“Zeus,” she murmured.
“Asertu, the goddess of love. Arina, the sun goddess. Kusa, goddess of the moon.”
“You have no warrior goddess?”
“A warrior goddess?” The idea seemed ridiculous to me. Men are warriors, not women. “No, my lady.”
“Then you do not serve Athene, under any name.”
I shook my head.
“Athene despises me. She is the enemy of Troy.”
I remembered the weathered little wooden statue in the garden courtyard. “The Trojans honor her image, though.”
“You cannot fail to honor so powerful a goddess. No matter how much Athene hates me, the people of this city must continue to placate her as best they can. Certain disaster will overtake them if they do not.”
“I was told that Apollo protects the city.”
She nodded, her lips pressed into a tight line. “Yet I fear Athene.” Helen looked beyond me, looking into the past, perhaps. Or trying to see her future.
I began to feel uneasy. The black-robed servant had not moved from where she stood in the doorway, her eyes boring into me from beneath her hood.
“My lady, is there some service you wish me to perform for you?”
Helen’s gaze focused on me again. A faint smile dimpled her cheeks. “You wonder why I summoned you.”
“Yes.”
The smile turned impish. “Don’t you think I might want a closer look at such a handsome stranger? A man so tall, with such broad shoulders? A man who stood against Hector and his chariot team and turned them away?”
She was teasing me. Taunting, almost. And I felt a stirring in my blood. I realized that Helen could melt stone with those blue eyes of hers.
It took me an effort of will to refrain from reaching out to her. I bowed my head slightly. “May I ask you a question, my lady?”
“You may—although I don’t promise to answer it.”
“The Achaians argue among themselves: did Paris actually abduct you or did you leave Sparta willingly?”
Her smile faded. She lowered her eyes, as if thinking hard about what answer to make. At last she replied, “Lukka, you don’t understand the ways of women, do you?”
“That’s true enough,” I admitted.
“Let me tell you this much,” Helen said. “No matter how or why I accompanied Paris to this great city, I will not willingly return to Sparta.”
I thought, But you will return, willingly or not, if Priam accepts the offer of peace that I gave him.
Helen spread her arms. “Look about you, Lukka! You have eyes, use them! What woman would willingly live as the wife of an Achaian lord when she could be a princess of Troy?”
“But your husband Menaleos is a king.”
“And an Achaian queen is still regarded less than her husband’s horses and dogs. A woman in Sparta is a slave, be she wife or concubine, there is no real difference. Do you think there would be women present in the great hall at Sparta when an emissary arrives with a message for the king? Or at Agamemnon’s Mycenae or Nestor’s Pylos or even in Odysseos’ Ithaca? No, Lukka. Here in Troy women are regarded as human beings. Here there is civilization.”
She seemed really angry.
“Then your preference for Paris is really a preference for Troy,” I said.
She put a finger to her lips, as if thinking over the words she wished to use. Then, “When I was wed to Menalaos I had no choice. The young lords of Achaia all wanted me … and my dowry. My father made the decision. If the Achaians should win this war, the gods forbid, and force me to return to Sparta with Menalaos, I will again be chattel.”
Before I could reply she added, “That is, if Menalaos allows me to live. More than likely he will slit my throat.”
The servant back at the doorway stirred at that, the first sign of life I had seen from her.
“Would you agree to return to Menalaos if it meant that Troy would be spared from destruction?”
“Don’t ask such a question! Do you think for one instant Agamemnon fights for his brother’s honor? The Achaians are intent on destroying this city. I am merely their excuse for attacking.”
“So I have heard in the Achaian camp.”
“Priam is near death,” Helen went on, her voice lower. “Hector will die in battle, that is foretold. But Troy itself need not fall, even if Hector dies.”
I thought, And if Hector dies Paris will become king. Making Helen the Queen of Troy.
She turned and beckoned to the older, black-robed woman. “Apet, come here.”
Still like a dark phantom, the older woman glided silently to her mistress’s side.
“Lukka, I wish my maidservant to deliver a message to Menalaos. Will you promise to protect her in the Achaian camp?”
I looked from Helen’s wide blue eyes to the coal-black eyes of the older woman, then back again. “My lady, I am only a common soldier, bound to the House of Ithaca.”
“Do you promise to protect my servant?” Helen repeated, with some iron in her voice.
I nodded once. “I will do my best, my lady.”
“Good.” Turning to the servant, Helen said, “Apet, you will tell Menalaos that if he wants me to return to him he will have to win me on the field of battle. I will not go willingly to him as the consolation prize for losing this war.”
I took a deep breath. Helen was far more daring than any woman I had ever heard of. And much more astute. I realized that she unquestioningly wanted Troy to win this war, wanted to remain in this city and one day become its queen. Yet she wanted her servant to tell her former husband that she will come back to him—if he wins! She wanted to tell him, through her servant, that she will return to Sparta and be a docile Achaian wife—if and when Troy is burned to the ground.
Clever woman! No matter who loses this war, she will protect her own lovely skin.
Helen rose to her feet, signaling that our meeting was ended. “Lukka, my servant Apet will go with you when you return to the Achaian camp. You will bring her to Menalaos, then see that she is returned safely to me.”
If Menalaos doesn’t cut her head off, I thought, for such a message. And mine with her. But I said nothing as I bowed to Helen and went to the door by which I had entered.
“May the gods protect you, Lukka,” Helen said to me as I pulled the door open.
“And you, my lady,” I replied. I stepped through the doorway, feeling the glittering eyes of Helen’s servant on my back like a pair of daggers. The guard who had brought me to this chamber was still waiting outside to escort me back to the king’s audience hall.
As the door swung shut behind me, I heard Helen telling her servant, “Apet, you will leave with Lukka and give my message to Menalaos. Speak to no one else. He will recognize you and know that you speak my words.”
“But my nursling …” The older woman began, in a voice dry and harsh with age. The door closed, and I heard no more.
And then it struck me. Helen had called me by my own name. All the others called me “Hittite” and nothing more. But she knew my name and used it.
I marveled at that.
21
The gray-bearded courtier who had escorted me earlier was waiting for me in the audience hall, still in his
