by Byrne Fone
In early morning just as the sun rises I like to go to the balcony that crowns my tower. This is the time when the air is clearest, the morning silent and the view most tranquil, just before the work day begins and the city rises to pursue it tasks. A little smoke has begun to rise from cook fires in the city and from the charcoal burners whose fires burn at the foot of the walls. But no temple yet shows any black smoke of sacrifice, and no chariots clatter in the streets. The guards do not change till the Priam makes his daily progress to the walls to look out on the Achaean camp. Nor have they yet begun to stir. No enemy is about at this very early hour. From here on the highest point of the citadel, I have a clear view in every direction. I can turn north, south, east, and west, and see spread out before me all the lands that my family have ruled since time began. It is at this moment, just as Apollo’s chariot is poised to start its daily traverse across the sky, that I like to greet him, my former lover, author of my gift and misery. From my high vantage I look across the Trojan plain. On it we raise sheep and horses, figs and olives, and there are vineyards. We send fine wool around the world and swift horses, and sometimes chariots with them, and swords and spears heads of bronze, for we are master armorers as well. I wonder how many sharp Achaean blades were made in our own smithies and are destined to drink our blood.
On the high bank of the ridge that rises above the bay one morning--it seems now an eternity ago—the Achaeans appeared. They had come in the night and so silently that no one heard. They drew their ships upon the beach that faces out into the great sea—some call it Aegean—and made a camp upon the high point of the ridge. From their lookout towers they see where the Scamander flows into the bay and they look toward us as we can look toward them. From my tower I can see both their camp and the ships upon the beach. Indeed fair Helen, you did command a thousand ships to sail to Ilium. Sometimes, if I squint my eyes and look carefully, I think I can see among the tiny figures standing on the watchtower looking out toward Troy Agamemnon watching me. I have a rendezvous with him, alas.
Chapter 25
Helen
I stand in the shadow of Priam’s tower, strongest and largest of the fortifications that punctuate the walls of Troy---my back against the cool dark stone of the citadel that Trojans call the Pergamos. It is now just midday. I have been waiting, as have we all, since it is a point of court ritual that all must be in place before the king arrives, just as none may leave before him. Though the sun is high, the wind still buffets this height and I pull the cloak around me, the one Paris gave me. It is of fine wool, trimmed with ermine and with a golden clasp wonderfully worked with an image of the golden apple—an irony I see now but did not think it so then. The wind seems to choose my particular spot to gust, but I am lucky to be wrapped so; the girl who attends me has no cloak and she shivers. I think I should give her my cloak, but why? She, servant though she is, like her masters, like all the others, despises me. I stand at a distance from the small group waiting for the King, sensing the distance they keep from me. I am not, like them, a Trojan.
Soon a crash of arms alerts us as the guard comes to smart attention. Priam, robed in purple and wearing his diadem, carried in a chair, and wearing too the glittering mask that a Trojan King wears so as to hide his face from the irreverent gaze of the common. But these trappings do not conceal his frailty. I can see his hand trembling as it grips the lion head of the arm of his chair. He comes preceded by the Master of Ceremonies, self importantly heading the procession, and surrounded by court chamberlains, guards, fan bearers and boys with incense, and accompanied by an unsmiling Hector and Andromache—one day to be king and queen? Who now can tell.
Priam is carried to the edge of the battlement wall. As he does every day he looks long and hard across the Trojan plain to the distant encampment of the Achaeans. Even from this distance drifting faintly to us, we can hear the shouting of men, the sound of animals, a trumpet blowing. It is always the same, this morning survey—hardly, I always think, a thing of great moment, for what can have changed from the day before, or the day before that, or the one before that? It would surely be enough to dispatch some scout to the walls to see if anything has changed from the night before and come back to the king with the news. But as age overtakes him he has become suspicious, doubting his advisors, needing to see it all himself, have a hand in everything that once he might have left to generals or to Hector. The king decides and so it is done and what might have been simple recognizance has come to be yet another ritual in the many ceremonies with which this aging monarch loves now to fill his empty days.
As King and commander he comes to take the measure of his enemy, staring at the plain below that stretches to the sea, which now in the mid-day sun is a vast silver expanse tinged with cerulean blue. He gestures toward the shore where the Achaeans wait, they the wolves and we the sheep in the fold. He inclines his head and some gorgeously dressed flunky whispers sagely into his ear. It may be he is a general for all I know. Priam nods vaguely, says something in return and makes a gesture toward the plain. Hector as usual looks into the sunrise and his face remains grim. It is the same each time, and there seems to be little point to it all for nothing changes, day after day after day. And for day after day—for how long?-- there has been nothing but silence from the Achaeans. The camp has been obscured by a pall of heavy black smoke.
But today is, suddenly, different. From the direction of the Achaean camp we hear the sound of a trumpet, then more and more join in, risings note upon note and cascading across the plain from the sea to us. Hector rushes to the parapet, shading his eyes with his hand. More whispers are exchanged, urgently. Hector speaks quietly to the king, and then commands are given and a soldier, with a salute and the clank of arms, hurries away. Hector, barely bowing to the King, rushes away too, shouting for Aeneas, his second in command, to follow. I do not move from my place, but I know what it means as well as any. On the loom of fate another strand, perhaps the last, is being woven. I am oddly calm as I confront the possibility that my journey of nine long years may now be at an end. How long I have waited for this day, waited here in Troy. The wind has picked up. Is it merely an echo or can I hear as if from a distance the voices of untold numbers of men chanting in unison? It is no trick. I hear it—“Ag-a-mem-non! Ag-a-mem-non! Ag-a-mem-non!”--louder and louder, a war cry carried upon the wind. I shudder against the sudden cold.
Chapter 26
Andromache
Now we all are waiting, the men on the battle field, the women here in the city. Hector, Paris, Aeneas, Antenor, all of Priam’s other sons-- Deiphobus, Helenus, Pammon, Polites, Antiphus, Hipponous, Polydorus, and Troilus—and Priam himself, are now outside the walls. We, their wives and daughters—Hecabe, Helen, Kassandra, Hecabe’s other daughters Creusa, Laodice, and Polyxena—are within. I watched my husband leave this morning, hurriedly, for the attack was sudden. He kissed Astynax, our son, our jewel. He held my hand for a heartbeat. We kissed. My heart broke, for I fear at each parting that this kiss will be the last. Then he was gone to bid farewell to Hecabe and then to mount his horse and ride to battle.
We wait as we have been waiting for summer after summer, winter after winter. We have waited as the leaves fall and the snow flies, as the buds open and the water rushes down the streams in a torrent to the bay. We have waited, enduring, as the sun rises every day higher and hotter in the sky, as the river’s torrent grows less and less until the flies swarm in the heat above the dry river course and the grain is ready to be harvested. We have waited until we see the winter skies began to lower once again. I wait for him—my lord, my Hector who I love-- as he too waits on that barren field for Paris and Menelaus to fight to the death.
I hope it will be to the death. I hope one of them dies. I don’t care which. Let Menelaus win and take accursed Helen back. We can do without her gold. We have gold enough for all the ages. Deep in the vaults below the city it lies in rich and gleaming splendor. Should the Achaeans ever see it they will stare in wonder, nev
er having imagined in all their dreams of greed the real vastness of that horde. Or let Paris triumph. It is immaterial to me. Let him slay Menelaus, drive a spear into his heart or through his eye to pierce his brain. Then he will keep Helen. The Achaeans will depart. She will grow old; men will care less and less. Paris’ eye already wanders. Eventually she will not matter.
How have I become so callous and so unfeeling? I was not that way when first Hector brought me here, the blessing of my father coming with me. Our match was a union of our houses made by Eetion my father, king of Thebe, and Priam. It was a love match too and joy came with it. My brothers danced at our wedding. Priam presided and welcomed me with love to Troy. I was given love and gave it in full measure in return. On my wedding day Priam still stood straight; Hecabe’s hair was just beginning to be touched with grey. There was no Helen then.
Priam too waits for death; I can see it in his face. He is brave, is our king, and would even now die to protect his queen should need demand. But old age respects neither slave nor monarch, and his hand trembles. Hecabe is stooped and her hair is as white as the snow upon Ida. Now she prefers to stay alone in her chambers, allowing one old trusted servant to attend her. To please the king, and dressed in the splendor of a bygone age like a phantom from another time, she sometimes appears at a banquet or attends from time to time in the temple. But since the war began, she retreats more and more every day. Simply put, she is afraid, like all of us.
I try not to show my fear. I must set an example. But I see fear everywhere; in the faces of my women, in the eyes of the people who I see going to and fro about their work when sometimes I am carried in a litter to the lower town. Now that the men are gone, save those too old or too young to fight, the streets of the city are filled only with women, talking in low tones in the market or sitting in front of their houses, their black shawls pulled about the heads, kneading bread, or cutting up bits of lamb and vegetables that with some barley they will make into a soup for their children, for whom they all fear.
In the palace the days are muted too, without the men. Kassandra, mad as ever, is kept in her tower from whence we sometimes hear her call, no doubt warning us of something. Who can know? Who can care? We do not need her warnings to know that all is not well.
And there is Helen, who brought it all upon us. Her maids, loyal not to her but to me, report her every move. She waits too, alone like all of us. She puts a brave face on it, for as she always reminds us, shrilly, she is born divine, a queen in her own right and save for Priam and Hecabe, outranks us all. When some one of us, in spite of protocol or to flout it, leaves a room before her, or fails to make the obeisance she believes her due, she looks sullen, then angry, and then rushes, sometimes in tears, to her rooms, there to sooth herself with wine and poppy juice and to stare into her mirror and watch age stare back. Does she still hope to lure Paris back into her bed? Or does she think one day to find Menelaus again between her thighs? We all wonder if she spies upon us and sends out secret couriers to aid the Achaeans. Many think so, but none can prove it.
Yes, we are a city of women, Trojan women, waiting behind the walls.
Chapter 27
Helen
“My lady, the king commands you.” I see Priam beckoning to me as the Chamberlain, who has come to where I stand, bows to me, indicating by a deferential gesture that I should approach the king. I follow the chamberlain to Priam. He absently extends his hand, but does not look at me; his eyes are still fixed upon the spectacle unfolding on the plain below the city. I kiss his hand, and with this he looks at me. A flicker of a smile, an old man’s smile, sweet and vague, crosses his lips. Of all the family Priam is the most kind. The others are always frigidly polite. If needs be Hecabe, ever royal, nods distantly when we meet or chats stiltedly when we must be together at some function, but in essence she ignores me. Andromache and Hector obviously detest me, but like Hecabe, their hatred has become dogged and sullen; they put up with me and make small talk if they must, but think of me as something that must be born, like an incurable disease. Who knows what Kassandra thinks? Before they imprisoned her when she fell into a gibbering and shrieking fit, in the rushing incomprehensibility of her ravings I too often heard my name linked with warnings of Troy’s doom.
Far below the tower spreads the broad panorama of the plain of Troy. The distant ocean, an amethyst blue, is broken by the glitter of breaking silver waves; the horizon sharply etches a divide between the sea and the sky bright with the mid-day sun. Looking at the plain is to see it as if through a haze of shifting and translucent dust. In a line parallel with the shore of the bay I can see our forces racing into the sun, shields raised, spears at ready. Toward them in a seemingly endless stream like a river at flood tide the Achaeans are pouring down from the ridge, through their earthworks and across the Scamander, which now at the end of summer is low enough even beyond the ford, for men, horses, and chariots to cross it quickly and with ease. The dust breaks into a million silver motes that make the two huge armies racing towards one another bent on deadly collision seem somehow unreal, an almost magical vision. But it is no vision; it is war. Shouts rise up to us, war cries, imprecations, threats of death, the sound of horse’s hooves drumming on the earth, the inchoate roar that armies make as they charge one another, bent on death.
Priam reaches to take my hand. I am astonished, but I fold mine in his. His skin is old and papery, dry with age, but his grip is stronger than I thought.
“Are they coming to take you, my Lady Helen?” he asks. It is always “My Lady Helen.” He is always courtly and formal, and never unkind.
“I do not know my lord,” I reply, “that is in the laps of the gods.”
“Yes,” he says, “there are always things that we cannot control.”
Just then a chariot with driver and an armored warrior in it swerves from the edge of the Trojan line and races between the advancing forces and after circling three times in an ever decreasing spiral, comes to a stop in a cloud of dust. Even from here I can see that this sudden appearance has caused some confusion on both sides, for some of the men in front ranks falter and seem to slow.
Priam said, “Who is it my lady, these old eyes are not so sharp as they were when I used to lead my armies into battle. Then I could see a hawk mount in a moment to the sky, or see the flash of a spear point of some soldier hidden in a thicket in my path and dispatch him with a single throw without ever slowing my advance. Now it is all dim. Who rides there? Who comes between my army and the advancing Achaeans ?”
When watching a tragedy from the very highest row of the theatre, the actors on the stage far below seem to be miniature men, playing out the realities of life. Yet even at that far remove one can recognize a favorite player from the way he gestures, stands or speaks. And so I knew in moment the identity of the warrior who waited in the chariot before the two armies. It was Paris—my Paris—commanding the warring sides to silence.
Priam plucked at my sleeve.
“Who is it, Lady?”
“It is your son, Prince Paris, my Lord. He stands before both armies and is speaking to them.”
“Ah,” said the King. “Prince Paris. Yes, my son. And your husband too, Lady.”
From below there rose up to us a cheer that came from both sides, in response it must be, to what Paris has said. And as if in answer to it from the Achaean side now another chariot comes, this accompanied by an even louder cheer from the Achaeans. There is only one man in it.
“What is it now, Helen? Tell me what you see.” Priam’s voice seemed frightened as if he already knew.
How can I not recognize this man? That way of holding his head low, looking out from beneath his helmet, the broad shoulders and the rigid determination of his stance. Have I not slept with him in our broad bed, bearing there for him an heir?
Though a mime’s dumb show has no words to explain the import of the play, and though we could hear no words echo up to us from the scene being silently enacted in the theatre far below,
it took no adept in drama to divine it: Menelaus had come to fight for me.
The king said, “ You know I cannot let you go. You must stay. For his sake.”
Was there an edge of desperation in his voice?
“I fear, my Lord,” I said, “neither you nor I have a choice.”
Chapter 28
Hecabe
Antiope comes to me to tell me more news. Paris--my son--will fight the monster Menelaus. They say Menelaus is a hulk of a man; red-haired! And uncouth and a boor, like his brother Agamemnon. They are both brigands; adventurers all of them. Can you expect them to be any better than barbarians? And now Paris is to fight that brute. I must pray to the Great Goddess for his safety. Things go from bad to worse.
Paris, Paris; headstrong, so careless. He is the cause of all our grief, yet I cannot help but love him. He survives. When I was carrying Paris I had a dream that the city was burning. Kassandra, hair flying every way, face contorted, ran through the palace shrieking that my child would cause the destruction of the city if he lived. Kill him, she said. We did not. We took the easy route and sent him away, perhaps thinking that he would die, but hoping that he would not. And he survived and came home. The city still stands. Another reason to doubt Kassandra. The king was right to put her away.
But what if Paris dies? Dies for Helen? I feel my throat close up, my heart pounds. I must sit down. I ring the bell by my table and Antiope comes, She sees my face and knows what is wrong right away and goes to the table, mixes wine and poppy juice to calm me. “There, there, mistress, drink this. I have gone to the temple and prayed and offered to Aphrodite for Lord Paris. All will be well.” We are close and I can talk to her like to no one else. Somehow, whether it is because of the quick effects of the poppy juice, or from some divine comfort, I am reassured. I smiled at her and took her hand. She is good woman, sweet and simple. She worships Aphrodite as her special goddess. Aphrodite she is called here in Troy, but in my land we call her Cybele, the Great Mother. In Phrygia before Priam came to my father’s kingdom to woo me, I was her priestess. I do not speak of her in Troy for our Trojan men fear the madness that comes with her worship, and so I honor her secretly. In the mountains under the moon, when women worship the Mother they do not need men save as a sacrifice. Will the Mother protect my son, for me, her priestess? Or will she demand his blood? Though I hate her, this I know of Helen. She is an adept of the Mother too. When she hears of this battle between the men who claim her, for whom and for what will she pray?
