Chapter Eight

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Achilles took a deep breath and pulled back the flap to his tent. The wind chime Briseis had hung in the entranceway shook. Its seashells jangled and played a mournful, otherworldly tune. This noisy bauble served a practical as well as decorative purpose. It told whoever was inside the tent that they had a visitor.
His heart pounding in his breast, Achilles hesitated before taking another step. As Briseis had pointed out, these were his quarters, and he didn't need permission to be there. So why was he trembling at the threshold like a nervous bride?
Would Briseis give him a warm welcome when he came to her that night? That question gnawed at him like a dog at a bone all day. Would she receive him as her loving lord or her captor, who'd shackled her to him forever?
Well, he wouldn't find the answer by lingering out in the cold.
Briseis wasn't alone. She sat with Ajax's Techmessa and Pisistratus' Iphis around a massive tapestry frame.

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Off in the corner, Cressida, the priest's daughter who Agamemnon had taken as his concubine, cranked out a lilting tune on her hurdy-gurdy

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Off in the corner, Cressida, the priest's daughter who Agamemnon had taken as his concubine, cranked out a lilting tune on her hurdy-gurdy. The same song she'd played when Agamemnon, to his eternal shame, sacked Apollo's shrine and violated the girl as she tended the sacred flocks.

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