Helen of Troy (46 page)

Paris put his arm around me and steered me away. “I must show you something,” he whispered.

We left the crowded courtyard behind and he guided me to the main building, across the megaron, and to the staircase hidden in one corner of it. It was eerily quiet here, all the people having been drawn off into the courtyard. We climbed up the wooden steps slowly, I holding my gown so I would not trip on it. At once we emerged onto a flat roof overlooking all of Troy and the Plain of Troy, like the bow of a ship riding high above them. The vastness of it was startling.

“Come,” Paris said, taking my hand. He led me to the edge of the roof, where a waist-high wall protected us. The wind blew strongly, and I clung to the top of the wall.

“There it lies—all of Troy, and the territory around her,” said Paris. The wind snatched his words away.

I leaned over the wall and looked at the city, encircling the palace like petals of a rose. On this highest point, there was only the palace and the temple of Athena; on the other three sides, falling away beneath them, were rings of houses and terraces stretching to the walls, those guardian walls standing sharp and knife-edged in the starlight. Flickering torches, like little dots, marked out their course. Dim and dark, large towers reared up along the perimeter.

Below the steep north side a flat plain stretched to the sea, where the starlight caught on the waves and showed us the swift-running water.

“You cannot see it now, with no moon, but there are two rivers down below—the Scamander and the Simoïs,” said Paris. “The Scamander runs all year long, but the Simoïs dries up in the heat of summer. We pasture our horses there in the sweet meadows—our famous horses of Troy.”

The meadows must have been just springing, for a delicious scent rode the next gust of wind. I inhaled deeply. “This is truly an enchanted land,” I said. I looked out over all of it—the sleeping city, the grand homes, the strong walls, the neat lower town, the fertile plain. I walked over to another side of the roof and peered down at the courtyard, filled with noise, smoke, and people.

“Must we return there?” I asked him. From above, it looked like a field of writhing serpents.

“No. We need do nothing we do not wish to. You have been presented to the family and the Trojans, and all ceremony observed. Now you are free.
We
are free.”

Could that be true? Standing there on the highest place in Troy, feeling the wind rushing past us, clean and fresh, I believed so. I clasped Paris’s hand. In that moment, I felt as young as Persephone and as lovely as Aphrodite. Aphrodite then flew to me with the winds, enveloped me, entwined me. I felt her warmth all around me, soft as a cloud.

I have brought you here, my child. Obey me, revel in me, exalt me.
I turned to Paris. “Let us go back to your chambers,” I whispered. The wind snatched my words away, bore them southward over the city. I pressed closer to him, repeating them.

“Yes,” he murmured.

Across the rooftop, down the stairs in haste, skirting the loud courtyard, we entered our private courtyard from another doorway, running through its emptiness. To Paris’s doorway, flinging it open. The large receiving room, the connecting chambers, greeted us silently. As we rushed through them, the only sound was our footsteps on the colored stone.

The door shut behind us; we were alone in that innermost bedchamber. The little brazier had not been lit. I would have liked a fire, if only for its golden flames and its sweet scent. But now nothing mattered but being with Paris—no fire, no crackling, soothing sound, nothing but the two of us.

There were no wolf skins spread here, no bulwark against the cold. The apartments of Troy were not made of heavy stone boulders, to lock in the cold long past winter as in Mycenae, but of the finest clay and cedar beams—delicate, dainty. Spring would already come to these chambers when winter still lingered in Sparta.

I wanted only to hold Paris, to embrace him and the life in him, the life he offered me. Lying with him side by side, I could not help tracing his face with my fingers, as if I would memorize every plane and facet of it. And I have, I have . . . I can feel it even now, as I remember . . . But then, with his face beneath my fingertips, I was aware only of the warmth and the deliciousness.

“Paris,” I said, “now I am truly yours. I have laid my fortune—what will become of me—at your feet. I have followed you from my world to yours. Nay, more than that—I have disclaimed mine, incurred the wrath of my family and land. I have placed my hand in yours, between just us in privacy, and before the goddess who guards your city. May she guard us as diligently!”

Paris leaned over me and kissed me, his soft lips drowning my thoughts, all save my longing for him. “She will . . . she will . . .”

I had felt her enmity, but now it was washed away in hope. Did the gods not bend their favor to those who honored them? And now I cared for nothing but Paris. The strong swelling arms of Paris, the divine face of Paris, the urgent and insistent body of Paris.

They speak of an Isle of the Blessed. A place where living people are snatched away so they never die, and live out their eternal lives in bliss, wandering in this magic isle far from everything we know upon this earth. Paris and I flew to that isle; we were transported to a realm where we could touch one another for eternity, where we would never change or age, where passion would never slake nor the sun rise to shatter a night of love.

There was no time in the chamber. It stretched out and made one hour two, like a supple piece of leather. Whatever we wanted, whatever we did, we could savor, repeat, as many times as we wished, a bard’s favorite passages recited again upon request.

We slept, finally. And then the sun found its way into the chamber. We had not thought to bar the window; when it is deeply night, we do not think of the dawn.

Paris lifted himself on one elbow. “Stupid intrusive sun!” he muttered. “How dare it invade our privacy?” He staggered over to the window and tried to bar the light. But there were no shutters strong enough, and the sunlight could not be kept out.

“I was never bothered by the sunlight before,” he admitted. “I was always up with it.”

The light showed his body to perfection; its early morning slant caressed its hollows and swells. “The sun brings me a daylight Paris,” I said. “So I cannot be angry with it.”

Each hour, each minute, was ours. None was our enemy. Each laid its own gifts at our feet.

XXXIII

B
ut we had to emerge from our Isle of the Blessed, Paris’s chamber. Outside, the world of Troy waited, in the form of a summons to come to the king and queen.

Dressed, dismissing the night as best I could from playing about my thoughts, I stood before them in the privacy of their palace chamber. Priam looked weary; his hands clutched the side of his chair as if he feared falling. Hecuba, seated beside him, was unreadable.

“The ceremony was observed correctly,” Priam finally said. “And people seemed to join in the celebration freely enough.”

“As well as we could discern,” said Hecuba. Her words were soft and measured.

“But we must know what will happen. We talked bravely enough last night, but the gods are another matter—and what will the Greeks do when they believe I spoke them false?”

“Father, you are agitated. I tell you, nothing will happen. Nothing ever has, in such instances. People forget. The only person harmed, after all, is Menelaus, and he has no army.”

I was startled. I had never heard Paris speak so analytically. But he was right. Menelaus had no army. Paris was wrong in something else, though: the person most harmed was Hermione. My Hermione. I felt a cold sorrow at thinking of it.

“I must know,” Priam muttered. “I must know. I am sending Calchas, my seer, to the oracle in Delphi.”

“Father, why?” cried Paris.

“Because we do not know what wrath you have brought down upon us!’ said Hecuba. “Should we not know the price we are expected to pay?”

“What of a Herophile Sibyl? Is one not nearby?” asked Paris.

“Bah. They are not so reliable.”

Clytemnestra had said the opposite. “I am pleased to hear that,” I said, “as one foretold that I would bring great bloodshed to Greece.”

Priam started. “What? What was prophesied?”

“It was when I was but a child. I can still remember her hands clasping my head and making the ugly prophecies. She said . . .” I had tried to block them out of my mind; now I tried hard to call them back. “ ‘She will be the ruin of Asia, the ruin of Europe, and because of her a great war will be fought, and many Greeks will die.’ ”

Perhaps I should not have spoken, but it was too late. “My father was afraid of this prophecy. So he made my suitors—and there were many, from all over Greece—swear an oath to uphold my choice of husband. He thought thereby to avert the curse.”

“Aghhh!” Priam lurched forward, catching his head in his hands. “Oh, oh! He thought only that Greeks would fight one another, not that Greeks would fight far afield, would fight in another land. Greek blood can be spilled in many ways—he foresaw only one!” He glared at me. “What chance that that oath will prove binding?”

I thought of the suitors and their selfish concerns. Once I had chosen another, they had lost interest. It was ten years ago. “Very little,” I said. “The leaders of the various Greeks are much too concerned with their own worries. They will hardly risk themselves to rescue a rival’s wife—regardless of the oath Father made them swear upon the severed parts of a horse, all those years ago.”

“But we must still consult the oracle,” said Priam. It was my first taste of his stubbornness.

“Yes,” said Hecuba. “We dare not neglect to do this.”

Priam stood. “You must speak to Calchas yourself,” he said, looking at me. “It is important that he know you when he stands before the oracle.”

“Why?” said Paris. “If the oracle does not know her, what difference whether Calchas does?”

“Stop the questioning!” Priam’s eyes, bright within their surrounding wrinkles, blazed. “There have already been too many questions—along with too many questionable actions.”

“Do as your father commands,” said Hecuba, rising to stand beside him. “We shall summon you when Calchas arrives.”

They made their way past us, heads held stiffly on rigid necks.

“Am I ten years old,” fumed Paris, “to be dismissed and ordered about thus?”

“Evidently yes, in their eyes.”

“The air of disapproval they exhale is stupefying. Let us leave this—this enclosure fit only for tamed beasts!”

I looked up at the gold-leaf cedar beams overhead and the delicate frescoes splashing the walls with vibrant-hued flowers. “I think no beast ever guzzled feed in such a stable.” I laughed.

“No, better still, they spend their days in the freedom of sweet high meadows of the mountain,” he said. “I should know. I tended them most of my life. Let us leave the city! Come, and I’ll show you the glory of Troy—our horses!”

“But—if we are not here when Calchas arrives—”

“Let him wait! Father did not say when he would come.” Paris laughed. “The horses are calling. Am I not to show you all of Troy, as you are now a Trojan? Take your mantle, and your sturdy sandals.”

Paris sent orders to ready a chariot for us, and we made our way back down through the city to the south gate. I looked carefully at the terraced houses—some two-story and quite large—and the clean-swept streets that wound gradually down from the heights of the citadel, keenly curious to know the Trojans and how they lived. They were equally curious, watching us as we passed.

When we reached the broad inner passageway hugging the circle of the walls, a fine chariot was awaiting us, the gilded spokes of its wheels winking in the sun. Two dun-colored horses were in the traces. Paris stroked the neck of one.

“Want to see your cousins?” he asked it, ruffling its mane.

We stepped into the chariot; the massive gates stood wide open to the morning. Paris drove out and into the lower city, where carts and wagons and chariots cut a broad swath to reach the Plain of Troy. Instead of the reticence of the upper city, cries of welcome resounded from the lower. People thronged the street, pressing so close to us the chariot had trouble passing.