by C. S. Lewis
‘None of that,’ shouted Yellowhead. ‘You can have all the women you want tomorrow. Not now.’
A man close beside him had actually dropped his spear to have both hands free for the exploration of a little, dark sixteen-year-old who looked like an Egyptian. His fat lips were feeding on her face. Yellowhead fetched him one across the buttocks with the flat of his sword.
‘Let her go, with a curse on you,’ he said, ‘or I’ll cut your throat.’
‘Get on. Get on,’ shouted Eteoneus from behind. ‘Follow the King.’
Through an archway a new and steadier light appeared; lamplight. They came into a roofed place. It was extraordinarily still and they themselves became still as they entered it. The noise of the assault and the battering-ram at the main gate on the other side of the castle seemed to be coming from a great distance. The lamp flames were unshaken. The room was full of a sweet smell, you could smell the costliness of it. The floor was covered with soft stuff, dyed in crimson. There were cushions of silk piled upon couches of ivory; panels of ivory also on the walls and squares of jade brought from the end of the world. The room was of cedar and gilded beams. They were humiliated by the richness. There was nothing like this at Mycenae, let alone at Sparta; hardly perhaps at Cnossus. And each man thought, ‘And thus the barbarians have lived these ten years while we sweated and shivered in huts on the beach.’
‘It was time it ended,’ said Yellowhead to himself. He saw a great vase so perfect in shape that you would think it had grown like a flower, made of some translucent stuff he had never seen before. It stupefied him for a second. Then, in retaliation, he drove at it as hard as he could with the butt-end of his spear and shattered it into a hundred tinkling and shining fragments. His men laughed. They began following his example—breaking, tearing. But it disgusted him when they did it.
‘Try what’s behind the doors,’ he said. There were many doors. From behind some of them they dragged or led the women out; not slaves but kings’ wives or daughters. The men attempted no foolery; they knew well enough these were reserved for their betters. And their faces showed ghastly. There was a curtained doorway ahead. He swept the heavy, intricately embroidered, stuff aside and went in. Here was an inner, smaller, more exquisite room.
It was many-sided. Four very slender pillars held up the painted roof and between them hung a lamp that was a marvel of goldsmith’s work. Beneath it, seated with her back against one of the pillars, a woman, no longer young, sat with her distaff, spinning; as a great lady might sit in her own house a thousand miles away from the war.
Yellowhead had been in ambushes. He knew what it costs even a trained man to be still on the brink of deadly danger. He thought, ‘That woman must have the blood of gods in her.’ He resolved he would ask her where Helen was to be found. He would ask her courteously.
She looked up and stopped her spinning, but still she did not move.
‘The child,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Is she still alive? Is she well?’ Then, helped by the voice, he recognised her. And with the first second of his recognition all that had made the very shape of his mind for eleven years came tumbling down in irretrievable ruin. Neither that jealousy nor that lust, that rage nor that tenderness, could ever be revived. There was nothing inside him appropriate to what he saw. For a moment there was nothing inside him at all.
For he had never dreamed she would be like this; never dreamed that the flesh would have gathered under her chin, that the face could be so plump and yet so drawn, that there would be grey hair at her temples and wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Even her height was less than he remembered. The smooth glory of her skin which once made her seem to cast a light from her arms and shoulders was all gone. An ageing woman; a sad, patient, composed woman, asking for her daughter; for their daughter.
The astonishment of it jerked a reply out of him before he well knew what he was doing. ‘I’ve not seen Hermione for ten years,’ he said. Then he checked himself. How had she the effrontery to ask like that, just as an honest wife might? It would be monstrous for them to fall into an ordinary husbandly and wifely conversation as if nothing had come between. And yet what had come between was less disabling than what he now encountered.
About that he suffered a deadlock of conflicting emotions. It served her right. Where was her vaunted beauty now? Vengeance? Her mirror punished her worse than he could every day. But there was pity too. The story that she was the daughter of Zeus, the fame that had made her a legend on both sides of the Aegean, all dwindled to this, all destroyed like the vase he had shivered five minutes ago. But there was shame too. He had dreamed of living in stories as the man who won back the most beautiful woman in the world, had he? And what he had won back was this. For this Patroclus and Achilles had died. If he appeared before the army leading this as his prize, as their prize, what could follow but universal curses or universal laughter? Inextinguishable laughter to the world’s end. Then it darted into his mind that the Trojans must have known it for years. They too must have roared with laughter every time a Greek fell. Not only the Trojans, the gods too. They had known all along. It had diverted them through him to stir up Agamemnon and through Agamemnon to stir up all Greece, and set two nations by the ears for ten winters, all for a woman whom no one would buy in any market except as a housekeeper or a nurse. The bitter wind of divine derision blew in his face. All for nothing, all a folly and himself the prime fool.
He could hear his own men clattering into the room behind him. Something would have to be decided. Helen did and said nothing. If she had fallen at his feet and begged for forgiveness; if she had risen up and cursed him; if she had stabbed herself. . . . But she only waited with her hands (they were knuckley hands now) on her lap. The room was filling with men. It would be terrible if they recognised Helen; perhaps worse if he had to tell them. The oldest of the soldiers was staring at her very hard and looking from her to Yellowhead.
‘So!’ said the man at last, almost with a chuckle. ‘Well, by all the—’
Eteoneus nudged him into silence. ‘What do you wish us to do, Menelaus?’ he asked, looking at the floor.
‘With the prisoners—the other prisoners?’ said Yellowhead. ‘You must detail a guard and get them all down to camp. The rest at Nestor’s place, for the distribution. The Queen—this one—to our own tents.’
‘Bound?’ said Eteoneus in his ear.
‘It’s not necessary,’ said Yellowhead. It was a loathsome question: either answer was an outrage.
There was no need to lead her. She went with Eteoneus. There was noise and trouble and tears enough about roping up the others and it felt long to Yellowhead before it was over. He kept his eyes off Helen. What should his eyes say to hers? Yet how could they say nothing? He busied himself picking out the men who were to be the prisoners’ escort.
At last. The women and, for the moment, the problem were gone.
‘Come on, lads,’ he said. ‘We must be busy again. We must go right through the castle and meet the others. Don’t fancy it’s all over.’
He longed to be fighting again. He would fight as he’d never fought before. Perhaps he would be killed. Then the army could do what they pleased with her. For that dim and mostly comfortable picture of a future which hovers before most men’s eyes had vanished.
III
The first thing Yellowhead knew next morning was the burning of the cut above his knee. Then he stretched and felt the after-battle ache in every muscle; swallowed once or twice and found he was very thirsty; sat up, and found his elbow was bruised. The door of the hut was open and he could tell by the light that it was hours after sunrise. Two thoughts hung in his mind: the war is over—Helen is here. Not much emotion about either.
He got up, grunting a little, rubbed his eyes, and went out into the open. Inland, he saw the smoke hanging in still air above the ruins of Troy, and, lower down, innumerable birds. Everything was shockingly quiet. The army must be sleeping late.
Eteoneus, limping a litt
le and wearing a bandage on his right hand, came towards him.
‘Have you any water left?’ said Menelaus. ‘My throat’s as dry as that sand.’
‘You’ll have to have wine in it, Yellowhead Menelaus. We’ve wine enough to swim in, but we’re nearly out of water.’
Menelaus made a face. ‘Make it as weak as you can,’ he said.
Eteoneus limped away and returned with the cup. Both went into the King’s hut and Eteoneus pulled the door to.
‘What did you do that for?’ said Yellowhead.
‘We have to talk, Menelaus.’
‘Talk? I think I’ll sleep again.’
‘Look,’ said Eteoneus, ‘here’s something you ought to know. When Agathocles brought all our share of the women down last night, he penned the rest of them in the big hut where we’ve been keeping the horses. He picketed the horses outside—safe enough now. But he put the Queen by herself in the hut beyond this.’
‘Queen, you call her? How do you know she’s going to be a queen much longer? I haven’t given any orders. I haven’t made up my mind.’
‘No, but the men have.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s what they call her. And they call her Daughter of Zeus. And they saluted her hut when they went past it.’
‘Well, of all the—’
‘Listen, Menelaus. It’s no use at all thinking about your anger. You can’t treat her as anything but your Queen. The men won’t stand it.’
‘But, gates of Hades, I thought the whole army was longing for her blood! After all they’ve been through because of her.’
‘The army in general, yes. But not our own Spartans. She’s still the Queen to them.’
‘That? That faded, fat, old trot? Paris’s cast-off whore and the gods know whose besides? Are they mad? What’s Helen to them? Has everyone forgotten that it’s I who am her husband and her king, and their king too, curse them?’
‘If you want me to answer that, I must say something that’s not to your liking.’
‘Say what you please.’
‘You said you were her husband and their king. They’d say you are their king only because you’re her husband. You’re not of the blood royal of Sparta. You became their king by marrying her. Your kingship hangs on her queenship.’
Yellowhead snatched up an empty scabbard and hit savagely three or four times at a wasp that was hovering above a spilled wine-drop. ‘Cursed, cursed creature!’ he yelled. ‘Can’t I kill even you? Perhaps you’re sacred too. Perhaps Eteoneus here will cut my throat if I swat you. There! There!’
He did not get the wasp. When he sat down again he was sweating.
‘I knew it wouldn’t please you,’ said Eteoneus, ‘but—’
‘It was the wasp that put me out of patience,’ said Yellowhead. ‘Do you think I’m such a fool as not to know how I got my own throne? Do you think that galls me? I thought you knew me better. Of course they’re right; in law. But no one ever takes notice of these things once a marriage has been made.’
Eteoneus said nothing.
‘Do you mean,’ said Yellowhead, ‘that they’ve been thinking that way all the time?’
‘It never came up before. How should it? But they never forgot about her being the daughter of the highest god.’
‘Do you believe it?’
‘Till I know what it pleases the gods to have said about it, I’ll keep my tongue between my teeth.’
‘And then,’ said Yellowhead, jabbing once more at the wasp, ‘there’s this. If she was really the daughter of Zeus she wouldn’t be the daughter of Tyndareus. She’d be no nearer the true line than I am.’
‘I suppose they’d think Zeus a greater king than either you or Tyndareus.’
‘And so would you,’ said Yellowhead, grinning.
‘Yes,’ said Eteoneus. Then, ‘I’ve had to speak out, Son of Atreus. It’s a question of my own life as well as yours. If you set our men fighting-mad against you, you know very well I’ll be with you back to back, and they won’t slit your throat till they’ve slit mine.’
A loud, rich, happy voice, a voice like an uncle’s, was heard singing outside. The door opened. There stood Agamemnon. He was in his best armour, all the bronze newly polished, and the cloak on his shoulders was scarlet, and his beard gleaming with sweet oil. The other two looked like beggars in his presence. Eteoneus rose and bowed to the King of Men. Yellowhead nodded to his brother.
‘Well, Yellowhead,’ said Agamemnon, ‘how are you? Send your squire for some wine.’ He strode into the hut and ruffled the curls on his brother’s head as if they were a child’s. ‘What cheer? You don’t look like a sacker of cities. Moping? Haven’t we won a victory? And got your prize back, eh?’ He gave a chuckle that shook the whole of his big chest.
‘What are you laughing at?’ said Yellowhead.
‘Ah, the wine,’ said Agamemnon, taking the cup from Eteoneus’s hand. He drank at length, put the cup down, sucked his wet moustache, and said, ‘No wonder you’re glum, brother. I’ve seen our prize. Took a look into her hut. Gods!’ He threw his head back and laughed his fill.
‘I don’t know that you and I have any need to talk about my wife,’ said Yellowhead.
‘Indeed we have,’ said Agamemnon. ‘For the matter of that, it might have been better if we’d talked about her before you married. I might have given you some advice. You don’t know how to handle women. When a man does know, there’s never any trouble. Look at me now. Ever heard of Clytemnestra giving me any trouble? She knows better.’
‘You said we had to talk now, not all those years ago.’
‘I’m coming to that. The question is what’s to be done about this woman. And, by the way, what do you want to do?’
‘I haven’t made up my mind. I suppose it’s my own business.’
‘Not entirely. The army has made up its mind, you see.’
‘What’s it to do with them?’
‘Will you never grow up? Haven’t they been told all these years that she’s the cause of the whole thing—of their friends’ deaths and their own wounds and the gods only know what troubles waiting for them when they get home? Didn’t we keep on telling them we were fighting to get Helen back? Don’t they want to make her pay for it?’
‘It would be far truer to say they were fighting for me. Fighting to get me my wife. The gods know that’s true. Don’t rub that wound. I wouldn’t blame the army if they killed me. I didn’t want it this way. I’d rather have gone with a handful of my own men and taken my chance. Even when we got here I tried to settle it by a single combat. You know I did. But if it comes to—’
‘There, there, there, Yellowhead. Don’t start blaming yourself all over again. We’ve heard it before. And if it’s any comfort to you, I see no harm in telling you (now the thing’s over) that you weren’t quite as important in starting the war as you seem to think. Can’t you understand that Troy had to be crushed? We couldn’t go on having her sitting there at the gate to the Euxine, levying tolls on Greek ships and sinking Greek ships and putting up the price of corn. The war had to come.’
‘Do you mean I—and Helen—were just pretexts? If I’d thought—’
‘Brother, you make everything so childishly simple. Of course I wanted to avenge your honour, and the honour of Greece. I was bound to by my oaths. And I also knew—all the Greek kings who had any sense knew—that we had to make an end of Troy. But it was a windfall—a gift from the gods—that Paris ran off with your wife at exactly the right moment.’
‘Then I’d thank you to have told the army the truth at the very outset.’
‘My boy, we told them the part of the truth that they would care about. Avenging a rape and recovering the most beautiful woman in the world—that’s the sort of thing the troops can understand and will fight for. What would be the use of talking to them about the corn-trade? You’ll never make a general.’
‘I’ll have some wine too, Eteoneus,’ said Yellowhead. He drank it fiercely when it was b
rought and said nothing.
‘And now,’ continued Agamemnon, ‘now they’ve got her, they’ll want to see her killed. Probably want to cut her throat on Achilles’s tomb.’
‘Agamemnon,’ said Eteoneus, ‘I don’t know what Menelaus means to do. But the rest of us Spartans will fight if there’s any attempt to kill the Queen.’
‘And you think I’d sit by and watch?’ said Menelaus, looking angrily at him. ‘If it comes to fighting, I’ll be your leader still.’
‘This is very pretty,’ said Agamemnon. ‘But you are both so hasty. I came, Yellowhead, to tell you that the army will almost certainly demand Helen for the priest’s knife. I half-expected you’d say “Good riddance” and hand her over. But then I’d have had to tell you something else. When they see her, as she now is, I don’t think they’ll believe it is Helen at all. That’s the real danger. They’ll think you have a beautiful Helen—the Helen of their dreams—safely hidden away. There’ll be a meeting. And you’ll be the man they’ll go for.’
‘Do they expect a girl to look the same after ten years?’ said Yellowhead.
‘Well, I was a bit surprised when I saw her myself,’ said Agamemnon. ‘And I’ve a notion that you were too.’ (He repeated his detestable chuckle.) ‘Of course we may pass some other prisoner off as Helen. There are some remarkably pretty girls. Or even if they weren’t quite convinced, it might keep them quiet; provided they thought the real Helen was unobtainable. So it all comes to this. If you want you and your Spartans and the woman to be safe, there’s only one way. You must all embark quietly tonight and leave me to play my hand alone. I’ll do better without you.’
‘You’ll have done better without me all your life.’
‘Not a bit, not a bit. I go home as the Sacker of Troy. Think of Orestes growing up with that to back him! Think of the husbands I’ll be able to get for my girls! Poor Clytemnestra will like it too. I shall be happy man.’
IV
I only want justice. And to be let alone. From the very beginning, from the day I married Helen down to this moment, who can say I’ve done him a wrong? I had a right to marry her. Tyndareus gave her to me. He even asked the girl herself and she made no objection. What fault could she find in me after I was her husband? I never struck her. I never raped her. I very seldom even had one of the housegirls to my bed, and no sensible woman makes a fuss about that. Did I ever take her child from her and sacrifice it to the storm-gods? Yet Agamemnon does that, and has a faithful, obedient wife.
