Helen of Troy (100 page)

W
hile I had been inside the house, the conflagration had engulfed its neighbors, turning the buildings into funeral pyres flaring up by the hundreds. The unmistakable smell of human flesh now rode the air, familiar from funerals. People, then, had lain down on their beds drowsy with wine and awakened to a couch of fire. But they could hardly have lain serene like the draped corpses on their pyres.

“Faster, faster!” Menelaus shoved me, his broad hand spread out across my back, his arm behind it like a rod. He was still shaking the other one, and droplets of blood flew from it. In the sea of blood around us, they disappeared quickly.

Like a river in spate, the people were all rushing toward the gates, screaming and wailing. One man stood like a rock in the midst of them, looking longingly up the hill, trying to go in the opposite direction. We were swept past him; I heard him chanting, “I must go back, I must, I forgot to close the storeroom door.” Then we were gone, past him.

The ground flattened out, and suddenly we were squeezed through the narrow passage just before the gates, then we burst outside. A sword hissed past my head, and Menelaus yelled, “You fool!” and hit a soldier who was stationed by the gate to kill people as they emerged.

“Oh, sorry, Your Grace,” he said. “I did not see who you were.”

“Fool!” Menelaus snapped again.

“But in the darkness they all look alike,” the soldier said. “How’s a man to tell who’s Greek and who’s Trojan?”

“You ought to know your own commander!” Menelaus yelled. “Now go back to the killing!”

Smartly, the man turned back to his task, attacking the helpless people as they poured through the gates; another soldier on the other side made sure none escaped. As the ground filled with bodies, they were dragged away so that the flow of the escapees was not hindered. Then they, too, would be pulled off as soon as they were dead.

“Along here!” Menelaus pointed with his sword to a path lit by flickering torches. In the shadows I could see lumps and I knew they were bodies. Behind me a roar filled the air; I turned to see Troy one flaming pillar, encircled by its collar of walls—molten glowing red with a black ring. The flames sang, keening on the air.

“Keep moving.” Menelaus shook me.

“Turn and look,” I told him. “At least behold what you have done.”

Grunting, he turned. Then even he was silent, lost in awe at the crackle of the flames, the dying city.

The front of my gown was soaked in blood, clinging to my skin. With trembling fingers I wrenched off the brooch, its source, and handed it to Menelaus. “There is much more to come and I cannot be bathed in more blood.” If the brooch were to weep drops of blood for each Trojan, the fields would be flooded.

He turned it over in his hand as if he did not recognize it. “And why not? You are the cause of the blood.”

His attention was on the brooch. I turned to flee, but one arm shot out and his hand closed on me like a raptor’s talon. “Not ever again, my lady,” he said. “You shall never escape or flee me again.” He tossed the brooch into the darkness. “It was to help you count the cost of your love. Now
you
look, and see what you have cost Troy. Its life. Now move.” He shoved me forward.

It seemed a very long way to the shore where the ships were beached. Always behind me I could hear the convulsions of the city in its death throes; flames lit up the plain in throbbing flickers. Gradually the smell of the sea embraced us and overpowered the smell of the fire, and I could hear voices and see people milling beside tall dark shadows.

Menelaus gestured to someone and bellowed, “Tie her up and put her with the others. And mind you, use strong rope and a good knot. On second thought, make that a chain.” He grinned at me, a horrid fixed curve on his mouth. “Like all snakes, she is good at escapes.”

I was chained to a post like a wild animal, my wrists shackled and my feet bound. As dawn came, I saw there were others up and down the beach tethered like me. There was also a stockade fence confining other, presumably more docile prisoners. Even in this dim light I could see that there were no men at the stakes. So no Trojan men would be allowed to live; those not perishing directly in the flames would be killed.

As day lightened, the full horror surrounding me was gradually revealed. The fields were strewn with so many bodies it seemed impossible Troy could have held so many living. As far as my eye could see, telltale dark bulges and lumps lay unmoving. Each little dot, each mound, was someone who had been alive yesterday, before the horse was dragged into Troy. No crops had ever been so plentiful in the fields; no harvest ever so rich.

The seashore began to grow crowded as men returned from Troy, dragging spoils with them. They were singing, laughing gleefully. As they converged, singly and in groups, they heaved their takings onto a pile that grew as I watched. Swords, spears, armor, pedestals, curtains, lyres, inlaid tables, pottery, decorated boxes, bolts of linen, board games, pitchers, ladles, bronze mirrors, pipes, and medicines and ointments created a mountain of the remnants of Troy. Each piece seemed to cry out for its owner, the person who had played its strings, beheld her face in its reflection. Was my weaving there? Its center had been unfinished. Now most likely singed and scorched, the center was complete, the ending of the story told in its blackened threads.

Was Hector’s armor there? No, something so famous would be like gold or jewels and claimed by Agamemnon. Paris’s armor, his helmet? At the funeral games a Trojan had claimed them; now, if they were not melted, they were most likely buried in the pile of booty.

I saw groups of men swaying around another huge mound, putting offerings on it. This must be the tumulus of Achilles, the place where he and Patroclus were buried. Now their victorious countrymen were telling them about the fall of Troy, trying to share it with them by leaving them tokens of the spoils.

The mist and blue light of dawn were gone, replaced by sun and a brisk breeze. The waters of the Hellespont sparkled, clean and laughing, sweeping out to sea. Nothing floated on them. The dead instead were landbound, lying like boundary stones as far as the eye could see. Amongst them were the corpses of horses, the famous horses of Troy. The Greeks, knowing they could not transport them back, had slaughtered them, destroying more of Troy’s riches. The orchards had been chopped down, too, as if the trees were their enemies. There must be nothing of worth left to Troy.

I struggled against my chains. I could not even shield my eyes, and the sun was glaring into them. The men were starting to file past me and gape, muttering and pointing.

It was all back. The staring, the lip-smacking—all I had left behind when I fled with Paris to freedom. Oh, I was back in the prison that enveloped me even without chains.

Soon Menelaus was standing in front of me, his legs spread, hands on his hips. I recognized his knees—strange the things that identify a person and never change. I did not want to look at his face, so I kept my eyes on his knees.

“Had enough?” he said. “Are you ready to behave?”

Now I could not endure even the sight of his knees. I shut my eyes.

“Get her up and into the tent,” he barked, and I felt hands fumbling with my chains and freeing me. Standing up, I was dizzy. They spun me around and pushed me toward a tent, but not before I looked back at the black smoke streaming into the sky, marking the place where Troy had been.

The tent was filled with weeping women. None were old—all those had been left behind. These were young and strong enough to serve either bed or kitchen duty for their new masters—perhaps both. Some were sitting and staring unmoving at their laps; others were walking restlessly about. None seemed to really see anything; their eyes were dull and glazed.

Crouched in a corner were the princesses of Troy, in a place set aside for the high-ranking. I saw Cassandra, Laodice, Ilona, and Polyxena. As I approached them, I saw they were shielding their mother, who lay stretched and stiff on the ground. I tried to kneel down and touch her forehead, but they pushed me back.

“I saw what happened in the courtyard,” I whispered. “But in the confusion I was swept out into the street. Blessings to your father, and to your brother.”

Laodice said, “They had their proper pyre. The last funeral rites that Troy will ever offer.”

Cassandra’s eyes were fixed, staring ahead. I had seen what had befallen her, too, but I would say nothing. Perhaps the others did not know of it, and for others to know makes it more real.

“Creusa is dead,” said Ilona. “We saw them attack her. Aeneas—no one has seen him. They were not together when she was slain.”

Polyxena recounted, in her sweet voice, which made it all the more terrible, that her little sister Philomena had perished in the palace, Antimachus was dead, Aesacus was missing, and Panthous died trying to open one of his devices to rain down destruction on the Greeks, a device that crushed him instead. Antenor had survived, and his wife Theano, who was here in this tent.

“Deiphobus is dead,” I told them. “Menelaus killed him in his bed.”

“Helenus is here, but the Greeks will not allow him to speak to us.”

“Why are we here?” I asked. “Why are they keeping us in here?”

“To auction us off.” Cassandra suddenly came to life and spoke. “They will let the men bid on us. Then they take us back to Greece with them. But they won’t do that for me. I am spoken for. I go with Agamemnon.”

I drew a deep breath. Could this be true? Why would Agamemnon choose her? The virgin prophetess, now despoiled, not even pretty—why would the high commander choose her from all the women of Troy?

Fleeting within my mind I saw her at Mycenae, saw her with Clytemnestra, then saw . . . I blinked and it vanished, a scarlet flash. Greece was waiting. Greece had been waiting all these years, and it had not ceased to exist, but lurked like a beast to devour us all when we returned. It was all back, then, not just the staring of the men but the lowering walls of stone and soaring mountains and the families left alone all this time. The men, returning and trying to take up where they had left off, would find they could not, that time never permits that, time changes everything in a thousand subtle ways, so that even the walls they touch are not the same.

“You’ll avenge us, then.” From the floor Hecuba spoke. “The daughter of Priam will be the one to avenge him, not one of his many sons.” A scraping sound like a scudding leaf was her laughter. “The gods are amused.”

“Mother.” Polyxena raised Hecuba up, embraced her.

“So we know who has perished, who still lives?” Hecuba asked.

“None of us lives,” said Ilona.

Hecuba looked around her. “Where is Andromache?”

One by one her daughters shook their heads. “We have not seen her.”

Nor had I.

They fed us barley gruel dished out from a common pot, and left us to sleep on the ground. We lay down, and passed the first night in which there was no Troy. Occasionally, when the wind shifted, I could smell ashes and smoke through the tent cloth. But the prevailing winds were from the north and they were clean.

Soldiers came in and separated the women, taking Priam’s family and me outside and pushing us toward a substantial wooden house that stood at the end of the line of ships. Stools and benches had been set up outside it, filled with onlookers.

“This must be the auction,” murmured Ilona, her head bowed. She did not look at the men squirming on their seats like little boys.

They would not auction me. Menelaus had claimed me. Or would he, in revenge, give me to a slave? No matter. He could not know that to me it was all the same. I had died with Paris, died in Troy. And a slave, whom I had never seen before, would be easier to endure than Menelaus, with his list of grievances.

They made us stand in a row. Then they made a show of putting Hecuba first, in recognition of her former status.

An old man rose to preside. Nestor! Now my eyes swept over the group of leaders from long ago and beheld them all once again: Agamemnon (the child-killer), Odysseus (the liar), Diomedes (another liar), little Ajax (the rapist), Calchas (the traitor): a band of merry malefactors. Others, guilty mainly by association with them, were Idomeneus (once a good man, now . . . ?), Menelaus, and Nestor himself.

Nestor held up his hands, so thin and wrinkled they looked like oak bark. He swiveled his scrawny neck and looked far into the distance. But his head was high and his eyes were still dark and proud. “Troy is gone,” he said, looking to the place where it had been. Now the smoke was only wisps, rising forlornly into the sky. Even smoke dies, and when it does the erasure is complete. “What is left of it stands before you to dispose of as you will—the lovely women, and the spoils on the beach. It is fitting we meet here at the house of our greatest warrior, Achilles, to conduct this . . . dispersal of Trojan goods.”

Trojan goods.
That was all we were, then.

“And the queen of Troy must be first.” He nodded to her. “Like you, my lady, I am old. Yet we hope for respect from those younger, in memory of what we were.” He looked around. “Whose household will welcome her?”

Odysseus leapt up. “She comes with me. She shall live in Ithaca.”

Hecuba made a strangled sound. “That rocky island, far on the west of Greece? Let my tomb be here instead.”

“Penelope will welcome you,” Odysseus insisted.

“How do you know Penelope even lives, let alone will welcome anyone—even you?” Cassandra suddenly cried. “You presume much! But that is your way.”

Odysseus grunted, then gestured to Agamemnon. “Not to take this out of order, but she is yours, shut her up.”

Agamemnon stood. It was the first time I had seen him close up, and separated from the others. The years had eroded him, like a bear whose coat is now motley and faded. He was still dangerous—he still had sharp claws and teeth and keen, covetous eyes, but he had passed the height of his strength. Perhaps that made him more vicious and therefore even more threatening. “As you say,” he muttered. He jerked his hand and his guards seized Cassandra, dragging her into Achilles’s house.