Helen of Troy

by Margaret George

  “Nothing, my lord,” said Panthous, spreading his hands wide. “We were but speaking of the dreary fact that the Greeks have chased away the merchants that usually throng our shores this time of year.” He laughed. “A minor annoyance, and next year they will be back in force.”

  Hector smiled and rocked back on his heels, crossing his muscled arms. “Let us hope so, Panthous. Let us hope so.”

  Exhausted, Paris and I almost crawled onto our bed at home. The entire day had been so filled with pain that I felt buffeted. Had my body absorbed the blows rather than my heart, I would have been covered in bruises. As it was, I could hardly move. Paris lay flat on his back beside me, staring up at the ceiling.

  “It is over,” I finally said. He did not reply. “This day has finally closed.”

  “It will never close,” he said. “Troilus will always be missing from our lives.” His voice was dull and flat.

  “I meant . . . that the worst of it has passed. The funeral, and the feast, where he had to act as host. I felt him there in the room, did you?”

  “Yes. He was there. And I wanted to pluck him from the air and force him to take fleshly form again. Helen—I killed him. I cannot endure that knowledge.”

  “Achilles killed him, Paris. Not you.”

  Paris’s eyes filled with tears. “Troilus. Hector told me that when Troilus was a baby, one of his earliest memories was of Hecuba holding him, as he reached out and pulled her hair.” He smiled in spite of himself. “She smacked his little hand. She hated it if anyone messed her hair. She still does.”

  The picture of Troilus as a laughing, happy baby was like a stab. “Paris—if only we had had a child, a boy, like Troilus . . .” Now I ached for that lost son.

  “Are you mad?” His voice went from soft to harsh, and he sat up. “So he could get killed, too? Have we not already killed enough people? I tell you, I killed Troilus! For if I had not . . . done what I have done, Achilles would not be here!”

  “It is what we have done,” I said. “Not you alone, but us together. And . . .” Suddenly I felt bereft, unfairly attacked. “My mother killed herself! And my brothers—who knows how they died? I have had more losses than you! And my daughter, I’ve lost her—”

  “We said we were willing to pay the price.”

  “But you, apparently, weren’t!” There, I had said it. He was content with my losses, but now that Troilus was sacrificed, it was a different story.

  “I don’t think we can ever know a price until we are confronted with it. But now, in this world we have brought about, to have a child, to even think of it . . .” He shook his head. “Oh, Helen, I am sick with grief!”

  “I know,” I said. “As am I.”

  “We should be the ones to die, not others. I could more easily die myself.”

  “Perhaps we will,” I said. As if that were any comfort.

  XLIX

  As I walked along the ramparts with Gelanor, we spoke of the death of Troilus and Paris’s continued gloom. Paris’s happy manner had vanished, as if it had only existed in company with Troilus’s. Certainly they were the only ones of Priam’s sons with glad laughter and flashing smiles, and now Troilus had taken Paris’s with him to the underworld. Even Paris’s voice had changed, so that when he spoke from another room I did not recognize it. I told Gelanor that Paris was especially haunted by the thought that Troilus had been killed because of the prophecy. Gelanor asked who had known about the prophecy, and I said very few, it was not commonly spoken of. Gelanor thought that the ambush of the party to Dardanos and the obvious knowledge of the weak spot in our western walls, as well as the targeting of Troilus, all pointed to uncanny lucky guesses—too lucky, in fact. He suspected spies. But how had they penetrated our walls?

  “Who comes and goes freely? Who is likely to be present when private matters are discussed? Did you speak of the prophecy about Troilus at any time?”

  I tried to remember. “Priam refused to speak of it publicly,” I said. “As for the scouting party to Dardanos and the weak wall, many people would have known about those things as well.”

  We turned to look out over the walls; we were looking down over the south slope, where the lower city spread out below us. In the midday sun, the palisade fence and ditch were barely visible, casting no shadows at noon. Far away the faint blue of Mount Ida beckoned. Mount Ida. Oenone. I put her out of my mind.

  “These people must be protected,” Gelanor said. “They must not be betrayed unto death by a spy—or several spies. I thought I was the spymaster, and now I see I have a rival. Someone in the Greek camp challenges me.” He drew his shoulders back. “It is these lives we play for. We must win.”

  I did not wish to return to the palace, and Paris. These days he sat inside, burnishing his armor, polishing his shield, and evermore refitting his greaves. I would come upon him practicing his sword thrusts, and once I found him stringing his huge bow, his face knotted in the sweaty effort. He meant to fight, and all else had paled before him. He would look up, embarrassed, but there being no place to hide armor or a bow, he had to stand and stare at me defiantly. I would pass silently across the corridor and leave him to his exercises.

  I could avoid him and seek the chamber where my loom was waiting. The great picture I was weaving enveloped me and when I began guiding the shuttle across the warp in the pattern I had designed, it was as if I myself had stepped into the story. With great care I wove the blue wool depicting the Eurotas, making it encircle the whole tapestry, as it had encircled my own life as a child. I could see the swans on it again, and the great swan I had beheld that vivid day with Clytemnestra.

  Mother. I had begun her outline, but got no further. An outline: that was what she was to me now. And her outline had shimmered and faded and fled, because of me, because of my flight.

  Hermione. I had not yet begun her picture on the tapestry. Should I keep her still a child, still with her turtles? The turtles she chose over me.

  But no, I must not think that. She asked how long you would be gone, I told myself, and you did not tell her. She thought you were coming back.

  I had not thought it would come to this. But then, I did not think. Aphrodite did my thinking. Now she had withdrawn and stranded me here. With Paris, who fretted and wept and regretted his part in this, and had little thought of me. There was no one else here for me. Gelanor, yes, and Evadne, but them I would have had in Sparta.

  And you, I thought, brushing the loom, caressing the growing pattern there. You speak to me, you console me. I touched the purple threads with my forehead.

  I began avoiding Paris. Or was he avoiding me? We passed one another in the hallways of the palace, smiling, murmuring regrets about having to be at the armorer’s or the goldsmith’s, or attend upon Hecuba, or inspect horses. Now the wisdom of separate quarters for men and women came home to me; at night we could not pass one another but must light, like weary moths, in the same room. Still it was possible to slide past one another and, even in the same bed, to awaken, backs to one another, one looking east and the other west.

  It began to echo my life with Menelaus: the surface politeness, the unruffled demeanor, the cool untouched middle of the bed. And yet it was not the same. I had not been mad for Menelaus, and passion had been absent from the beginning. With Paris now I was ill at ease; his changed manner had left me nervous about causing him distress. Any thoughtless mention of the name Troilus, any accidental humming of a tune connected, in any way, with Troilus, or a thousand other things that had some private meaning to Paris in regards to Troilus, would plunge him into despair—or anger. He was holding me up in the balance with Troilus on the other side, and it seemed that there were days when I weighed lighter than Troilus, when he would have exchanged me for him. Thus the false smiles as we passed one another in silence.

  There were no Trojans to whom I could express my unhappiness. Gelanor and Evadne were the only ones to whom I could flee, who could read what was happening without my saying the words, for they h
ad come with me, they had made the journey with me here.

  Evadne had rooms in my palace and Gelanor had been given a tidy little house by Priam midway down in the city. Priam liked knowing that he could call upon Gelanor for ideas whenever he liked; lately I had had to compete with the king for Gelanor’s time.

  On a day when Paris had been particularly distant and sunk in gloom, Evadne and I hurried down to Gelanor’s. His little house was crammed full of objects that had caught his eye and taken his fancy: boxes of butterflies, bits and pieces of rocks, bronze spearheads, bows in various stages of assembly, seashells, pots of paint, horse bridles with metal mouthpieces. They were arranged in neat rows on shelves, to be sure, but still it struck me that this was the room little boys dreamed of. My brothers had collected things and brought them home, but Mother had had their rooms purged regularly as messy and unworthy of princes.

  He emerged from an alcove, walking with his arms extended stiffly in front of him. “Greetings,” he said. Blood was dripping off his forearms. What sort of accident had he encountered?

  “Oh, let me help!” I rushed to him, ready to daub the wounds and bandage them.

  Laughing, he pushed me away. “Nay, let them be.” He waved his arms to dry the blood. “I cut them myself.”

  “Are you mad?” Evadne said. “What fool cuts himself?”

  “A fool intent on seeing if a scar can be willfully induced to mimic a known one,” Gelanor said. “Now . . .” He pulled a clay pot down from a shelf running across one wall and wrenched its lid off. “This will do for one of them. Get me that gray jar on the table there. And the little bowl beside it.”

  I brought them to him, and he lined them up with the first pot. Carefully he dipped his fingers in each container and rubbed the contents into the oozing cuts on his forearm, wincing as he did so.

  “Can I create a scar as I wish?” he asked. “We shall see. This one”—he indicated the gray jar—“has clay from the banks of the Scamander. The others are ash from a hearth fire and soil from a field of barley. All common enough, all easily gathered by anyone.”

  “But what if the wounds fester?” Evadne cried. “What if your arm becomes withered?”

  “I have not finished,” Gelanor said. He reached behind him for a pitcher of wine, and poured it slowly over the wounds. “This will seal in the dirt and protect the wound from festering.”

  All this begged the question: why was he doing this?

  “Ah, my lady, you see how far I am willing to go to protect you and yours in Troy.” He raised his eyebrow in that teasing way I hated. “You know the trite saying, I would give my right arm? Well, here I prove it!” He held up his bloody, smeared arm.

  “You prove nothing but that you have taken leave of your senses,” I said. “I fail to see how this has anything to do with Troy, or me.”

  Now his face changed, in that sudden way he had. “Oh, you are wrong,” he said. “Tell me what you know of scars, and of their importance.”

  That was easy. “I know that they are with us for life. If we fall on our knees as children, the scar holds a testimony of that spill for the rest of our lives. Warriors speak proudly of their scars as the proof of their battles.”

  “Ah. You said the word: proof. We rely on scars for proof that a man is who he says he is. How many tales are there of a man returning to claim his heritage and having to prove himself by his scars? Usually, in these stories, an old nurse or his mother or someone recognizes them. Oh, yes, they say, little Ajax was bitten by a wolf on his leg, I remember it . . . welcome home, Ajax. But what if a scar can be duplicated? Especially a very unusual one? And that clears the way for an imposter to gain trust. I am not sure it is possible, but I intend to find out.” He stopped for breath. “Someone in Troy is a spy, a spy placed very high. He listens to our most private conversations. He comes and goes in our homes without arousing suspicion. I have my idea as to who it is. Now I need to prove it.”

  “But who?”

  “Look at what has been known that should not have been, ask yourself who was present to hear it. It is a very clearly marked trail, if you have eyes to see. But the person is young and did not think to cover his tracks better.”

  “Who? Who?” I asked.

  “Not now,” said Gelanor. “It is best no one knows my suspicions until I am sure. After all, why besmirch someone who may yet be innocent?”

  Evadne and I left him, shaking our heads. I worried about him; I knew he had not wanted to come here, and now he was trapped. Had his frustration and anger led him to these strange actions?

  “Evadne,” I said, “if only you could see who it is!”

  She shook her head. “I have tried, my lady. But the vision is granted only as the gods allow. I cannot command it. They have revealed nothing nearby; they seem to delight in the faraway and the future. And even there they have disclosed nothing of late. Perhaps my springs have dried up.”

  My own gift of seeing—nay, of knowing—seemed also to have waned. It had been so strong in Sparta when first I returned from Epidaurus. “Perhaps we should consult the household snake, which you so lovingly brought from Sparta,” I said. He was, after all, connected with my gift. “Let us visit him.”

  We could safely go there without encountering Paris. He never came to the little chamber we had allotted to the snake, though the snake had once bound us together, in that strange and wild night, when first we met alone . . . No, I would not think of that now!

  “Well met, my lady.” I was wrested from my thoughts by the voice of Deiphobus. I abandoned the snake in my mind and turned to face him. He was planted in our pathway, standing, hands on hips, leering down at me. “Ah, such a sight as your fair face makes the morning blush.”

  “It is long past morning,” I said, holding my gown to step past him on the steep path. I tried not to look at him.

  “Oh, is the sun overhead?” He refused to budge, and gazed at the sky. “But Phoebus has not yet whipped his horses to the highest zenith,” he said. “You are mistaken.” He leaned forward, whispered in my ear, “I hear you like all these old tales, my lady—Phoebus and suchlike. I understand this; it befits the daughter of a swan, after all, to believe such things. Did your mother save any feathers?” He chuckled.

  I could not help myself: I drew back and struck his face. “Let us pass!” I said. “Or, by all the gods, the king will hear of this.” I shoved him.

  Instead of giving way, he leaned forward and grabbed my forearm in a hard grip. “You cannot walk amongst us and expect to escape our desires,” he hissed. “That is all you do—create desire. Never think there is any other worth to you.”

  I flung off his arm and pushed him as far away as I could.

  And he was my husband’s brother! Had he no shame? No restraint? I wanted to tell myself that it was his bitterness about Troy and its dangers that had sparked his words. But I had seen the lust in his eyes from the beginning.

  The snake. The snake—cool and impassive in his grotto. I must seek him as an antidote to all this ugliness. Shuddering, I took Evadne’s arm and pulled her through the streets, perhaps faster than she would have liked. But I desperately needed the snake and his solace, his wisdom.

  There was an entrance to the chamber on the ground floor. Together Evadne and I descended the stairs into the underground chamber. It was always lit with oil lamps; an acolyte brought the milk and honey cakes for the creature at dawn. Daily bouquets of dried herbs kept the air fresh.

  Still, it seemed dark as we entered the chamber, after the brilliant light outside. It took a long time for my eyes to adjust and for forms to resolve themselves, stop quivering, and stand still. Once they had, I would pray before the altar and lure my beloved snake out so I could see him, whisper my desperate concerns to him.

  The dark slowly dissolved. The polished stone floor came into view, its squares gleaming in the light of the oil lamps. I breathed deeply, smelling the sweet herbs in the urns beside the altar. Evadne sat beside me, only her breathing be
traying her presence.

  Then, as the room swam into view, there was something ropelike lying just before the altar. It was not arranged as a deliberate offering would be. I felt a chill in my heart as I saw it.

  Was this innocent, or something very evil indeed?

  Evadne’s eyes could not see it. “Stay here,” I said, trying to make my voice as normal as possible.

  I crept up on it, and as I drew closer, I saw the horrible truth: my snake lay dead, killed. The cuts—I cannot describe them, I do not wish to see them ever again.

  I fell to my knees, raised my hands, and screamed. Screamed to the heavens, screamed to the gods, begged them to restore life to my snake, my guardian.

  Silence, and stillness. The pale body of the snake lay stretched before me.

  * * *

  I forgot the Paris I had avoided and rushed upstairs seeking the Paris I loved, fleeing the horrid sight in the grotto. Panting, I reached the uppermost floor; as I thought, he was there, surrounded by his weapons and armor. He looked up as I stumbled through the door, slowly raising his eyes to me.

  “What is it?” His voice was chill, but I did not care. I cared only about the attack on me—on us.

  “Paris—Paris!” I flung myself in his arms, seeking the warmth that was lacking in his voice. It would be there in his embrace. But no, his body was as lifeless as the snake’s. He stepped away from me.

  “What?” he repeated, but his tone shouted, I do not care.

  “Paris—someone has killed the snake! Someone came into this house and struck him, and destroyed our—our—first companion!”

  Now at last his face came alive. His lips quivered. “The snake?”

  “Yes. Go see. It will rend your heart.” I took his hand and led him to the entrance of the chamber, but drew back before entering. I could not look upon it again. I heard Paris’s footsteps, heard him murmuring to Evadne, heard the two of them come out of the little room, while I waited, head bowed.