Helen of Troy (53 page)

“How long will it take for a craftsman to build me one?” I asked. I was eager to begin.

“Not long,” said Andromache. “They are quite simple, really.”

“We weave all winter,” Creusa said. “When the cruel winds sweep across Troy, there is little else to do.”

“We find ourselves with a world before us,” said Andromache. “We lose ourselves in it, in the scenes we create with our wool, and when we look up, it is spring again.”

“Spring!” Laodice sighed. “Already I long for it.” She turned to me. “Winter can seem so long.”

What would this spring bring them? Not the glorious springing hyacinths and violets they cherished, but Agamemnon and his ugly ships.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it can.” But might it, this year, last forever!

As the other women prepared to depart, Andromache motioned me to stay. In spite of the braziers, it grew cold in the chamber once they had left.

“I know we worry about what is coming,” she said, drawing her mantle closer around her shoulders.

“Yes,” I said. I dared not say more.

“And being cut off from my family, far to the south, I worry for them, too. My mother—”

I longed to tell her. I wanted to speak to her as a friend and not to guard my words. Did I dare?

“Andromache—I must tell you—my Mother! Oh, Andromache, she has killed herself!”

Did she step back, or was that only my fancy? Her face clouded. “Helen,” was all she said, and embraced me. “How can you bear this sorrow?”

“I cannot,” I said. “I have not borne it, only writhed within it.”

“Who told you this?”

“I heard it . . . at the fair.”

“And kept it inside yourself all this time?”

“Paris heard, too. She killed herself because of us. So we cannot comfort one another.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, Helen.”

I reached over and brushed away the tears. “Still we go on. We must.” I felt I must end this talk; it stabbed me like a dagger. “Perhaps it is only in new life that we can find joy. And as to that . . . ?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. And you?’

I smiled. “As you.”

“Shall we go to Mount Ida?” she asked.

“I do not understand.”

“There’s a festival of fertility there in the autumn. It is ancient and untamed, and only women may come. Male intruders are torn limb from limb. But for the desperate . . .” She smiled. “The desperate are brave. Come with me, Helen! There is no one else who has my needs, or would understand.”

It was impossible to go to the flanks of Mount Ida in secret; it took the better part of a day to trundle there in a cart, swaying to and fro. Paris and Hector insisted on driving us there. They were worried about our safety, but Andromache told Hector we need have no fear, since we came in the true spirit of the festival.

We had our torches—great resin-soaked pine branches—and wore thick hooded cloaks; our sandals were the sturdiest to be fashioned.

“To tramp about the mountain in the darkness . . .” Hector frowned. “And in the company of strangers. I like it not.”

“You’ll like a son well enough,” said Andromache. “What is a night on a mountain to obtain him? A small price.”

“Where are these people you should join?” Paris craned his neck, searching the looming woods.

“Around this bend, where the hot springs gush,” said Andromache. “That is what I have been told.”

“Ida is covered with hot springs,” said Hector. “Hot springs, cold springs. That is why they call it ‘many-fountained Ida.’ ”

“It is the spring that faces toward Troy. The first one we shall come to.”

The late afternoon sun was sending fingers through the stand of pines ahead, stabbing between the trunks. A chill breeze sprang up; we had passed the point when days and nights were equal, and now the time when Persephone would descend to the darkness drew near. I shivered and Paris drew his arm tighter around me.

“You need not do this,” he whispered close to my ear. “If we have no sons or daughters, it is perhaps our lot.”

I shook my head. “I know that. I shall accept the will of the gods. But I must ask them first.”

“Here.” Hector reined in the horses. A group of women were gathered around a stream just ahead of us. Every one of them carried a pine torch or a wand wreathed in ivy, and wore a cloak of animal skins.

We disembarked from the cart—after reassuring our men once more that all would be well—and made our way over to the group of women. I heard the cart turning to head back to Troy, but I did not look to see. Instead I kept my eyes on what lay ahead.

Light was fading rapidly. It was hard to make out the faces; they blurred before my eyes. Young, old, middling—there seemed to be all sorts. Was there a leader? Yes, an older woman with a shock of white hair that spilled out from under her hood, at odds with her obsidian-black eyes. Or was she old? Her skin was unlined.

“We’ll wait only a bit more,” she said. “Then we must climb the mountain. We must be halfway up before dark.” She lifted her unlit torch aloft. “The path becomes rocky and steep, and we must make our way across it by torchlight. The torches will last only half the night. So let us not waste them on the first part of the climb.”

“And when we come to the place . . . ?” a young woman—her voice betrayed her youth—asked timidly.

“You shall know it. And you must never speak of it afterward. What you see here must remain here. When you lie on your funeral pyre, the things you saw must be burned along with your body.” She flung back her hood and revealed her strong-featured, blunt face. “Do you understand, my daughters?”

“Yes, Mother,” they all answered.

Mother who? She must be the keeper of the mysteries, but no one spoke her name.

“Come,” she said, and turned to enter the woods.

She marched straight through the pines. We followed; as soon as we were amongst the tall trees, the light grew dim. Overhead the branches wove themselves loosely across the sky. We were silent as we walked swiftly behind the Mother, trying to get as far up the mountain as possible before lighting our torches.

I glanced over at Andromache, admiring her fine strong profile. She and Hector were well matched. If only they could have a child, what a marvel that child could be! If only this . . . this ceremony—whatever it was—could bestow a child on them, and on Paris and me. Just then she looked at me and smiled in complicity.

The climb was hard. Soon I was breathing fast and sweat covered my face and neck. I threw off the hood to let the cooling air rush around me; it was dim enough now to conceal my face. My feet began to slip on the loose stones and pebbles on the path. Once I stumbled and Andromache caught my arm.

We emerged out onto a flat plateau. The plain, now far beneath us, swam in an indistinct blue haze. The sun had set, sending up a few last feeble rays from beneath the horizon.

“Let us light our torches,” said the Mother. She knelt down and laid a clump of dried moss on a rock, then twirled a stick against a piece of wood to create first smoke, then a flame. She dipped the end of her own torch into it, then, when it had caught, motioned to one woman to come up and light hers. She touched her torch to the lit one.

“Now light the others, light your sisters’,” the Mother said.

The woman began to move amongst us, touching her torch to ours until all were alight, all flamed, and the air around us grew bright even as the light faded in the west.

“When we reach the summit, embrace what is there,” she said. “I can tell you no more, except to say that she who does not fling herself into the riches of our rite will reap no benefit. Hold nothing back.”

The flaring torches, their new-lit tips sputtering and jumping, made the air around us alive with capricious spirits. Overhead the pines swayed and groaned, bending like dancers.

“Higher, higher,” the Mother exhorted us. “Do not linger here.” We streamed after her, a snake of bobbing lights.

The path grew much steeper and narrower. We had to scramble up, holding our torches in one hand and using the other to grasp roots and rocks as we skirted ravines falling away to one side. It grew blacker and blacker. The moon was dark now and hid her face. The stars shone more brightly, but starlight cannot keep one from stumbling.

Around a great sheer face of rock we came out upon a narrow path that wound to a summit where a tumble of stones, twisted pines clinging amongst them, crowned the mountain. The wind was whistling past us, whipping at our cloaks.

“Play, my daughters, my sisters,” the Mother said. Several women pulled cymbals, flutes, and small drums from under their fawn-skin cloaks, and began to play. It was soft at first, barely rising above the wind and the cries of the night birds that were circling the summit.

It was music I had never heard before. The sweet low flute was pierced by the strident bronze cymbals, and the throbbing of the goatskin drums created a tide of sound that ebbed and rose, ebbed and rose.

Some of the women planted their torches in the ground, making a wide circle, and began to move, swaying and bending, clapping and humming. The wind carried their hair streaming out behind them, and they stepped faster as the music grew louder and more insistent. Now the drums were strongest and drowned everything out, now the flute screamed above the drums, and now both were shocked into retreat by the cymbals.

“Come!” Andromache took my hand and we joined the circle of dancers. We were almost the last to do so, and already the pace was quick. Around and around we traced the path that circled the heap of rock at the summit. Someone planted a torch on the very tip of the pile.

“Do not look at your feet but at this torch,” she cried. “Keep your eyes upon it!”

I lifted my eyes and focused them on the wavering flame. I could sense the women before me and behind me, but now I was held on the tether of the flame upon the summit, it was my master.

The flute speeded up its piping, and we moved faster; now we needed to trip and jump. Suddenly one of the women broke from the group and started turning, her cloak flying out behind her. Faster and faster she whirled, letting her arms propel her, whirling her. Others broke away and started turning, flinging their arms out and their heads back. The circle of dance broke into swirling leaves. The women began to utter shrill cries of jubilation and excitement, competing with the music.

“Turn, turn, turn!” cried the Mother. “Close your eyes now, embrace the god!”

What god? Who was this who they worshipped in dance and fire?

Suddenly grapes were arcing through the air, landing all around us. We stepped on them and the ground grew slippery, the scent of sweet juice enveloping our senses.

“Drink his gift!” A big pouch, a drinking skin, was flung onto a rock. “Drink the gift of wine, wine that brings gladness and joy and release!”

We rushed to the wineskin and gulped the wine in draughts, wanting to get our fill before yielding our place to another. Wine dribbled down our faces and onto our gowns, but the Mother assured us, “Every drop is a blessing. Never wash it away, and now you may ask the god for his other blessing—fertility. He is the god of wet things that grow.”

Still I did not know what god she meant, and she never named him. I saw Andromache looking down at the stains on her gown, touching them.

The women spun away from the wineskin, their dancing wilder. I twirled with them, feeling my head grow dizzy and my thoughts loosen. Loosen . . . float away . . . I drifted in a sea of movement, cut free from everything else.

Time ceased. I know not how long I turned and turned, only that I was in a trance. I barely heard the shrieks when a cage with a pig was opened. I was knocked down by a hoard of women running after it, shouting and screaming. They were like a pack of dogs, their faces twisted and their teeth bared.

The music had stopped, and now the guttural cries of the women resounded in the air. I heard them rise to a shrieking scream and then stop. They had disappeared down a pathway on the other side of the mountain.

Andromache and I and several others who had been left behind by the pack followed them. What we saw when we reached the little glen was unbelievable, shocking: a circle of women covered with blood, blood up to their elbows, tearing at the carcass of the pig, ripping it into pieces. And then—one woman grabbed a piece of the raw meat and began eating it, staining her face and neck with blood. Her eyes looked slanted and dark like an animal’s.

Andromache and the other women in our group shrank back, not seized by whatever madness had taken these women, and watched in horror as they devoured the pig raw, making hideous swallowing noises, gulping not only its flesh but its blood.

How had they even killed it? By tearing it with their bare hands? This seemed impossible, yet it had happened.

So this was why it must never be spoken of. What else was to come here on the mountaintop? We had to leave before whatever it was took place. Might it even be sacrifice of one of us? I clutched Andromache’s hand and said, “We must escape! Even though it is dark, we cannot wait for light, we must find our way down! Even if we get lost, I would rather be amongst true animals than these human beasts!”

“Oh, Helen, forgive me for bringing us here, I did not know—!”

Together we turned and stole away, hoping no one would see us. I tried to remember the paths we had taken on the ascent, but I knew we would be lost sooner or later. Better later, was all I could hope.

The wind howled and tore at us as we slipped and slid down the steep path, being careful to lean away from the yawning ravines on one side. As we got lower, the trees suddenly grew thick again around us, and the dangerous ravines disappeared, but now the path was not so clear and the forest enveloped us. We could hear the cry of wild dogs and a thousand other sounds of night creatures surrounding us. Paris’s teasing about lions no longer seemed a joke.

Andromache clutched at my arm as we threaded our way through the dark forest, stumbling over tree roots and loose stones, slipping on old leaves and needles underfoot.

“Ida is enormous,” I whispered, marveling. This one mountain seemed as vast as the entire range of the Taygetus at home.