Weddings in History: Briseis Weds Mynes - Reconstructing Trojan Wedding Rituals

My novel, Hand of Fire, set within the Trojan War has a key wedding early on. It isn’t going to be a happy wedding—the reader has plenty of foreboding about it. But for me as a writer, it had to be a correct wedding. That is, it needed to follow accurately the rites that would have occurred in such a Late Bronze Age (1250 BCE) wedding in Troy or any of the satellite, semi-independent kingdoms of the Hittite Empire.

For all things Hittite we have thousands of clay tablets describing religious and political procedures. But do you think that those piles of clay happened to record a wedding? Nope. Not that I could find. The closest Hittite information is on a vase in the Çorum Museum, Turkey depicting several religious celebrations including a wedding.

Hittite Vase in Çorum, Turkey

I've used photos of this vase to illustrate this post. But the vase isn't terribly informative.

So what is a historical novelist who cares about historical accuracy supposed to do? Go comparative. I scoured the surrounding cultures (also literate, helpfully enough) and I picked up the constants, the things that repeat across these cultures. You may find it interesting to note any similarities to the weddings you’ve witnessed. Some things don’t change much.

I designed as legitimate a ceremony as I could and wrote it down. And then I cut almost all of it. Much later, of course, but still, all that research and thought on the chopping block. The wedding stayed but most of the details needed to go. The story must leap along, not get overloaded with unnecessary stuff, and I had weighed mine down. The historian gave way to the novelist. All that knowledge still echoes behind the details I did include and makes for a much stronger scene. But when Lisa Yarde, the trusty leader of the Unusual Historicals blog group, asked for a post about “Weddings in History,” I opened up an ancient version of my novel and thought. Hmm. Here’s a post where I can include what my informed guess about what a Hittite/Trojan (or most Near Eastern cultures of the Late Bronze Age) wedding looked like. That’s fun to read for the historically enthusiastic.

So here is my reconstruction as I wrote it originally (well, this time I cut a lot of the emotional stuff because I was going for the wedding details in this post—reverse novelist, maybe). If you’ve read Hand of Fire, you’ll notice characters who are no longer in the book and other wisely edited-out strands. But you’ll also find all the rich details of the ceremony itself. In my novel, I kept the elaborate bathing and dressing ritual, so if you want to know about how the lovely, sexy bride was attired and prepared, you can find that part in the printed pages. For the ceremony itself, here it is, the wedding of Briseis to Mynes:

Ana and Eurome lead Briseis into the courtyard. Ana made a few minute adjustments to her drapery, and then on either side, Eurome and Ana pulled open the double doors so that Briseis was revealed in one dramatic moment. There was an appreciative intake of breath as the large assembly caught sight of her. She stepped into the megaron hall, and her father came forward to walk her to her groom.

She caught sight of Mynes: his eyes were locked on her. She felt her father’s hand on her lower back as he guided her toward the family shrine. 

When they were a few steps from Mynes, Glaukos stopped and said, “I give my daughter, Briseis, to be led into marriage by Mynes, son of Euenos. I grant her the goods and lands as agreed for her dowry. This tablet, a catalogue of all that I send with her and marked with my seal, will go with her as proof of her dowry.” Bienor placed the tablet onto the offering table that had been set up next to the wooden shrine. 

Glaukos stepped back. Mynes moved forward so that he and Briseis faced each other. He gazed up and down her veiled form. 

Priests making offerings on wicker offering table

There were many prayers to the gods—two priests and one priestess laid breads and grains on the offering table and poured libations while asking for the blessings of the gods and goddesses—but Briseis was only partially aware of this long process. For the first time she could look closely at the man marrying her and study him without shame. 

…

The offerings and prayers were done. They had reached the final part of the ceremony. One of the priests nodded to them. They came closer together. The priest drew a circle around them on the floor with barley meal. Mynes reached for her right hand and breathed in sharply as his hand touched hers. His hold tightened. Her long fingers suddenly seemed small inside his powerful hand. He spoke the traditional words that sealed their marriage. “You will be my wife.  I shall be your husband.”

Hatepa handed Mynes a small silver bowl filled with cedar oil, and he let go of Briseis’ hand to receive it. Briseis turned towards Ana so that she could fold the veil back into a frame around Briseis’ face and then pin it into place with two golden pins, their tops shaped like bees. When Ana stepped back, Mynes looked directly at Briseis’ face. For a moment he seemed to waver as though wind had struck him full in the face. Then, as required by the ceremony, he dipped three fingers into the oil and anointed her forehead. The fragrance of freshly cut cedar filled the air. His fingers lingered on her skin and his eyes met hers—consuming her as a starving man devours food.

Briseis did not hear the final blessings spoken by the head priest. She did not know for how long she was locked into Mynes’ gaze, but when he dropped his eyes, the musicians were accompanying the singers in a hymn to Kamrusepa, praising her for bringing fertility to women. She was grateful when her father led the two families to the seats of honor near the hearth, and she was able to conceal her discomposure by attending to her dress as they moved through the crowded room. 

…

Mynes sat in the chair next to her.  In a state of confusion, Briseis watched Ana and the servants settle the guests into seats around the megaron hall and flowing out into the courtyard. The big double doors had been thrown open to make the guests outside feel part of the celebration. Immediately trays of food came out and wine was poured for everyone. This was her home—or had been until today—but she felt as if she were observing a completely strange place and people. 

The feast went on. Mynes occasionally put his hand over hers when she rested it on the arm of her chair. She dared to look at him and smile when he did.  Gradually she overcame the blushing that followed each glance. She tried to imagine being in a room alone with him, but that made her too nervous, so she let her mind go still.  Many people came to greet them and wish them well. She smiled and bowed her head modestly in thanks. 

When the food was cleared away, the musicians started to play again and the dancers beat out rhythms with their feet and hands, their swaying bodies drawing lines through the air as they moved together in sacred circles. The movements were prayers of thanksgiving for this new union; the dancers raised their hands to the heavens and pulled the gods’ blessings down towards the couple so that they would have many children. Then they began to spin ever faster, drawing down the gods’ goodwill.

Acrobats in religious procession

Next the acrobats performed, drawing cries of delight from the crowd with their antics. Their movements were occasionally suggestive of the coming nuptial night, and the guests responded with laughter and jokes. They directed much of their ribbing at Mynes, and, as was expected of him, he laughed and turned aside the jesting by pretending to be completely unaware of its intended meaning. Briseis was grateful when her father announced that it was time to accompany the bride to her new home.

Ana arranged her veil back over her face for the procession to the palace. Her father and brothers guided the bride and groom out of the house behind the musicians and dancers. Guests formed a loose tail behind them, often singing joking songs and throwing figs and almonds towards the newly joined couple to bring them sweetness and fertility.

_________________________________________________________

Judith Starkston writes historical fiction and mysteries set in Troy and the Hittite Empire. She is a classicist (B.A. University of California, Santa Cruz, M.A. Cornell University) who taught high school English, Latin and humanities. She and her husband have two grown children and live in Arizona with their golden retriever Socrates. Her debut novel is Hand of Fire.

Find an excerpt, book reviews, historical background, as well as on-going information about the historical fiction community on www.JudithStarkston.com

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Legendary Heroes and Feats: Achilles

Achilles receiving divine armor from his goddess mother

Achilles, as depicted in Homer’s Iliad, is a legendary hero. You might even say a mythological one since his mother was said to be a goddess—a goddess strong enough to protect Zeus when all the other gods ganged up against him. Some mom! And some son.

He’s an interesting bundle of contradictions. In the Iliad, he asked uncomfortable questions of the Greek leadership in the Trojan War. Why are we fighting? What is the meaning of a warrior’s life if we all die, both the one who fights in the forefront and the one who hangs back? For what end should our fathers, mothers and wives suffer such losses? He had the moral courage to be a thorn in a powerful but greedy leader’s side and defend the men of the fighting ranks. Homer’s depiction of this questioning dimension in Achilles’ character makes him an appealing hero to a modern world, weary of war. Achilles would be great in a democracy—just the kind of gadfly every open society needs. Through Achilles Homer lets us explore the big questions about life and war, family and loyalty, love and hate. There’s something so irresistible about a man who has all the physical power and none of the answers but is willing to ask the questions anyway.

On the battlefield at Troy

But also in the Homeric tradition Achilles was the Best of the Achaians, a formal title that meant everyone saw him as the pre-eminent warrior without question on the battlefield. If he sometimes questioned why they fought, he still excelled at the fighting.

One battle in particular showed his semi-divine excellence. The Greeks and other ancient people imagined that every river was a god, and appropriately enough, the rivers that embraced Troy on either side were controlled by divinities who supported the Trojans. At one particularly fierce moment in the war, Achilles slaughters Trojans right and left in order to get to Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors. Hector has killed Achilles’ best friend, and Achilles is driven by both grief and fury. He kills so many Trojans on the bank of the River Scamander that the divine river decides to enter the battle and finish Achilles off. Huge waves rear up to drown the hero. Zeus sees what is going on and brings a fiery wind to help drive away the water. Eventually Achilles fights his way free and dashes across the plain killing Trojans as he goes. Revenge is a powerful motivator. To succeed against a godly river is an extraordinary feat—even if we rationalize the tale it’s still impressive. Almost nothing is more powerful than the onslaught of tons of water. But when the tradition remembers your battle as a victory over a god, well, that’s a pretty legendary feat.

I’ve been intrigued at where the tradition behind such a hero might have arisen. It’s as likely as not that some “real” human warrior provided the beginning of the Achilles legend. Some version of a Trojan War did historically happen (I discuss this in articles entitled  “Troy History or Myth?” and “Did the Trojan War Really Happen?”) But any historical warrior received several generations of mythologizing before he became the Achilles we hear about in the tradition.

We think of Achilles as part of the Greek tradition because Homer composed in Greek, but it’s also the case that the poetic/mythological tradition of the Trojan War, including the stories of the heroes on the Greek side, arose in the region around Troy, the western coast of what is now Turkey. The peoples there, in the era in which any “Trojan War” would have occurred, were culturally and religiously closely related to the powerful Hittite Empire just to the east. Troy was formally allied to the Hittites through much of this period.

Among the Hittite myths there is one about a young, angry god, Telipinu, and I think his myth influenced the way Achilles’ story formed. Homer and the other oral bards would have heard the Telipinu cycle of myths, and they could have incorporated it into their understanding of this hero.

Hittite gods carved into an open air sanctuary

As the Hittite myth describes it, Telipinu, son of the Stormgod, attends the assembly of the gods one day only to find they have offended his honor so vilely that he rushes out in fury and refuses to have anything to do with the gods or mankind. He runs around burning rivers and hiding from his friends. His absence from the company of the gods causes great harm. Eventually he is brought back into harmony with the gods. This mythic plotline calls up pieces of Achilles’ story with remarkable precision, including burning up a river. I think this young warrior god, Telipinu, whom the armies of the Hittites and Trojans described as “running before them” in battle, became intermixed with a human warrior. I think this literal combination of man and myth gave rise to a hero slightly disjointed with his world, one who could ask big moral questions as well as fight.

I’ve expressed this understanding of Achilles through fiction in my novel of Briseis and the Trojan War, Hand of Fire. While my readers need never have read the Iliad or any Hittite myths, those influences guided my writing. Here’s my description of Achilles burning up the river, with some appropriately ambiguous help from Briseis and the gods. (For my sources of inspiration, you’ll find the relevant “battle in the river” verses in Homer in Iliad Bk 21, the first 400 lines or so, and the Telipinu myth is published in English translation in Hittite Myths, by Harry Hoffner, Jr., published by Scholars Press.)

“There—Briseis saw a golden flash. Achilles stood in the river surrounded by the dead bodies of his victims. The water crested above him like a lion pouncing on its prey. Boulders and bodies, carried by the water’s force, knocked his feet from under him. Troy’s immortal river itself engaged him in battle. Achilles reached for a branch of an overhanging elm, but the whole tree wrenched from the riverbank, its dense roots dragging the river bluff with them into the water, nearly burying Achilles.

Surely this was not his fate, to lie folded under mud and stones in the hostile waters of Scamander, but how could even he escape such raw power?

To reach for Troy he had fought against the city’s gods for so long; she could not tolerate this river god rising against him also and drowning his beauty in its murk, no matter how many dead he had thrown into Scamander’s waters. She strained forward, willing him to escape the river’s hold. A wind rose up, hot and blasting. It caught her hair and pulled it toward the river. When she tried to gather her hair in her hand, it scorched her fingers and escaped her hold.

The banks of the river burst into flames. The dead burned in a sudden pyre. The water boiled. The fish leapt upon the scorched banks in a vain attempt to flee the flames that had replaced their watery homes. The tamarisks and elms along the river’s edge became monstrous torches.

In the midst of this inferno, she saw Achilles lift his massive shield and spear in victory. Her heart surged. Not even the divine river could stop him. She heard his shout of joy as he raced across the plain, blasting Trojans like a bolt of lightning. Invincible warrior god, unstoppable fire.”

Curing the Hittite Way: Analogical Magic and Powerful Words

Hittite Mother Goddess Figurine

By Judith Starkston

Like many ancient peoples, the Hittites of the Late Bronze Age (13thC BCE) in what is now modern Turkey, along with their semi-independent ally, Troy, believed that illness came from the gods. Sickness revealed a lack of harmony between mortal and immortal worlds that once restored would also restore physical well-being. Their definition of illness was considerably broader than our modern one often is. A quarrel between a wife and husband was viewed as needing the attention of the healer just as much as a cough or broken limb. Perhaps in this respect they had a more progressive, holistic view.

Although there is some evidence of herbal cures, poultices and brews of various sorts as well as practical wound treatments, most of what we know about Hittite cures is more magical than practical. They were particularly drawn to analogical magic. So if a baby in the womb was turned the wrong direction, they would hold a root vegetable, perhaps an onion, that had layers within layers and turn the inner layer as they said the proper words, and the assumption was that the baby also would turn in the same manner as the onion. This is an example that strains our credulity. Certainly they noticed the baby didn’t turn? But perhaps they accompanied this magical formula with some manual procedure and attributed the benefit to the prayer and rite.

Hittite Cuneiform Tablet

The cuneiform tablet only mentions rather opaquely an unidentified root vegetable, turning and special words. For Hittites words were of utmost importance and power. They had a saying, “The tongue is the bridge.” The words are the connection between human and divine worlds. Words have transformative power.

The Hittites were also early practitioners of “scapegoating” as a healing process. If you suffered from a pain in your chest, the healer would rub a mouse on the source of the pain, transfer some red and green wool threads from your chest to the mouse, and then send the mouse away—again with the proper incantations to the gods. Your pain was supposed to wander off with the mouse. In some cases it probably did, at least temporarily. Modern studies of placebos show a remarkably high success rate, after all. If your whole belief system built trust in the efficacy of a rite, it may well have accomplished pain reduction often enough to sustain the overall belief.

Here is a brief excerpt from my novel Hand of Fire, showing a healer named Briseis trying to use her array of tools to heal her mother, divinations, rites recorded on tablets, incantations, and analogical magic:  

Briseis believed her mother had given in to this illness, accepted defeat from the beginning. Illness generally came from the gods as punishment for violations against the gods’ laws. In case her mother had neglected a sacrifice or some similar affront— any more serious sin seemed unlikely—Briseis performed a snake divination at the temple to ask Kamrusepa directly how they had offended the gods. But the swimming snakes had given only a muddled answer as they touched the words inscribed in the great basin. The snakes failed to identify anything Briseis could correct. Even before she’d tried the divination it had seemed impossible to Briseis that her mother could have sinned so greatly that Kamrusepa sent the illness, but giving in to the disease felt like a sin to Briseis. Her mother had resigned herself to death too easily, and the gods abandoned her because she did not love life enough— their gift to all. She needed to be dragged back to life.

Briseis had an idea. “You two stay with Mama. I need some supplies.”

She ran downstairs to the back storerooms, the sound of the storm growing muted as she went deeper into the house with its thick walls. Once inside the library, the comforting odor of clay soothed her. Her mother, Briseis thought, was a mixture of lavender and earthy clay. She pulled tablets from the wooden pigeonholes, scanning the words formed with a reed stylus that her brothers said looked like bird tracks. She found it, “The Breath of Life Incantation.” It hadn’t made sense to her when she’d been required to copy it for practice three years ago, but it did now. Her heart felt light. She committed the rite to memory and tucked the palm-sized tablet back in its place.

She hurried through the megaron hall, the main room of the house with its two-storied ceiling and circular hearth, out to the main courtyard and into the kitchen opposite the stables. The wind-driven rain splattered under the portico’s shelter.

The cook, a middle-aged woman with a kinder heart than her boney, hard face indicated, looked up in surprise from sorting lentils when Briseis appeared at the door.

“For Mama, hurry. I need honey, mint and sweet wine.”

The cook quickly gathered everything on a tray, and Briseis carried it back upstairs. From the carved wooden chest next to the floor-to-ceiling loom in her mother’s sitting room, she grabbed a sachet of lavender and a clay incantation jar shaped like a fig.

Iatros and Eurome looked up when she entered the sleeping chamber. She set down the tray on the table and leaned in close over her mother. Antiope’s lips were parted, her eyes closed, their lids withered like fallen leaves in winter. The space between breaths felt impossibly long.

Iatros crouched by the bed, biting his upper lip, eyes fixed on his sister.

Briseis shifted her mother’s legs aside and sat down. She closed her eyes and waited while the fear she felt emptied out with each breath she exhaled. The power of the ritual’s words filled her mind. She called to Kamrusepa, praying for her to give power to this rite.

She opened her eyes and placed both hands on her mother’s chest, then her head.

“Antiope, wife of Glaukos, mother of Bienor, Adamas, Iatros, and Briseis, you have heard death whisper in your ear. You have mistaken that whisper for the nurturing breath that flows in and out of every human being. You have gone after death. Return now. Hear the breath of life.”

Briseis poured wine and honey into the fig jar, breathed into it, and then added the lavender and mint, crushing the leaves to release their scent as she held the jar close to her mother.

“Antiope, do you smell the spring? The time of new growth and blossoms? Remember the spring. Remember your children. Remember the sweetness of life. Remember that you love life. Take a strong breath.”

Silently Briseis added, Come back, Mama, I need you. Remember how much I love you. Antiope sighed and her eyelids fluttered for a moment. Iatros cried out.

Briseis’s heart leapt like a deer. “Mama!”

Daughter and son clung to their mother’s hands. They waited for Antiope to open her eyes and reassure them that she would live. They listened for the slow rattle to quicken. Instead it faded, caught once, tangled in a last wisp of life, then fell silent.

Tears ran down Briseis’s face, hot against her skin. Gradually her wet cheeks grew cold.

About the Author:

Judith Starkston writes historical fiction and mysteries set in Troy and the Hittite Empire. Ms. Starkston is a classicist (B.A. University of California, Santa Cruz, M.A. Cornell University) who taught high school English, Latin and humanities. She and her husband have two grown children and live in Arizona with their golden retriever Socrates. Hand of Fire is her debut novel.

Find an excerpt, Q&A, book reviews, ancient recipes, historical background as well as on-going information about the historical fiction community on Starkston’s website www.JudithStarkston.com

Follow Judith Starkston on FB and Twitter   

Visit on Goodreads Hand of Fire or Amazon

Author Interview & Book Giveaway: Judith Starkston on HAND OF FIRE

This week, we're pleased to welcome author and Unusual Historicals contributor JUDITH STARKSTON with her newest novel, HAND OF FIRE. One lucky visitor will get a free copy of Hand of Fire. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.

The Trojan War threatens Troy’s allies and the Greek supply raids spread. A young healing priestess, designated as future queen, must defend her city against both divine anger and invading Greeks. She finds strength in visions of a handsome warrior god. Will that be enough when the half-immortal Achilles attacks? Hand of Fire, a tale of resilience and hope, blends history and legend in the untold story of Achilles’s famous captive, Briseis.

**Q&A with Judith Starkston**

Tell us about Hand of Fire and why you chose to write about Briseis?

Hand of Fire tells the story of Briseis, the captive woman from Homer’s Iliad who caused the bitter conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon during the Trojan War. She has practically no voice in the male-centered epic; I wanted to discover her as a flesh and blood woman.

I was asked a really good question at my book launch: does a reader need to be familiar with the Iliad to read my book? Absolutely not! My primary critique partner has never read the Iliad, and she was invaluable for keeping me true to that goal.

Hand of Fire is partly a romance—Briseis and Achilles fall in love but in an unconventional manner that includes a mystical element. Achilles is half-immortal and I made full use of that half of his conflicted personality.

In addition to the romantic element, Hand of Fire explores why some people, women especially, can survive great tragedy and violence against them, even managing to experience joy in what life still has to offer.

It is a coming of age tale featuring a smart, strong-willed young woman in an ancient culture (Trojan/Hittite) that, counter to our modern stereotypes of the past, expects Briseis to be powerful, literate and a leader. Briseis succeeds in rising to those expectations despite the circumstances arrayed against her—and she’s strong enough to take on the mightiest of the Greek heroes.

How did you research the historical background to the story and did you discover anything surprising along the way?

The Trojans and their allies (such as Briseis’s city of Lyrnessos) are culturally and politically related to the powerful empire of the Hittites that ruled what we think of as Turkey throughout the Late Bronze Age (around 1250 BCE). Troy was a semi-independent kingdom of the Hittites. As a classicist, I knew a fair amount about the Mycenaean Greeks when I started writing, but the Hittites were a delightful new realm of exploration for me—and that’s Briseis’s world.

I spent a lot of time at university libraries, pouring through dry stuff like archaeological site reports (which produce both an urgent need for napping and great juicy details if you stick with it—fortunately for my readers, I do the culling). I also travelled extensively in Turkey and Greece, meeting with archaeologists at key sites and examining museum collections.

The big surprise for me was the Hittite culture that has come to light in the last couple decades, especially as the recently excavated cuneiform clay tablet libraries have been translated. We have a rich historical record of these people—including details very handy for a historical fiction writer like political intrigues, treaties, religious practices, magical rites and customs of daily life. I found Briseis’s “job description” right there in the tablets. It was a joy that these authentic sources described a role so perfect for the woman I had imagined confronting the war and Achilles and finding love and joy in life no matter how hard the Greeks made that for her.

What do you hope readers take away from your book?

Despite being a book about war with a lot of death and violence, the fundamental theme of Hand of Fire is one of hope. I think people will come away with a renewed sense of the resiliency of humanity and of women in particular.

Also, my aim was to build the Bronze Age world of these Greeks and Trojans vividly enough that readers feel like they’ve lived there. For most people, that’s a new and exotic world and yet it will feel surprisingly familiar in some ways. I guess you could call Hand of Fire historical escapism with a positive message.

Can you tell us what you are writing next?

I’m in the middle of a historical mystery featuring the Hittite Queen Puduhepa as “sleuth.” She would be as famous as Cleopatra if she hadn’t been buried by the sands of time. Her seal is on the first extant peace treaty in history next to her foe, Pharaoh Ramses II. Now that both her world and her correspondence have been excavated, I’ve started a series about her. She ruled from her teens until she was at least eighty, so I think this series may outlast me!

I’m also outlining a sequel to Hand of Fire—and Briseis may make a move to Cyprus. It’s such a gorgeous and intriguing island, covered in Bronze Age ruins, with several qualities that make it perfect for her. But as readers of Hand of Fire will realize, Briseis has got some business to take care of nearer to home before that happens. 

Learn more about author Judith Starkston

Website: JudithStarkston.com

Twitter: @JudithStarkston

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Current Book List

Hand of Fire, (Fireship Press, 2014)

SoWest: Desert Justice, story entitled “Season for Death” (Desert Sleuths Sisters in Crime Anthology)

Excerpt Thursday: HAND OF FIRE by Judith Starkston

This week, we're pleased to welcome author and Unusual Historicals contributor JUDITH STARKSTON with her newest novel, HAND OF FIRE. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. One lucky visitor will get a free copy of Hand of Fire. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's post or Sunday's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.

The Trojan War threatens Troy’s allies and the Greek supply raids spread. A young healing priestess, designated as future queen, must defend her city against both divine anger and invading Greeks. She finds strength in visions of a handsome warrior god. Will that be enough when the half-immortal Achilles attacks? Hand of Fire, a tale of resilience and hope, blends history and legend in the untold story of Achilles’s famous captive, Briseis.

**An Excerpt from Hand of Fire**

That’s what it’s come to, Briseis thought, women defending the palace with cooking pots. She reached up to the burning places on her cheek and chest where Mynes’s whip had struck her.

She sent Eurome to warn Maira and prepare Hatepa, though they would keep what was happening from the queen for now. Then Briseis started up the ladder to a defense tower.

A tremendous crack rang out and the ground shook beneath her. It felt like a lightning strike, dangerously close, but the sky was clear blue. What had happened? She climbed to the top and looked toward the Great Gate of Lyrnessos. Where the wooden beams and stone supports should have been, a cloud of dust and debris arose.

What force could have pulled down the massive gate in so little time? The men, few as they were, could harry the attackers from above the gate, inflicting enemy losses so great most leaders would choose to withdraw.

She saw a huge warrior standing on the rubble, his sword held high, the morning light reflecting fiery gold off his full-length shield. She knew then. Nothing stood between Achilles and her city.

She raced down the ladder.

As she reached the ground she yelled to the servants hurrying to their posts. “The Great Gate is down. We must gather everyone and escape from the city and head to the sheep camps. No point defending the palace. Achilles knocked down the city gate as if it were a pile of kindling.”

Servants ran to call the others from the walls. Briseis hurried inside to get Eurome, Maira and Hatepa. She tried to appear calm. The less frantic Hatepa became, the faster they could escape.

Briseis pushed aside the door curtain. “Lady Hatepa, your son has asked you to come with me quickly outside the city.”

The queen fidgeted in her chair. “Mynes? Outside the city? What are you saying? What is that noise I heard? What is that cut on your face?”

“Your son commanded me to take you to safety.” They pulled the queen to her feet, ignoring her protests. Eurome handed Briseis her healing satchel.

Hatepa began to cough. “I must sit down. Why are you dragging me around?” She batted at Maira and Eurome.

Eurome looked the queen in the eye. “Queen Hatepa, unless you wish to be skewered by a Greek spear, you’d better walk. There are no servants left in the palace. Come with us or stay alone to greet the Greeks.”

Hatepa’s eyes bulged wider than usual. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish stranded on the shore. For a moment Briseis wondered if she was unable to breathe, but then she squawked, “How dare you—”

“Eurome is right, Queen Hatepa,” Briseis interrupted. “We wish no disrespect, but you can come now or be left behind. We cannot endanger others to suit you.” Hatepa stopped resisting.

Outside in the main courtyard, the remainder of the household staff had gathered, men and women with some children. Such a large group would have trouble getting through streets jammed with fleeing townspeople. She could hear screams rising from the lower city. They had to get out. Greek warriors could be climbing the hill toward the palace right now. Everyone looked at her.

“We must leave the city. Go from the back of the palace away from the fighting that is centered on the Great Gate. We’ll escape the other way, out the Stag Gate.”

She hoped that by starting their journey on the steep backside of the palace hill, well above the packed neighborhoods, they could avoid both Greeks and crowds. By the time they dropped into the populated area, they would be near the Stag Gate.

The menservants had knives, clubs and other weapons snatched from the work sheds or kitchens, but she said a prayer that enough of the guard had survived to keep the Greeks busy so that her household and the townspeople could escape without a fight. The shrieks from the battle kept increasing. Had the fighting spread this far? As they unbarred the gate, Briseis held her breath.

The street lay empty. They hurried along the road that hugged the back of the palace. The children held tight to their mothers and moved silently with the adults. All went well until they reached a side road with houses and shops on either side.

Other fleeing people crowded in so that she lost sight of the servants at the front of her group. Family groups trying to stay together got pushed to the sides by faster moving men. Briseis glanced behind and saw Hatepa stumbling forward, her eyes wide with terror.

Maira walked next to the queen, holding her arm, but Briseis couldn’t find Eurome. She tried to go back to look for her, but the flow of the crowd made it impossible, and in the confusion her old nurse could have passed her. Briseis pressed on, fighting back tears.

Other paths and alleys led to the gate, but she stayed on the main road, hoping her household and Eurome had also. The crowd pushed her faster, and she could no longer see Maira. A few of her servants ran near her. Two of the men, armed with a club and a butchering knife, stayed on either side of her. How had they clung to her when she had lost both Eurome and Maira?

Suddenly she heard screams. The crowd in front turned back, driven by something. The serving man with the knife took her arm. “Down this alley.”

She ran up several stone steps and into a narrow passage between the buildings. Some of her serving women ran after her in single file, the men behind them. She heard a man bellow in agony and looked back. The man with the club was on the ground. Close behind she saw the horsehair plume of a Greek helmet.

Learn more about author Judith Starkston

Website: JudithStarkston.com

Twitter: @JudithStarkston

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Current Book List

Hand of Fire, (Fireship Press, 2014)

SoWest: Desert Justice, story entitled “Season for Death” (Desert Sleuths Sisters in Crime Anthology)