I would be lying to you if I said I didn't cry almost the entire time reading this chapter. I hope that I have done these characters justice after all this time and I would love to know everyone's thoughts. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this until the end, we are getting close but there is still some to go yet. Of course, thanks for being here and happy reading, and please leave a review if you feel up too it! Xx
Chapter 45
Adara felt trickles of sweat dripping down her back as she surveyed the loose line of men and women carrying sacks of grain from the Spartan camp off along the shore to where they would be stored in the hull of Myrmidon ships. The latest raid had been much more productive than originally intended, and Menelaus had honored Achilles, and Patroclus' memory Adara suspected, by rewarding the Pythians with an abnormally large portion. If this had upset Agamemnon, Menelaus had clearly ignored his brother's protests.
"We are nearing the last of it," one of Achilles' soldiers called, his name unknown to Adara as he emerged bear hugging a large sack of grain. Adara nodded at him and smiled her thanks, observing the already downward trek of the Apollo's chariot. It had taken them much longer to secure the gifted goods than originally thought.
Her mind wandered again to the forest where she should be waiting for Achilles to join her, but the tally of items to be completed seemed to grow by the moment. There was the tent that needed to be erected and prepared for Neoptolemus as well as other quarters for the men he was bringing. The ships needed to be rearranged to make space for the newcomers, and they needed to haggle with other camps to buy more livestock. With a sigh, she knew she would likely be cutting it close when it came to meeting her lover.
As she stood watching the line march, her eyes drifted over the familiar red tents of Menelaus' camp. She had not laid eyes upon the Spartan king since he had run, tail between his legs, from the sight of hers and Achilles' happiness. She did not blame him, but she missed his brutal honesty, the simple-ness of his mind, their friendship. She had also not spent more than fleeting moments in his camp since her captivity. He had not treated her poorly, but she could not swallow the acidity that was building at the base of her tongue as she remembered the circumstances that sent her away. What had awaited her when she finally returned to the Myrmidon camp.
She had tried too not to think of Achilles' mercurial nature of the day before – the passion for her, the grief of his song. She could feel the weight upon her own shoulders trying to maintain some understanding of what was going through his mind, but she knew she could not. It was always Patroclus who understood him the bestAdara thought with a tinge of bitterness. She was not proud of the jealousy she felt towards her dead companion. Only a fool is jealous of death. Yet she was jealous, of Achilles undeniable readiness to join their friend, of his eagerness to accept fate, of his willingness to leave her.
She had considered begging Apollo to send her after him. A life on Trojan shores without Achilles was infinitely changed for Adara – more empty, more dark, more dangerous. She did not know how Neoptolemus would react to her, nor if she would be afforded the same autonomy as she was now. I suspect not she thought with a wince, watching as Nikias passed with her sack of grain hefted upon her shoulder. She was thankful Achilles would introduce his son to her, that he could convince him of her worth.
Eventually the familiar sound of the creaking gates was heard and Adara called to the workers to move faster. I will be late to meet him she fumed, stepping into the tent to help them pick up the sacks and passing each to the next set of waiting arms. It was exhausting, and she took some sympathy for the work her people had been doing that day as she smiled at another unknown man who accepted the package from her with a nod. The mingling of voices could be heard creeping around the feeble structures, men muttering of the trials of the day and the bone deep exhaustion that ran through them as they slowly returned to their tents to strip and bathe. Their voices were soft, as if whispering prayers to the gods and not complaining of the sores on their feet. One was weeping, surely carrying the body of a fallen comrade. Adara's heart lurched. Zeus watch over youshe thought as the weeping man passed her tent and at last faded away.
When the last bag was passed off what felt like ages later, Adara pressed her hands to her face and exhaled, attempting to catch her breath before journeying back to meet Achilles. It was as she turned to exit, however, that Adara found she was not alone in the tent.
Menelaus' usually ruddy face was white, the hand that was scratching the back of his head covered in the telltale viscous coating of blood. He leaned upon his spear, his soft, downturned eyes flickering across her face as if trying to read a message that was written there. Her stomach clenched, and suddenly the silent whispers of the returning soldiers seemed more deadly.
"Adara," he mumbled, his voice barely above a whisper, yet she thought it may have been the loudest thing she had ever heard as the soft downturned eyes of her friend met her own.
Her chest seemed to be shrinking, her brain compressing in upon itself. His voice had never been so gentle, his gaze had never looked at her and seen so much. There was no further need for words, he needed to say no more. Whatever he was here to tell her could not be said, for to say it would be the end of her. It was the only certainty she had ever known. Noher mind screamed. No no no nononono.
Suddenly there was rushing in her ears and the corners of her vision burned black as she felt herself stumble. Her body seemed to be failing, her heart pumping at a thousand beats per minute to accommodate for the set of lungs that no longer seemed to bring in air. Vaguely, she recognized that he looked sad. That Menelaus was feeling pain on her behalf, yet nothing could register within her except the tempest of energy that seemed to be mounting, cresting, blotting out the thoughts of anything else. It cannot be today. NoNoNoNo.
Placing her hands in the sand, she forced herself to stand, ignoring the wobbling of her knees and the torment that had begun in her chest. Faltering forward, she took a few hesitant steps towards Menelaus, attempting to pass him back into the sunlight. The small, red encapsulated tent which made the light shine crimson as ox blood was too tight, suffocating her and this man who wanted to whisper horrible things in her ears. Menelaus' hands wrapped around her forearms and pulled her in close as she endeavored to stumble past.
"Adara," he repeated, this time a trickle of grief spilling into his words. She knew that voice. She had heard him use it when he spoke of Helen, of his agony for her, of his loss. "It is Achilles."
"I am supposed to meet him in the wood," she said dumbly. It was the truth, just saying it breathed that traitorous flare of hope into her chest. He would be waiting for her. He had given her his word, and Achilles was a man of honor. I am supposed to meet him in the wood, he will be waiting for me. It is not today – cannot be today. These words cycled through her mind, a mantra or prayer that could protect her from whatever it was Menelaus wanted to tell her.
"Adara," Menelaus said, and this time there was no denying the tone of his voice. Adara felt her body thrash, and then abruptly she fought against his grip. If I can get away from him, cannot hear what he says, than it cannot be the truth. Her mind was blank, the roaring in her ears deafening, and the agony that had begun in her chest was spreading down her arms. "He will not be there…he is gone."
Silence reigned between them.
Menelaus had never lied to her. It was the trait she admired most about the Spartan, but in this moment she thought she could learn to hate him for it. It did not matter that she had known this was coming, nor that this was what Achilles longed for. All she could think of was the knife that was surely being pressed between her ribs and into her heart by someone she considered her friend. There was no other explanation for the bleeding feeling consuming her, the inexplicable anguish that seemed to rattle her very bones.
Sobs ripped from her lungs at last like a gale and tears blinded her eyes. She thrashed like a wildcat, letting her nails find purchase on his armor, his neck, his face. How could you do this to meher mind repeated over and over again, but she did not know if she meant it for Menelaus or Achilles.
"Adara, stop, you foolish girl," Menelaus said, shaking her so that her head fell back like a rag. Suddenly the fight left her, but the sobs that seemed to be ripped from her chest could not be stopped. It is too soon, too soon. Vaguely she saw angry red lines across Menelaus' face.
"Take me to him," Adara begged through moans, her thoughts now only to be with him, to lay next to his corpse and dissolve into it. There would be no end to this pain, she was certain. Death, her own death, was all that could bring relief now.
She did not know if Menelaus responded, nor could she recall leaving the Spartan camp, but she at last found herself stumbling through the black tents that she had come to regard as hers. Menelaus did not lead her past hers and Achilles tent – Adara did not realize it at the time, but days later when she regained her sanity she recognized his action and was grateful.
There were many men gathered. Myrmidons in black, but others too in grays and browns and blues, their helmets removed as they faced the direction of what could only be the storage tent. In another state of mind Adara might have been thankful for their presence, for their shared mourning of the man she loved, for their show of respect, but now they were only a hindrance preventing her from reaching Achilles. Menelaus called to them to step aside, his hands still clasped firmly on her forearms as he steered her like a drunk fool before him.
The doorway of the supplies tent was blockaded by men, lesser captains and princes who Adara recognized from dinners and running messages. She felt their eyes upon her, saw in her periphery as they warded against evil or raised their palms to the sky in libation to Zeus. Let them think me a servant of Hades or a deranged womanshe recalled thinking as Menelaus removed one of his arms to pull men out of the way. It didn't matter anymore – nothing mattered.
Before them, men peeled away like leaves as they recognized the duo. Suddenly they were at the gaping mouth of the tent and the agony that had been mounting within Adara seemed to double.
"I am not ready," she said, her words almost ineligible through her tears. She dug in her heels, unable to face what she already knew was waiting for her. Menelaus' grip once again tightened.
"You do not have a choice, you must be," he whispered in her ear as the last line of men before here turned, saw her, and stepped away.
There was never anything that would have prepared Adara for what she saw. Patroclus' cold corpse and Actor's body had been agonies of their own. They haunted her still, their skin sallowing before her in memory. Yet they had not been one half of her soul, she had not known their bodies as if they were her own, they had not completed her. Her knees buckled and she would have fallen if not for the Spartan still clutching her. Hades pleaseshe thought, a longing for death so great she had perhaps never been closer to Achilles in that way.
She saw his foot first. It hung off the end of the table, golden hairs on the top of his feet matted with dirt – feet that had once carried him faster than the wind. Briefly she recalled races between Achilles and Patroclus along the shore, the feel of the pads of his toes tracing up her legs in their bed. No more, no more, no more.
She did not want to see further.
She could not stop her eyes.
His calves and thighs were still defined with muscle, his pelvis pale where the sun had rarely graced his skin. Her eyes traced him as if they were in his tent and he was undressing for her, as if this was all an act for her benefit. Achilles chest glistened like he had been laying sweating in the sun, hands clasped across his stomach in a harsh imitation of resting. Everywhere were the familiar white scars, dips and divots of missing flesh that were like constellations to Adara. There, along his ribs was a knife wound from a drunken Thessalian. And the puckering of white tissue in the crook between his thumb and first finger the result of a fishing mishap when young. And there, at the top of his shoulder where she could not halt her eyes from traveling, was the simple white line given to him by Mynes. His favorite scar some voice recalled. Because it gave him me.
His face was beautiful. It had always been beautiful, since the first time she had seen it ransacking Briseis' quarters. Full, rose lips, straight nose, golden hair falling in waves like silks from across the seas. His eyes were closed. Tempest blue, the color of summer. It was with a sickening understanding that Adara realized she would never see them again. A moan escaped her lips and her vision faltered once more.
She had taken no notice of the men around her. The kings of Greece watched Adara with ill ease, her visible grief putting face and sound to their own misery. She did not see the resignation in their faces, the worry that Achilles death meant an inevitable loss to this ten year escapade. They watched her shake in Menelaus' grip, features once commonly considered beautiful amongst the Achaean kings now grotesque in her sadness.
It was when she at last ripped her eyes away from his face, the face her world had come to revolve around, that Adara saw it. Just a few feet beyond another body lay on a table. The body was tall and narrow, the straight brown hair falling in sheets alongside an angular jaw. The weeping figure of an old man lay with his head upon the boy's chest. Antilochus she knew, and if her heart had not already been shattered, it would have broken anew.
"Antilochus," she whispered, pressing a hand to her mouth. Was there no end to the god's cruelty? He was a boy Adara thought, staring at his face where owl like eyes would never open again. His father, for it could only be Nestor, splayed his palms on his son's chest, letting out a moan that seemed to rip her innards from her.
Dreading it, unable to look away, Adara's gaze returned to Achilles, a fresh wave of tears spilling down her cheeks. We are supposed to be at the river she remembered again, yet another wave of nausea sweeping through her. His body looked unblemished, there were no visible injuries. Get up, Achilles she wanted to scream. But there was no denying the stillness. Achilles had been a whirlwind in every action, his presence exuding energy through existence alone. No longer. He was still now, he has left me. Yet he was half god, his body was still commanding even in death.
"How?" She demanded of the kings gathered round her, the question croaking out of her throat which had been shredded raw by her own screams. Many faces turned away, none of them able to bear the accusation in her eyes. "How?" Adara demanded again.He protected you for ten years. How could you each have failed him? How could you not return the favor? Before her his body was perfect, except that it was dead. She needed an answer, deserved one.
"An arrow in the back," Odysseus grunted, his voice thick as he turned to face her.A cowards weapon Achilles had once told her of the bow. "We think it was Paris." And shot by a coward. It was too much
Maddeningly, sickly, she wanted to laugh. This is not what the gods had promised him, not what the fates had intoned. Glory they had promised him. Glory above any other's at the expense of his life, his brilliant, awe inspiring life. But he had died at the hands of a lard and a womanizer using a weapon that one did not even have to see the light leave your foe's eyes. Anger surged within her. For a moment it blotted out her grief, but quickly it settled into the place where once her heart had been.
"He must be cleaned," Adara said, suddenly desperate to place her hands upon him one last time, to feel the sturdiness beneath her fingers as a reminder that he had truly been real. That he was once mine.
"Ajax will handle it, with Phoenix," Odysseus relayed. Anger flared again from its roost in her chest.
"I am the mother of the Myrmidon camp, it should be me. It is always me," Adara said, the shaking in her body once again peaking.
"Ajax was Achilles' cousin, Phoenix was like a father," Odysseus said gently. He was half of my soul, you know my claim is better.Beside Adara neither Ajax nor Phoenix looked at her, whether in grief or shame she did not know. Is there no end to the cruelty of others?
She wanted to rage at Odysseus that Achilles would have chosen her, perhaps he had at some point. But it did not matter – Achilles was gone, had left her, and now the things he may have wished for were gone with him. Adara was nothing again, but it no longer mattered. She had always known she would be nothing without him, there could be no life beyond the one they shared and grew together. She wanted to rage at the kings around her for not saving him, at the gods for mistreating him, at Achilles for leaving her. It was the cruelest thing he would ever do – leaving her – and now she had nothing, felt nothing except the all-encompassing need to swim out into the ocean until her lungs failed and Hades swallowed her.
"Agape," Adara heard herself murmur, several of the men turning in surprise at her use of the word. The term hung in the air for several breaths, silence echoing around the tent, but there was no response. There will never again be a response Adara realized. She had never even said goodbye to him this morning as he had ridden into the fray like one of the fates himself, teeth bared into a snarl.
The silence at last seemed to permeate her body as well as the air around her. Without any warning she fell, her mind slipping into blissful blackness as she stumbled forward. In his surprised Menelaus lost his grip on her.
It was Odysseus' weathered hands that caught Adara's limp figure, pulling her in close to his chest where he could wipe the tears that stained her cheeks and press his lips to her brow.
"Someone help me carry her to her quarters. Achilles would rip us limb from limb if he knew she was in pain and not seen too," Odysseus commanded. Before him Menelaus stepped forward and lifted the woman's legs and they exited the tent. The Spartan had never loved Achilles, but Odysseus knew of his soft spot for the handmaiden, and for once he was grateful that Menelaus knew grief of his own. Adara would need friends that could help her.
{{{}}}
Odysseus strolled through the Myrmidon camp, his fingers running again and again through his hair until he knew he must appear half crazed. He had known it was today, Athena had given him signs all throughout the day before. And yet… and yet I was as unprepared as she. He had not expected the emptiness in his chest when he watched Ajax prepare the body of his friend, nor the scream that had ripped vocal chords as the arrow that had cut through the air to connect with Achilles back made contact. He had fallen immediately – dead – a smile upon his face. He was always mad.
Odysseus felt restless as he stared out over the water to his right to where Apollo's chariot was sinking below the waves. His skin tingled as if he could peel it away layer by layer, somehow releasing the grief that had wallowed within him. The entire Greek camp now seemed diminished without Achilles' presence, as if some façade of righteousness they had carried before them had been stripped away.
But there was no time to wallow in his grief. There was much to do. Neoptolemus would be here in a fortnight, the poor young man, and the camp needed preparing. The funeral games must be planned, and the pyre built. And you must tell all of Greece Achilles and Adara were married. It had been his final request of Odysseus, and he would see it done.
"Eudoras," Odysseus called out as he meandered through tents. Over and over he called the name, ignoring the graveness of his voice, until the captain pushed his head through a tent flap, eyes bloodshot from crying. It never ceased to amazing Odysseus how publicly the Myrmidons bore their emotions. Achilles never viewed love as a weakness Odysseus reminded himself as he pulled the man in for an embrace.
"Odysseus," the captain replied with a nod of his head as they let each other go. "What is it you need."
"In the morning, you and your men must make the pyre. Agamemnon will wish for it in his camp, but I believe here is best. The quicker you have begun construction, the sooner we can thwart his wishes," Odysseus explained. It would be no greater insult to Achilles' memory than to have his body burned in the camp of his sworn enemy. It could not happen, of that Odysseus was determined.
"Yes, my lord," Eudoras said with a bow. Odysseus returned the gesture and they parted ways, Eudoras back into his tent and the Ithacan king back towards the heart of the Myrmidon camp. Adarahe thought not for the first time since leaving her in hers and Achilles' bed. The image of her face wracked with sadness seemed to float before him, the pain at denying her request for anointing undeniable. It had been the right decision – he could not give the anointing of Greece's best soldier to a perceived bed slave, but Odysseus would make it up to her. She will have a role to play.
Without remembering his decision too, Odysseus directed his feet towards Adara's tent. I will check on her. He could not deny the look of madness in her face, the certainty he felt that she would try and follow Achilles into the night.
Throwing open the flap, he felt a stab of anxiety when he did not find Adara's form strewn across the furs where they had left her. With a few calming breaths, however, his intellect seemed to return and he knew without a shadow of a doubt where she had gone.
Moments later, Odysseus found himself pulling back the door hanging of the provisions tent just slightly to peer into the semi light. Candles had been lit, causing Achilles' and Antilochus' bodies to glow waxy. There was no smell yet, perhaps the only gift from gods who had treated the greatest of men like a rock stuck in their sandal.
For a brief moment he did not think she was there, but a flicker of movement as Adara appeared from the depths of the tent revealed the blankness of her face. The tears that could not stop running down her cheeks and neck. Her hands did not shake as she anointed Achilles body, pressing what smelled like rosemary water into the insides of his wrists, under his jaw, the insoles of his feet, his forehead.
In another life he would be angry she had disobeyed his command, but peering at the woman who was more ghost than living being, he could not muster the anger. He wanted to comfort her. To pull her close and promise her that she would be ok. Yet there was nothing to say to a woman who had chosen to love a servant of death himself. First her home destroyed, Patroclus' death, and now Achilles. It made sense why many of the kings of Greece believed her an ill omen. They would never see the bravery it had taken to follow her heart down paths of grief.
At last Adara seemed to finish, her hands coming to rest on his chest as if she could melt into him. The blankness in her face was broken by a heart wrenching wail, a scream that caused the hair on the back of his head to stand on end. Grief is a powerful thing to run uninhibited through your body he once told her, but for now there was nothing to do but let her feel.
When her cries had subsided to nothing more than pitiful sobs and the tears spilt on Achilles chest had dried, Odysseus at last made his presence known. Adara came with him willingly as he led her back to her tent, once again wraith-like and numb. Her hands were cold within his, as if she danced on the line between the living and the dead herself. Odysseus deposited her in bed, still dressed in the chiton she had worn this morning for she refused to change. He did not know it was the last thing Achilles had dressed her in.
"Tomorrow, when you burn him," Adara croaked, her voice no more than a silver of wind. "Let me lay beside him. Let me go to him." It was a pitiful request and Odysseus found himself warding against evil, against the shell of the woman he had once known.
"No Adara," he replied, laying a hand on her brow to find it hot. "Any life taken by its own hand will never reach the blessed realm. I would not curse you and Achilles to eternity apart – you will have to learn to bear whatever years the gods have cursed you to life without him. Patience, and he will be yours."
Adara stilled under his hand, as if any remaining will to live had left her. Odysseus' own grief for his companion whirled, somehow unleashed by this woman before him.
"We will go on, to carry on his story – it was his greatest wish, his only wish, and we must uphold it," the Ithacan said, more for himself than for her. Never before had he felt so war weary, so desperate to sail home and wrap himself in Penelope's arms. If Adara heard him, she did not answer, dragged under into sleep were the shades of the dead can still meet the living.
