Helen of Troy

by Margaret George

  Slowly Paris lifted his head and drew himself up. His face was ashen and his eyes desperate. “I—I cannot,” he stammered. “I cannot defend myself, for I know not what happened. I fought Menelaus—you know that. You know that in spite of his sword breaking to pieces and his spear failing to wound me, he was strangling me as he dragged me in the dust. Did I run then? No, I could not breathe. But suddenly I was free—I know not how. And I crawled away, and when I stood up, I was here.”

  “What nonsense!” Hector cried. “You betray my own good sense, to insult me with such a lie.”

  “It is true, I swear it, all I can say is that the gods—”

  “Lies! Stop involving the gods, when it was your own duplicity that did it! Yes, you planned it all—”

  “Hector,” I said, “think! Even if Paris had planned such a secret escape—which he did not—his plans could not have rescued him from the death that Menelaus was dragging him toward: a death outside the rules of a duel! Menelaus had lost the duel, so he resorted to this strongman’s trick. But such tricks work, all the more sadness for honest men. Only a god could have saved Paris then. And a god did. It is clear.”

  “No, it is not clear!” Hector roared.

  “Hector, it is clear to anyone who looks at it as a stranger would, rather than a wronged brother,” said Paris. “I did not ask for the help. I was prepared to pay the price; indeed, I thought I had paid it. But I will not refuse a gift from the gods, particularly when the gift is my own life.”

  “Why they love your life so, I cannot imagine!” Hector cried. “How many times have you been slated to die, and they rescue you?”

  “A man cannot die before his time,” said Paris. “You know our destiny is determined at birth and no man can change his. Even the gods, though they could, do not. I was destined to live at least through today. And Helen is right—Menelaus cheated by trying to kill me that way, so the gods were justified in preventing him from it.”

  Hector gave an ugly laugh. “Agamemnon has proclaimed Menelaus the winner. What did you expect? And then someone from Troy shot an arrow at the Greeks—by accident, I think—and Agamemnon used that as an excuse to start the fighting again. Can you hear the battle noises from the Plain of Troy—or is the air in your chamber too rarefied for such sounds to carry up here?”

  I rushed to the window. I could hear rumbling noise, faint and wavering like heat waves, from somewhere far away. Then the unmistakable sound of metal hitting metal. Paris came and stood beside me. He gripped the sill.

  “We are all powerless to stop it,” he said plaintively to Hector. “Too many people want to fight.”

  Hector shook his head. “Foolish boy! This is all on your head.”

  “No,” Paris said. “I refuse to accept that! There were—and still are—people within Troy who want this war as badly as any of the Greeks. Who was it prevented Helen and me from seeing Menelaus and Odysseus when they came? We never found out. True, the spy impersonating Hyllus was unmasked, but he must have had accomplices, and they go free. Hyllus could not have been everywhere, doing everything. Someone killed our sacred household snake to frighten us. Who was it? Helen tried to end it by going to the Greeks herself, but was stopped by Antimachus. Ask him what he was doing outside the walls at night!”

  Hector started. Clearly he had not known about this. Antimachus had kept our secret. “Helen tried to go to the Greeks?”

  “Yes, to end this. Antimachus caught me.”

  “Caught you—where?”

  “Outside the walls.”

  Hector’s eyes bulged in disbelief. “You escaped over the walls?”

  “Yes. I was a good piece away already before the prowling Antimachus grabbed me.”

  I could tell by his face that Hector did not accept my story.

  “Very well, then,” I said, “ask him yourself. See how surprised he is that you know!”

  “I shall,” said Hector sternly. “But if it is true, he has been adamant about wanting to keep you here, and bait the Greeks with you. Whereas Antenor has most sensibly tried to avert the war.” A particularly jarring clash down below came to our ears. “But it is too late now.”

  “That is what I just said,” Paris reminded him. “It goes forward now and there is no stopping it. Those of us who tried have been cast aside.”

  “I must return to the battle,” said Hector. “Lest it be said I, too, am a coward.” He swung around, so quickly his tunic flew out behind him.

  “I am not a coward!” yelled Paris. “Stop calling me one!”

  “It is not I who call you that, but every man on that field who saw you flee.”

  “I didn’t flee! I just told you—”

  Hector was gone, his footsteps dying away.

  “Paris, from today onward we are branded as cowards and villains,” I said, turning to him. “We know the truth, but there is no convincing others.”

  “We must! We must! We must clear our names.”

  Now he seemed what Hector had just called him—foolish boy. No, not foolish so much as naïvely hopeful.

  “There must be a sacrifice.” My niece Iphigenia had been the one for the Greeks. This was more subtle, but we would be the Trojan sacrifices. “People demand sacrifices. It is part of war.”

  “I thought the fallen warriors and the sacked cities were the sacrifices of war.”

  “For something within the human heart, more is demanded.” I felt drained.

  Paris smiled. “You upset yourself in defending me. Such a fierce champion! It must be true what they say about women—they are more deadly than men. At least the Amazons will fight for Troy.”

  “Then let us call them now. We will need them.”

  “We call them?”

  “Yes. Before it is too late.”

  “I do not have the authority to call them. It has to be Priam—”

  “He will dither and dally until we are so penned up by the Greeks they cannot reach us. You call them. Are you not a prince of Troy?”

  “But it has to be the king who makes these decisions.”

  “Make this one on your own. Then see if they do not look at Paris differently.”

  I was ready to declare my own war on Troy. I was done with bowing to her self-defeating rules and demands.

  LIV

  The Amazons are on their way,” said Paris. We were in our uppermost chamber, polishing his armor, when he suddenly looked up and told me. In the evenings we took refuge up here; the lower floors were still teeming with our foreign “guests,” but here, as in a hawk’s nest, we were far away. The fighting had come close to the walls of Troy at times, but there had been no attempt to storm them, and the war had become an everyday affair.

  We had learned to shape our lives around the coldness we found in Troy, a coldness that had nothing to do with winter. That had passed, and even another summer was passing, the sun still strong and yellow and warming on the bricks, but winter in the faces of the people. Hector and Andromache’s baby had come—the longed-for son—but I had not been invited to see him except in secret, when all other family members had left, even though I felt that by accompanying Andromache to the rites at Mount Ida I had, in some way, helped in his conception.

  Andromache said as much, but, sighing, she covered the baby’s head and took him from my arms. “It grieves me,” she whispered, cradling him against her body. “I feel as though you are his aunt more than any of the others, but . . .”

  “Leave it unsaid,” I answered. Someone might be listening. I had grown used to spies everywhere.

  She asked after my weaving.

  “I devote more and more time to it,” I told her. “It seems to grow of its own accord, take on new meanings and directions. I am using purple wool for the background. The gray-blue borders are my old life, the inner area Troy and her history, but the heart of it is still empty, still forming.”

  “The fate of Troy has yet to be written,” she said. “Someday you will fill it in, and the gaps will close.”


  What I did not say was that I was driven more and more to the weaving; as the rest of my life shrank, it expanded, took on a life of its own—or perhaps it created its own life, as art does.

  “Paris has been fighting well,” she said, to cheer me. “Hector welcomes his help.”

  I smiled, appreciating her effort to cheer me up. Paris, true to his dedication, had put aside his bow and was learning to fight skillfully day after day on the plain with spear and sword. “Yes,” I said. “Hector complimented him yesterday, saying that he fought as well as any man.” I did not say how difficult it was for him to make himself go out day after day, nor how frantic with worry I was as the wounded stumbled back in at sundown and the dead were carried on the shoulders of the able. In the lower city the casualties were lying on blankets, tended by our physicians and women. Gelanor and Evadne were busy aiding them, and Gelanor had compounded some salves that speeded the healing, but only for those destined to recover; for the more severely injured, we still were at the mercy of the gods. I was thankful that plague had not struck yet. People believed it was caused by an angry Apollo’s arrows, but Gelanor said it also appeared whenever there were too many people crowded together. Perhaps the arrow-god just waits until his targets are conveniently packed close, he had said.

  “The Amazons are coming,” I said. It felt right to inform her; she had confided in me, and was the only member of the family still to be my friend. “Paris sent for them, and he has a message that they are on their way.”

  She frowned. “Paris sent for them? Without permission?”

  “Without whose permission? Hector’s?” Hector did not rule here, not yet.

  “The king’s,” she said. “Did Priam give his consent?”

  “He gave his consent when he asked them to be his allies,” I said. “He will wait too late, that is his way.”

  “So you are directing the war now?” Her voice was suddenly as cold as the rest of the family’s. “I cannot think it was Paris who urged this action.”

  “And why not?” I burst out. “Why does no one credit him with any command? It was he alone of Priam’s sons who was raised beyond the sheltering walls of Troy, in the wilds, where he had to survive on his wits and his strength.”

  She smiled indulgently. “Helen, let us not pretend. It is touching that you are so solicitous of Paris and his abilities—” She paused. “But it is a mistake to insult Priam this way.”

  “We meant no insult.”

  “He will take it as one.” She took a deep breath, to reset the mood. “Now tell me, when will the Amazons come? We will welcome them with a great to-do. Perhaps I can even sit down and talk to the famous Penthesileia, their leader. I saw her ambassador—or should it be ambassadress?—when she came to declare herself Troy’s ally. What a woman!”

  “She was indeed formidable,” I remembered. “I cannot imagine anyone more stalwart or fierce. But their commander must be . . .” I would have said must be a female Achilles, but I must not speak that name.

  That evening I took refuge in my weaving. It was more and more my beloved companion and my solace. I loved the feeling of the slight rasp of the thread against my fingers, the unique smell of the wool, and the lingering softness it bestowed on the hands that touched it—all this apart from the rapture of losing myself in the story I was telling in the pattern. I thought of weavings folded away in trunks in the treasure rooms of palaces; I wondered if, in years far away, anyone would take mine out to remember us here.

  I barred no one from my weaving chamber; still, almost no one chose to come in. I was used to being quite alone. But one cool day Gelanor strode in, a bit out of breath from the many stairs. I was pleased. I had seen little of him of late. He had to be the busiest man in Troy, tending to the wounded and ill in the lower city, running his spy circle, preparing his various weapons to be put into action if the enemy came close enough to the walls. I hardly knew what to inquire about first. He spared me the choice by announcing, “I have news from Greece.”

  Greece! And I had just been there, in my mind, at least.

  “The seas are closing for winter, but one boat managed to get through,” he said. “I thought it well to know what was happening at home, so I had sent people to inquire. Not spies!” He held up his hands. “I assumed there were no secrets there. I was wrong.” I would have spoken then, but he plunged ahead. “Your sister Clytemnestra—she has taken a lover, and together they rule Mycenae. Should Agamemnon return, he will find his way barred.”

  Clytemnestra! A surge of pride washed through me. Her husband had trampled upon her, sacrificed their child. Instead of meekly bowing her head, she had turned elsewhere. So in chasing after his greedy dreams, Agamemnon had made a second sacrifice he did not intend.

  “Who?” I asked. It was of no matter, I thought.

  “Aegisthus,” he said.

  All part of the curse of the House of Atreus! Aegisthus was but the last generation of it, having had his heritage taken away by Atreus. And there was another, different curse, the one Aphrodite had laid on my father, saying that his daughters would be husband-forsakers. So now they fulfilled one another.

  I gave a great whoop of laughter. It was all too fitting. “I hope he is handsome?”

  Gelanor pursed up his lips. “I know not, my lady. That was not important to my informant. Shall I dispatch another?”

  “No,” I said. “May my sister have joy of him, whatever he looks like.”

  “The Greeks, in sailing away and staying gone for so long, have hatched many troubles for themselves. Thrones are not tanned hides; they do not keep.”

  “What of home? What of Sparta?”

  “Your father, Tyndareus, manfully holds the place. But he does not know who will follow. Your brothers . . . It was true what Agamemnon said.”

  “Oh.” I had half believed it; now I knew. “What of Hermione?”

  “Tyndareus has sent her to Clytemnestra.”

  “Also as Agamemnon said.” Oh, why could not these have been lies? He lied so much. “Why has he done this?”

  “Perhaps he did not feel he could provide for her, there being no woman in the Spartan palace for her. So he sent her to her aunt’s in Mycenae.”

  “Where she will learn of adultery and treachery!” Oh, my dear daughter!

  Gelanor gave one of his strategic coughs. “Adultery and treachery . . . if I may say so, my dearest Helen, lessons begin at home.”

  “I never committed treason!”

  He laughed, and I joined him. There was no other response possible.

  “But enough of Greece,” he said. “My spies here have been busy lads and girls inside that palisade protecting the enemy camp, and you will be most interested in what they report.”

  “Should you not tell Priam?” I felt I owed him this respect.

  “I tried,” he said. “He waved me away. It seems I am too closely allied with you and Paris, and some of his advisors wish to bar me from the king’s presence.”

  “Should you not tell Hector, then?”

  “Hector, in his nobility, also wants no information that might deflect him from his chosen course.”

  “But only a fool refuses to take new knowledge!”

  “Sometimes nobility transforms a man into a fool.” He said this with sadness. “Down in the Greek camp, dissension has broken out. It seems that Agamemnon insulted Achilles by taking away a woman he won in one of his nasty raids. The woman Agamemnon had taken for himself was the daughter of a priest of Apollo, and you know what havoc Apollo can cause when he is angered—yes, plague has broken out among the Greeks. So the woman must be returned, and Agamemnon must have another, else his loins will ache. So he grabbed Achilles’s prize as a substitute.”

  Who cared what these squabbling men did? They were loathsome.

  “I can see by your face that you do not understand our great good fortune in this,” he said.

  “I hear you say our fortune. Have you become so entirely Trojan, then?”

  “
No. I still long for home, but my home and my people have nothing to do with the likes of Agamemnon and Achilles. If they perish, all the better for common Greeks. Our good fortune is that Achilles now refuses to fight under Agamemnon. He first threatened to sail away, but now is content to sulk in his tent. ‘Someday you’ll want me!’ he says. ‘And in that day . . .’ ”

  “It shows how entirely selfish he is. For if the day comes when they are desperate, it means many of his countrymen have been killed.”

  “Surely you are not surprised that he is besotted with his own importance,” said Gelanor.

  “No, he has been since childhood,” I said. “He allowed that his cousin Patroclus existed, but no one else. One could hope he would have grown out of it, but I see he has not.”

  “He has forbidden Patroclus to fight as well. And my best spy, who has ingratiated himself with Patroclus, told me that Achilles stormed and yelled and called upon his goddess mother to make sure that the Greeks were soundly thrashed, to punish Agamemnon for insulting the pride of the great Achilles.”

  “I wonder if she will obey her darling son,” I said.

  “Perhaps she has already. For Hector and the company are arming for an assault on the Greek camp. Something put it into their heads, after all these months of sticking close to the walls of Troy. Who can say it was not the goddess?”

  Eager to breathe some fresh air, I walked with Gelanor out into the courtyard as he left. My palace rooms, shut up in winter, seemed suddenly stale and sealed; the herbs we burned to perfume the air only made it worse. But as I stepped outside, my mantle was almost ripped from me. Suddenly it was very cold, and a fierce wind was howling, its fingers tearing at my hair and clothes. Tiny pinpricks of chill landed on my nose, my cheeks, my brow. It was something I had not felt in a long time.

  “Snow!” I cried, looking up at the sky, where swirls of white were covering the stars.

  Gelanor grunted. “Chariot wheels will clog and there’ll be no fighting for a while.”