Helen of Troy

by Margaret George

  “Achilles is mortal,” I said. “Mortals die as easily by accidents of nature as in battle. He cannot go on killing forever. I will say, he will never enter the gates of Troy.”

  “You may say so, but it is only wishing.”

  “Andromache, you waited so long for this child and desired it above all things. Now if you do not fight to put this sorrow from you, Achilles will have killed it without striking a blow, without ever coming near you. I say, take your strength from your father and your brothers—they left it for you. Take it up and put it on like a helmet, and be as strong as all of them put together. And rise up and give Troy this child.” I paused. Was she hearing any of this? “Perhaps he will avenge your family. Why assume he will die at Achilles’s hand? It could just as likely be the other way, and what a glorious revenge that would be.”

  She sank back down again on the couch, closing her eyes. “I will think of them,” she murmured. “I will call each of them by name, and take their courage where they left it lying. It must not be left in the meadow, discarded like an old cloak.” She gave my hand a weak squeeze. “Thank you, Helen, for letting me see what they left behind for me.”

  Shaken, I made sure that her attendants would tell me if there were any changes, and then I left the palace, where full-scale keening and mourning resounded in the public chambers I hurriedly passed. Outside, the crowds were surging through the streets like a herd of frightened cattle running madly from a lion. Unlike cattle in a meadow, there was no place for them to go, and so they rushed here and there, back and forth from one side of the city to the other, bound in by the walls.

  They bellowed and cried out for Priam to come and address them. The old king should show himself, they demanded, else they would regard Hector as king instead. These shrill challenges brought Priam out onto his rooftop, which served as a podium for him to address the crowds. I could see the strain on his face, could see it in his eyes, hear it in the slight hesitation between words as he picked his way between them like a horse with a tender hoof treading a pebbled path.

  Troy was in no danger, he assured them. Troy’s strength was shown by the fact that the enemy had not attacked her directly but was trying to sap her strength by attacking her friends.

  “Then why does Troy not come to the aid of her friends?” a loud voice called. “Why does the friendship go only one way? The Dardanians and the Adrasteians must suffer for Troy, but Troy does not suffer for them!” A roar came from what presumably were the Dardanians and Adrasteians.

  “You agreed to fight alongside us,” said Priam, raising his voice to be heard. “And for reward,” he added.

  “We did not agree to have our towns attacked,” another voice called. “We agreed to send soldiers to fight, not have foreign soldiers descend on us and loot and kill.”

  “We thought it was Troy that would be attacked, not us!” a quavering old man cried.

  “Oh, so you were pleased enough if it was us!” Deiphobus suddenly appeared beside his father on the rooftop.

  “Troy has high walls and towers,” the voices in the crowd cried. “She is built for it. We are not!”

  “Ptah!” Deiphobus waved dismissively. “Now you are here, partaking of our hospitality.”

  “Son, you speak out of turn.” Priam laid a strong hand on Deiphobus’s shoulder. “You do not speak for the king, nor for the honorable people of Troy.” Speaking louder, he approached the edge of the roof and held out his hands to the crowd. “We are grieved by your misfortune, and admit we did not anticipate it. What may we do to assure you of this?”

  “Cattle! Gold!” yelled one man.

  “Cattle cannot bring back my mother,” cried another.

  “Good people, come into my palace tonight. It will be open, and I will feed you all and we shall talk.” It was not Priam who spoke this invitation, but Paris, who had appeared on the rooftop near Deiphobus.

  A groan rippled through the crowd, until someone shouted, “It’s him! It’s the cause of it all! Paris! My fellows, your homes lie smoldering and your herds taken and your fathers dead because of him!”

  Priam yanked Paris back, his face dark with anger. “I am shamed by my sons, who speak before they think,” he said, looking first at Paris and then at Deiphobus. “No, it is to my palace you must come. Tonight. The doors will be thrown open for you.”

  Rumbling, the crowd dispersed, placated. I saw now how dangerous Troy could become in an instant once people were agitated. They were confined, like beasts in a cage, packed too close together, and everyone knew that several beasts in the same cage were prone to fighting. Now Troy was swamped with foreigners, volatile as dry tinder, and swarming with the wounded, Trojan and non-Trojan.

  So Paris wanted to throw open the gates of our home to them? He must have taken leave of his senses. Or else his deep and lingering sorrow over Troilus made him think he could make amends this way. I was selfishly relieved that Priam had put a stop to it.

  But I pitied Hecuba tonight.

  With no time whatsoever to prepare, the king and queen of Troy must welcome hundreds of guests into their private domain. It would cost them dearly, depleting precious stores needed for the continuing siege. But we were at that stage of war when courtesies still could outweigh necessities.

  The courtyard was blazing with torches—I had expected no less. Several oxen were roasting—again, as expected. Jugs of wine stood like little soldiers, five abreast and six lines deep, on long tables. Heaps of bread—hastily baked that afternoon—and baskets of precious dried figs and dates were spread out lavishly beside bowls of olives and apples.

  I was alone. Paris had been nowhere to be found in our palace, and I knew that meant he did not wish to be found. Not only did he not care to share my bed, he did not care even to share my arm for a public occasion. He had meant what he said. He was finished with me. Paris and Helen were no more.

  As I weaved my way through the crowd, seeing their wounds and knowing their losses, guilt and sorrow descended on me like a rain-sodden mantle. Guilt because they had suffered for nothing; if Paris and Helen were no more, then all their losses were for nothing—Troy need not have been attacked. And sorrow for myself, grief that Paris no longer loved me.

  He had brought me giddy happiness, fulfillment, freedom. That made it all the harder to go back to the gray world without him, a world as gray as the flat Plain of Troy in winter, as gray as the rolling sea breaking against the pebbled shore of Gytheum. I had wanted to taste the flavors of ordinary life, had prayed to be released from my position as a near-goddess. Now I had my wish. Ordinary women were cast aside, ordinary women every day heard their husbands say, “I do not love you any longer.” Ordinary women went into a room alone. Ordinary women looked around that room for the face of one who would only turn away.

  Welcome to the land of the ordinary, Helen. Do you like it? A voice was whispering low in my ear, but no, it was not in my ear but in my mind. A voice I knew too well. I did not think you would.

  “I have not had time to accustom myself to it yet,” I told her. “In time, I shall.”

  I can make all things glow again, she said. I can change Paris back in an instant.

  Now I would have rounded on her, had she been visible. “We must now make our own way,” I told her. But there was a part of me that longed to say, Yes, yes, cast your spell and make him mine again. But I would not belittle either of us in that manner.

  As you wish, she said mockingly. Her light laugh echoed in my head.

  The room seemed louder than ever, now that the hush and audience with the goddess in my head was over. I was overwhelmed by the noise of the milling people, the shoving and jostling to get near pieces of roasted ox being sliced and handed out. It was true, Priam had to welcome them in to honor their suffering, but it was a pity all he could do was provide earthly food and drink, when what they needed was something on another plane.

  Deiphobus was looming just ahead, bobbing through the crowd. I turned aside. I had no wish to speak
to him, even to acknowledge him. When the heart is sick, one does not encourage the carrion crows. In turning away from him, I bumped into that self-effacing lad Hyllus, who bowed and stuttered and smoothed at his cheeks. He made a few gasping compliments before melting away. I was alone in the crowd, pushed and shoved and heaved here and there. There was no one for me to talk to, unless I insisted on forcing someone to talk.

  Alone in Troy. And yet, except for Paris, I had always been alone in Troy.

  Now he had withdrawn and left me stranded, a stranger amongst strangers.

  I would leave, slip away to my own home. I turned to do so. I only wanted to be alone, truly alone. I saw Gelanor at one end of the chamber and turned on my heel. He would seek out my company. But I wanted no company now, I felt only the burning need to escape.

  He saw me! His face changed and he started to come toward me, but I pretended I did not see him and wended my way through the people. I was almost clear—I could feel the cool air from outside flowing between the pillars—when I heard him addressing the company.

  At first I thought it could not be. Only the king, only the royal family could address the guests in the chamber. But no, it was his voice. Slowly the buzzing stopped, and all heads turned in his direction.

  He was standing next to Priam. Priam’s arm was encircling his shoulder, giving royal sanction to whatever he would say. Priam was looking at him almost tenderly.

  Gelanor spoke at length about the mysterious spy who had wormed his way into the innermost bastion of Troy. This spy, he said, had knowledge that only someone free to come and go, to listen and pass amongst us, would have. He—or she—had known of the scouting party to Dardanos and Abydos. He had known of the weak portion of the wall.

  “And he knew of the prophecy about Troilus,” he said. “He knew only because it was spoken in his presence. Troilus trusted him; Troilus died for that trust.”

  Now it was so silent it seemed the room was empty. I could not even hear any breathing.

  “We call upon Hyllus to come forward.” Priam extended his arm: a royal command.

  Nothing happened. No one stirred. Then, suddenly, there was a scrambling in the back of the room. Then a cry, and two strong men were dragging Hyllus forward. They flung him in a heap at Priam’s feet.

  “Stand up.” Priam’s voice was cold as the snows that fall somewhere high on the peaks of Ida.

  Still the bundle of clothes that were Hyllus shook and shivered at Priam’s feet. Two soldiers hauled him up.

  Gelanor stepped forward and pulled away the waterfall of hair that hid Hyllus’s forehead, exposing the jagged scar. Roughly the soldiers turned him to face the people.

  “A scar,” mused Gelanor. But I knew it was no idle musing. “A scar is always proof that someone is who he says he is. A thousand stories and songs attest to this. Enough to lull us, would you not agree? Enough so that when young Hyllus—or whoever he might be—returned to us lamenting his father Calchas’s defection, we merely noted that he had his disfiguring forehead scar and welcomed him back. So much had been made of that scar before he departed! And from the moment that boy entered into our gates, the enemy had mysterious knowledge of our whereabouts and concerns. How many deaths followed? Enough that I wanted to learn how distinctive a scar can be.” He held up his forearms. “Here is what I have learned. Scars can be duplicated. It is easy. Here are the distinguishing scars on my arms—all created by me.” The sleeves of his mantle fell away and three scars revealed themselves. Now I knew the purpose of his experiment with the clay and the ash and the soil.

  “This young man duplicated the scars of Hyllus. Where is Hyllus? Murdered, perhaps. In any case, this person is not Hyllus, but a clever impersonator sent by the Greeks. He was sent here to play upon our desires, upon our wishes that both the father and the son had not betrayed Troy. But where is Hyllus’s mother? She has been strangely silent. She would have known this imposter was not her son. But”—Gelanor walked directly over to him—“you avoided your ‘mother,’ did you not? You said you did not spend time at home. Small wonder!”

  Hyllus now began to blabber. “Ask my mother! Ask her! You shall see! My mother knows!”

  “Fetch the wife of Calchas, the mother of Hyllus.” Priam’s command was quiet but sharp.

  “While we wait, let us continue the questioning,” said Gelanor. “We would like to know how you conveyed your findings back to your friends in the Greek camp. Going openly yourself would have been too obvious. Either you sent someone else or you devised signals in advance. You don’t seem clever enough to have created a code yourself, if I may say so. Perhaps you will tell us who it was? And what it was?” His polite tone was as insulting as a slap.

  Hyllus closed his eyes and shook his head, to indicate ignorance and sorrow at the misunderstanding.

  “No, I did not think so,” said Gelanor. “You will continue the playacting until the end. Very well, for the end is near.”

  Hyllus’s mother was brought forward. Hyllus made a great show of embracing her. I could not see whether the embrace was warmly returned or merely endured. “Mother! Tell them, Mother! They are making a dreadful accusation, saying that I am an imposter.”

  She looked at him searchingly. She reached out and touched his cheek, running the back of her hand lightly along it. “My son . . .”

  The room came alive with murmurs.

  “Yes, Mother!” he said, tears trickling down his face, his mouth starting to quiver. “Thank you, Mother!”

  “. . . I do not know,” she said, twisting her hands together, her face contorted as well. “I do not know . . .” She turned to Priam, her eyes desperate. “There are days when I think, yes, it is he, Hyllus—days when he turns and makes a gesture and it could only be him. But when I first beheld him, I did not know him for Hyllus.” Turning this way and that, between Priam and Hyllus, she was distraught. “It was not my son. It was someone else. It frightened me—as if he had died and this was a shade, a pale visitor. As the days went on, the paleness disappeared and color came into him and he took on the life of Hyllus.”

  “How could you have done this?” Priam was shocked. “How could you have received him—this ghost?”

  “Because . . . because I could not know, for certain.”

  “A mother not know her own child?” Hecuba spoke for the first time, from her place near Priam. Yes, Hecuba, the mother who had cast out her own son!

  “It had been some time since I had seen him . . . people change . . .” She looked miserable. “And you know the longing of a mother for a lost child. There is a part of you that will accept back any morsel you can get, even if it is not complete. Part of you that will settle for a copy, if the copy is a good one.”

  “Even if it is false through and through?” Gelanor sounded outraged. “This boy was not a piece of Hyllus, he had not a shred of Hyllus in him. He was no more Hyllus than I am! Would you have called me ‘son’?”

  “No. Because there is no way I could have convinced myself that you are Hyllus, no matter how I longed to. This boy made it easy.” She took his hands, then dropped them in farewell. “Now it is doubly hard. I lose Hyllus twice.”

  “Mother!” the boy cried out, extending his arms.

  “If you truly knew me for your mother, you would not be so cruel as to torture me any further,” she said, stepping back, her arms still at her side. “This proves what I wish were not so.”

  “Take him away!” said Priam. “Hold him in chains, and mind that he does not escape. Before he is executed, we must know what he knows.”

  The two soldiers grabbed him and, locking his arms behind his back, pushed him through the crowd, which had grown nasty.

  “Let us kill him!” yelled one man. “Think of the deaths he has caused!”

  “All in good time,” said Gelanor. “There may still be some deaths we can prevent, if we know what this spy and his friends have planned.”

  “Mother!” the boy wailed from the back of the room, then we heard th
e soldiers strike him and silence him. Calchas’s wife, weeping, stumbled from her questioners and disappeared into the crowd.

  Suddenly the room erupted into wails and cries of mourning for all the death caused by this war. Priam’s attempt at solace and reconciliation had only gathered large numbers of war victims together in one room, where their grief and anguish could multiply tenfold. Women screamed and raised their hands, children sent pitiful shrieks like dagger stabs through the night. They overturned the tables and shattered the wine containers, scattered the food, turning the chamber into a slippery deck.

  “My friends—” Priam held up his hands, imploring them. But his voice was lost in the melee.

  “I will end this!” One voice rose above the others, cutting through them like the sweet high notes of a flute rise above the throb of drums. “I began it, and by all the gods, I shall end it!”

  Paris! But how could he end it? There was no turning back.

  He had taken his place beside Priam and in the flickering light I had never seen him look so glorious—but was that only because he had withdrawn himself from me? He was no longer mine, therefore his beauty increased?

  He held his arms up, his fine hands reaching for the sky. He held his head high, his chin lifted, but I could see his eyes searching the crowd. When he saw me, he looked away. “I brought us to this,” he said. “I plunged headlong into the realm of the unknown, and now I have dashed us all upon the rocks. But the ship—the ship of Troy has not foundered. And my good fellows, you know what we do when a ship seems to be endangered or cursed—we lighten the load, we throw the cursed object overboard. So I shall. I am that cursed object.”

  I could not believe what I was hearing. Was he to kill himself? No, rather than let that happen, I would fasten my arms around him and entwine him for the rest of his life, I would be his hated chain.

  “Two men call themselves the husband of Helen, daughter of Tyndareus of Sparta.” Slowly he turned his head to look over the entire gathering, and his eyes darted across all the faces. I was thankful he had not said daughter of Zeus. “Menelaus of the House of Atreus in Greece, and I, Prince Paris of Troy. This is a private quarrel, which the brother of Menelaus has chosen to make an occasion of war. This man, Agamemnon, was a warlord without a war until I appeared in his vision. But I say, it is still a matter between two men—between the man Helen chose as husband in a contest her father arranged many years ago, and the man she chose for herself. It is Agamemnon’s doing that anyone else should suffer for it. Let us thrash it out for ourselves. I challenge Menelaus to a duel. Let him meet me on the plain before the walls of Troy.” He lowered his arms at last. “The fight will be to the death. And may the gods anoint the best man.”