The Double Sorrow of Misunderstanding and Manipulation

A Troilus and Criseyde What if?

High above in his fourth sphere, Hecuba’s consort scorches down on the lover’s third anniversary.

Having melted away the last of the winter snow, I note how the gales have now relaxed to just an invigorating breeze. Spring’s presence has unleashed the lands full health; and yet leaves of the richest emerald do nothing to relinquish sorrows hold on Priam’s bastard son.

Beside me Diomedes sits astride his horse with unnerving health for someone awake since dawn, ready to return the infamous Briseis to her father. Seeing the two epic lords face one another outside of battle was enough to set me on edge, shifting the reigns between my sweaty palms. Though Leo’s sun was a good omen its presence now only further edged my nerves, coupled as it was with the reek of war.

I drag in a subtle breath; I must not falter from the plan. Troilus might have noticed my trepidation had he not been so clearly occupied by his beloved — the secret of their affair nothing for the Greek spies.

Though Calchas was a fool, I consider, a fool can often guide a wise man.

The soothsayer had been a stumbling waste of food for my entire duration at the Greek camp, but even I can agree my people — previous people, trusted his council with the stars more than themselves. If he predicts Troy will fall from a son’s death or otherwise, they will believe it regardless of validity. Despite my confidence, seeing one of the sons I have devoted so much to so afflicted with heartbreak made my own countenance waver. I remind myself of the stakes — kill or be killed.

            May Troy forgive me.

From this vantage, it was plain to see the anguish across Troilus’ face. He kept glancing from Briseis to Diomedes, mumbling incoherently to himself like a mad man. Eros’ cruel bow had its wicked poison in him. The only creature to eye me wearily was the hawk on the prince’s fist, its ever-present glare striking me harder than any iron.

“Allas!”

Unexpected, Briseis’ voice made me start on my horse, spooking the beast. The brown mare shook her head twice in uproar that took a moment — and Diomedes’ side-glare — to correct. While Troilus’ knights struggle to meet her horse’s sudden stride, she and I switch places and I note how solemnly she too is taking this separation.

My nerves are entirely on edge as I ride to meet Troilus, though men I recognise give me nods or quiet words of welcome. I bow my head as low as I dare once we are abreast, almost toppling over my horse in surprise at his firm clap on my back. He smelt of bonfire and brine, but it’s the compliment that scalds me the most.

“Easy,” —he rests a calming hand on the mare— “It’s very good to have you returned, Antenor.”

He moves on to join Briseis, now lamenting their parting so vocally I imagine her soul might be broken. I watch, we all do, Troilus take her hand and whisper something in her ear before roughly turning and riding hard for Troy.

The look on her face will haunt me into an afterlife of peace - one I long for despite my indiscretions, and Dardanus’ fall, to come.

***

“Apollo is wrong father, cast the lots again.”

Calchas swings round in the confines of his tent, hand raised ready for recompense for such an adulterous statement.

“Keen to join Capaneus, daughter?”

“Cast it again,” Briseis snaps, undeterred. Her time alone has made her strong, she faces him straight spined and stone-faced. She is a force, but Fortune does not favour strong, only the bold.

Calchas heaves in a sharp breath, nose flaring. The discipline that comes down is swift yet Briseis in all her anger does not waver that resolve. Unsettled but invigorated nonetheless, Calchas turns from her to instead peruse the wonders of his tent again. As Greece’s most valued turncoat, he is spared no expense.

“If I did not know better, daughter,” Calchas says, musing over a pile of grapes. “I would say you loved this Lord.”

“It seems only Venus should know me so well, then.”

Thoughtlessly he plucks and sends grapes rolling across the floor, discarded, before he finds one perfect enough for his tastes.

“Recall that I am never wrong then - if Apollo has sought it important to inform me the boy will die before his twentieth birthday, so mote it be.”

Exasperated, Briseis goes to stride past her father and out into the camp beyond. Within two breaths, Calchas has caught the end of her braid in his fist and drags her near. Standing a foot above his daughter, the tail of his beard touches her bare shoulder nauseatingly.

“Know also that this camp is not a safe place for you - it is my protection, my work that has allowed us their good graces,” he pulls harder, so that Briseis must turn her face away or be forced to smell the other engorgements on his breath. “These knights will ruin you so thoroughly that prince and any other eligible suitor would discard you as your previous did.”

“I was not discarded he died,” Briseis says.

“Semantics.”

Releasing her, her father takes pains to smooth her hair lovingly before guiding her back into the depths of the tent where her bedroll lay safely beside his.

What Calchas does not realise, does not consider as she concedes, is the scheme she harbours. She promised Troilus she would meet him in ten days or less and should she not succeed it would be both their deaths on her shoulders.

She considers her options carefully. It would be foolish to attempt escaping — she’d have to be hidden from sun god’s sight and blessed by Fortuna. That left her one ally, Diomedes. If she could convince the son of Tydeus to corroborate, perhaps Cipride would take favour with her too.

Having artfully suggested such a meeting to Calchas, who is all too happy to see her attention wander, her meeting with the famed knight is orchestrated, played out and complete in epic time.

Briseis took full advantage of the humble service Diomedes had offered her. Perhaps he anticipated something more akin to Cupid’s deference; she persevered regardless.

***

“You need to leave Briseis.”

Briseis wasn’t backing down after what she’d just seen. She struggled to again pass around him, back through the archway to confront Troilus for his infidelity.

The gleam in Pandarus’ eye went unnoticed as he grabbed her again, persuaded her away, convinced his niece the risk of being seen so publicly wasn’t worth the effort. Pandarus always had abused her insecure self-image.

What she didn’t know is the scene before her in King Sarpedon’s home was falsified; the great feast before Troilus, the gentle string music playing and the women languishing around him - and on him.

Pandarus’ words still seeped through and made doubts of themselves. By meeting before their agreed day under the fortuitous sky Briseis worried she may incur the Gods wrath and despite disavowing her father, she still believed in their favour. When he cast the lots, they had predicted her story misted and Troilus’ death by his twentieth - this - year. Thinking to outsmart fate, she agreed not to approach and return instead to the Greeks.

Pandarus was angered by Briseis’ autonomy — expected his useless brother, Calchas, to keep her controlled. He had taken such care in cultivating Troilus’ obsession with the girl, knowing he’d so thoroughly break him in suggesting to the King she be traded for Antenor.

He had an ear with all the sons of Troy, with Lord of the land himself, which made him the best spy in the Greek army. After Briseis’ departure, he righted his tunic and readjusted his white hair before returning to the banquet. He had endured days of the whiniest prince’s selfishness; but he reminded himself each miserable gulp and refill of wine was another step towards Pandarus’ success.

Having spread discontent throughout his siblings; most thoroughly in Hector, the most valued of the sons - whose only weakness was his desperation to please his father - Pandarus’ last task was Troilus. Though doubtless a formidable warrior the boys one exploitable vice was his ego.

Refilling their glasses, Pandarus took a careful once over of his corruption.

Slumped across the throne of the table, hair hung low over black eyes, Lord Troilus was inebriated enough he could barely lift a butter knife, let alone a sword. One leg dangled forgotten over the arm of the chair where - to his consistent dismay - an unclad woman tried to tend to him.

It was she who had turned Briseis so green at her unexpected arrival. Luckily, Pandarus had spotted her as she strode toward him in a fury — ready to unravel all his painstaking work.

Calchas and he had machinated this together; the collapse of Troy in its tenth year, to gain favour with Greece and rise much further in the ranks than Priam had ever allowed.

Though Calchas’ predictions were oftentimes correct; in this instant they had been heavily corrupted. If all goes well, the sons of Troy will all be dead, and the city besieged before Troilus and his beloved ever reunited.

***

There was no way Briseis’ plan would work.

She hoped Atropos had not yet set fate’s course on this terrible third day of May, prayed Jove himself would look down on her desperation kindly.

“Does this look okay?” Diomedes said kindly, showing the brooch every-which-way on his collar.

Distracted, Briseis nodded and continued thinking over the plan for the hundredth time. When Troilus saw his token to her, nearly drowned in his tears, he would have to believe she was sending a message.

The prior day had been their original meeting - she had been ready to leave under Apollo’s gaze when Calchas had stopped her. In his fist was a handful of letters, all he claimed from her beloved. He burnt them all, bar the last and most recent which illustrated in detail Troilus’ agony and belief she had betrayed him. She couldn’t ascertain if Calchas had been corresponding on her behalf as subterfuge, but she had no time to wonder.

“Make sure it’s clear,” she said, glancing blurry eyes up from her writing. 

The peace now over, war had begun again between them. It made any thoughts of safe and subtle escape impossible; Briseis even suspected her father to have encouraged the soldiers to unsettle her. Whenever she left the tent to pray, she was followed.

“Here.”

“Do you think he’ll believe the truth?” Briseis nodded.

She had penned a letter invoking Minerva’s guidance; she detailed her love for Troilus alongside her intentions to return without delay to his side. Diomedes had promised an ally would get it into his hands, as well as risk his own life too in returning Troilus’ brooch to him.

“Whatever blots you see, tears have made then,” he said.

She couldn’t fathom, in those moments, how such a poignant declaration of love could be misconstrued.

She called to Diomedes as he lifted the tent to leave. “You know the words, yes?”

Hopeful Briseis seemed then that it was not too late, that she was not already doomed to join Tantalus’ depths.

He nodded. “That you love him. To meet you at the gate under Cynthia’s sky so you can abscond, together.”

***

Briseis watched on from the Trojan wall, excited to see the moment Troilus noticed the brooch and realised she still loved him.

From this distance, she told herself she could remain safe from battle while also knowing what was going on - despite being too far to hear anything. It wasn’t part of the plan, to be here in the city, but she couldn’t stay in that tent while the camp emptied itself of soldiers all bent on killing her brethren. Her soulmate.

Diomedes had left earlier and now stood within shouting distance of Troilus — under the dappled light, he appeared as a fallen god. Pallas’ champion heaved great breaths in the dust of his city, a thousand soldiers slain by his bare feet. Blood, his or otherwise, smeared him like someone who had been born again and come out screaming.

Calliope will bless mortal hands for millennia of how those two dauntless knights first caught eyes, how Mars himself was said to writhe in illicit anticipation. When Troilus took in Diomedes and the symbol he harboured, all three Furies took pains to personify themselves in Troilus’ ruthless eyes.

“Megaera offer me your wrath,” he bellowed, echoing through every Corinthian helmet and soul in such a way the sides of the battle almost overwhelmed the Greeks.

“I bring news from your beloved,” Diomedes said.

“Say her name, seducer,” —Troilus approached— “it will be the last sound you make.”

Before Diomedes could begin to explain, and history should harken his efforts, that unyielding second Hector was on him. Their swords clashed hard enough to burn, melting away the iron until they came at each other by hand.

Briseis could only watch in palpable horror, abandoned by every god and spirit she could name — even Janus had turned both faces on the calamity.

Selfish as it was, she saw then how books would ruin her whence these men fell:

Briseis the betrayer,

the oath-less,

Diomedes’ mistress.

She would be remembered only for how she brought this noble man to his knees.

The men fell to the floor, heads gripped in such a way it could be misconstrued as a lovers embrace. “The letter —” Diomedes gasped.

“Is a carefully schemed lie,” Troilus cut him off, “if my eyes do not deceive me that is my brooch you were - in battle no less!”

Though they each walked away from this battle, the thorn in Troilus’ heart led him to his end by Achilles rampage, regardless. Briseis, indeed, is cursed to a fate worse than death; to live on half of a whole and be remembered as the villainess — while those scheming brothers Calchas and Pandarus accomplished their fall of Troy.

Though Diomedes and Antenor both expected death in illustrious battle, the knights lived on to deliver the truth of this tale. They devoted themselves to Melpomene’s mighty pen over the sword hence this account is forever plagued with the duality of a jolly woe and a cheerful sorrow.