The Boy Who Cried Horse (2 page)

The trouble was Prince Paris had
stolen
Queen Helen from the Greeks. And no sooner had he landed back in Troy, than the Greeks arrived…

“We want her back!” her husband, Menelaus, said. “We’ll stay right here, outside your walls, until you starve to death.”

“Not a chancely hopeful thing, think I,” Prince Paris laughed. “We overstuffy with foodlets!”

“And that happened the day you were born,” my mother said. “Ten hungry years later, and still we battle on.”

In the palace, Prince Paris found ways to feed the people. Troy was a huge city with many little gates to sneak food in. A deep well in the market place made sure that we had water.

The best food went to Paris and Helen, and the next best to the fighting men who stood guard on Troy’s massive walls.

The next best went to the people working in the palace. The rest of us were left to live on scraps – or any rats that we could catch.

But soon even the rats were as thin as the east wind that blew across the plains of Troy.

And that was why I learned to be a storyteller.

Every Friday, they had a feast at the palace. They ate proper pies with tender goat or dog meat and gorgeous greasy gravy. Poets sang stories of the heroes and were paid with a pie.

I learned to write poems and sing them to Paris and Helen. Long story poems that went on for half a feast.

Of course, the tales I told were lies. I made Paris and the Trojan heroes sound like gods because that’s what they wanted to hear. I made the Greeks appear as weak as the seaweed on the shores where their ships rested.

So I am a liar. If you were hungry, then you’d lie, too.

Chapter Two

That Friday evening was the last evening Troy would ever see. It was the evening I met the stranger. I met him on the road to the palace. He was an old man with a grey beard and a dusty robe. He slipped from the shadow of a side street and stopped me.

He pointed at the tortoise shell I carried. “You have a lyre,” he said. “You must be a poet.”

“I am. I’m going to sing for Paris and Helen at the palace.”

“Then I’ll come along with you,” he said. “You can show me the way.”

“Everyone knows where the palace is,” I said.

“I am a stranger,” he told me.

I walked a few paces over the paved road, then stopped. “There are no strangers in Troy. The city has been locked for ten years to keep out the Greeks. How did you get in?”

“There are ways,” he said softly. “Lead on. Perhaps you can help me get inside the palace. I need to speak to Paris.”

“Why should I help you?”

“I’ll give you all the food you ever dreamed of … and more,” he promised.

I said I’d lie to help him. If you were hungry then you’d lie, too. I didn’t know I’d betray my city, did I?

We walked on through the moonlit streets to the palace. The wind from the plains seemed to shake the moon and pushed us up the hill. The guards knew me well and let me through. “Who’s this?” they asked and pointed at the man.

“My dad,” I lied. My dad had died fighting in the first few weeks of the war. I’d never known him. I always thought he’d be like this kind-eyed, grey-haired, old man.

The palace hall was bustling with servants and guards, magicians and jugglers, dancers and musicians. I knew them all.