Mistress
Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.
He watches as she runs from him, her feet catching on the stone steps and her hand caught in her cousin's unrelenting grasp. He watches until she is gone from sight and he is certain that he will never see her again; there is no need for composure, save for an honourable death and funeral rites, and those are out of his hands. Achilles keels slowly over to his side.
It is as if he can feel the very Fates, sisters who spin, measure and cut the threads of mortal life, holding the spool of his own life in their knobbled hands and considering, laughing, questioning.
And so he waits to die. What now? He thinks. There he lies, the great and invincible Achilles of Greece, waiting for his death to claim him after seeking out his mistress one last time in a faraway land. It is the fodder made for myths and legends, he thinks distractedly, and recognizes his immortality as it stares him in the eye alongside his mortality. The gods work in strange ways, he thinks.
A shout.
From behind him, hordes of Greek soldiers spill and froth like teeming waves upon the stairs as they come upon their hero. Odysseus or Ithaca is with them, and he comes to Achilles' side almost immediately. He is not, unlike many romantic poets would have you believe, taken aback and beset by tears and sobs; this is a war, and far too many men of better character than Achilles have fallen within his view. Instead, he sets to work: "Alive?" The attending soldier motions positively, and the fallen warrior's eyes follow up to the face of the respected king.
His eyes merry and confident despite the carnage, Odysseus leans toward him and whispers, "do not despair over your mortality just yet, dear friend. The gods of war favour us, and they will watch over you."
She supposes that he is dead by now. It has been days since fleeing from Troy.
It is early in the morning, the sky still darkened, and Briseis feels like a dark and solitary mistress of an actual domain, rather than simply the carved territory of her own flesh. It is a heady and powerful wine that makes her smile, despite the true nature of her entire situation, and she allows herself a few moments of passing drunkenness over these nightly moments of freedom.
Despite what her displaced fellows, Aeneas, Paris and Helen might think after the days of her silence sheathed in quietism, Briseis is not ashamed of herself. She actually thinks very little of herself. At some points, she even prefers the limber feel of this no-longer-untouched body of hers - it means experience, and it's time people stopped thinking of her as an unmarred little girl with a tabula rasa.
She supposes that her recent vow f silence was a mere extension of her complete disgruntlement with people in their entirety. She doesn't remember planning it like a strategist, but as a momentary surge of adrenaline and knowledge through well-worn veins the first time she saw another person, after...
It wasn't that complicated, she might say, should she ever decide to volunteer an explanation. Within a single flash, she had experienced this epiphany that had foretold all she needed to know: the questions, the requirements, the guilt, the explanations - all required of her because of her ties to her people.
Forget that, she had thought - no communication means no explanations. And that, literally, was that. And so, Briseis decided to stop talking for the time being and remain mute, so as not to be harassed by the people around her.
These past events have inspired other changes in her, she knows. As Briseis steps softly away from their nightly camp en route to wherever Aeneas takes their group of Trojan refugees, she knows that she feels very little natural fear. She is dressed in a lightly, and despite the innocent setting of the lands past Mount Ida, she feels no worry whatsoever about what might befall her - a young victim walking the lands at night in flimsy clothing. She has experienced enough.
There is a very light wind lazily being carried through the otherwise stagnant air, and it tugs a few flyaway pieces of her hair out of its sloppy tie. Briseis frowns -a quick transformation of ice-ridden flesh of the face- and tucks her hair behind her ears nervously. The strands are too long now, but she's afraid to cut them - doesn't like the look of blades just yet.
She glances back at the shadowed, broken planes of her fellow Trojans, all of them sleeping at the moment, and regards them in quiet appraisal. The chaotic interplay of personalities and emotions flung there together over the past little while since fleeing Troy has turned to negative shades of black and white and gray. Like the grey of rain. She doesn't like rain, because it reminds her of the nature of her dreams. But those shades will have transformed eventually - turned into muted sepia tones.
Minutes pass, and she is walking directly and efficiently on a path marked only in her mind.
Every night it is like this. She spends the day making her convoluted plans along with every possible contingency, using it as fodder to keep her sanity straight. Her lack of speech has made Briseis turn inwards, to herself, for distraction. And so the night falls, and all her countrymen go to sleep, and she steals away from camp with the intent of running away and never returning. What ties her to Troy now? Not her family, for all who survive are Paris and Helen, who are little to speak of. Andromache she loves, and would take with her, but Andromache is immersed in her own pain, and Briseis cannot be selfish enough to share her own with her.
And so, each night, the newly "mute girl" leaves camp with all intentions of abandon.
Briseis stops.
Each night, the newly "mute girl" leaves camp with all intentions of abandon. And each night, she stops and turns back.
Because what is out there for her? Her lover is dead, her family is dead, her faith is dead. Why not cling to her nationality? Why not? Even if she does not believe in Aeneas, what difference could it possibly make?
Briseis returns to camp, and sits on her pallet. Andromache stirs, raises her head and looks at her cousin. "Hello Briseis."
The girl who has decided to say nothing, says nothing. It is as if her vow of silence after Troy is a new faith for her, a new sense of virginity to offer to the gods.
There is wisdom in Andromache's eyes as she lays back down, and Briseis momentarily feels like a fool, like a petulant child, for saying nothing to her dear cousin.
Time passes in this manner.