Gossip
Disclaimer: See previous chapters.
Carthage is a foreign place, a strange place, and it is full of strange stories. Like the people of Carthage, its stories are best because they do not separate mind from myth. Parts of the stories from that strange, strange place are as real as the lines in your fist, and other parts are unbelievable. Mundane parts and mad parts, mixed together into a purely Carthaginian story.
Briseis and Aeneas and the Trojans are fast becoming the fodder of another story. The men of Carthage pass the story between each other when they are gathered together the night before the sacrifices. There are always a few men who are upset and unravelled, like a tapestry come apart, because their infants are unwillingly going to be sacrificed at the altar the net day. So the other men, understanding but not willing to intervene, tell colourful stories to distract them.
Hermes, a man who shacked the Trojan party because he unwittingly bore the name of one of their gods, is a man who works amid the prestigious Carthaginian generals. He is the one who starts the story of the Trojans, because their party keeps together and to themselves in Carthage; a well-advised move. But because the generals know of the Trojans in their city, Hermes knows as well, and he swears to his friends that it is the honest truth.
Even so, others don't always believe him. "Why would the Trojans have come so far?" they say, or, "The soldiers would've killed them on the spot, anyway." But Hermes insists, "I've seen them. I swear it." And at this insistence, they let him tell his story.
Not too long ago, he had been busy delivering maps to the higher ranked officials when the small and battered group had entered. They were near-surrounded by soldiers, but the lot seemed far too exhausted and dusty to put up any complaint. It was a party comprised mostly of women and infants, and perhaps a few young men. At the head of the group was a brash and confident young man with a sword, but the soldiers were evidently ignoring him in lieu of a slip of a woman with long, curly brown hair. The soldiers walked forward and presented her to one of the generals, to whom she inclined her head but did not speak.
"See," he shifts in his seat as he recalls to his friends, "the Trojans had just lost this grand war back home, and they were the survivors. Not much to them, 'cept for the youngest Trojan prince, the widow and son of the eldest prince, Hector, and a cousin to the princes, the woman Briseis."
"The brown-haired one?" Somebody asked, and he inclined his head.
"Yes, that's the one. And this other kid, Aeneas, who fancies himself leader of the whole group. But it's the girl that everyone cares about up amongst the generals. See, our soldiers did attack their party when they approached the border, but when they threw a spear at this woman, a bird flew from nowhere and took the hit."
Their was a hush among their gathering.
Hermes continues, "They fancy it a sign from the gods, thinking of her as a patroness of luck." He sits forward. "So the generals think, so long as they keep the Trojans in Carthage, the woman's luck will fall in our favour – and so it has. We have won all our battles downstream against the rebels since their arrival."
"But will the Trojans stay?"
He stokes his beard in thought, but answers frankly. "I don't think they want to; what place do they have in Carthage? But the soldiers are doing all they can to keep them here, including setting Princess Dido the task of seducing Aeneas, the fool. She says she loves him now." He laughs. "Silly princesses with their silly dreams about silly men."
More laughter.
Her eyes are tracing the outline of his face again. She finds him fascinating. His own eyes are cast downwards, not in a shame, but in languorous concentration upon the elegance of the tidy weapons before him. A miracle of metamorphosis, of transformation, as the memories he associates with them deconstruct and synthesize themselves from visual to audio, visual to audio; astute observations on the nature of human life, and of human nature. He is lightly explaining them to her. And she watches.
If Achilles could affix a sensation to that regard which she so lavishly slathers on him as the moments drip past with the viscosity of liquefying sugar or better yet, warm candle wax, he would say that it tickles. Her glance is feathered, traveling smoothly and boldly over the hollows and slopes that make the planes of his face, a rigid landscape of hard stares and ashen skin and golden hair. A feeling familiar like a sword.
"Are you even listening?" He demands.
He doesn't look up at her - Achilles generally doesn't when he is lost in thought. Swordplay is so alluring and attractive to him, like sex to frustrated young boys, and he cannot nor does he want to detach his full attention from the weapons before him, even for the sake of this woman. But he can feel Briseis' curiosity.
Now he looks up at her from under the unruly strands of his matted hair, and motions carelessly and casually with his hand, loose fingers and looser goblet hanging from them.
"Not that I don't appreciate you continued vigil of me," he says, "but..." Achilles is conscious of her gaze following his every movement with a certain detached interest as he tosses the empty cup into the dark area of her room in Carthage. He wants to arouse that thing in her, whatever it is in whatever manifestation, curled up tightly like a fetus underneath the sheath of her new skin. ...whatever it was that led her to yield to him so many times on the beaches of Troy. He wants to wake her blood, make her less detached and yearn for him. "I know that I can be a great distraction." He allows generously. Achilles grins, Cheshire cat.
Her eyes change from their previous fleeting thoughts to a carousel of annoyances, a vigorously sloshing cup of visual retorts hammering on the sides of carefully leashed control. Achilles can hear her voice her thoughts in his own head, though, something along the lines of: "Or perhaps it's just your unacknowledged narcissism kicking in. Stay away from mirrored pools." He hears it in his head because she won't voice it herself.
He smirks because he knows she won't object, since she is continuing her oath of silence, and he talks on other subjects all the while.
Achilles tells her that he's sure she knows that Paris has become some sort of an empathetic martyr victimized by another martyr, with less intelligent language. Paris is going around saying that he forgives her for her mistakes with the Greek warrior, for her betrayal, there are worse things… after all, he did take his vengeance by killing the man.
Her eyes dance at this as he continues.
He tells Briseis that he heard about her marvelous feat at the confrontation with the Carthaginians. Achilles pauses and takes a long look at his laid out weapons on display for her, and then looks away thoughtfully. What he would have given to see her defy Trojans and Carthaginians alike, he tells her wistfully.
When he looks up at her, Briseis finds her features momentarily frozen by strange means as she finds wrapped amid the cold iron of his eyes a warm core of obvious affection. She doesn't check herself as she reaches out and runs her hand first over the vertex of his cheekbone, flanking the planes softly and feeling the texture of the ongoing interplay of muscles beneath her fingertips. He leans into the curve of her palm, and she reaches it up again to brush her fingers through his hair, and back down again. Achilles lightly kisses her palm, then nips the end of a finger, and this is when she wakes up.
Briseis sits, alone is her allotted chamber in Carthage, staring at the space where she had seen her once and only lover. She draws her hand back and looks away, picture of a doe conscious of being in the sights of several poachers. She looks back at the space, and there is something new, snake-like, and very determined in her eyes.
She turns around, and finishes reading one of the few books in Greek she had found in the Carthage library ("Warrior Codes" – perhaps this was where she had drawn her hallucination of Achilles explaining weaponry to her?) on her own, and in silence. If he had been where she had imagined him, the decrepit curves of her back would be taunting to him – Achilles might have imagined reaching out and placing his palm flat over her vertebras and under the thin layer of her robes, dragging his hand, fingers splayed, down the length of her back- but he is not. And so, Briseis reads under the oppressive blanket of quiet.
For a moment, she wishes she was back and submerged in the ongoing underwater world of noise that was war. She wants to have voices wash over her like water, conversations drifting in and out of her attention at her discretion and at his volition. But Briseis does nothing. She lives now is a world of displacement, a nomad lifestyle, and her own not-very-thought-out oath of silence.
She worries like a frail and wrinkled blonde might fret after a criminal husband, worrying about her sanity and worrying about her place and worrying because she doesn't trust the Carthaginians, stilling her quirking hands at every potential moment during the following day. Her worry is merited. Even so, the next night, the vision of Achilles doesn't come back.