Helen of Troy (94 page)

I turned away, retreating farther into the chamber, luring him after me. Avidly, he shut the door. It thudded into place on its hinges, and he dropped the bolt into place. “Now,” he said, “we begin our life together.”

When I reached the darkest part of the room, I stopped. He kept walking toward me, and when he reached me, he embraced me. I shuddered at his touch—it sent little wriggling snakes of aversion all over my body.

“Are you cold, my sweet?” He sounded solicitous. “Let us draw closer to the brazier.” In a corner a round stone brazier was glowing faintly with its coals.

“No. I am not cold.” I stood where I was and commanded my body to stop its quivering.

“Oh, Helen,” he murmured dazedly, running his hands across my shoulders and back. “My wife, my beauty.”

I stood stiffly, letting him fire himself to such a peak that he would lose his ability to notice anything else. Soon he seemed utterly lost in the web of his own desire and anticipation. He shuffled toward the bed, that beckoning goal. Trying to keep his dignity, he first knelt on it, then attempted to draw me after him. He would not fall on it like an unbridled, impassioned youth. I let myself follow him.

Safely—as he assumed—on the bed, he reached out for me. He plunged his thick and clumsy fingers into my hair, and for a moment I pitied him and would have left the thorn lying on its table, making do with ordinary ways of keeping him at bay. But he started kissing and biting my neck, lunging his thick body at me, and muttering insults about Paris. All these days in Troy, to have lived with the cowardly Paris . . . but now all was remedied. I should have been with him, Deiphobus, from the beginning.

“From that first night in my father’s courtyard, I knew,” he breathed. He started sliding my gown from my shoulders, pressing up against me.

“Pray, remove your tunic,” I teased him.

“I need only raise it,” he said, panting.

“That is what shepherds do in the fields,” I said. “It is not worthy of a prince of Troy. Is not your body that of a warrior? Then why hide it?”

“I offer it to you,” he said eagerly, sitting up and stripping off his tunic, leaving his shoulders bare.

Now! I reached over and plucked the stem of thorns. I dangled it before him. “This came from Sparta, my home. Our customs differ from yours. Yet I must honor them or feel that our union is not complete.”

“Do what you must,” he murmured, not knowing what he said.

“Very well.” I placed the branch carefully on his shoulder and drew it slowly down across his back. The little thorns dug in; tiny punctures wept a little blood, thin lines down his back.

“If this makes you mine, and me yours, it is but a trifle.” He sighed with pleasure.

“There,” I said, laying the branch aside. How long would it take to work? I must divert him for a little while. “Husband,” I said solemnly, “there is another ritual we observe in Sparta. We must intone the hymn to Hera as protector of marriage, and invoke her blessing.”

“Very well.” A trace of impatience mixed in his voice, but the night was long and he could postpone his pleasure for a few moments, if by so doing he gained stature in his wife’s eyes.

I had never memorized the entire prayer to Hera, which left me free to improvise and add verse after verse, which I hoped sounded authentic: “. . . the fruits of the earth and the great expanse of ocean, / and Poseidon and all his forces, grant us safe passage . . .”

How much time had passed? I had no way of knowing. The coals in the brazier were dying, but that was no measure. It depended too much on the quantity and quality of the coals.

“. . . and all Olympians—”

“Must retire at last to Olympus,” he finished for me, firmly.

Now it had come to this. He pulled off my gown—as he had the right to do—and gaped at my nakedness. Incoherent, he threw himself on me.

A rush of sounds came from his mouth like bounding stags, but they were a confused mass of compliments and desire. He grabbed at my belly, cupped my thighs, my breasts, his stout fingers demanding a response. I tried to pretend, but my tepid flutterings were lost in his rush to consummate the union. He would conquer Helen, make her his at last.

O let the drug have worked its disabling strength on him!

“Oh! Oh!” he was crying out in pleasure—but it was a pleasure that could not go beyond those limits.

I let loose a silent cry of thanks to the gods, and to Gelanor. I was spared.

Bewilderment flooded him, then anger, then embarrassment. He fell away from me. He started to say something, then checked himself. He wondered if I knew what had happened.

The pretense must only last a bit longer. Whatever served best to send him away and keep him from my bed: I would feign ignorance, and in so doing make his disappointment greater.

“Deiphobus,” I whispered. I stroked his cheek. I forced myself to gaze upon him dreamily in what little light there was. “Thank you.”

LXVIII

W
hat the Trojans thought of my “marriage,” I have no idea. Most likely they cared very little. Their appetite for and interest in my doings, or in any member of the royal family’s behavior, had shriveled like their bellies with the deprivations of the siege.

I was safe from the predations of Deiphobus. A few times he made halfhearted attempts to overcome his mysterious malady—bolstering himself with drink, or inflaming himself with lascivious songs—but when the result continued the same, he slunk away. Before long I could leave my bedchamber door open with no fear of his trespassing.

I worked at my loom, sadly completing the great pattern that had been empty and awaiting its final story. The edges, with Sparta, had been finished long ago, and within that, Paris and our voyage, but the center, with Troy, now must be filled in.

The once proud and shining city was threadbare, stripped. The artworks had long ago been sold to raise money, the fountains were silent and filled with dust, the streets teeming with injured soldiers and widows and refugees, beggars and urchins. The fine horses were gone, and only a few bedraggled donkeys staggered under their packs. The lower city, which had formed an apron to the south below the main city, had been overrun by the Greeks, who trashed and burned the houses and workshops, stealing horses and wrecking gardens.

The shining, sloping walls of Troy still held, and the towers still reared proudly over the enemy. They were impervious to the burning arrows and the stones the invaders aimed at them. As long as the walls of Troy held, Troy would stand.

But oh! the walls guarded nothing but misery, encircled only pain and grief. From the outside it looked stout and snug, but inside all was abject. The only consolation lay in knowing our enemy could not see through the walls to what lay beyond.

Of course, there were spies, always spies, on both sides. Doubtless the Greeks had hints of how badly things were going in Troy. They may even have heard about my “marriage” and undoubtedly they knew which of Troy’s best warriors survived—Deiphobus, and Aeneas, and Antimachus—and which were lost. They would have guessed that Priam and Hecuba were sunk in mourning and that the councils of war had deteriorated into laments and hopeless plans, and that Troy floundered, leaderless.

But they, too, had lost leaders—Achilles, and Ajax, their two best warriors. Our spies told us that the survivors were disheartened and weary, and that to their eyes, the walls of Troy seemed untouched despite their years of effort. And then, a dreadful visitation of plague had ripped through their ranks. They prayed and asked the gods from whence it had come, and how had they offended.

But it had not come from a god, so they received no answer. It had come from Gelanor’s mock treasure bundle, stuffed with the shirts from the temple of Apollo.

“They have been reading entrails and bird flights like madmen,” Gelanor said. “But therein does not lie the answer they seek.” He was leaning over the wall, staring across the plain to the Greek camp. His voice echoed a grim satisfaction, tinged with sorrow. “It has worked as I thought it would.” He sighed. “As I hoped it would. But what an evil hope, to kill my countrymen.”

I looked at him—so much older and worn than when I had first seen him. What had I done to him, to this honorable friend? My own journey had corrupted an upright man, to the point where he could poison his countrymen and call it a good day’s work. The sun was setting, and in the coming shadows I knew we were part of that darkness.

It was left to the daughters of Priam and Hecuba to provide solace to their parents: Creusa, the wife of Aeneas, Polyxena, Laodice, Ilona, and Cassandra. They had been spared the arrows and spears of the Greeks, but if the city fell, they would suffer worse than their dead brothers. In a conquered city, there were only two fates for women: the young ones would be raped and taken away into slavery, the old ones, deemed useless, killed outright. No one survived the sack of a city—not even the city itself. Achilles, the most ferocious ravisher, was gone and would not stride through our streets as he did through the home city of Andromache, destroying everything before him. But there were others—lesser imitators of their hero. They could mimic his cruelty easily enough, if they could not match his strength and prowess. Thus do cowards always.

Our only hope was that the Greeks, exhausted and demoralized, might bow before the seeming invincibility of our massive walls and go home. As I said, they could not see through them, could not know how near the end we really were.

I awoke crying. In the night I had had a strange vision, clear as a crystal splintering the sunlight. Even as I tried to grasp it, to retain it so I could convey it to others, it was fading, jumping, wavering, wriggling like shudders under the skin. I had seen something made of wood, huge, looming. I had seen it once before, even less clearly. But what was it? The image swam away from me. It harbored death. And I had also seen—could this be true?—Odysseus walking the streets of Troy, disguised. Taking our measure.

He was wearing beggar’s rags. Had I seen such a person? But the streets of Troy were filled with beggars now. If Odysseus had managed to sneak in, he could have lost himself amongst them easily enough. And why would he have come? Had they no spies?

Later he was to claim that I saw him, recognized him, helped him. But that is a lie. That man tells nothing but lies, whatever will serve his purpose. I pity Penelope, who waited for such a man!

I cried because this hulking wooden thing—whatever it was, I had seen it but fleetingly—signaled the doom of Troy.

I sat up. Daylight was nudging the shutters. The room around me was unchanged. Frescoes in red and blue showed the same serene flowers and birds. The polished floors gleamed, reflecting the fresh daylight. It seemed eternal, fixed. But the dream had shown it was all too vulnerable, living only on the sufferance of time.

It could not vanish, it must abide. But that was an illusion. Everything vanished—Mother, Paris, my own youth. Why should this room be different? Why should Troy itself be different?

“They are gone!” Evadne burst into the room, her spindly arms suddenly surging with strength as she flung the doors open. They flew out on either side of her, banging against the wall. The vases in their niches shuddered, trembled, but did not fall. “The Greeks have gone!”

The dream . . . it must be tied in with the dream . . . I leapt up out of bed. “Did they leave anything behind?”

She shook her head. “What matter what they left? They themselves are gone. Our sentries saw ship after ship sailing away, and then a brave lad confirmed it by going to their camp. It was deserted! And the spies report that they were so weakened by that mysterious plague they had not the manpower to continue the fight.” Her words rushed joyfully like a long-dammed stream suddenly free to tumble where it would.

“Did they leave anything behind?” I repeated. I hated my own dampening words, but it was all that mattered.

She inclined her head. “Dress yourself, my lady, and I shall tell you. I see your second sight did not vanish with the serpent.”

* * *

There was a horse, constructed of wood. From the camp a survivor had stumbled forth, claiming to have escaped the Greeks and their intended sacrifice of him by hiding in the forest. His name was Sinon, so he said. He told a pretty tale of their reasons for constructing the horse and leaving it behind.