Helen of Troy (70 page)

“Achilles killed him, Paris. Not you.”

Paris’s eyes filled with tears. “Troilus. Hector told me that when Troilus was a baby, one of his earliest memories was of Hecuba holding him, as he reached out and pulled her hair.” He smiled in spite of himself. “She smacked his little hand. She hated it if anyone messed her hair. She still does.”

The picture of Troilus as a laughing, happy baby was like a stab. “Paris—if only we had had a child, a boy, like Troilus . . .” Now I ached for that lost son.

“Are you mad?” His voice went from soft to harsh, and he sat up. “So he could get killed, too? Have we not already killed enough people? I tell you, I killed Troilus! For if I had not . . . done what I have done, Achilles would not be here!”

“It is what
we
have done,” I said. “Not you alone, but us together. And . . .” Suddenly I felt bereft, unfairly attacked. “My mother killed herself! And my brothers—who knows how they died? I have had more losses than you! And my daughter, I’ve lost her—”

“We said we were willing to pay the price.”

“But you, apparently, weren’t!” There, I had said it. He was content with my losses, but now that Troilus was sacrificed, it was a different story.

“I don’t think we can ever know a price until we are confronted with it. But now, in this world we have brought about, to have a child, to even think of it . . .” He shook his head. “Oh, Helen, I am sick with grief!”

“I know,” I said. “As am I.”

“We should be the ones to die, not others. I could more easily die myself.”

“Perhaps we will,” I said. As if that were any comfort.

XLIX

A
s I walked along the ramparts with Gelanor, we spoke of the death of Troilus and Paris’s continued gloom. Paris’s happy manner had vanished, as if it had only existed in company with Troilus’s. Certainly they were the only ones of Priam’s sons with glad laughter and flashing smiles, and now Troilus had taken Paris’s with him to the underworld. Even Paris’s voice had changed, so that when he spoke from another room I did not recognize it. I told Gelanor that Paris was especially haunted by the thought that Troilus had been killed because of the prophecy. Gelanor asked who had known about the prophecy, and I said very few, it was not commonly spoken of. Gelanor thought that the ambush of the party to Dardanos and the obvious knowledge of the weak spot in our western walls, as well as the targeting of Troilus, all pointed to uncanny lucky guesses—too lucky, in fact. He suspected spies. But how had they penetrated our walls?

“Who comes and goes freely? Who is likely to be present when private matters are discussed? Did you speak of the prophecy about Troilus at any time?”

I tried to remember. “Priam refused to speak of it publicly,” I said. “As for the scouting party to Dardanos and the weak wall, many people would have known about those things as well.”

We turned to look out over the walls; we were looking down over the south slope, where the lower city spread out below us. In the midday sun, the palisade fence and ditch were barely visible, casting no shadows at noon. Far away the faint blue of Mount Ida beckoned. Mount Ida. Oenone. I put her out of my mind.

“These people must be protected,” Gelanor said. “They must not be betrayed unto death by a spy—or several spies. I thought I was the spymaster, and now I see I have a rival. Someone in the Greek camp challenges me.” He drew his shoulders back. “It is these lives we play for. We must win.”

I did not wish to return to the palace, and Paris. These days he sat inside, burnishing his armor, polishing his shield, and evermore refitting his greaves. I would come upon him practicing his sword thrusts, and once I found him stringing his huge bow, his face knotted in the sweaty effort. He meant to fight, and all else had paled before him. He would look up, embarrassed, but there being no place to hide armor or a bow, he had to stand and stare at me defiantly. I would pass silently across the corridor and leave him to his exercises.

I could avoid him and seek the chamber where my loom was waiting. The great picture I was weaving enveloped me and when I began guiding the shuttle across the warp in the pattern I had designed, it was as if I myself had stepped into the story. With great care I wove the blue wool depicting the Eurotas, making it encircle the whole tapestry, as it had encircled my own life as a child. I could see the swans on it again, and the great swan I had beheld that vivid day with Clytemnestra.

Mother. I had begun her outline, but got no further. An outline: that was what she was to me now. And her outline had shimmered and faded and fled, because of me, because of my flight.

Hermione. I had not yet begun her picture on the tapestry. Should I keep her still a child, still with her turtles? The turtles she chose over me.

But no, I must not think that. She asked how long you would be gone, I told myself, and you did not tell her. She thought you were coming back.

I had not thought it would come to this. But then, I did not think. Aphrodite did my thinking. Now she had withdrawn and stranded me here. With Paris, who fretted and wept and regretted his part in this, and had little thought of me. There was no one else here for me. Gelanor, yes, and Evadne, but them I would have had in Sparta.

And you, I thought, brushing the loom, caressing the growing pattern there. You speak to me, you console me. I touched the purple threads with my forehead.

I began avoiding Paris. Or was he avoiding me? We passed one another in the hallways of the palace, smiling, murmuring regrets about having to be at the armorer’s or the goldsmith’s, or attend upon Hecuba, or inspect horses. Now the wisdom of separate quarters for men and women came home to me; at night we could not pass one another but must light, like weary moths, in the same room. Still it was possible to slide past one another and, even in the same bed, to awaken, backs to one another, one looking east and the other west.

It began to echo my life with Menelaus: the surface politeness, the unruffled demeanor, the cool untouched middle of the bed. And yet it was not the same. I had not been mad for Menelaus, and passion had been absent from the beginning. With Paris now I was ill at ease; his changed manner had left me nervous about causing him distress. Any thoughtless mention of the name Troilus, any accidental humming of a tune connected, in any way, with Troilus, or a thousand other things that had some private meaning to Paris in regards to Troilus, would plunge him into despair—or anger. He was holding me up in the balance with Troilus on the other side, and it seemed that there were days when I weighed lighter than Troilus, when he would have exchanged me for him. Thus the false smiles as we passed one another in silence.

There were no Trojans to whom I could express my unhappiness. Gelanor and Evadne were the only ones to whom I could flee, who could read what was happening without my saying the words, for they had come with me, they had made the journey with me here.

Evadne had rooms in my palace and Gelanor had been given a tidy little house by Priam midway down in the city. Priam liked knowing that he could call upon Gelanor for ideas whenever he liked; lately I had had to compete with the king for Gelanor’s time.

On a day when Paris had been particularly distant and sunk in gloom, Evadne and I hurried down to Gelanor’s. His little house was crammed full of objects that had caught his eye and taken his fancy: boxes of butterflies, bits and pieces of rocks, bronze spearheads, bows in various stages of assembly, seashells, pots of paint, horse bridles with metal mouthpieces. They were arranged in neat rows on shelves, to be sure, but still it struck me that this was the room little boys dreamed of. My brothers had collected things and brought them home, but Mother had had their rooms purged regularly as messy and unworthy of princes.

He emerged from an alcove, walking with his arms extended stiffly in front of him. “Greetings,” he said. Blood was dripping off his forearms. What sort of accident had he encountered?

“Oh, let me help!” I rushed to him, ready to daub the wounds and bandage them.

Laughing, he pushed me away. “Nay, let them be.” He waved his arms to dry the blood. “I cut them myself.”

“Are you mad?” Evadne said. “What fool cuts himself?”

“A fool intent on seeing if a scar can be willfully induced to mimic a known one,” Gelanor said. “Now . . .” He pulled a clay pot down from a shelf running across one wall and wrenched its lid off. “This will do for one of them. Get me that gray jar on the table there. And the little bowl beside it.”

I brought them to him, and he lined them up with the first pot. Carefully he dipped his fingers in each container and rubbed the contents into the oozing cuts on his forearm, wincing as he did so.

“Can I create a scar as I wish?” he asked. “We shall see. This one”—he indicated the gray jar—“has clay from the banks of the Scamander. The others are ash from a hearth fire and soil from a field of barley. All common enough, all easily gathered by anyone.”

“But what if the wounds fester?” Evadne cried. “What if your arm becomes withered?”

“I have not finished,” Gelanor said. He reached behind him for a pitcher of wine, and poured it slowly over the wounds. “This will seal in the dirt and protect the wound from festering.”

All this begged the question: why was he doing this?

“Ah, my lady, you see how far I am willing to go to protect you and yours in Troy.” He raised his eyebrow in that teasing way I hated. “You know the trite saying, I would give my right arm? Well, here I prove it!” He held up his bloody, smeared arm.

“You prove nothing but that you have taken leave of your senses,” I said. “I fail to see how this has anything to do with Troy, or me.”

Now his face changed, in that sudden way he had. “Oh, you are wrong,” he said. “Tell me what you know of scars, and of their importance.”

That was easy. “I know that they are with us for life. If we fall on our knees as children, the scar holds a testimony of that spill for the rest of our lives. Warriors speak proudly of their scars as the proof of their battles.”

“Ah. You said the word:
proof.
We rely on scars for proof that a man is who he says he is. How many tales are there of a man returning to claim his heritage and having to prove himself by his scars? Usually, in these stories, an old nurse or his mother or someone recognizes them. Oh, yes, they say, little Ajax was bitten by a wolf on his leg, I remember it . . . welcome home, Ajax. But what if a scar can be duplicated? Especially a very unusual one? And that clears the way for an imposter to gain trust. I am not sure it is possible, but I intend to find out.” He stopped for breath. “Someone in Troy is a spy, a spy placed very high. He listens to our most private conversations. He comes and goes in our homes without arousing suspicion. I have my idea as to who it is. Now I need to prove it.”

“But who?”

“Look at what has been known that should not have been, ask yourself who was present to hear it. It is a very clearly marked trail, if you have eyes to see. But the person is young and did not think to cover his tracks better.”

“Who? Who?” I asked.

“Not now,” said Gelanor. “It is best no one knows my suspicions until I am sure. After all, why besmirch someone who may yet be innocent?”

Evadne and I left him, shaking our heads. I worried about him; I knew he had not wanted to come here, and now he was trapped. Had his frustration and anger led him to these strange actions?

“Evadne,” I said, “if only you could see who it is!”

She shook her head. “I have tried, my lady. But the vision is granted only as the gods allow. I cannot command it. They have revealed nothing nearby; they seem to delight in the faraway and the future. And even there they have disclosed nothing of late. Perhaps my springs have dried up.”

My own gift of seeing—nay, of
knowing—
seemed also to have waned. It had been so strong in Sparta when first I returned from Epidaurus. “Perhaps we should consult the household snake, which you so lovingly brought from Sparta,” I said. He was, after all, connected with my gift. “Let us visit him.”

We could safely go there without encountering Paris. He never came to the little chamber we had allotted to the snake, though the snake had once bound us together, in that strange and wild night, when first we met alone . . . No, I would not think of that now!