Helen of Troy (55 page)

“Unless we capture him, we shall never know,” said Deiphobus with a nasty slant to his mouth.

“And what of that boy he took with him, that he insisted on taking? Has anyone seen him?” Deiphobus asked.

“No, no, I swear!” Pandarus held up his hands. “If I do, I shall bring him to you immediately!”

“There was something odd about the request,” mused Priam. “I was suspicious even then. It served no purpose.”

“I agree, it served no purpose. How could it?” Pandarus cried. “He is only a lad.” He swallowed. “
Was
a lad. But let us consider the most obvious explanation. Youth wants adventure, wants to sail to lands far away. The old are content to stay where they are and savor what is at hand, but youth wants to rove. I think his desire was innocent, and my brother merely sought to let him indulge it.”

Priam grunted. “Perhaps.” He cleared his throat. “We need to post look-outs, not only in our own vicinity but up and down the coast.”

Yes. Paris and I had not landed at Troy but farther south. They could land anywhere. It was a very long coastline.

“And we must alert our allies, order them to report any landings to us. For now, we can come and go as we wish. Let us bring in large stores of food and goods. Enough to last a year or more. No siege can last longer than that. When the winter winds blow again, the Greeks will go home.”

“You speak of a siege?” asked Hector. “Surely we must meet them in battle?”

“Perhaps,” said Priam. “But I am thinking of all the Trojans, not just of you warriors. The Greek contingent will have only men, only fighters, whereas we have a city full of artisans, laborers, women, children, livestock, all that makes Troy, Troy. We fight for it all: the smallest item that is dear to us, the sword of our grandfather, the necklace of our great-grandmother, the cradle of our firstborn. They left all that safe behind them; they are unencumbered by goods and by memories, whereas we must defend all—life, property, everything we love.”

“You speak again of fighting,” said Antenor. “Perhaps it will not come to that. Surely they will send an embassy and we can discuss terms.”

“If you think for a moment of asking me to return Helen, the answer is again no!” Paris cried, leaping into the middle of the floor. “She is my heart, my mind, my own hand. I cannot give her up. If they kill me, then I will be gone with the shades into Hades, and care not. But I cannot live without her!”

“But we can,” said Hector. “Must we all suffer because she is your heart, your mind, your own hand? Surely that is unfair.”

Hector had dared to say what everyone surely must be thinking.

Paris did not immediately respond. Instead he made his way out into the center of the chamber, slowly and deliberately. A silence flapped down like one of Athena’s owls. It lighted on my own shoulder and I could no more have spoken than if my own tongue were cut out. I could only look on, and listen.

Paris smiled. That smile was so glorious, and he never seemed to begrudge it, even to those hostile to him. “You speak wisely, Hector. I am fortunate to have a brother both honest and brave.” He turned in a circle, facing each of his interrogators, looking each in the eye. Finally he spoke.

“Dear friends and family,” he said. “I bow my head before your very just observations. It is true, the root of your possible trials seems to lie with me. Had I not brought Helen of Sparta here to Troy, you would not face the threat of this army. But sometimes we must bow our necks to the will of the gods, no matter how perverse or mysterious they may seem. I was selected for the task that has set all this in motion, and there was no way I could evade it. I have not spoken of it before—there was no need to. It seemed as a dream. But Zeus forced me to settle a dispute between his daughters and his wife. Not that I was worthy! Perhaps he chose me for no particular reason at all. I tried to demur, but it was no use. Have
you
ever tried to balk the gods? I tell you, it cannot be done!”

The company just continued staring at him. They shot looks at one another, as if to say,
Is he mad?

Paris cleared his throat. “The goddesses—Zeus’s wife, his daughter Athena, and Aphrodite, all came to me at Mount Ida and forced me to choose between them.”

Deiphobus scowled. “In what way? And to what end?” he scoffed.

“I was to choose the fairest,” Paris said.

“Ah, that’s no contest,” said Antenor. “Neither Hera nor Athena is noted for her special beauty, although of course all gods are beautiful.”

“Ah, you make my mistake,” said Paris. “I had always assumed that each god or person was jealous of his excellencies and dismissive of his weaker areas. After all, who can be perfect in all things?”

“Just so,” said Priam. “Son, why have you not told us of this?”

“It seemed a private matter,” said Paris. “Alas, now I see that when dealing with the gods, there is no private matter. Nor do they have weaknesses—or acknowledge them. The militant Athena, preeminent in ordered warfare, longed to be declared most beautiful as well. And so the goddesses sought to bribe me. Me, a mortal, whom they could wipe out with a swipe of their hand. And I chose Aphrodite, and now Hera and Athena seem to have a mighty grudge and have taken all of Troy as liable for the judgment of poor Paris.”

“Oh!” Priam reeled to a chair. “Oh, my son, what a dreadful burden to fall upon you. But still I do not see where this has led to our present difficulties.”

“The goddesses Athena and Hera are hostile,” Paris said. “They make Troy me, and me Troy. They wish to punish me.”

“But what of Aphrodite?” Antenor asked.

“Alas, she is not much help in battle,” said Paris.

A great murmuring broke out between them. No one seemed to notice that he had not explained exactly how Aphrodite had brought about our present plight. No one asked him what the goddesses had bribed him with.

“The goddesses have put us in this position,” said Paris. “I was but their tool.”

“Then we must undo their doing,” said Aesacus, who had kept quiet until now. I remembered him from the earlier council gathering in which sending Calchas was discussed—a little weasel of a man with stubble and bright eyes. “I have found that, unlike people, gods are easily distracted and bought off. A little flattery and sacrifice will make them forget quickly.” He managed to look both sarcastic and weary at the same time.

“In this case there is no way to appease them,” said Paris. “The judgment is over.”

“No judgment is final, unless the parties are dead,” said Hector. “You must return to the site and propitiate them.”

“But they won’t be there any longer.”

“They can travel anywhere they like, and they will, as soon as they hear about the retrial.”

“But I would not decide differently!”

“Pretend to have reconsidered. Say something that will flatter them. They like that.” Aesacus again.

XXXIX

A
s soon as we were safe in the deepest alcove of our chamber, I pulled Paris toward me and whispered—no, even softer than a whisper, I breathed—my request directly into his ear: “You must tell me of that day on Mount Ida.” I sought to keep any human or divine ears from overhearing.

He turned his face toward mine and in the golden light from the oil lamps I could read, rather than hear, his reply. “When I was still a herdsman, I was dozing near a pool in the twilight. The cattle had wandered away, but it was too early yet to fetch them back. I was lying there, just as—” He broke away and flung himself down on the bed. “Just like this.” He stretched his arms out above his head and wallowed luxuriantly. “I was dreaming—drowsy warm dreams, and the little violets under my head were like a fragrant bolster—and then . . .” I settled beside him on the bed; his voice had risen too loud. “I thought it was a vision, but three female figures stood around me, enveloped in a green shade. I could see through them, but it did not seem odd. I sat up.” He rose, enacting it. “And I whispered, ‘What do you want of me?’ and they bade me rise and to take off my sandals. I did. Then they beckoned me to follow them. I walked over the cool grass, which felt like polished marble, and they drew me toward the pool, secluded and overhung with branches.”

He sat up on his knees. “It was then I became frightened. Kneeling on the ground, feeling the pebbles under my shins, suddenly coming wide awake, I knew this was no dream. And as I looked at the . . . figures . . . I knew them to be no mortals, but gods. I started to shake all over.”

Sweat sprang out on his forehead. I thought of my mother and what had happened to her. It is not easy, coming suddenly upon a god. “Did you . . . did you even think of running away?”

“No, I knew better. I thought they would strike me dead. I knew they would. Their eyes . . . there was something so deadly about their eyes, for all their smiles and compliments.”

“You saw their faces?” I had always thought that to gaze directly on a god was sure death.

“Better than that—I saw them naked!” He started to laugh, nervous gusts of laughter in the remembering. “They forced me to look at them.” He was sputtering now. “Yes, they disrobed before me and sought my . . . my evaluation of their comparative beauty!”

“But . . . why?” Perhaps it all
had
been a dream.

“I don’t know why, I only know they said I must choose between them for the fairest.”

“You said they offered you bribes,” I coaxed.

“Yes.”

I waited for him to tell me what they were. But he only hung his head. I asked him directly.

“I don’t—I don’t remember,” he said miserably.

“How could you not remember?”

“I told you, it was like a dream. Do you remember dreams? Some of them, perhaps, but little details become blurred, melt into something else. The harder you try to catch hold of them, the more they recede.”

“Are you certain you could find that place again?”

“I think so. I know the mountain very well.”

“Stand there again, and it will come back to you. That is the difference between dreams and real places. You cannot reenter a dream, but you can go back to a place.”

“But why should we go back there? I don’t want to.” I half expected him to say, like a trembling child,
I won’t!

“You must remember what it was you did to offend Hera and Athena, if ever we have any chance of placating them. It goes back to what they offered you, and how you responded. Aesacus is right.”

“It’s too late.”

“No, no. If they have sent an army against us, should we not try to find out why, and repair it?”

“I don’t want to go back there. What if they . . . take it all back?”

“Take what back?”

“The thing they gave me. That
she
gave me.”

“I thought you didn’t remember what that was.”

“I don’t. I don’t!”

I took his face in my hands, tried to wipe away the frantic fear on it. “Paris, Paris. We must go back, for the sake of Troy. And while we are there, you must show me the herdsman’s hut where you grew up. I want to meet your foster parents. I want to see where you spent your childhood. We can do it all on the same day, the pleasant with the frightening. Will you show me?”

“Yes,” he mumbled.

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.” He looked as if he were about to be whipped.

* * *

Ida, again. In the bright, cold sunlight it felt nothing like itself during that murky wild night when last I was on the mountain. We were not going toward that peak where the women’s rites had been carried out, but on to another spur of Ida. The mountain had so many little peaks and flanks and spurs that it was like a mother lion suckling many cubs.

The moment we set foot on Ida, Paris changed.

“Here’s where I used to run—over there is where I built a treehouse—and there’s where I made a fort of boulders—and look, in that dale is where Agelaus and Deione raised me. I see no smoke rising—they aren’t home. We can return at sunset, see if they are back. And I’ll show you the place where they found me. Where I was lying on a wolf skin.”

“Please do not.”

“Oh, but it’s a sacred place, at least to me. Where I passed from one life to another.”

“We came here so that you might show me that other place where you passed into another life—and brought danger to Troy.”