Helen of Troy

by Margaret George

  “Priam did, but I thought he was wrong, as wrong as he was about Hesione. This has never happened before! Why should it be happening now?”

  “There has never been a Helen, a Menelaus, and an Agamemnon before. A queen never ran away from her realm with another man before, either. What will happen now, no one can say.”

  “Helen! Helen!” Paris was leaning over me. “Wake up. Oh, wake up!”

  “Let her rest.” Evadne was firm. “She will wake when she can face what has stricken her. The body retreats when the mind has borne too much.” Soft fingertips were caressing my forehead. Then a cool cloth was dabbed on my wrists. She lifted my heavy arms and crossed them over my breast.

  But I was awake. I was awake! I wanted to scream, but silence muffled me. Far from being granted surcease from my troubling thoughts, I was held prisoner by them.

  Mother. Mother had hanged herself! I could not keep the hideous picture from my mind. Mother, a rope around her neck, swaying and turning, her little feet drooping from under her gown. What color gown? She had always favored white, like the feathers, perhaps in memory of the feathers . . . was this gown white? She hung in the air like a wraith, her head lolling to one side . . . all memories, white and otherwise, gone, drained from her . . .

  I shrieked, an earsplitting roar, as my throat was freed from the grip of paralysis. “No! No!” I flung myself up, lunging to a sitting position. My eyes opened and I saw them staring at me. Then Paris sprang forward to embrace me.

  “My dearest,” he murmured. “Would that I could say it was not true, that you awaken but from a black dream.”

  “We must tell Priam.” Gelanor was grim. “Immediately. With your leave, I’ll go to him.”

  Priam, alarmed, sent for the merchants. But no one could find them. Paris then led his father to the spot where they had been, only to find it empty. Trampled grass betrayed the site of the vanished booth. None of the surrounding merchants knew where the Spartans had gone, or whether they planned to return. Priam sent soldiers to scour the area, including the beach, but they found nothing.

  “The escape route is too easy,” one of the soldiers said. “It takes no time to get from the fair-fields to the shoreline, and then to cast off. They are probably already making out to sea.”

  “Why did they run away?” said Priam. “Why?”

  “Someone must have told them who we were,” said Paris. “They must have realized that behind the veil was Helen, and they were afraid.”

  “Of what? Punishment?” bellowed Priam. “They didn’t run off with her!”

  “People are not as clear-thinking as that,” said Gelanor. “Whenever people scent trouble, like a hare scenting a hound, they flee.”

  “So!” Hecuba strode into the room. “It has begun!”

  “Nothing has begun yet,” said Priam. “We must make sure nothing does. I shall send an embassy—”

  “They said that the time was past for that,” I remembered. My voice was still faint. “When, in all good faith, you told the envoys who came to Troy that you knew nothing of Paris and me, it was apparently regarded on the other side as a—a deliberate falsehood.”

  “Just as I said!” he cried. “Just as I feared. What did I say, Paris, as soon as you returned to Troy with your prize? I said you had made a liar of me.” He paused. “But not a deliberate one.”

  “They think otherwise,” said Paris gently.

  “Indeed, how can they not?” Hecuba spoke low. “We must send another embassy. We must call a council. Helen must—”

  “No!” Paris cried. “Do not even speak the words! Helen will not return! I will never let her go. Never. Understand that, Mother. Understand that, Father. We will flee Troy to the mountains, but she will never leave my side.”

  “The mountains!” scoffed Priam. “And what will you do when they come for you there, to hunt you down like a stag? At least the walls of Troy provide some protection.”

  A dreadful, looming guilt soaked me. Mother was dead, dead of shame over me. Now they were talking of walls and being hunted down and fleeing and killing.

  “Paris.” I rose and took his hand. “Already my mother has sacrificed her life. There should be no other sacrifices, except by me. I should be the one to require a price, but paid by myself.” I trembled as I said it. Returning there would be dreadful, except for coming back to my Hermione. But for the rest—

  “Nobly spoken, Helen, spoken like a queen.” Hecuba’s voice was warm, warmer than I had ever heard it. At last I had earned an approval of sorts from her—because I was willing to leave.

  “I should . . . I should . . .” I could hardly frame the words.

  Paris clapped his hand over my lips. “Do not speak them! Words have a life of their own, and those words must never come from us. No. I would die first!”

  “Perhaps Helen would not,” said Hecuba. “Do not choose death for others without their consent.”

  Before I could speak, Paris cried again, “I choose death for myself, then! I will die before I surrender Helen.”

  “And so you shall,” said Evadne. “And so you shall.” Her voice was cold, like the little trickling stream that flowed where the snake had its abode.

  “I’ll call a council,” Priam muttered, turning toward the door.

  XXXVII

  The fair was to continue for a long while, until the sailing season drew to its natural close. Priam was resolute that no murmurs of trouble should ripple the calm of the fair, from whence he derived so much wealth. Troy would need all the wealth she could amass.

  Gelanor persuaded him to send spies out amongst the booths and traders to garner bits and scraps of information, which he deemed more important than any booty. The true wealth of spies was secrets and knowledge, he said. Priam’s spies—not very subtle ones, in Gelanor’s view—fanned out and listened everywhere, slipping in between blankets and booths and pretending to compare the taste of dried date cakes from Thebes to those of Memphis, to examine the carved ivory combs of Sumer, to leer over the potions of mandrake and toad sweat to enhance desire. All the while they were trying to draw the merchants into conversation about what was happening to the west. Each day they would return and lay their findings before Priam, like a carpet.

  Tantalizingly little was learned, for all that. They confirmed that a call had gone out through the Peloponnese to supply ships and men for an overseas venture. This was to be led by Agamemnon, as brother of the wronged Menelaus. Some princes whose realms lay inland and therefore had no ships were to be given them by Agamemnon. My old suitors were honoring their promise to Father upon the bloody carcass of the horse in the glen. Ajax was coming, along with his brother Teucer. Nestor and his two sons had responded to the summons. Odysseus had been tricked into joining the expedition, after feigning madness to avoid it. King Cinyras of Cyprus had angered Agamemnon by promising fifty ships and then sending one, along with forty-nine clay model ones.

  “They do not wish to participate, then,” said Priam. “They have to be forced to, and even then they try to evade it.”

  “Nonetheless, a great number have flocked to the call.” Hector frowned. “A warrior tends to lose his reluctance once he puts on his helmet.”

  “We don’t know the number of ships, nor where they are gathering, nor when they sail,” lamented Priam.

  “Obviously they cannot sail before next spring,” said Hector. “The seas will close before long. They will not come then, only to arrive in time to camp on the Plain of Troy and endure a winter. Though I wish they would! Oh, how I wish they would!” He looked around at his listeners—Priam, Hecuba, Paris, and I. “We could smash them easily then, with supplies and shelter on our side.”

  On our side. But I did not wish Menelaus, or Idomeneus of Crete, or any other men I knew, to be killed. Where was my “side”?

  “They would never be that foolish,” said Priam. “We must credit them with some strategy and foresight. No, they will arrive in the spring. But how many?”

  “Dear
Priam, I can tell you only of the number of men my father forced to swear the oath,” I said. “There were forty of them. Each would, of course, command different numbers of warriors.”

  “Forty.” Priam squirmed on his chair. “Say each brought two ships”—he held up his hands—“I know this is a low estimate, but let us begin there. Two ships, forty leaders, that means eighty ships. Fifty fighters in each ship means four thousand warriors.”

  “We can easily defeat four thousand warriors,” said Hector.

  “But if they brought ten ships each, now there would be twenty thousand warriors.”

  “We have our allies to call upon,” said Hector. “The Lycians, the Thracians, the Carians, and more farther to the east and south. Even the Amazons, formidable warriors. Or should I say ‘warrioresses’?”

  “They fight better than men,” said Priam. “We can rely on them, and their strong right sword arms.”

  Gelanor—who seemed to be a shadow everywhere now—spoke softly. “How can an army of twenty thousand sustain itself in the field?” he asked. “They would be in hostile territory, and every day twenty thousand men would need food. Where is it coming from?”

  “They would raid our allies. Destroy them first, before moving in on us.” Hector shook his head. “We would have to take measures to deny them this . . . this privilege.”

  “Strengthen the allies,” said Gelanor. “And do it now, before the enemy arrives.”

  “Someone needs to visit them and ascertain their supplies,” said Priam. He nodded at Hector. “But I shall still send envoys west. It is preferable to settle disputes by tongues than by sword arms.”

  “Agamemnon hates tongues,” I said. “Ever since I have known him, he has looked longingly at his store of weapons. He amassed them before he had any cause.” I looked around at them, people already dear to me. “And now I am that cause. It grieves me greatly.”

  Those four words did not begin to convey the lowering sorrow and guilt I felt at providing my vicious brother-in-law with a reason to bring out those arms he had looked so hungrily upon at that gathering in Mycenae, with his strutting warriors encircling him.

  Now Agamemnon’s eyes were measuring the Hellespont, the rich trade beyond it, the booths and wares of the great gathering every year on the Plain of Troy. Fewer merchants came to Mycenae; fewer goods fell into Agamemnon’s grasp, so he must go pirating. He must raid and plunder abroad to satisfy his lust and his reputation. And he would use the honor of Helen as his figurehead to cleave the seas to come to Troy.

  While the men scattered about the countryside to visit our allies, the women within Troy gathered in their chambers to draw closer to one another. The days were growing shorter and the merchants had departed, leaving the plain empty, waiting for winter to turn it back into a spongy swamp as the Scamander and the Simoïs flooded their banks.

  Although I was hesitant at first, I found myself welcome at these gatherings, the other women taking their lead from Andromache. Just as Hector was preeminent among men, so was his wife preeminent among women. She honored our early, hesitant friendship and no woman dared defy her and behave otherwise. Still, I felt that only Andromache felt any true warmth toward me.

  “Helen, we must procure a proper loom for you,” Andromache said when we women were gathered in the great chamber of her palace. Through the western window the shadow of my own, rising beside it, slanted across the floor. It would rise higher still. Gelanor had succeeded in designing four stories. It would rear above all of Troy and command a higher view of the plain and the Hellespont and the Aegean than any other building. Now I feared what we would soon see from that height.

  “I had a small loom at Sparta,” I said. I had been a good weaver, but my designs, as well as my imagination, had been limited by the size of my loom.

  “You need a large one,” Andromache said. “We perfected them here in Troy. We weave stories, tales, and for that we needed special looms.”

  Stories. Tales. We women could be bards, then, telling our urgent truths in wools of scarlet, violet, black, and white, instead of words.

  “How long will it take for a craftsman to build me one?” I asked. I was eager to begin.

  “Not long,” said Andromache. “They are quite simple, really.”

  “We weave all winter,” Creusa said. “When the cruel winds sweep across Troy, there is little else to do.”

  “We find ourselves with a world before us,” said Andromache. “We lose ourselves in it, in the scenes we create with our wool, and when we look up, it is spring again.”

  “Spring!” Laodice sighed. “Already I long for it.” She turned to me. “Winter can seem so long.”

  What would this spring bring them? Not the glorious springing hyacinths and violets they cherished, but Agamemnon and his ugly ships.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, it can.” But might it, this year, last forever!

  As the other women prepared to depart, Andromache motioned me to stay. In spite of the braziers, it grew cold in the chamber once they had left.

  “I know we worry about what is coming,” she said, drawing her mantle closer around her shoulders.

  “Yes,” I said. I dared not say more.

  “And being cut off from my family, far to the south, I worry for them, too. My mother—”

  I longed to tell her. I wanted to speak to her as a friend and not to guard my words. Did I dare?

  “Andromache—I must tell you—my Mother! Oh, Andromache, she has killed herself!”

  Did she step back, or was that only my fancy? Her face clouded. “Helen,” was all she said, and embraced me. “How can you bear this sorrow?”

  “I cannot,” I said. “I have not borne it, only writhed within it.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “I heard it . . . at the fair.”

  “And kept it inside yourself all this time?”

  “Paris heard, too. She killed herself because of us. So we cannot comfort one another.”

  Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, Helen.”

  I reached over and brushed away the tears. “Still we go on. We must.” I felt I must end this talk; it stabbed me like a dagger. “Perhaps it is only in new life that we can find joy. And as to that . . . ?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. And you?’

  I smiled. “As you.”

  “Shall we go to Mount Ida?” she asked.

  “I do not understand.”

  “There’s a festival of fertility there in the autumn. It is ancient and untamed, and only women may come. Male intruders are torn limb from limb. But for the desperate . . .” She smiled. “The desperate are brave. Come with me, Helen! There is no one else who has my needs, or would understand.”

  It was impossible to go to the flanks of Mount Ida in secret; it took the better part of a day to trundle there in a cart, swaying to and fro. Paris and Hector insisted on driving us there. They were worried about our safety, but Andromache told Hector we need have no fear, since we came in the true spirit of the festival.

  We had our torches—great resin-soaked pine branches—and wore thick hooded cloaks; our sandals were the sturdiest to be fashioned.

  “To tramp about the mountain in the darkness . . .” Hector frowned. “And in the company of strangers. I like it not.”

  “You’ll like a son well enough,” said Andromache. “What is a night on a mountain to obtain him? A small price.”

  “Where are these people you should join?” Paris craned his neck, searching the looming woods.

  “Around this bend, where the hot springs gush,” said Andromache. “That is what I have been told.”

  “Ida is covered with hot springs,” said Hector. “Hot springs, cold springs. That is why they call it ‘many-fountained Ida.’ ”

  “It is the spring that faces toward Troy. The first one we shall come to.”

  The late afternoon sun was sending fingers through the stand of pines ahead, stabbing between the trunks. A chill breeze sprang up; we had
passed the point when days and nights were equal, and now the time when Persephone would descend to the darkness drew near. I shivered and Paris drew his arm tighter around me.

  “You need not do this,” he whispered close to my ear. “If we have no sons or daughters, it is perhaps our lot.”

  I shook my head. “I know that. I shall accept the will of the gods. But I must ask them first.”

  “Here.” Hector reined in the horses. A group of women were gathered around a stream just ahead of us. Every one of them carried a pine torch or a wand wreathed in ivy, and wore a cloak of animal skins.

  We disembarked from the cart—after reassuring our men once more that all would be well—and made our way over to the group of women. I heard the cart turning to head back to Troy, but I did not look to see. Instead I kept my eyes on what lay ahead.

  Light was fading rapidly. It was hard to make out the faces; they blurred before my eyes. Young, old, middling—there seemed to be all sorts. Was there a leader? Yes, an older woman with a shock of white hair that spilled out from under her hood, at odds with her obsidian-black eyes. Or was she old? Her skin was unlined.

  “We’ll wait only a bit more,” she said. “Then we must climb the mountain. We must be halfway up before dark.” She lifted her unlit torch aloft. “The path becomes rocky and steep, and we must make our way across it by torchlight. The torches will last only half the night. So let us not waste them on the first part of the climb.”

  “And when we come to the place . . . ?” a young woman—her voice betrayed her youth—asked timidly.

  “You shall know it. And you must never speak of it afterward. What you see here must remain here. When you lie on your funeral pyre, the things you saw must be burned along with your body.” She flung back her hood and revealed her strong-featured, blunt face. “Do you understand, my daughters?”

  “Yes, Mother,” they all answered.

  Mother who? She must be the keeper of the mysteries, but no one spoke her name.

  “Come,” she said, and turned to enter the woods.