Helen of Troy (103 page)

“Find her,” said Agamemnon grimly.

“I wish to say that our brave men need to be saluted,” said Idomeneus, standing up, trying to rescue the feast and divert attention. “Especially those who brought about the ruse of the horse and those who secreted themselves within it. Odysseus, you mastermind, you must claim the invention of the horse as your own.”

Grinning, Odysseus stood and bowed his head. “It was clear Troy could not be taken by force. Its warriors were too fierce, its walls too strong. But guile can win where direct attacks fail.”

“And Epeius,” said Idomeneus. A short man stood up, eager to be acknowledged. “You constructed the horse.”

“Indeed I did!” He grinned. “We went to Mount Ida for the wood, and if I may say so, we fashioned a lovely creation. And in a short time, too.”

Agamemnon handed him a heap of golden things; I could not see what they were. “You deserve this and more,” he said. “I am only sorry that I cannot lay all of the spoils of Troy before you, for they would not be here without your cunning.”

Epeius bowed and retreated with his hands brimming.

“Sinon!” Agamemnon’s voice boomed out. The monkeylike Sinon appeared. “All hinged on you and your performance. You were willing to undergo harsh, disfiguring punishment in order to convince the Trojans we had mistreated you—as indeed we had. You did not falter or stumble, but carried our mission through to success. To you”—Agamemnon thrust a set of armor in his hands—“you deserve so much more than this, but take this as a token.”

Sinon looked down at his prize. “Thank you, my lord,” he said. Undoubtedly he would demand more later, but, showman that he was, he would not spoil the moment.

“Now we salute those who, at great risk to themselves, hid inside the horse. Menelaus!” Menelaus stood. “Odysseus!” We raise our glasses in salute to you!” Then followed Diomedes, Machaon, Epeius, Neoptolemus, little Ajax.

Someone thrust a glass in my hand. A boy quickly followed, pouring wine. I turned mine out on the ground.

“To Epeius! To Sinon! To the horse!”

Everyone but the Trojan women drank.

Agamemnon laughed exultantly. “We are for Greece, then.” He wiped his mouth. “Home again. Home. It is calling.”

I saw Menelaus whisper in his ear. Agamemnon frowned, then turned to us.

“The gods are pleased enough. We have not offended.”

No one ever found Hecuba. Privately I thought she had rushed into the surf and drowned herself. As the feast concluded—the torches were doused, the tables dismantled, the empty amphoras dragged to the water and abandoned—we captive women were herded up and sent to our tent. Idomeneus suddenly appeared by my side.

“Helen,” he said. “I have been here these many years yet have never beheld you, let alone spoken to you.”

I looked at him, a kindly remnant of a vanished, ordered world. “Idomeneus. I am grateful for your good wishes.”

“As I am for yours. Helen, I do not know what awaits you in Sparta. Only know that whatever it is, I am your friend. As I said long ago, in whatever age you reside, you are the supreme being. No other woman could command awe with gray hair.” He looked me in the eye. “You are Helen, the never-diminished.”

I shook my head. “I am Troy, and Troy is me, and Troy is gone. So Helen is more than diminished. There is no more Helen.”

The fools that were taking me back to Greece did not understand that.

LXXIV

T
he wind was rising; it made the last flaming torches dance and snuffed the rest out. It sent showers of sparks into the sky, new red stars against the old white ones. Sand flew into my mouth, and the men began to gather up the stools and full amphoras and prize armor.

“At first light, men, we sail!” Agamemnon called to his men.

I saw Menelaus tug on his shoulder. Agamemnon shook him off.

“It wasn’t only the temple little Ajax polluted, it was Cassandra as well,” Menelaus warned him.

“You call Cassandra polluted?” Now I could hear clearly, and so could the men around them.

“What else can you call a woman who was raped?” Menelaus sounded as if he were glad of it.

“Don’t you wish yours had been, instead of offering herself?”

“And do you know what yours has been doing, in your absence?” Menelaus taunted him. I did not think he had it in him.

“She wouldn’t dare,” said Agamemnon. “She can see—she has heard—what punishment I’ve wreaked on Troy, and on those who defied us.”

“And how has she seen it, or even heard it?” Menelaus was turning himself on the sand, and I noticed that he seemed to limp, favoring his left side.

“The beacons are ready to be fired. But the biggest beacon—smell that?” He stood on tiptoe and inhaled deeply, putting his fleshy hands on his belly.

“It’s roasting Trojans!”

“The fire is out,” said Menelaus. He was always so literal. But Agamemnon was right—Troy would burn forever.

“It was a good war,” said Agamemnon. “For us.
I
am proud of it, even if you are not, little brother.”

“I shall see you in Greece, then,” said Menelaus. “In only a few days. We will return to what we left so long ago. We will reclaim what is waiting for us.” Now he turned and made his way over to me, walking stiffly. Yes, he had an injury of some kind. I had not noticed it before. “Helen,” he said. “Your last night on Trojan soil, wife. I shall leave you to your thoughts. Tomorrow we sail for home—Sparta. I have thirty-one ships left. Only thirty-one, after the sixty that first touched this beach all those years ago. That is the price I—and many other warriors—have had to pay for your folly.”

I had nothing to say. I stared at him in the dull light, seeing only the changes in him, superimposed over the wavering image of him as a young man. His face was lined now, his lips set, and he moved in the gingerly fashion of one guarding a weakness, not like the young athlete of long ago. The war had taken a grave toll on his body.

I was taken back to the women’s quarters in the damp and decaying Achilles house and given a pallet to lie upon. The others were silent, except for muffled weeping. The place where Polyxena had been was screamingly empty.

My last night in Troy. Menelaus had said it. This was the last time I would pillow my head on my arms and know that beneath lay Trojan soil. But Troy was a smoking mound, and when the sun rose I would have to behold those ugly streaks of smoke still sending their tendrils up into the sky, like beseeching fingers for a mercy that would not come.

Polyxena had been brave, the last Trojan to die. I would have changed places with her, or so I wanted to believe. But I did not know if I had that courage. And now I would go back to Sparta as a prisoner.

My promise to Hector! I had failed him. I had not been able to protect Andromache.
You are a survivor,
he had said. But that had not availed to save anyone else.

Evadne. Gelanor. Where were they? Had they perished in the conflagration? Oh, I should have let Gelanor return as he had wished! Instead, out of my own need and vanity, I had kept him in Troy. His death was my horror.

The brooch had wept blood, drops for the dead. I had killed so many. I felt their vexed ghosts crowding around me, prowling in the ruins of Troy. Because I had loved Paris, I had killed them, and him as well.

Is this what you wanted, Aphrodite? I asked her. But she did not answer. She had promised to save me, and she had done that. Beyond that, there were no answers.

I boarded the ship—as Evadne had foreseen, and I denied, so long ago. Menelaus was laughing, his head thrown back, standing at the stern as the shore was left behind. I did not stand and watch the land recede, nor behold the smudge and smoke from the noble ruin of what had once been Troy. I did not think I could bear it.

I had my own quarters; Menelaus did not come near them. He kept to himself, his own bed up near the bow, beside the captain’s. I did not come to his, either. We barely spoke if we passed one another on the decks. Strange: this man who had been obsessed to possess me did not try, in any way, to act upon it. It was enough for him, apparently, that I was on his ship.

I felt dead. I even wondered if I might, perhaps,
be
dead and be unaware of it. Sometimes the dead do not know they are dead. But the stinging sea air, the dips and stomach-roiling tossing of the ship told me well enough that I was here, a prisoner on the ship making resolutely for Sparta.

What would I find when I returned? I only cared what I would see reflected in the eyes of Hermione.

We did not reach Sparta as planned. Instead, a great storm accosted the fleet, scattering us in all directions. Where Agamemnon went, we did not know; we lost sight of him. The ship carrying little Ajax sank; the gods punished him for his desecration of the Pallas Athena and her temple. Twenty-six of Menelaus’s ships were lost, and we were driven helplessly before the wind for days. When we finally reached a shore, it was a flat and sandy coastline, fringed in palm trees. We had come to Egypt.

Egypt. We staggered forth to behold a strange warm world of green, brown, and blue: the three colors of Egypt. Green along the riverbanks and the irrigation canals, brown in all the rest: the sand, the murky Nile water, the mud-brick houses. And blue above it all, a vivid and cloudless sky.

Menelaus was immediately apprehended by soldiers of the Egyptian king—the pharaoh, who resided up the Nile in a place called Memphis. We had no choice but to go with them. Most of Menelaus’s soldiers had been lost with the ships, and he did not have the means to resist.

The Nile was a broad, flat, slow-moving ribbon, very different from the Eurotas or the Scamander. The current was exactly balanced by the wind, which blew in the opposite direction at the same speed. If someone wished to sail down the Nile, he let it take him. If he wished to sail up it, he merely had to hoist a sail.

The pharaoh and his wife received us kindly, but made no pretense that we were anything other than his prisoners. They knew little of the war at Troy; Egypt was insulated against what went on elsewhere. They listened with polite curiosity as Menelaus attempted to explain about it. I noticed that he did not betray the reason it had started. Perhaps he felt it reflected too badly on him.

The pharaoh assigned us quarters together. Now I must sleep in the same room as Menelaus. I did not expect him to approach me, but I was taken aback when, as he stripped off his tunic, I saw the massive scar running from his thigh to his groin. Now I knew why he moved so carefully; he had lost part of his leg muscle.

“Staring, are you?” he snapped. “Look your fill. That’s what your Trojans did to me. Crippled me!”

“You aren’t crippled—” I started to say. He still moved, just not as a young man.

“You can’t see the end of it!” His voice was savage. “Trace its path, and you shall see well enough where it ends!” He grabbed my hand and pulled me over to him, lifted up his undergarment. “
That’s
what your Paris did to me. But he had already done it anyway, when you chose him.”

“I am truly sorry,” I said. I meant it. The ruins of Troy, the killing and destruction, left me with no appetite for any more sorrow or revenge. Menelaus’s deficiency could not bring Paris back, could not make children sing again in the streets of Troy. All of it was useless waste.