The War At Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  Gravely the priest reminded him of the terrible fate that had fallen on Troy when his father Laomedon had tried to cheat the gods, and the priestess remained implacable in her conviction that the child at least must die. Had not Hecuba’s own dream warned her that she carried the ruin of the city in her womb? Could it be wise to let it live at such dreadful cost?

  ‘You have brought this evil into the world,’ she said. ‘Have the strength and wisdom to let it die by your own hand.’

  When Hecuba could only wail out her refusal, the priest turned his gaze on the king. ‘Will you risk all you have built for the sake of an ill-omened child?’

  ‘I have served Apollo well,’ Priam protested. ‘How have I wronged him that he should persecute me so?’

  The priest opened his hands. ‘Apollo looks deep into the well of time. His concern is for the protection of this city.’

  ‘If your kingdom is to live,’ the priestess insisted, ‘the child must die.’

  ‘My sister and her newborn child are already dead at my command,’ Priam cried. ‘Would you have all the Furies roost in my mind? How much blood guilt do you think I can bear?’ The priest looked away. ‘It’s not we who demand this sacrifice. The king must choose between his city and the child.’ Looking for mercy where none was to be found, Priam lifted his eyes. ‘Then let it be the child. But not at my wife’s hand. And not at mine either.’ He dragged the wailing infant from his wife’s arms and gave it to the priestess. ‘Do with it as you will,’ he gasped, ‘and leave us to our grief.’

  With Hecuba screaming behind them, the priests left the chamber and handed over the baby to be killed by a palace guard. But the man could not bring himself to do the deed. When he consulted his friends, one of them said, ‘Give the job to Agelaus. He’s used to butchery.’

  And so, hours later, in the village where he lived in the Dardanian Mountains beyond the plain of Troy, the king’s chief herdsman was drawn from sleep by a horseman hammering at his door. Told what was required of him, Agelaus looked down where the infant’s swaddling bands were coming unwrapped.

  ‘It seems a fine boy,’ he said. ‘Why does he have to die?’ ‘Because the king commands it,’ the horseman replied. Wondering why this unwanted task should have fallen to him, Agelaus shook his head. ‘Did the king say by what means the child should die?’

  ‘By any means you choose.’ The man wheeled his mount to gallop away. ‘This thing is the will of the gods,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Be free of it.’

  Though he had slaughtered countless animals in his time, Agelaus had no more stomach than the guard for cutting an infant’s throat. Frowning down at the scrap of life in his arms, he muttered, ‘If the gods think you should die, let the gods attend to it.’ Then he took the child to a forest glade on the slopes of Mount Ida and left it there to perish or survive as fate decided.

  Three days later, driven by his wife’s insistence, the herdsman returned to the glade. When he saw the tracks of a bear headed that way, he expected to find nothing more than bloodied swaddling bands, but as he came closer a thin sound of crying drifted towards him on the breeze. Hurrying through the brakes, he found the baby still alive, bawling for food and almost blue with cold. Instantly his heart went out to it.

  Holding the infant against his chest for warmth, he said, ‘If the gods have sent a she-bear to suckle you, boy, they must mean you to live.’ Tenderly, he placed the baby in the wallet slung at his side, and brought it home to his wife. It was she who spotted the birthmark like a kiss on the baby’s neck and her heart was quickly lost to it. This child had been sent to them, she declared, and she would care for it. She named him Paris, which means ‘wallet’, because of the strange way in which he had come to her.

  As the years went by, Paris soon distinguished himself both in courage and intelligence from the herdsmen round him. Even as a child he showed no fear among the bulls, and his greatest delight was to watch them fight one another and to see his own beast triumph. Under the patient tutelage of Agelaus, he soon proved himself a good huntsman and a skilful archer too. And he was still only ten years old on the day when he used his bow for a deadlier purpose than shooting wildfowl, though that had been his only intention when he took off into the woods.

  The sun was thunderously hot that day and the air heavy. Paris had set out cheerfully enough but by early afternoon he was feeling drowsy and irritable. Casting about in the bracken for the arrows he had loosed and lost, he felt as though the thunder had got inside his head, so with only an old buck-rabbit and a partridge hanging at his belt, the boy was coming listlessly back down the hillside through the trees when he heard a restive sound of lowing from the cattle penned below.

  Dismayed that his father had decided to move the herd without telling him, Paris was about to run down to join the drive when he heard men shouting -- unfamiliar voices, strangely accented, barking out commands. He came to a halt while still under the cover of the trees and saw a gang of cattle-lifters breaking down a fence that Agelaus had built that spring.

  He had counted nine of them, all armed with spears or swords, when more shouts drew his eyes to the right where Agelaus was running across the hillside from the settlement, followed by two of his herdsmen. They had no more than staves and a single hunting-spear between them. A burly man wearing a helmet and a studded leather jerkin advanced to meet them, drawing his sword and shouting to the others for support. Paris’s grip tightened on his bow. He saw that there were seven arrows left in his quiver. Swallowing, dry-mouthed, he took one of them between his fingers and nocked it to his bowstring.

  By now six of the rustlers confronted Agelaus and his followers on the open meadow, and the other three were coming up quickly. As Agelaus grabbed the spear from the older man at his side, the helmeted leader brandished his sword and ordered one of his spearmen to throw. The man lifted his spear and was about to loose it when an arrow whistled out of the trees and pierced his neck. Herdsmen and rustlers alike watched in amazement as a gush of blood spluttered from his mouth, the spear fell from his hand and he crumpled to the ground. Seconds later, with a sparking of metal against metal, another arrow glanced off the leader’s helmet. Taking advantage of the shock, Agelaus hurled his spear with such force that it drove through the jerkin and dragged the man down to the ground where he lay writhing and slobbering.

  Again, for several moments, everyone stood transfixed.

  A third arrow flew wide and stuck quivering in the grass. The rustlers had lost their leader but all three herdsmen were now weaponless with seven armed men standing only yards away. Paris loosed another shot at a scrawny rustler, who instantly dropped his spear to clutch at the shaft stuck in his thigh. The remaining cattle-lifters turned uncertainly, not knowing how many assailants were hidden in the trees. When a fourth man grunted and stared down to see an arrow trembling in his belly, three of the others started to run off down the hill. Moments later, unnerved as much by the unexpected alteration in their fortunes as by the groans of those dying around them, the others made off, stopping only to aid their injured comrade.

  Agelaus and his companions were watching them hobble away down the hill when Paris came out from between the trees, carrying his bow. He heard his friends calling to him as if from a far distance. The air wobbled about his head. His throat was very dry. ‘I had only two arrows left,’ he mumbled as he fought free of Agelaus s embrace. Then he stood, looking down at where the dead leader lay with the spear-shaft through his lungs. Turning away in recoil, he saw the body of the man with the barb through his throat, and a third, who gazed up at him as if beseeching him to take back the arrow from his belly.

  A nimbus of darkness circled behind the boy’s eyes. He was watching the dying rustler choke on a gush of blood from his mouth when that dark circle widened and thickened so swiftly that it consumed all the light in the day.

  He woke to the sound of water running over stones. He was beside a river in the shade of a thatched awning, lying on a litter, and the fl
ash of white rapids came harsh against his eyes. The air about his head was aromatic with herbs. Savouring the mingled scents of balm, camomile and lavender, he moved his head and moaned a little at the dizziness. Then he saw the grey haired man sitting on a nearby rock, fingering the long curls of his beard.

  A girl’s voice said, ‘I think he’s awake.’ Paris turned to look at her. ‘Yes,’ she cried, ‘he is,’ and her face broke into a bright, gap-toothed smile. Her hair also hung in curls, but so fair and fine they might have been spun from the light about her head. Wearing a white smock marked with grass stains, she was playing with a mouse that ran between her small hands. She was perhaps six years old. At her back, some distance away, were two grassy hummocks with stone portals, which looked like burial mounds.

  ‘Bring him some water,’ her father said, putting a gently restraining hand to the boy’s shoulder. ‘Lie still for a while,’ he smiled. ‘All will be well.’

  Paris tilted his face to watch the girl as she stretched out to hold a drinking cup under a freshet of water bursting from a dark cleft in the rocks. The inside of his head felt burned out with pain. It was as though his violent dreams of fire and smoke and blazing buildings were still smouldering in there.

  The girl came back and lifted the cup to his lips. ‘You’ve been very sick, Alexander,’ she said with the air of one endowed with privileged knowledge, ‘but my father has the gift of healing. You’ll soon be strong again.’

  The water flowed across his tongue to break like light in his throat. He licked his parched lips, drank some more, then laid his head back. Struggling to retrieve the recent past, he remembered how the flies had gathered round the bloody wounds of the men he had slaughtered. His breath whimpered a little. Then he said, ‘My name isn’t Alexander.’

  ‘No, it’s Paris, I know. But you’ve been given another name since you drove off those cattle-lifters. They say you may only be a boy but you’ve become a defender of men, so that’s what they call you now -- Alexander. I like it better.’

  ‘That’s enough now,’ her father said. ‘Give him time to come to himself.’ He smiled down at the boy again. ‘I’m Apollo’s priest at this shrine. My name’s Cebren. Your father brought you here three days ago to be cured of the burning fever. He’ll be glad to learn that the mouse-god has looked kindly on you. In two days he’ll come to bring you home. All you need now is rest.’

  ‘It’s all right, Alexander,’ the girl said. ‘You needn’t be afraid.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’ Her arms were so thin they made him think of the stems of flowers. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Oenone,’ she answered. ‘I’m the nymph of this fountain. One day I shall be a healer too.’

  Paris smiled vaguely and, almost immediately, fell asleep again.

  Agelaus came with a mule to carry his foster-son home bringing grateful offerings for the god and for the priest who served him. Received as a hero among his friends, Paris soon forgot how his mind had sickened at things he had done. In the years that followed, his boyish face developed the strong-lined, handsome features of a noble young man whose bodily strength had grown to match his courage. Renowned also for his good sense, he was often called upon for his counsel or to settle arguments among the herdsmen. So, as Agelaus aged and his muscles stiffened, Paris became the guardian of the herd, and out of love for the work he began to take an obsessive pride in breeding a formidable pedigree of fighting bulls.

  Only once across the years was his chosen champion defeated in a fight. At that spring fair, a wild bull, blacker than a thundercloud, came down from the mountain, scattering the villagers and spreading alarm among the herd as it broke through the fence and began to storm and gore about the paddock. The bull fought with such ardour that Paris could only watch in astonishment while it bore down on his own favoured animal, trampled it under its hooves, and then twisted an immense horn through its breast to puncture the lungs. Though he was left aghast at the sight, the youth had no hesitation in honouring such ferocity with the victor’s crown. Panting in its sweat, the bull quivered before him, tail swishing, black pelt splashed with blood. Paris gazed into the fierce roll of its eye. He heard someone mutter that the beast should be killed before it did more harm. Firmly he shook his head. ‘No,’ he entwined the crown of flowers about its horns, ‘this bull goes free. Let him roam the mountains at his pleasure.’

  Snorting in the dusty light, the bull dipped the blunt prow of its head as though in salute. Moments later, with the garland still gaily wreathed about its horns, it galloped back into the mountains.

  When Agelaus remarked that never in all his long years as a herdsman had he seen a bull behave so strangely, Paris smiled and said, ‘I think he was possessed by a god.’

  At the spring fair two years later, Paris was garlanding the creamy-white curls of the bull he currently favoured, when he looked up and saw a young woman watching him from the edge of the trees across the paddock. Dappled sunlight shone off her hair. She was tall and lithe, and held a flower at her lips. All his senses instantly quickened to her presence. Then his heart jumped at the smile with which she studied him for a long moment. By the time she glanced modestly away he knew that never before had he seen anything so beautiful.

  Unable to think of a sensible word to say, he crossed the few sunlit yards stretching between them and held out his hand to take the flower. Scarcely breathing, she watched him lift it to his lips. Then he strode back to where his bull panted in the afternoon light and twisted the stem into the garland already laid across its horns. Paris glanced back at the girl. ‘Who are you? I don’t recall having seen you before.’

  Smiling she said, ‘Perhaps if I had horns and a tail and snorted like a bull you would remember me.’

  ‘I can’t believe I would ever forget you.’

  ‘But you clearly have,’ she laughed. ‘No doubt you will again.’

  ‘Never. I swear it as I am a true man.’

  She tilted her gaze away. ‘Perhaps that is still to be proven -- despite that leopard-skin you wear.’

  He flushed at that. ‘My name is Paris. No one doubts my courage. Or my faith.’

  ‘I recall a boy whose bravery showed such promise,’ she said. ‘They called you Alexander then. You were a long sleeper in those days.’

  Paris came closer, fixing her with a puzzled frown. The bright lilt of her voice brought the sound of water to his mind - white water, water over stones. ‘You’re the fountain nymph,’ he said. ‘From the shrine in the mountains. Your father healed me of the burning fever. You brought me water in a cup.’

  ‘And you have never thought of me since!’

  Again he flushed. ‘You were only a child who played with a mouse.’

  ‘While you were the great defender of men!’ She laughed at his evident discomfiture, and then looked away into the trees, smiling still.

  Not far from where they stood, the herdsmen and their wives were gathering under the awnings for the feast with children running noisily round them.

  ‘Did you come down from the mountains to see the fair?’ he asked. ‘They say that King Anchises and his son will come to watch the games.’

  ‘I came because the river told me to come.’

  She glanced up at him. Their eyes might have been fixed on the same shaft of light. In a lower, less certain voice, she added, ‘I have thought about you every day since then.’

  Paris stood astonished as she turned away, back into the trees. Someone called out to him to join the feast. He raised a hand and answered that he would come soon. Then the girl’s name came back to him. He whispered it to himself aloud: ‘Oenone.’ But she was gone among the trees. Drawn by the thought that he could not let such beauty vanish from his life forever, he followed her into the green shades. She stopped when he called out her name. Timidly they talked for a time. Paris grew bolder. Laughing, Oenone turned away from him and ran deeper into the cover of the trees. He gave chase, following the sound of her laughter till he came out in a
sunlit glade by the riverbank where the water sleeked its light through stones. It was there that she let herself be found.

  Soon they were all but inseparable. Sometimes in the cool of the mornings they would hunt deer or wild boar together, traversing the mountain gorges where Paris carved Oenone’s name into the bark of trees as loud torrents of melt-water cascaded down the rocks around them. And in the heat of the day they would often lie together in high alpine meadows that were bright with wild flowers as they watched the herds graze at their summer pasture.

  Ignorant of his origins, free from all worldly cares, delighting in the strenuous country life which was all he had ever known, adored by his foster parents, admired by his friends, and deeply loved by Oenone, Paris might well have been considered as happy as a man can ever hope to be. Yet as the seasons passed a vague restlessness began to seize his soul. Not that he could have named it for himself, or that he was troubled by feelings of discontent; but an obscure sense of horizons wider than that of the silent summits round him sometimes unsettled the reveries of the hours when he was alone. And it was on such an afternoon, while the heat was building over the high green pasture below the snowline on Mount Ida, that fate ambushed him.

  The Judgement of Paris

  ‘So you see,’ Hermes was saying, ‘there’ll be no peace till this argument is sorted out. We need an impartial judge to settle the issue and the general opinion was that you were the best man for the job.’

  ‘Me?’ Paris protested. ‘How can a herdsman be expected to sort out a quarrel among the gods?’

  Hermes tipped back the brim of his hat with his staff and cocked a wry eye at him. ‘You have an eye for beauty, don’t you? And Ares was impressed by your sense of justice. Anyway, the only thing the goddesses are agreed on is to abide by your decision. You should be flattered.’