Helen of Troy (76 page)

To my surprise, Priam agreed. Could he not see that no amount of recompense would satisfy Agamemnon, and that he had just given him permission to sack Troy? And as for the wealth he claimed I had brought, that was a lie.

“No!” I cried, but I was far away.

Agamemnon drew out his great sword, and cut the throats of the lambs. Next he poured wine into two cups; he took one and gave the other to Priam, and they poured it out onto the ground. Then, in one voice, the Trojans and the Greeks chanted a curse:
May the brains of anyone breaking this treaty be
dashed out upon the ground, yes, and the brains of their children, too, and may
their wives be taken slaves by foreigners
.

Trembling, Priam muttered that he must return to Troy. “I cannot bear to stay here so close and see my son Paris suffer. My only comfort is that the gods already have chosen which man will win, and all that follows has already happened.” Stiffly, he turned and got into his chariot. But not before he—and I—heard both armies pray that Paris should die.

“Let the man who brought all these troubles upon us perish,” they implored the gods. “Let him go down to the House of Hades, and give us peace!”

Could any father, or wife, hear a worse prayer? And what fools they were, if they thought that would truly bring peace to them. Agamemnon wanted the treasures of Troy, and these did not include me.

Now the puffs of dust traced a line as Priam returned to Troy, and the gates swung open once again to admit him.

“He takes his place at the walls,” said the Evadne-spirit. “I propose that we join him.” Her lips—oddly supple and missing the purse-string wrinkles usually there—was curved into a sly smile. I wanted to object, but I recognized the command.

A large crowd of onlookers had gathered in the area just above the Scaean Gate, and I could see Priam’s gray head surrounded by his family and councilors. As I passed through their ranks, I heard them muttering. Old Panthous, who usually fretted himself over irrelevant mechanical devices, turned baleful, red-rimmed eyes on me. Beside him the elegant Antenor looked at me reproachfully.

My place was beside Priam and Hecuba, no matter how painful that must be for us all. Priam turned to welcome me. His words were kind, but I saw the blank terror in his eyes. He said that he did not blame me; no, he blamed the gods. Hecuba said nothing. She looked at me with narrowed eyes, and her daughters beside her kept staring straight down on the plain to watch their brother go to his doom, even a doom he had brought upon himself.

Hector remained by Paris’s side, and he and Odysseus measured out the combat ground. The two contestants stood watching. Menelaus, who in all my time in Troy had produced so much anger in me, was standing before the Greek army, his feet planted in just that awkward way I remembered so well. My heart went out in pity for him. He, also, was still suffering for me.

Paris was looking down at the ground, his head bowed. A sacrifice. He did not expect to live.

Hector stood between them, shaking the lots in his helmet, turning his head away. The lot for the right to cast the first spear-throw leapt out. The gods had chosen Paris.

Both men drew on their helmets and their faces vanished beneath the bronze. Menelaus took up his round shield and, striding to the middle of the measured piece of ground, staked out his place. Paris drew back the long-shafted spear and hurled it through the air. It struck Menelaus’s shield with a loud noise but did not penetrate all the way through; for an instant it protruded in a straight line and then the bronze tip bent under the weight and the spear sank. Menelaus wrenched it out with one hand, tossing it aside, then drew back his own and threw at Paris. The hateful goddess enabled me to hear his muttered words, calling on all the powers to see that he killed Paris, to grant him revenge. He added spitefully that our children’s children should still shudder at the thought of wronging such a kindly host as he, Menelaus. Selfish words, and they snapped me back from my pity of him.

Hatred gave his throw strength and the spear penetrated the shield of Paris, tearing through to rend his tunic. But he had swerved in time to avoid real injury. While he was reeling and trying to regain his balance, Menelaus rushed on him, brandishing his sword, and brought it down hard on Paris’s helmet. The force knocked him to his knees. But instead of piercing the helmet, the silver-mounted blade broke into pieces and fell as glittering metal rain around the kneeling Paris.

Menelaus yelled and raised his hands to the sky, then lunged at Paris and grabbed him by the crest of his helmet. His fury gave him the strength of Heracles and he swung Paris off the ground in an arc, then started dragging him toward the line of Greeks. No more bothering with spears and swords; he would kill him with his bare hands.

Writhing, Paris clawed at the strap of his helmet; he was being choked to death. A groan went up from the walls as we watched helplessly. Paris’s feet were trailing in the dust, and his arms were tearing at the helmet.

One moment the newly risen sun was casting its golden light on the contest ground, and in the next a dull mist was creeping across the plain, reaching odd fingers toward the dust-enveloped combatants. Just before it reached them, I saw the strap of Paris’s helmet snap and he scramble to his feet. Menelaus held an empty helmet. He stared at it, then threw it back into the lines of his army. He turned on Paris, looking for a way to kill him. Then suddenly both men vanished.

The mist enveloped us, too. I could not even see Priam, near as he was. But I heard the soft, sweet voice of my companion. “Back to your palace,” it murmured. “Paris awaits you in your fragrant bedroom, in all his radiant beauty. Go, join him in the inlaid bed.”

This was too much to endure, even though I was mortal and she who taunted me immortal. “No!” I said. “Menelaus has defeated Paris down on the plain. You torment me. I will not be mocked by an empty room.”

Before she answered, I felt a cold fear spreading through me. “If you provoke me again, I shall hate you as I’ve loved you,” she hissed. “Oh, yes, you sit and feel sorry for yourself when you have had my favor! If I withdraw it, you will look back on that sorrow as bliss.” She waited a moment. “Now do as I say. Go to your palace and seek the bedchamber of Paris.
Now
.”

I fell away, leaving the Trojans at the wall. No one missed me, no one watched me go. The mist saw to that.

My legs heavy as wood, I trudged uphill toward the palace. There would be no one there. The only Paris waiting would be the one I carried in my mind, while the real one lay slain. No chance ever to repair what had sundered us, either in this life or the pale underworld. There we would wander in the darkness, cold water seeping around the stones where the hopeless dead gathered, passing one another, unable to think or speak.

The palace loomed ahead, surrounded by emptiness. Everyone was down on the walls, and the summit of Troy was deserted. The doors stood open. Odd, when they were always shut fast. There were no guards inside, no attendants, none of the people who had thronged our quarters for so long. My feet sounded very loud as I walked across the floor. I trudged up the stairs, to silence. Up more stairs, ascending into stillness. I did not want to mount the final steps or to enter the bedroom. I looked back; there was no one behind me. “Evadne” had vanished, as I knew she would.

On I went, reaching out to the big handles on the door, pulling them toward me, drawing the heavy portals open. I stepped in, and saw the movement on the bed. Paris was lying there, as provocatively as a faun stretched out on a flowering riverbank. Startled, he sat up, clutching a cover to himself, blinking as those suddenly awakened from sleep do.

What was he doing here? Where was his armor? Why was he lying naked in the bed? How could he have been asleep? I stared at him, speechless.

“Helen,” he said, and his voice had not a tang of the old, ugly nuance to it. “Helen.” He sounded like a lost, bewildered child.

Suddenly we were not alone. Aphrodite, not bothering now with the likeness of Evadne, fluttered near. She brandished a chair and set it down beside the bed.

“Sit!” she ordered me.

I sank down onto it. I did not look at her, though. I saw only Paris.

“I saw you on the plain . . .” I began.

“I—yes, I was being dragged by Menelaus, and then suddenly I was free. My head snapped back and the helmet was off, and I scrambled away. Just before that, I knew I was going to die. And I did not want to, in spite of all my brave words the night before. I would die and you would go back to Menelaus.”

“You did not understand,” I said, “that I never would have gone with him.”

“But you had tried to once before! You climbed over the walls to make your way to him!”

“To end the war and to make my way to Hades, not to Menelaus. Are there no daggers? Are there no poisons? Oh, there are means aplenty to take ourselves to Hades. Rope was good enough for my mother, after all!”

“I wronged you, Helen. You left the palace—or was it a prison?—in Sparta. I had no right to put you back into it. And dying in that duel would have done so.” Now he was sitting up and I could see he was not naked but wearing a tunic of the finest spun wool, shot through with silver threads—not the undertunic of a warrior. “I was crawling away from Menelaus, giddy with surprise that somehow I had been released, hearing the roar of the Greeks in the lines behind me, but crawling to nowhere, as there was no safety. The duel must go on, until one or the other of us was dead. And then, as I scampered through what seemed a forest of legs and flung myself over the sandaled feet, suddenly I was here, here in this chamber, and, overcome with sleep, I lay down. And when I looked up, there you were.”

“And she as well.” I glanced over at the smiling Aphrodite.

“Who?” asked Paris. He could not see her.

“Our friend. Our enemy. With the gods, it is one and the same.”

He looked at me, all the old trust and yearning and splendor in his youthful face. “Helen, I beg you to forgive me. I love you beyond any words to express it. I cannot live knowing that there is any shadow of a cloud between us.”

“But you have cast that shadow!” My sun, Paris, had gone behind a gray blank cloud and my world had gone cold.

“Sorrow at the deaths around us, deaths that I—not you!—have caused, weighed me down so heavily I could barely breathe, or even look up. I wanted only for that to end, and I tried to end it the only way I could see. But Helen—oh, Helen!” He rose from the fragrant bed and embraced me. I felt the warmth and strength in those arms, which had hung limply at his side whenever I was near since the deaths began.

His kiss was sweeter than any I had ever tasted before. Was it only because I had been denied them for so long, or had Aphrodite increased that sweetness? I looked around the room from the corners of my eyes, but I saw nothing. She had vanished. This, then, was entirely our own love and our own desire. I clasped him to me and vowed that I would never let anything sunder us again.

We hid in our private quarters—some later said we cowered. But that is not true; we were just once again removed from all the rest of the world, as long ago. The day, which had started so sternly and passed so slowly, now leapt like a deer through its hours.

Then Hector strode in, flinging the doors open with no ceremony. He looked around eagerly, but when his eyes lighted on us, he scowled.

“No!” he cried, his voice breaking with disbelief. “It cannot be! You cannot be here. They said you ran—I did not believe them—I knew you better than that, but here you are. The shame of it, the disgrace to our father’s house!” He rushed to Paris and yanked him up, pulling him off his feet. I thought he would shake him to death. “I came here to prove them wrong, and instead of finding your chamber empty, I find you here.” He hurled Paris to the floor. “How did you do it, you slinking coward? How did you slither away, in plain sight of everyone? Oh, you must have had the escape route all planned when you issued your mock challenge. But what was the point? If Menelaus lived, you still had not won. Or were you and Helen planning to run away, like you did from Sparta?”

I had never heard so many words from the reserved Hector, not in all the time I had been in Troy. Paris wrapped his arms around his head to shield himself from the coming kicks. From his muffled mouth came a plea that Hector listen. Hector’s legs were trembling—aching to kick Paris as he would a stuck door. His right foot was pulling back. Then it stopped. “Very well. Speak, then. Defend yourself with words. You, who cannot defend your honor with arms.”

Slowly Paris lifted his head and drew himself up. His face was ashen and his eyes desperate. “I—I cannot,” he stammered. “I cannot defend myself, for I know not what happened. I fought Menelaus—you know that. You know that in spite of his sword breaking to pieces and his spear failing to wound me, he was strangling me as he dragged me in the dust. Did I run then? No, I could not breathe. But suddenly I was free—I know not how. And I crawled away, and when I stood up, I was here.”

“What nonsense!” Hector cried. “You betray my own good sense, to insult me with such a lie.”

“It is true, I swear it, all I can say is that the gods—”

“Lies! Stop involving the gods, when it was your own duplicity that did it! Yes, you planned it all—”

“Hector,” I said, “think! Even if Paris had planned such a secret escape—which he did not—his plans could not have rescued him from the death that Menelaus was dragging him toward: a death outside the rules of a duel! Menelaus had lost the duel, so he resorted to this strongman’s trick. But such tricks work, all the more sadness for honest men. Only a god could have saved Paris then. And a god did. It is clear.”

“No, it is not clear!” Hector roared.

“Hector, it is clear to anyone who looks at it as a stranger would, rather than a wronged brother,” said Paris. “I did not ask for the help. I was prepared to pay the price; indeed, I thought I had paid it. But I will not refuse a gift from the gods, particularly when the gift is my own life.”