“There was a riot,” prompted Gelanor. “I’m afraid it proved their point about the Trojans being dangerous and barbaric, outside the normal rules of conduct—the sort of people who steal wives.”
“Who started that hue and cry?” asked Paris.
“I don’t know. It seemed to come from the back of the room,” said the man.
“So there are several of them,” said Gelanor. “Drugging Paris, confining Helen, and spying in the council chamber. We must look for many.”
A suspenseful calm descended on Troy after the tumult with the Greek visitors. It was as if the two men were gods, or strangers from an unknown world, whose existence, to the shock of the Trojans, had now been confirmed.
I was shaken as well. Menelaus had been here, walking these streets. But the two halves of my life were separate, utterly sundered. So I believed and so I wished. How could they now come together? I was not sure what I would have felt, seeing his face again.
Nervously, a group of women decided to leave the city to go to the washing troughs as usual. This time they went with armed guards; several of the royal women wanted to join them, not to wash clothes but to soak their newly woven tapestries to blend the colors. Much weaving was done in the palace and there was a small cartload of it waiting for the next step in its processing, which could only be done at the troughs. My own weaving was stalled, I felt. I wanted it to tell a story, an important one, but the old stories had lost their pull for me, and so I had begun nothing. Perhaps seeing the designs and works of others would help me.
The day was fair and promised to be hot for the first time in the new summer. Trundling out of the Dardanian Gate, the carts carrying the laundry and tapestries rolled down the incline. The women laughed and walked beside them; boys eager for play patted the horses and leapt up on the carts, jumping from one to the other. A fine sweet breeze blew in from the countryside.
One of the boys standing on the highest pile of laundry suddenly cried out, “Look! Look!” and pointed toward the sea, which was visible from where we were.
“What is it?” the guard nearest him asked.
“Can’t you see? Black things out there!”
Grunting, the guard climbed up on the nearest cart, after ordering everyone to stop. He shaded his eyes, squinting. For several long moments he said nothing. Then he shouted, “Ships! Ships! Back into the city!”
The big carts turned laboriously around and headed back to the gate, their loads of wash and tapestries quaking.
“Shut the gate tight!” barked the guards, after the last cart had rumbled through. We women hurried, tight-lipped, to the ramparts on the northern side of the city to see what was happening. When we got there, we found people lined up six deep, staring out to sea. We pushed through them to find our men, and then, standing beside them, we saw what they were seeing.
Spread out upon the sea, a great dark web of ships drew toward us, making a pattern like that on a loom, a tapestry telling its own dreadful tale. The ships were as numerous as flies clustering around a spilled pool of sticky wine—swarming, jostling for place, hungry.
“How many?” Andromache, standing beside me, was still out of breath from our dash to get there.
“Hundreds,” said Hector, staring grimly out. “The lookouts at Sigeum and Aesyetes’s tomb on the headlands have just come in, reporting that there are hundreds.”
“A thousand,” said Deiphobus, next to him. “At least a thousand.”
“That is impossible,” said Hector. “There simply cannot be a thousand of them.”
“Can you count, man?” snapped Deiphobus. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
“They move too swiftly and are too far away to be accurately counted,” insisted Hector.
Deiphobus sneered. “You will admit, dear brother, that there are a great many of them?”
“Yes, I grant you that. I see it gladdens your heart.”
“Indeed it does. I am eager to engage them.”
“Hector . . .” Andromache touched his shoulder. “Look at them.” Again she pointed out to sea, shuddering.
“The more, the better!” cried Deiphobus. “The more to perish. No army of that size can maintain itself in the field. They will starve to death, and the more of them, the faster it will happen. They must count on a quick strike, a quick victory, before the problems of living in an alien land bear in upon them. But they are fools. The walls of Troy are impregnable. They cannot assault us here. All they can do is mill and mass upon the plain. Perhaps,” he said smugly, “a few of us may venture out to give them battle. But it will be an individual or two.” He whirled around and looked at me. “Here it is. The face that has called forth all those ships. One ship for each hair of your head, each eyelash, each finger and toe. Let them wreck themselves on the rocks of our walls! We have more stones than you have golden hairs on your head!” He swung away, a little smile of pleasure playing about his lips.
I turned and fled. I could not stand and watch the hideous black line of ships come closer. One ship for each hair of your head, each eyelash, each finger and toe. Let it not be so. But it was so. The forty suitors had grown into an army. My forty suitors, come to fulfill their promise.
The streets of Troy were thronged with people, pushing and jostling. I looked into their faces and they did not seem frightened, but acted like children being presented with a new toy. The ships had come to play with them!
I rushed through them and up into my palace. Hurrying up to the roof terrace, I had my own private view of the approaching ships. If I had somehow believed that they would have vanished, I was disappointed of that miracle.
I descended to the household shrine and sat quietly, hoping that if I were absolutely still my heart would stop pounding so violently. I could barely catch my breath, and was gasping for air.
Soon the calm of the place soothed me—that and the fact that it was underground and in another world from the one above. Slowly, silently, the sacred serpent glided from his dark abode and waited by my feet. He raised his head as if expecting me to impart wisdom to him, rather than the other way around.
But I had no wisdom. Everything we had counted on had turned out to be wrong. That Menelaus would not pursue me. That the suitors would not honor their oath. That Agamemnon could not gather a large army, and even if he did, men would not follow his bullying command. All wrong, all wrong.
Evadne had seen it in her vision, people had spotted the fleet on its way here, but seeing it making for our shores was altogether different.
The vast number of ships—how could Troy withstand them? What if—unthinkable thought—Troy fell? Yes, unthinkable thought, but all the earlier possibilities had been unthinkable, too, and yet the ships were here.
Because of her a great war will be fought, and many will Greeks die.
But if many Greeks died, so would many Trojans. And all because I had chosen to run away with Paris.
I started the familiar song that I had sung to others—it was not on account of me, Agamemnon had just been searching for an opening for war. But I need not pipe that music to myself. I had given him the excuse.
A mixture of panic and guilt surged through me, gripping me so hard, each breath hurt. These men—they were coming to assault my new family, new home. But amongst them could there be my old family? Were my brothers there? Were Castor and Polydeuces in Menelaus’s ships? Was Father? But no, they could not have all left Sparta. Someone had to remain behind to rule.
Oh, let not my brothers be there!
The snake slid over my foot, caressing it with his cool belly.
Tell me, tell me! I begged him. But his dark eyes gave no answer.
Night fell, but in the last fading of the twilight, before the darkness of night blended with the darkness of the ships, we could see how much closer they had come to our shores. Tomorrow they would land.
Priam called an emergency council meeting, sending us our summons by torchlight. Soon we were crowded into his megaron, the poor light
making it hard to recognize faces. Priam, in his agitation, did not wait for everyone to arrive before he began speaking.
“We all know why we are here,” he said, skipping the usual niceties. “The Greeks are bearing down upon us! By sunrise they will be here! Our lookouts have reported the number of ships to be well over five hundred. We cannot count, of course, until they have landed and tied up. This is our last unmolested night.” He stopped to catch his breath. I saw his hands were trembling, but he clenched his fists to cover it up. He gestured to his elders, motioning for them to come to his side. Thymoetes, Lampius, Clytius, and Hicetaon appeared, taking their places beside him, while Hecuba stepped back, disappearing into shadows.
“Antimachus. Antenor.”
They came forward.
“My sons.”
Paris left my side and went to stand beside his brothers.
“You are what stands between our enemies and our citizens, our women and children.” He looked around at all of them, letting his eyes linger on each face. “Troy has never faced such an attack. But I know it is safe in your wisdom and strength. Let the lookouts speak first, tell us what we are facing.”
The lookouts, both young soldiers posted at Sigeum and Aesyetes’s tomb, stepped forward. “We think, sir, that there are more than seventy-five hundred ships but possibly fewer than a thousand. So let us take five hundred as an estimate.”
At that, Priam cried out and clasped his head between both hands. “Five hundred! Even if there are only five hundred, and in each ship there are only fifty men, still it is . . . twenty-five thousand men! And if it’s the worst it can be, a thousand ships, with a hundred men each, it’s—a hundred thousand of them!”
“Yes, sir,” the lookout said.
Priam slowly lowered his hands and held his head high. “Very well. It is what it is. What—and I ask you all—in your considered opinion, should be our first action?”
“That’s obvious!” said Antimachus. “Attack them on the beach when they are attempting to land. Catch them at their most vulnerable. How many do we have at full-trained battle strength?”
“We have near seven thousand,” said Hector. “The best in Troy.”
“Then we are outnumbered at least five to one?” cried Antenor.
“This does not count the allies, who will soon even out the numbers,” said Hector. “I’ll lead them!”
Priam nodded. “Of course. And Deiphobus and Aeneas will bring up the second rank.”
“And I?” said Paris.
“We don’t need archers on this mission,” said Deiphobus. “Stay back and guard the walls.” The flickering light hid the pleasure on his face, but I could hear it in his voice.
“And I,” Troilus cried.
“You’ll stay inside, away from the walls,” said Priam. “Along with little Polydorus and Polites.”
“And I?” Hicetaon asked. “My armor has been burnished, the leather bindings replaced, and it’s as supple as ever.”
“But you are not,” said Priam firmly.
“I can still thrust and slash with the best of them.” His eyes narrowed in his wrinkled face.
“But you can’t run. You’re as slow as a hobbled donkey.”
“That’s not true! Who told you that?”
“I’ve seen you try.” Now Priam’s voice grew gentle. “We are of an age, and our swift days are past.” My javelin arm is still strong, and once I could have raced any one of these lads into the ground. The old athlete. Had he begged to join Menelaus, too? Had Menelaus shaken his head apologetically and turned him away?
Lampius looked at me and shook his head. “There she is, her beauty frighteningly like that of the immortal gods. But no matter her loveliness, it would be better for Troy had she never come!”
“It is done, Lampius, and cannot be undone,” Priam told him. “It was willed by the gods.”
How accepting they all were of this. How different from Greeks, who never embraced their fate until they had first tried unsuccessfully to trick it.
“At first light, then, to the ships!” cried Hector. “We will arm and prepare all night!”
A great roar of excitement swept the hall, filling it like smoke.
When we were alone together in our chamber, Paris stood with his back to me, staring out toward the dark sea. “We know they are there,” he said. “Just knowing makes everything different.”
I turned him around to face me. “I feared this day might come,” I said.
“You said you feared this day might come, but did you really?”
“No, I did not want to,” I admitted. “Do you remember the waterfall on Cythera? The long one, where we stood at the top and looked down, and could barely hear the water splashing far below? I feel as if we are holding hands, jumping off into it together, and we cannot see the bottom. Oh, Paris, I am so fearful of what harm may come to Troy, and on our account.”
“Then the prophecy would have come true, about my causing the destruction of Troy,” he said. “In which case, once they decided to let me live, harm to Troy was inevitable. Therefore we need not punish ourselves for it.”
“You hold it so lightly, then?”
“No, I do not, but neither do I bear the entire burden for it.”
“I feel suffocated in omens and prophecies. When we ran away together, we thought we were fighting our way out of that net. Now I see the net is bigger than I imagined.”
“Fighting . . . the real fighting is about to begin. I was stung tonight when I was forbidden to join my brothers on the beach attack. ‘Stay back and guard the walls’—!”
“It was not the king who spoke thus, but Deiphobus.” The sly and malicious Deiphobus.
“The king did not contradict him, nor reprimand him.”
“Perhaps—”
“I must learn to fight better in the usual way. I’ll have new armor made. They’ll not hold me back!”
“Perhaps this is the only fight there will be. Perhaps they’ll give the Greeks such a thrashing they’ll pull up their freshly dropped anchors and head home.”
“Menelaus is a stubborn man,” said Paris. “It will take more than one skirmish to send him packing.”
No one slept that night, and before the dawn was even hinted in the east, Paris was gathering up his bow, arrows, and quiver and stealing out of the room. He assumed I slept; I pretended to, so he would not feel the need to assure me all would be well. The moment he was gone, I leapt up and threw on some clothes, my heart pounding, my hands shaking so badly I had to clasp them together to stop the trembling.
Standing with all the other Trojans at the high northern wall, I watched our men streaking across the plain toward the Hellespont, the place where the ships would have landed. Paris was somewhere inside one of the guard towers and there was a part of me so thankful he was not among those rushing headlong toward the Greeks. The other part of me, the Paris part, felt his anger and shame at being ordered to stay in Troy.
Night fell and the men were not back, and we could see and hear nothing. It was not until near sunset the next day that the army returned, wearing a fine coat of dust on their armor, sweat smearing their bodies, with litters carrying the dead. They had attacked the Greeks just as they were landing, and Hector had killed the first man to step ashore—a good omen, although he disdained omens. But the rest of the Greek company put up a fierce fight, and although they were driven back almost into the sea, they managed to attack and burn many ships of the Trojan fleet anchored at the mouth of the Scamander.
No sooner had the gates closed behind our men than the Greeks followed them across the plain, as if they could not wait to behold Troy. Our high, polished walls and stout gates repelled them, and they withdrew under a hail of arrows and stones hurled from the ramparts.
Their futile march across the plain allowed us to see how large their army was. It filled the basin between the two rivers, and from our heights, it looked like a blanket, a moving blanket. There was an occasional flash of light from a s
hield angled to catch the sun, and the clank of their armor made a dull music as they marched.
I recognized no one amongst the leaders, but their helmets obscured their faces and the light was fading in any case. In armor all men look alike.
XLIII
War. We were at war. How chilling to utter those words, to realize them. Inside our chamber it was safe, with all the pretty playthings enjoyed in peace scattered about—lyres, mirrors, gaming boards of ivory. Outside, the streets were bustling with grim evidence of war—soldiers, of course, but also boys carrying baskets brimming with arrows, men leading donkeys staggering under the weight of stones to be thrown from the parapets, taking them to be piled up at stations around the walls, women rushing toward the safe southern gate to take their washing to the troughs outside before it was too late. The horse-keepers were leading their animals to the springhouse and watering troughs before penning them up behind the first barricade in the lower town. And everywhere the traditional horsehair crests atop the war helmets were waving, as men swaggered down the streets enjoying the narrow vision from behind their eye slits.
The mood in Troy was defiant. The Trojans gloried in the strength of their walls—the strongest and highest anywhere in the world, they said—and in their brave warriors.
The prospect of many young men losing their lives filled me with dread. When I voiced my sadness, Deiphobus just laughed in that dismissive way he had. I had disliked Deiphobus from the beginning and the feeling was growing. “You think overmuch of the men and little of the needs of the army. An army needs to win. It does not care about the individual soldier.”
“But the land that gathers the army must care about its people.”
Helen of Troy Page 44
