Helen of Troy (49 page)

“I want to be up here!” said Paris. “Up here, where the winds blow fresh and strong.”

“It seems that others have come first,” said Gelanor. It was almost the first thing he had said. In all this time, I had not been able to speak with him at length, privately. Was he still bent on leaving?

“Others came first in my father’s household, but I have taken my true place. So shall I, here, alongside him.” Paris pointed to a surprisingly modest house perched near Priam’s palace at the summit. “Let us pay this man for his land and build here.”

“There is not enough ground to build anything much larger than what is already there,” said the builder. “It might be smaller than your present apartments.”

“But the location is perfect!” Paris looked dashed.

“Perhaps you could build upward,” said Gelanor.

“Upward?” said the builder.

“Two stories are commonplace,” said Gelanor. “Has anyone ever tried three stories?”

“It wouldn’t hold—the weight would be too great—the middle floor would be oppressive—I don’t think—” the builder said.

“But has anyone tried it?” Gelanor asked. “I am not being argumentative, but it would be helpful to know. Men are always reaching to try new things.”

“In days to come, there will be a hundred stories,” Evadne suddenly said. “Or more. Shall it begin here?”

The builder turned to Paris. “Am I to help you, or do you insist on listening to these Greeks, who admit they are ignorant of building?”

Paris turned and looked at me. “My dearest, your companions . . . perhaps they should hold their questions.”

“No,” I said. Gelanor had never failed me with his probing mind. The question he raised was an intriguing one. “There is no land left here for the wide palace you envision. Perhaps it is time for another vision. Or we can seek another location, lower in the city, and build in the traditional fashion.”

Thwarted, Paris turned back to Gelanor. “Do you really think there could be a building with three stories?”

“Perhaps. If there can be two, there can be three. Or even four.”

“But if we were to build this, it would loom over the other buildings here on the summit,” I said. “Would that not cause ill feeling?” Above all, I did not want that with the Trojans.

“That is why I would recommend only three stories,” said Gelanor. “Although four would be a challenge . . .”

“This is absurd! The upper stories would collapse the building and kill all those beneath!” The builder threw up his hands. “I cannot condone this. I cannot be a party to it. If anything happened to you—the king would have me executed. No, I will not!”

Gelanor smiled at Paris. “It seems you must make a choice. Be safe and choose another, less lovely site, or be bold and build here, trying a new type of dwelling. Of course, the price for failure is high.”

“I want a palace here!” Paris’s face was set.

“You’ll find another builder, then!” the builder proclaimed.

Paris looked angry. “Very well.” He turned to Gelanor. “Can you linger here in Troy a bit longer and oversee this? If it is successful, you will become renowned throughout the world!”

“And if it fails?” Gelanor seemed amused, not frightened.

“Then, as a Greek, you can flee Priam’s wrath when Helen and I lie beneath the rubble.”

“I could never flee my own sorrow,” he said. “So I shall make sure it does not fail.”

“I leave you to your folly!” cried the builder. “I shall attend your funeral rites. They will have to drape your mangled bodies. You will have created your own earthquake! Deliberately!” He shook his head and made his way back down the paved, slanting street.

“People are always afraid,” said Gelanor. “But desperate wants create desperate acts of courage. And, my prince, building such a palace is an act of courage.”

“You will stay to direct the building?” I asked.

Gelanor slid his eyes over to me. “How could I not?” he said. “You have won again. You set out that bait—”

“I set out no bait!” I said. “I argued with Paris that the whole idea of leaving the king’s palace is provocative. We hardly need that.”

“Oh, the lengths you go to to keep me!”

“You conceited man!” I said.

“Stop it, you two,” said Paris. “If I did not know better, I would say you sound like lovers!”

Gelanor laughed again, more heartily. Finally he said, “Well, you do know better.”

“Gelanor rarely laughs, so this proves how preposterous the idea is,” I said.

Suddenly Hector strode out of his doorway and looked at us in surprise. “Little brother!” he said. “And the most beauteous Helen.” He crossed over to us quickly, a man who did not hesitate. “What are you about, this glorious morning?”

“I am looking to become your neighbor as well as your brother,” Paris said. “I shall build my palace here. Beside yours.”

Hector raised one eyebrow. “There is already a house here, the house of Oicles the horse breeder.”

“I shall buy him off,” said Paris airily, making a gesture of dismissal.

“I am pleased to see that you are modest, my dear newfound brother,” said Hector. “For any palace here must perforce be a miniature one, as there is no space. But it can still be exquisite.”

“It will be large,” said Paris. “I have a plan to make it so.”

“Unless you have recourse to magic arts, I fail to see how that can be.”

“Wait.” Paris cast a knowing glance at Gelanor. “My magician!”

“The wisest man in Greece,” Hector recalled. “I await this with interest.”

“Where are you off to?” Paris asked. “Down to the horses?”

“Yes,” said Hector. “I need to inspect the breeding pens. A request has come in from Cyzicus for a number of mares and one fine stallion. I will make a selection this morning.”

“I showed Helen the herds out grazing yesterday. We did not visit the pens closer to the city.”

“Horses are our joy,” said Hector.

Paris did not relate being thrown, I noticed.

“Andromache loves horses,” Hector continued. “She is quite knowledgeable about them. Are you?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Ah!” Suddenly slender hands grasped Hector’s shoulders from behind, the fingers looking like tendrils. He whirled around.

“Cassandra!” I saw his arm encircle whoever it was and turn her toward us.

A flat face stared back at us, framed by lank red hair. I had never seen a paler face—even her eyebrows were invisible. Her eyes were blue, protected by deep lids that rendered them both expressionless and placid.

“I see with whom you stroll,” she said. Her voice was as flat as her face. “I had heard of their arrival. But I heard it in my head first.” She stared at him. “Your house will fall,” she said. “It will tumble.”

“Do you refer to the building of my new palace?” said Paris.

“No. It will stand as long as the others. But it will topple, consumed. Along with the others, in the flames.”

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.
I shuddered. That awful phrase again, that phrase that had come to me, unasked-for, from my own store of prophecy.

“That must be generations from now,” I said. I looked out at the magnificent buildings and the tranquil green countryside with its horses grazing. “As you know—as I certainly know, having had my own visions—time is not specified in the messages we receive.”

Cassandra looked at me as at a vile thing. “You are the cause of the flames,” she said.

“Oh, stop it,” said Paris. “Please, dear sister.”

Hector cleared his throat. “I must to the horses,” he said. “Helen, call upon Andromache when you can. She would welcome the opportunity to tell you everything about our famous horses. She loves them so.” Then he was gone in a rustle of mantle and a tramp of sandals.

We were left confronting the hostile Cassandra. She glared at us, then lifted her chin and evaluated me.

“Yes, it’s true,” she muttered. “A face to cause a war. And it will.”

“No wonder Father locked you up,” Paris said. “I shall tell him to again.”

“ ‘Because of her a great war will be fought and many Greeks will die,’ ” she recited. “And how many Trojans?”

How had she come by that phrase—the bloodcurdling one of the Sibyl? “Cassandra,” I finally said, “the shadows of the possible future must not poison our thoughts.”

“The shadows of the future have already ruined my life!” she cried.

“That is because you allowed them to drown out your present,” said Paris. “You live only in what has not yet happened, and in that sense you do not live at all, since the future always recedes before us.” He reached out to her. “Both of us, sister, have been robbed of much of our past. But if we let our prophecies rob of us our present, we are fools, and have only ourselves to blame. Come with me—come with me, into the present. Into this morning, here, sunny and warm. Live here, sister! Live with us! The truth is, you can live nowhere else.”

To my surprise, she began to cry, big tears spilling out around her guarded eyes. She made no sound at all, she just stood stricken. Finally she mumbled, “You are right. I cannot go on like this, always living in some other time, hearing other voices, never voices of my own time or place.” She touched his shoulder gently. “I do not want to go down to Hades without having walked in the sun—my own sun, not an image or a dream-sun.”

“Then stifle your prophecies, and when they come thick and fast, turn your back. Come, take my hand.”

Just as he had with me:
take my hand—
and made me leap, wild and bold, into a new world.

Cassandra put her pale one into his, closing her eyes and breathing deep. “I am afraid,” she said. “I have never lived—here—before.”

“It is more interesting than the world of shadows and fancies,” said Paris. “Just look at what your own eyes show you, and drink in what is before you. If you do that, you might find that Helen is a woman you would care to know, not a sign or an image.”

“But who is Helen?” she asked. “
Is
she more than an idea or ideal?”

Paris laughed, and put my hand in hers. “You cannot hold an idea.”

I lived; I was real; I had come to Troy to take her hand in mine.

XXXV

Y
es. I came to Troy, and I began to make my home in Troy.

Evadne and I searched for a place for the sacred snake. “We must find a home for your snake,” she said. “He will feel unwelcome here if we delay much longer.” We found a small room beneath the main chambers with a trickling spring diverted into a pool. It was secluded and quiet, a perfect abode for the serpent.

It was a simple matter to have an altar built, and a place to set out the honey cakes and milk for him. When it was ready, I asked Paris to come and help release him. After all, we had first spoken privately in his presence, had declared our love in the household shrine where he lived.

Together we loosened the sack holding him, and let him slither out. He paused, regarding us—did I imagine it, or was he solemn?—and then slowly made his way across the slippery floor to a dark recess.

“Bless us,” Evadne implored. “We need your blessing. We are in a new land where only you are of our old home.”

“This is your third home,” I said. “You came with me from Epidaurus, then to Sparta, now here in Troy. But to change is to ever renew. As you shed your skin, you live forever young. Teach us to do the same. And look after Hermione, even from afar.”

Paris knelt down and spoke to him where he waited, coiled, watching him. “You gave me a sign in Sparta. You bound me to Helen, your mistress.

Now we are in my city, and we look to you. Keep us bound. Protect our home.”

The snake flicked his tongue out; then he disappeared with a start into the darkness.

Day after day the workmen came; Paris’s new palace rose on the summit of Troy. I sought out Andromache, and found her sympathetic to me, a foreigner, as she was one, too. She had been wedded to Hector from her father’s home on Plakos; more than anything she longed for a child.

As she spoke of her longing, the image of my lost Hermione loomed before me; I ached for my own child. Sometimes it was so intense I had to retreat to the secluded underground chamber with the altar, and cry out to the gods, before the sacred snake there.

Andromache confided that she had sought all the remedies, made all the proper sacrifices to the gods.