CHAPTER ONE

I had been married for three years and was still childless. My family was becoming seriously frantic. My mother kept recommending me herbs, potions, and prayers. Before death took him by surprise, my father kept telling me to do whatever it took to remain in Mynes' favour and insisted I should go to one temple or another to offer sacrifices and beg for my fruitfulness. On the few occasions when I met my brothers in Mynes' great hall, all they ever seemed to ask me was whether I was finally about to do my duty to my husband and provide him with a son.

Frantic they were and, if truth be told, they had reason to be. Three years was way too long for a married woman to remain without so much as a sign of pregnancy. My marriage to our king, Mynes, had been a great – albeit well deserved – honour to our family and my childlessness was putting all that in jeopardy. My second brother even went so far as suggesting I offer Mynes one of my handmaids for her to give him the necessary son in my stead. But that would be tantamount to proclaiming my barrenness to the world and which woman is ready to declare herself barren at eighteen?

I admit I was worried as well, but not in as much of a panic as them. After all, I was still rather young and there was justifiable hope that I would still produce a string of strong and healthy children. Besides, what I knew and my family did not – I wasn't so stupid as to tell them – was that Mynes' interest in me had waned considerably after the first year of our marriage. He still visited me regularly, about once every six days, but it seemed to be more out of a sense of duty than a sign of any real desire or passion. At first, he shared my bed every night, but maybe back then I had been too young to get pregnant, even though my body showed all the signs of female maturity, and now he had begun to lose interest. Perhaps precisely because he thought me barren…

Or perhaps because my own lack of interest smothered his. The fact was that I didn't really mind Mynes' increasing estrangement very much. If it weren't for the child problem, I would actually be relieved if his visits became even scarcer. Now, you've always been adamant that people speak the truth – "No lies, anything but lies", you insisted – so I will tell it like it was: I didn't love or want Mynes; he was the husband my parents had chosen for me, not one I had picked for myself. But I didn't hate him either, nor did I resent him. I was faithful to him and loyal to his interests. In a way, I had adjusted to his being part of my life and I was grateful that he hadn't yet sent me back to my parents because of my fruitlessness. Also, his position as king, even if only of a small city and subject to the High King Priam of Troy, gave me a certain social standing and a sense of security which I treasured.

So I did the herbs and the potions, the prayers and the sacrifices, and I tried my best to be as pleasing to my husband as I possibly could – which clearly wasn't working very well, probably because I was never very good at pretending – but I drew the line on the handmaid's solution. I might still consider it, but only as a last resort and not quite yet.

I was precisely heading off to pray at Hera's altar when the Achaens arrived at our walls. No, not the Achaens: the Myrmidons, with you at their head. It was barely dawn and there had been no sign whatsoever that there would be a raid coming in. The alarm was given, the men jumped out of bed to race for their armour and weapons, the women, children and old folks ran around in mindless panic before finally taking refuge in the palace or the temples.

By sunset it was over. The walls had been breached easily enough, but then our men put up a surprisingly good battle, forcing the enemy to fight for every inch of our streets. Heroic as they were, your army was like an incontrollable flood and, step by step, they broke the resistance and erupted into the citadel.

I didn't see Mynes fight you. I know only what I've been told: it was a fierce duel, fought with honour on both sides. Mynes didn't surrender, not even after you had him cornered and called out for him to yield, and you killed him in one single swift blow.

Lyrnessus had fallen and with it my husband and my three brothers, along with an indeterminate number of other warriors. The old, the women and the children were flushed out of their hiding places and assembled in the main square as prisoners.

Slaves. That's what we had all become.

There was a lot of screaming and calling, crying and wailing. People were desperately looking for their loved ones, clinging with all their might to the ones they found. As for me, I had no-one left to find. I already knew my husband and all my family were dead, except for my mother, and she was sitting next to me on the ground, staring vacantly in front of her. She hadn't spoken one single word since learning of the death of all her three sons.

Your men were positioned all around the square, watching us with stern faces, but they didn't interfere with the prisoners or try to keep us from speaking and searching for one another. They looked fearsome, with their long hair and sturdy helmets, their skin and armours covered in dirt and blood. But they were also surprisingly disciplined, standing silent and watchful, still holding their shields up on the left arm, spears at the ready on the right hand.

We could hear shouts and all kinds of noises at the distance, and we realized the rest of your army was combing through the city for anything that could be deemed valuable or useful.

I felt bile rise to my throat. Everything I had ever known was being destroyed, everything any of us had ever owned was being taken. I had never truly hated in my life, but I did now. I hated each and every one of the arrogant enemy warriors standing around the square, each and every one of the pillaging men spread throughout our city. And above all, I hated the foreign leader who had brought these foes into our lives.

I had heard of you before, of course. Everyone had. Achilles, son of Peleus, the best of the Achaen warriors. Undefeated in all terrains he had ever done battle in. Swift, strong, ruthless. Idolized by his men, who would follow him to Hades and back. Idolized, some said, even by the men of the other Achaen kings, who trusted him more as a leader on the battlefield than they trusted their own commanders. The legends around you spread so wildly people said that your mother was a nymph and that you could not be killed.

Night was falling when you arrived at the square, surrounded by the other Myrmidon leaders. You stopped on the top of the palace stairs and rose your spear to salute your men, who responded with a deafening ovation.

You looked younger than I expected. Around twenty-one, twenty-two? At any rate, much too young for someone who had built such a reputation. You had taken off your helmet and your long hair fell in a golden mane all the way down to your shoulders. You were nearly one head taller than the men around you, broad-shouldered and as covered in blood and dirt as any of your soldiers.

When they fell silent, you made a short speech in your own dialect, of which I couldn't decipher one single word. But it was patent enough that you were commending them for their bravery and celebrating victory. Your words were greeted with several bouts of applause.

Then you shifted into the Cretan language that was commonly understood by most people in our area of the Mediterranean to address the prisoners. You stated we would be safe as long as we caused no trouble and followed the orders your men would be relaying to us, that we would be brought to the palace yards for shelter and given food and water for the night, and that next morning we'd be allowed to search for our dead and to bury them with full honours. You finished off with: "All the fallen died like true heroes and deserve proper funeral rites and the respect of us all."

A lot of murmuring broke out among the prisoners. Although disposing of the dead after a battle was common enough among civilized peoples, no-one was expecting the mercy of being given a chance to mourn our dead and provide them with an honourable burial. Nor were we expecting to be promised any kind of safety: from what we could tell, all the survivors had been brought to the square. There had been no rapes and no massacre of male children. That was truly odd: at least Mynes' surviving male relatives, including his nephews and his bastard son, should normally have been killed by now to avoid the danger of future vendettas against you. And even if it would be reasonable for your men to spare the higher-born female captives, preserving them for later distribution among their own leaders, a merciless attack on the lower scale, less valuable women would be pretty much par for the course under the circumstances.

But so far nothing of the kind had happened. I suppose we should be grateful for the fact that you seemed to save your ruthlessness to the battlefield and chose mercy when the fighting was over, but I was beyond feeling anything but fear and hatred.

One of your lieutenants stepped forward, shouted for the prisoners to stand up and form in lines and led us to the palace yards where, true to your word, we were all given bread, water and wood for fires to keep us warm. We huddled together, fearful and wary of the foreign warriors positioned at every entrance, but the hours dragged on uneventfully, and eventually most of us succumbed to the extreme fatigue and fell asleep.