I inclined my head, Agamemnon let out a low chuckle and shifted himself slowly forwards on his throne. He peered at me, short-sighted little eyes squinting in the flesh of his once-handsome face, now turned old and flaccid by too much drink and too little fighting. The foul smell of him wafted over me.

‘She
is
pretty,' he said, with a belch, and patted his bulging stomach as the Greek lords around him tittered. ‘I'll give Achilles that – she's damned pretty. Well, it looks like we did a good bit of business today, did we not, men?'

The lords – those who were not out cold on the floor with drink, or occupied with the Trojan girls – cheered and held up their goblets. ‘To King Agamemnon – leader of men!' one shouted, and he raised his goblet, slopping wine all over the floor as he did so.

‘King Agamemnon!' the others mumbled, and the room was quiet as the men drank deeply.

‘Well,' said Agamemnon, heaving himself up from his seat with difficulty, ‘I think I shall retire to bed. At least I'll have a new companion to keep me warm tonight – not like Achilles.' He grinned around at his generals, lapping up their sycophantic laughter, like an overfed dog.

‘He only has Patroclus now!' shouted one of the lords, and the others dissolved into howls of laughter and jeers.

‘I've always wondered what they got up to, shut away in their hut!'

One of the lords guffawed. ‘Why else d'you think he brought him to Troy?'

‘And why d'you think he doesn't let Patroclus fight?' another cut across him. ‘Scared of losing his pretty-boy, isn't he?'

‘
Enough!
' A white-haired lord had stood up, his aged limbs trembling with silent anger. His bright blue eyes seemed to spark with rage. ‘That is
enough
. How are we ever to win this god-forsaken war if we cannot refrain from tearing apart our own army with slander?'

But the men were not listening. The old lord looked at Agamemnon in outraged appeal.

Agamemnon's lips still twitched as he held up his hand. ‘You heard Nestor. Settle down. It's not our business what Achilles and Patroclus get up to in that hut of his.' He smirked, and several of the lords snorted into their goblets.

Nestor looked as if he wished to say more, but knew better than to try.

‘And now,' Agamemnon said, lifting up his long tunic and stepping down from the platform, ‘to bed.'

He held out his hand, heavy with rings, to me, and I took it, eyes downcast, trying not to look at his flaccid face and thick lips.

His grin widened.

Agamemnon lifted the curtain to his sleeping chamber and stepped inside, grunting as he heaved his massive rear on to the pile of cushions and woven blankets that was his bed.

I moved slowly in behind him. The room was large and spacious, filled with rich tapestries and carved tables beside the bed bearing golden goblets with the dregs of wine. I hesitated by the entrance.

‘Come,' the king said, leering at me and patting the covers beside him. ‘Come, join me.'

He was untying the silver-studded belt around his fat paunch as he spoke.

I caught another waft of the sour smell of him as he pulled his tunic up and over his head, revealing a pale flabby chest and a belly like the gut of an old pig.

I clenched my fists. ‘I would rather not, my lord.'

His leer disappeared, and his small eyes narrowed. ‘It does not matter what you want, girl, it matters what
I
want. I order you to come here.'

I held my ground. ‘Believe me, if you knew what it would cost you, you would think differently.'

His eyes narrowed further until they were small slits in his face. ‘What are you talking about, slave?' he snapped. ‘You are my property, you belong to me. You are mine to do with as I please.'

I bowed my head. ‘I am your slave now.' I paused, fingers trembling. I
would
not lie with this foul king of the Greeks, no matter what it cost me. ‘But I was also the slave of Achilles.'

He sneered at me. ‘Not any more.'

I nodded, praying that I was saying the right thing. ‘But Achilles seems not to think so. He still seems to think I belong to him by right of conquest, though he has been forced to give me up.'

‘And why would I care?'

I took a deep breath. ‘Do you think Achilles is a man who is used to sharing? What do you think he will do when I tell him that you lay with me, the slave he still believes is his property, and his alone?' I swallowed. ‘Do you truly think he will hold back from killing you this time?'

I let the words hang in the air. Agamemnon's eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed again in anger.

Moments passed. I could almost see the emotions flickering across Agamemnon's face – fear, defiance, then fear again – as he considered what I had said.

‘Very well,' he said at last, flicking his ringed fingers at me in a dismissive gesture, his face a mask of calm, though I could see his chest trembling with the petulant anger of a king unaccustomed to denial. ‘Very well. Get out of my chambers, slave.' He sneered the word as he heaved himself on to the bed. ‘And tell the guards to have Diomedes send in the girl from Thebe he was playing with.' He turned away from me. ‘I do not want a woman Achilles enjoyed dirtying my bed, in any case.'

I bowed my head and backed from the room as quickly as I could. ‘Yes, my lord.'

The journey to Larisa took half a day. We had arrived just as the sun disappeared behind the horizon to dip into the sea and the evening breeze was blowing gently through the leaves of the olive trees. Lycaon, the priest who tended the temple of Apulunas at Larisa in my father's place, had welcomed me and taken me to our old stone hut by the sanctuary to sleep.

But I could not sleep.

I was needed in Troy. And now I was at least half a day's ride from the city with only nine days remaining until my initiation, by which time Achilles might already have killed Prince Hector and sacked Troy.

As Night began to pull her dark cloak from the sky and Dawn brushed her rosy fingertips over the trees in the forest outside, I drew back the rugs and fleeces on my bed and crept around the hut in the half-darkness, gathering my robes. I had made my decision. I could not let my father stop me, even though I knew he meant well, that he wanted to save me. Not when the fate of our people was at stake.

I would escape to Troy and tell King Priam myself how to kill Achilles.

It did not take me long to gather my few possessions. I swung my travelling cloak around my shoulders, glanced back at the small room, then opened the door and moved quietly outside.

Birds were calling to each other in the trees, and I was glad of their chatter as it covered the sound of my footsteps on the dried pine needles that lay scattered on the forest floor. I did not know how early Lycaon would rise from his bed, and I could not afford to be heard. The temple grounds seemed quiet, however, the sounds of birdsong mingling with the faint lapping of the sea against the shore of the bay.

I let out a breath as I reached the beaten-earth path that wound through the trees. I had known of this hunter's track to Lycaon's farmhouse since my childhood – how many times had I visited Lycaon and his wife, Eurycleia? – but it had been five years since I had been in Larisa.

Fortunately, someone – one of the hunters, no doubt – had been keeping the path clear, for the ferns and brambles were beaten back neatly at the edges, and the branches of trees that had fallen across the path had been cut to allow passage. I was lucky that it was still passable, for much of the forest seemed to have become more overgrown in the time I had been in Troy.

Smiling to myself, I lengthened my stride.

Lycaon's farm was a straggling cluster of buildings made of dark grey stone, set on top of a small hill that looked out over the still-dark sea to the west. Pigs grubbed around in a pen by the gate to the farm, and Lycaon's hunting dog, Dromas, was sleeping on the porch. His black fur was patched with white around the jaws now, and he opened a sleepy eye at me as I undid the latch on the picket gate as slowly and quietly as I could.

‘Hush, Dromas,' I said, refastening the gate and hurrying over to scratch him behind the ears. ‘Hush, it's me, Krisayis. You remember me, don't you?'

The dog sniffed at the hem of my robes, considering me. He gave a soft sigh as I started to scratch him in his favourite place under his muzzle, then closed his eyes again and laid his head back on his greying paws to sleep.

I breathed a sigh of relief and straightened. The stables were around the other side of the farm, towards the sea. Gathering my cloak around me, I retraced my steps back from the porch and followed the cart tracks around the side of the farmhouse. I looked up. The window to the room where Lycaon and Eurycleia usually slept was still dark.

‘Krisayis?'

I almost groaned aloud. Turning as slowly as I could, I saw Lycaon walking towards me from the beehives by the outhouses, carrying a clay pot filled to the brim with dark honey. His eyebrows were furrowed and his expression was grim.

‘What, by all the gods of Ida, do you think you are doing here?'

Lycaon summoned two young farmhands from the fields to march me back to the hut. They smelt strongly of grass and goat dung, and I tried not to flinch as they stepped close to me and placed heavy hands on my shoulders, forcing me forwards. We trudged down the path into the forest and away from the farmhouse, Lycaon leading the way with Dromas, the farmhands flanking me at the rear.

‘I've told you,' I said, as Lycaon asked me for the tenth time what I had been doing so far from the sanctuary. ‘It is years since I have been in Larisa. I wanted to see everything again.'

Lycaon muttered something under his breath. ‘And since when has my home been one of the sights of Larisa?'

I tried to shrug my shoulders. ‘I have memories of going there as a child.'

‘That still doesn't explain why you were up and out of the temple grounds at the first light of dawn.'

I hesitated. ‘I couldn't sleep.' At least that much was true.

Lycaon sighed and bent down to pick up a stick to throw for Dromas. ‘I don't know, Krisayis,' he said, hurling the stick into the trees. ‘Your father sent a messenger ahead a few days ago to say you might be coming, and he warned us you might try to escape. It is hard for me to understand
why
exactly you would wish to run away in the midst of the war but, then, I am also having difficulty explaining why you were skulking around my stables by yourself at daybreak.' He paused and gave me a direct, penetrating look. ‘
Were
you trying to escape?'