The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs

by Michael Ciardi

My eyes eventually adjusted to the backdrop of an azure sky that dispensed a temperate wind from a nearby sea. I welcomed this briny zephyr as it evaporated the perspiration from my skin. Where had I now spontaneously awakened? This was a hilly terrain illuminated in a torrid haze. The sun’s rays baked a limestone fortress that I now hunkered upon. After taking my stance upon a turreted wall of prodigious density and height, I gazed out across an inlet of water dappled with lustrous wavelets. Two rivers intersected into this estuary. Farther across a vegetated plain, dominating the southeastern horizon, I observed a mountain’s peak shadowing the golden landscape like the veil of an Olympian goddess. But it was not this topography by itself that engulfed my imagination with awe and wonder. The true marvel of this olden paradise resided directly beneath my feet.

  Upon further observation, I determined that I now stood at the apex of ancient civilization’s most renowned and fortified battlement. The wall encapsulated a sand-colored city like Apollo’s encircled hands burrowing into the dunes. Columned temples, weathered by The Sun God’s emblem, escalated in flawless symmetry as far as I studied the inhabited metropolis. Bronze and marble statues of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hermes served as tributes in this polytheistic safe haven. Here existed a domain where mortals and gods intermingled in a precarious exchange across the centuries. In favor to the human occupants living behind Troy’s colossal cordon, no assailant from this world or any other had ever breached its glorious infrastructure. But, of course, the Trojans had neglected to anticipate a destructive force fated to swarm across the Aegean Sea like a pestilence of unparalleled proportion.

  This doomed city’s present mood revealed nothing to indicate any preparation for the legendary war. If anything, the olive-skinned denizens had an air of infallibility to their routines. I watched them lurching insouciantly along the labyrinth-like pathways, adorned in silken robes and tunics as if the gods had privileged them with an eternal sanctuary. Where were the bronze-armored Trojans with their quivers and bows? Why hadn’t the skilled sentinels assembled on the ramparts to keep a vigil for Achaean invaders? Surely, they must’ve sensed some unnatural rhythm in the ocean’s tides. After all, no man born to this epoch could’ve seized another man’s wife without an expectation of grave consequence.

  Adding to my perplexity, I traveled along the populous byways virtually unnoticed. My contemporary attire must’ve intrigued the Trojans, but if this was the case, they made no reference to my meandering progress. I passed common dwellings and ornate shrines, each carved from bleached stone and bedecked with bronze embellishments, some of which had already oxidized into a pale shade of green. Horse-drawn chariots shared the dusty routes with the sandaled men, children, and women. The latter of these swathed their lean bodies in sheer fabrics as vibrant as the Aurora borealis.

  Eventually, I ventured into some of the most guarded palaces of Troy, passing the horse tamers who were seemingly oblivious to my presence among them. It was as if I had suddenly donned Hades’ cap of invisibility. Through the mechanisms of my imagination, I approached a chamber where the Trojan’s stowed the pilfered princess of Sparta. Here, perched behind a spinner’s wheel, where she weaved lavender linen from a bowl of wool, the most beautiful woman in the world waited for my arrival.

  The Muses had not inflated the comeliness of this feminine creation. Leda’s daughter appeared to have her true father’s Olympian blood flowing through her veins. Her visage was almost too stunning for a mortal man to forecast into words. As the poet and playwright Marlowe once wisely scripted, here was a countenance that wholly merited a thousand ships’ deployment. I approached the Bronze-Aged beauty as cautiously as I might’ve neared a porcelain relic. Her chamber held an aromatic scent of ambrosia, while her flesh was as white and unblemished as the marble in which she was first immortalized.

  As I drew closer to this exquisite female, her midnight-colored eyes watched me with a sorrow I didn’t fully calculate. Even through this gloomy disposition, her physical attributes remained unmatched. The fair hair framing Helen’s face cascaded well beyond her shoulders in ringlets that rivaled the luster of the Ram’s Golden Fleece. At the risk of offending Aphrodite, who received the Apple of Discord from Helen’s abductor, this woman’s prettiness rivaled all who shared her sex, goddess-borne or otherwise.

  Helen of Troy observed me with tested eyes that penetrated the souls of countless suitors. She wore woe on her brow as the spinner’s wheel continued to rotate. She also donned a diaphanous robe trimmed with copper sashes. From my perspective, it was almost conceivable why the Prince of Troy had imperiled the life of every one of this city’s inhabitants in order to attain Helen’s love. When she finally spoke to me, her voice sounded as melodious as Apollo’s lyre; it soothed my eardrums with infinite splendor.

  “What news have the gods delivered to me now?” she asked. She continued to use the spinner’s foot pedal to manipulate the fabric through the wheel’s mechanisms. Her task at hand seemed equally as important as anything I might’ve divulged. Then, without provocation, she stopped the wheel and spliced her loom’s purple threads with the impassive precision of Atropos.

  “I don’t mean to intrude upon your weaving,” I said.

  “State your purpose for this interruption,” she insisted.

  “I believe I’ve come to see you, if you are indeed the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “Then you’re here by your own volition?”

  Before I managed to respond to Helen, she rose from a bench behind the wheel, allowing the purple cloth to spill onto the floor and bundle around her unclad feet. I then noticed images of clashing Trojan and Achaean warriors woven into the fabric of this tapestry, depicting prophetic scenes of mayhem and slaughter.

  “Mortal men aren’t motivated to visit me for mere conversation,” Helen announced. She stepped over the linen gingerly, gliding across the floor in almost a trance-like state before my eyes. I felt her soft fingertips tracing my nose and lips as if her vision alone couldn’t decipher my features.

  “Tell me why you are clad so strangely?” she inquired.

  “I come from a land very far away from here.”

  “But you aren’t a Mycenaean or a Myrmidon?”

  “I have no ties with either the Greeks or the Spartans. I hope that puts your suspicions at ease.”

  “Only for the moment,” she uttered. Helen’s attention then drifted to the lone window in her chamber. A northeastern wind swept the hair back from her ivory shoulders; her swirling tresses reminded me of the amber prairies of my own homeland. I watched her survey the thus far tranquil Plain of Scamander with solemnity, perhaps foreseeing as much as Cassandra about the imminent destruction of this Anatolian city. Even during such reflective moments of despair, her loveliness shone with more scintillation than Hephaestus’s forged armors.

  “This is a perilous time for any outsider to stray among us,” Helen warned. “But if you traversed the tides with Aeolus’s winds, then you already know what the Fates have foretold for Troy.”

  Helen’s gaze centered upon her loom again, this time inviting me to inspect the patchwork of prophecies with the same poignancy as she. I neglected to respond to her, but instead looked at her loins with an unflinching lustfulness. She must have sensed me examining her body’s curves through the transparency of her silken garment.

  “Menelaus is an unforgiving king,” she whispered. “I’m afraid that the Prince of Troy’s choice for companionship is a now a blight we all must share.” Helen shifted her stance again, this time facing me directly. “What is it that you wish to claim?”

  “As I said, I’m here only to observe,” I reaffirmed.

  “Your homeland cannot be so lenient with its people. They must expect some tribute for this visitation. Do you wish to take up arms and fight beside us?”

  “I’m not a soldier.”

  “In Troy,” she said, correctively, “every man agile enough to clasp a spear and shield is a servant to Ares.”

  “B
ut, in regard to what you forecast on that tapestry colored in death, I wish not to fight for either side. I’m a peaceful man.”

  Helen still cast a stare at me laced with either disbelief or confusion. If any man of this classical world ever spoke as earnestly as I had just done, his own comrades would’ve ostracized him. But Helen’s onyx-shaded eyes honed in on me as if all other objects dissolved from the room. I sensed an intensity brewing in her expression as potent as anything conjured in Hecate’s book of magic. We had apparently reached a crossroad in our discourse, and Paris’s prize used this impasse to her advantage.

  “Tell me something,” she started while raising her hands to the sashes of her gown. “Do you keep a wife back in your faraway land?”

  “I do,” I answered obediently, but not so naively as to suspect that such a revelation would’ve protected me from her sultry encroachment. With the dexterity of a seamstress, she pulled the supporting ties on her frock, permitting the material to descend like a melting sheath of ice down the length of her loins. As all men must’ve mimicked before me, I looked upon her nakedness with fallible temptation.

  Helen lowered her arms to her hips, but her palms faced forward rather than pressing against her thighs, making her look oddly vulnerable. I remained immobile, trying not to indulge in her erotic magnificence. “Are you certain that you’ve come here only to look at me?” she prodded.

  “As I told you, I’m a married man,” I replied, swallowing a portion of my warm saliva.

  “But you must have a concubine to tame your desire in your travels.”

  “I am faithful to my wife.”

  “What do you think of me?”

  Surely, the fabled beauty of Troy didn’t need further confirmation of her unsurpassed perfection. But I felt obliged to answer her if only to verify that my restraint was not fastened to anything else but loyalty toward my wife. “You are everything that epitomizes womanhood. In fact, I’ve never encountered anyone as fair as you.”

  Helen sidled closer to me. I sensed heat wafting off her flesh, almost daring me to absorb her essence against my own skin.

  “Men have always lusted for me,” she said, unflinching in her mannerisms. “And yet you stand before me as if fettered to the floor. I detect rapture in your stare and a fluttering in your heart. If you covet what you see, why not take it?”

  “There’s always consequences for taking what doesn’t belong to you, Helen,” I admonished. “You more than anyone can attest to that maxim.”

  “The gods and heroes of my world mock such virtue,” she chided. “Act as Paris, Menelaus, or Theseus before them both. Why deprive yourself of carnal delight? Take me as your own for as long as I shall permit it.”

  “I would only dishonor my wife by doing so.”

  “What is a wife? I am a wife of a Spartan king, and Paris abandoned his own wife Oenone to lay with me. Are you so imprudent to believe that such ecstasy will revisit you without an expectation of something in return?”

  Temptation swelled in my eyes’ pupils like the Aegean tide. But I knew that one delectable taste of her flesh on my tongue would’ve lured me to a wasteland occupied by far too many of my lascivious kind. With Herculean resolve, I managed to keep Helen and my libido at bay.

  “Soon this grand city will be marked for slaughter and left in cinders,” she whispered in my ear. I felt her breath tickle my eardrum, but she made no direct contact against me with her mouth. “Why is it that women value a man’s opinion in order to ratify her prettiness? Even Aphrodite couldn’t ignore the charm of being gifted the Golden Apple. By the Love Goddess’s blessing, I am Paris’s reward, but not necessarily his alone. Now, for the last time, prove yourself worthy of my desire.”

  Throughout the annals of antiquity, hoards of suitors in the form of kings and princes had tried to secure Helen’s love. Most of these men failed to partake in the pleasure she now openly extended to me. But my stance on this matter remained as impenetrable as Troy’s battlements.

  “With respect to you, Helen of Troy, I must not accept this offer. You belong to another man, and I to another woman.”

  “I belong to no man,” Helen seethed. “Do you think I wish to be thought of as a possession? My sister Clytemnestra knows of such domination, too. Her husband Agamemnon has sacrificed their own daughter Iphigenia to Artemis at Aulis so that his warships can sail to Troy.”

  Helen sensed my stare’s ardency diminishing as if I had been doused with cold water. After Helen was certain that I hadn’t intruded upon her territory as a means of seduction, she retrieved her garment from the floor and covered her nudity as if I had willed the cloth from her body.

  “You haven’t been sent here by Hera or Athena,” she mused. “But it’s uncanny to think that you’d risk your life by coming here to stare upon me. What is it that you hope to achieve?”

  “Maybe it’s more of a test on my part.”

  “And this crucible is designed to make you a better man?”

  “Yes. I think that’s my intention.”

  “I pray you will return to your wife with the same discipline you’ve displayed to me,” Helen commended. “I suspect that if more men followed your example, a great many wars would be averted.”

  “Perhaps we’ve both learned something that the gods can’t teach us,” I returned.

  “Tell me what that is?”

  “All of us, men and women alike, lust for the unknown. It’s a quest that takes many of us to our own bitter ends. We’re not as virtuous as we like to feign. You’ve helped me understand how susceptible I am when confronting untamed passion.”

  Helen nodded her head once and returned to her bench at the spinning wheel.

  She took the linen in her hand before saying, “There’s still time for you to escape this city. Flee from here while the gods still look kindly upon your presence.”

  I left Helen’s chamber as I found her, despondently stitching the Trojans’ future into the fabric at her feet. Upon reaching Troy’s wall again, my eyes connected with a skyline painted with Iris’s prisms of light. The horizon’s cohesion of colors belied the bloody carnage yet to blot this landscape. In this time, the heroes and haughty tales of two nations loomed everlastingly in the lore of classic mythology.

  Chapter 15

  7:20 A.M.