I stood up, my legs quivering. The wind smacked me in the face, stinging cold. I could see the headland of Malea, and dead ahead the mountain of Cythera. It had resolved itself out of the mists of a dream.
“At last! At last I shall set foot on it!” I said.
“Not so hasty, lady,” said the captain. “There’s them to get by first.”
“What?” Paris asked.
“Them.” The captain pointed to a small ship, barely visible, near Malea.
Paris laughed. “That little thing? It will never catch us, and even if it did, what matter?”
The captain shook his head. “Did you not know, Prince, that pirate ships are small and light? They have to be, for speed and hiding. And this has all the look of a pirate ship to me. I don’t think it’s an innocent fishing boat, although it may be disguised as one.” He turned to the rowers. “Faster! As fast as you are able!” He motioned to the crew. “Sail up! Sail up! Let’s harness this wind!”
The men rushed to unfurl the sail and hoist it high, and it jerked as it filled with the impatient wind. The ship flew over the waves. The suspicious boat was left far behind.
The captain seemed to relax a bit, but he kept squinting astern, keeping the boat in his sights. He motioned to the men manning the steering oars to turn right, and they did. Then, a few moments later, he ordered them to turn left, quickly, and they obeyed. A dark look spread across his face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s pirates, all right. They are altering their course whenever we do.”
“Mightn’t it just be a smaller boat using us as a safe means of charting a course?” asked one of the younger men.
“Possibly,” the captain admitted. “And now that we have the wind, and a larger sail than they do, we are outdistancing them. If we are fortunate, then we will reach Cythera far ahead of them.”
“But we’ll have to camp far inland,” said the man. “Pirates raid coasts and carry people off!”
“Then we’ll have to go up the mountain and live there for a while,” said Paris, his lips close to my ear. He made it sound like a paradise there, a retreat where we could linger for a very long time.
“The pirates like to swoop down on festivals where women and unarmed men are celebrating,” the young man wailed. “My aunt was carried off that way; we never saw her again.”
Pirate raids furnished most of the slaves sold for household work; in peacetime, without any war captives, pirates supplied that need. I shuddered.
“Courage, lad,” said the captain, not unkindly. “It’s harder to take a whole ship of men. There’s only one woman aboard, and she’ll fetch such a ransom that she will be safe.” He winked at me. “Faster!” he ordered the rowers.
But Cythera was farther away than it seemed, or perhaps we had been carried away to one side by the current. As the sun neared the horizon, Cythera was still a distance away. And then the wind, abruptly, stopped, as if it were descending beneath the ocean with the sun. The sail fell slack, hanging limply, uselessly. Our speed dwindled, and we moved now only by the power of the rowers.
And the mysterious following ship now grew larger behind us. When the wind was blowing, our bigger sail had carried us over the water faster; but without the wind, their rowers could propel their lighter boat faster. They were catching up, and no matter how hard our rowers strained, the gap between us was closing. I clutched the railing of the ship. Was my freedom to end after only a day? Were one night and one day with Paris all I was to be granted? Was I to be captured, trussed up, and sent back to Sparta like a penned animal?
“No!” I cried. “No, no!”
They were close enough now that we could see how many were aboard—some thirty or so, all grim-faced. There did not seem to be a captain; it was all rowers. Perhaps all pirates were equal, or all could take turns in being the captain. I supposed it was necessary, since so many must get killed on raids.
“Arm yourselves!” Paris and Aeneas ordered their men. The Trojan soldiers fastened their corselets and breastplates and put on their helmets. Now, surely, at the sight of armored men, the pirates would turn away. But no, they kept coming, coming even faster, as if they were gleeful that a true fight was in the offing.
As the waters grew shallower near Cythera, the pirates came alongside us. Now, instead of slowly patrolling the waters looking for an opening through the rocks to beach the ship on shore, the captain had to order the rowers to continue pulling their oars to keep us away from jagged rocks while we took a stand against the pirates. They would, of course, try to force us onto the rocks. Our situation was a pirate’s dream.
Paris pulled me into the middle of the ship, between the two banks of oarsmen, and surrounded us with soldiers. “You must be in the middle of the middle, protected on all sides!” he said. I could hear a scrabbling sort of sound—the pirates were scaling the sides of the ship, climbing over. Then piercing yells—from the pirates, meant to terrorize us. Then the ship began rocking madly as the men fought, battling on every little scrap of space. Large as it was, I feared the ship would tip on its side into the sea, take on water, and sink. At one point I was thrown to my knees as it listed suddenly to the left, when the fighters piled up there. I clutched at the boards beneath my fingers and clung to Paris’s leg, and all the while I could see nothing, protected by the wall of men guarding me.
The noise rose—screams of pain now mingled with the war cries, metal hit metal, wooden oars were smashed, and someone brought the sail down, so it enveloped us all, making the men fight as if in a net. I lost my grip on Paris’s leg and then I lost Paris. He was gone, and the solid circle of soldiers around me broke up, and as I rose I saw the melee on the ship, the men caught in the sail, the others fighting desperately, the dead bodies lying where they fell, some draped across the oars. I saw Paris and Aeneas slashing at pirates together, saw Paris spit one with his dagger—Paris looked as surprised as the pirate at his success. The man sagged and grabbed at his belly with fluttering hands, and I saw then that he was no man but a boy. He died with surprise still on his face. Had this been his only foray into the world of plundering? Was this his first day as a pirate?
Paris saw me nearby and yelled, “Get away! Get away!”
But where could I go? The entire ship was a battle scene, from the figurehead to the stern, with the rowers trying gamely to keep rowing as soldiers fought all around them. Some had abandoned their posts to join the fight, others were disabled by the fallen sail. Somewhere in the midst of this was the chest with the Spartan treasures in it; I had not thought of it until this late. Had anyone gone near it? But no, it was safe under the sail. I looked around wildly to see where I might escape the fray, but all I could do was dodge and slither around the grappling men.
Again the ship listed, so sharply water sloshed onto the deck; several men were washed off and now the armored soldiers fared the worse, as the weight of their corselets dragged them down. Some hit the rocks with a dull metal clang; the pirates who hit sent up a spray of red. The sucking of the waves around the rocks mingled with the groans of the dying men to make a long mournful moan. On board the din of fighting rose to the pitch of a screaming wind.
Slowly the greater numbers of soldiers and their better arms began to best the invaders. More and more of our men crawled out from under the sail to join their brothers in the fight, and finally the last two pirates were cornered up near the bow of the ship. Aeneas and another soldier were pinning them down on the railing, and a crush of other men piled up behind, so much that the pirates were more likely to be suffocated than to be killed by the daggers of Aeneas and his companion.
Aeneas barked orders that the others were to back away; catching his breath, he demanded, “Who are you? Where is your hideout?” he asked one of the pirates.
The pirate shook his head and refused to answer.
“Talk or you’ll die,” said Aeneas.
“I’ll die, talk or not,” he said. With a stunning display of cunning and s
kill, taking advantage of the tiny space between himself and his captor, he suddenly twisted himself free and leapt onto the Eros figurehead. There he crouched like a cat.
“Trojans, I see,” he cried, mockingly, sweeping off his hat. “And what brings you so far from home? Pretty armor you have, and pretty soldiers, too. And a pretty treasure to go with the pretty woman, I’ll warrant.”
Aeneas lunged forward, almost flying through the air, and grabbed the pirate’s leg. But the man kicked free and retreated farther out on the figure-head, while Aeneas lay sprawled just out of reach.
“Farewell,” said the pirate. “I throw myself on the mercy of Poseidon.” With that, he flung himself off into the water. Muttering, Aeneas peered over the side and shook his head.
“Disappeared,” he said.
In the confusion with that pirate, attention turned from his companion, still pinned against the railing. With a cry, Paris suddenly ran forward and stabbed him. This time neither victim nor killer looked surprised. The pirate grunted and slumped forward, and Paris pulled out his dagger and wiped it on his tunic, his face grim.
“Oh,” I cried, rushing over and embracing him. He clasped me to him with trembling hands.
Death lay all around us, bodies like fallen flowers on the blood-soaked deck.
XXVI
We waded ashore, leaving the men to clean up the ship and dispose of the dead. But walking through the churning waters, we had to pass between floating bodies bobbing on the surface, and once I stepped on one that had already sunk to the bottom. It was still warm, and when my foot touched it I cried out. Paris grabbed my arm and steered me past it.
The waters grew shallower around my legs; now I would not step on anything hidden. Suddenly Paris let go of my arm and leapt ahead of me, jumping over the waves and rushing to the shore. “Now!” he cried, holding his arms wide. “Stop. Stand there.”
I could not imagine what he was doing, but I halted and looked at him.
“There. Don’t move. Don’t ever move.”
Was he mad? I could not stand there forever. I took another step.
“Now I have seen her,” he said.
“Who?”
“Aphrodite coming forth from the foam, the foam where she was born,” he said, holding out his hand to draw me onto the beach. “This is where she came ashore, you know.” He flung his arms around me. “And in you I have seen her.” He started kissing my neck. “But you are more lovely yet.”
“Do not provoke her,” I whispered. But I knew that she had already heard. And behind us I could feel the gazes of the men boring into us. While they threw dead bodies overboard and scrubbed the deck free of blood, these young fools were embracing. That was what they saw. At least they could not blame me for the pirate attack itself.
So I had reached Cythera, where I had set my sights. But how different the arrival than what I would have wished.
We camped deep inside the island, leaving only a few men to guard the ship. They broke up the pirate boat and sank it, after stripping it of anything useful—ropes, baskets, oars, and the few remaining weapons. Quickly they made basic shelters and gathered wood to set a fire; they built a big one, placing some of the wood from the pirate boat close by to dry out. The sun had set on us during the fight, and now the light was fading quickly. In a few minutes the stars would be out.
They passed around wineskins and we all drank from them. Usually—I assumed—there would have been tired, lazy talk, reliving the day’s journey, planning the next. Now they all sat dully staring at the fire, saying nothing. The silence, except for the snapping of wood in the fire, was not unwelcome. I feared what they would say if they could truly speak their minds.
What they were thinking was, Helen brings death. I had not been gone from my home more than a day and already we were surrounded by dead bodies. Was it my fault? No, how could it have been? But fault and cause are not the same thing. If honey attracts flies, the honey is the cause of the swarm. But it is not the fault of the honey, it is merely its nature to attract flies.
Was it my nature to attract death? The Sibyl and what she had said . . . many Greeks will die.
Were the pirates Greeks? I quibbled to myself. Perhaps they weren’t. But the one who had spoken to Aeneas—he sounded Greek enough.
“Glum, glum, my fellows.” It was Aeneas who spoke, as if he had overheard me thinking about him. “Cheer up. They say a journey that starts badly ends fairly. And it did not end as badly for us as for the pirates.” He laughed; a forced laugh at first that grew genuine as some of the men joined in.
“Here, here,” one of them said, squirting wine into his mouth, then passing the wineskin to the man beside him.
“Now!” One of the others grabbed a piece of wood from the pirate boat and heaved it onto the fire. It sizzled and spat from the water still within it. “Burn. Burn so we have something useful from you.” He spun around and said, “Isn’t it unusual, instead of taking something, the pirates have left us something?”
“No loot, though,” another man said. “Apparently we were the first victims to be attacked. It would have been better if we were the last—then we’d have inherited their booty.”
The first. He was probably right, then: that boy was probably on his first foray. Death was always ugly, but ugliest in the young. I shuddered.
“You dispatched a couple,” said Aeneas, pointing to Paris. “Your first, I assume? Not much killing before you came to Troy, I’ll warrant.”
But much killing afterward. Who whispered that in my mind?
“Yes. It was . . . easy.” Paris looked down, embarrassed. “It isn’t supposed to be.”
“Who said that?” one of the men said. “It’s a lie that it’s not easy. It’s one of the easiest things in the world. That’s why there’s so much of it.”
The captain joined in. “It’s especially easy when you know he’s about to kill you.” He roared with laughter. “But you made such a mess of my ship!” Another gust of laughter. “Can’t you men kill more cleanly?”
“Let us hope that the clean-scrubbed decks will see nothing else the rest of the journey,” said Aeneas. “Let us pass to Troy as quickly as possible.”
“We will have to pick our way in and out of islands almost all the way to Troy,” said the captain. We’ll be able to anchor and put ashore, but we won’t be safe until we reach the bay by Troy.”
I wondered how long it would take to reach Troy. Strange, I had not asked before, and now I realized even under the best of conditions it would take many days. Was someone following us? How long would it be until Menelaus found out and came in pursuit? He was still on Crete; he would remain there for the funeral games. Someone might sail to Crete to tell him, but by the time they reached him he would be almost ready to return. Suddenly I laughed. Why, he had not even arrived at Crete yet! We had left at the same time, and Crete was much farther than Cythera. I felt safe. We would be safe in Troy before he could rally any followers.
“What’s so amusing?” Paris leaned over.
I could not tell him I was laughing in relief that my husband was not a threat. “Nothing . . . I was just laughing out of weariness.”
“Yes, let us go to our tent.” He did not need much encouragement, nor did I. I did not want to remain at the fire much longer.
This time our tent was more substantial, with wooden supports from the planks of the pirate boat and drapings of goat-hair cloth. Paris still left an opening in the center so we could breathe the fresh night air. He had spread the ground with heavy wool blankets and set our cloaks atop them. The treasure trunk was resting within our sights.
“Not that I don’t trust the men, but . . .” He smiled. “What do you think of our palace?” He gestured proudly.
I leaned back against him. “I think you have learned a great deal about setting up tents in just a day. By the time we reach Troy, you will be the best tentmaster in the Aegean.” And it was true—he was clever and obviously resourceful. He will learn, I whisper
ed to myself, and everything he learns will make him more and more outstanding among men, until there is no touching him. I excited myself just thinking of it—of the young man beside me and the man he would grow into.
Even though the tent was chilly, we would kindle heat from naked bodies that would not shiver from cold but from desire. Again that wild desire swept over me that made me want to disappear into him, and at the same time to caress every piece of him, to worship his body.
Paris sank down on his knees and pulled me with him. Delicately he unpinned the shoulders of my gown and the fine wool fell off, light as a baby’s breath. Then his own breath replaced it, warm and caressing, on my shoulder. Oh, it was sweet as the murmuring wind that passes over flowery meadows.
I tilted my head back, and my hair fell all the way to the makeshift pallet, like a column. He plunged his hands into it, tangling his fingers in it, squeezing it.
“Your hair . . . your glory . . .” he was saying faintly. His voice sounded far away and was hard to hear. His hands in my hair pulled me backward. He toppled with me and playfully took handfuls of my hair and covered my face with them. “Now you cannot see,” he said.
It was so dark in the tent—and we could have no lighting because of fire danger—that I could not see in any case, but the hair was a strange mask: warm from his hands, thick and heavy with a scent that only now I realized was my own. He parted it and kissed my lips. My hair fell away on both sides.
I loved the shape and feel of his lips—they were curved like a hunter’s bow, and smooth as only a young man’s could be. Menelaus’s were harder and unyielding, and in those fleeting moments I wondered if Paris’s would become inflexible in time, but now they were soft and spoke only of pleasure. I could—I would—never tire of kissing them.
He slipped his arms under my shoulders and I ran my hands across his back, delighting in the feel of each muscle and sinew.
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