He smiled down at me. “Not if you come with me to Troy.”
“To Troy?” The thought seemed to stun her.
“Come with me and be my wife. You will be a princess of the mightiest city of the Aegean.”
A princess of Troy. Wife of Paris in the many-towered city by the Dardanelles. A city of gentility and beauty, fabled throughout the world. It was impossible. It could never be. Yet to be a princess in civilized Troy would be far better than being a queen in Menalaos’ Sparta.
Paris jumped to his feet and reached for his clothes. “Quickly,” he said. “My men are waiting at the palace’s main gate. Get dressed!”
In a daze, hardly believing what was happening to her, Helen did as he commanded. It was as if her true self was far away, watching this bewildered young woman obeying the bidding of the handsome prince of Troy. I came in and helped her to dress, then Paris wrapped her in his own brilliant blue cloak and pulled its hood over her head.
Like children playing a game the two of them stole through the stillsleeping palace and out to the mounted men waiting impatiently for their prince, while I roused a pair of slumbering slaves to quickly stuff as much of Helen’s clothes as they could into a pair of large wooden chests while I packed all her jewelry into a large woolen sack. It was almost too heavy for me to carry, but I would not let the slaves touch it.
They loaded the chests onto a mule cart as Paris lifted Helen up onto his horse and seated her behind him. She clutched his strong body and rested her head against his back. I climbed by myself onto the cart that one of Paris’ men drove. Then we were away, leaving Sparta, leaving her husband and her life, riding into a new dawn. How we got past the gates I do not know; Paris’ Trojan companions either bribed the guards or slew them, I never asked even later, when I wondered about it.
I felt weak with relief. Paris would take care of Helen. He would sweep her across the sea to a new life and make certain that everything was right. Menalaos was already fading into a distant, hateful dream.
With the sky brightening into a new day we galloped down the rutted road to the distant harbor. The cart I rode in jounced and groaned so badly I thought it would fall apart long before we reached the water’s edge. But soon enough we saw the square sail of Paris’ boat, with its sign of a white heron painted upon it.
Thus we left Sparta and headed for Troy, while the gods and goddesses atop Olympos watched and took sides for Helen and against her. Grim Ares, god of war, smiled at the thought of the blood that would be spilled over her. Athene, ever her enemy, began to plot her downfall.
5
Apet fell silent at last. For long moments I stared at her lean, withered face while the ever-constant wind from the sea swept across the Achaian camp along the beach.
In the dying embers of the campfire the aged Egyptian woman looked like a statue carved out of old, dried- out wood. The moon had set, but the skies were spangled with thousands of bright glimmering stars.
“So she came to Troy willingly with Paris, or Alexandros, or what ever he calls himself,” I muttered.
“Willingly, aye,” said Apet, her voice low and heavy with memories. “She feared for her life in Sparta, feared that if Menalaos sired a son he would murder her and install the bastard’s mother as his new queen.”
I nodded with understanding. Helen chose the path that offered her safety. Did she actually love Paris, or did she flee with the young prince of Troy to find safety for herself ? Both, I supposed. Women seldom do anything for one reason alone, I told myself.
“The Spartan nobility welcomed her cautiously,” Apet continued. “Queen Hecuba was very gracious. Paris was her favorite son, and he could do no wrong in her eyes.”
“And Priam, the king?”
Apet let out a sigh. “He was kind to her and ordered a royal wedding for her. Only the Princess Cassandra dared to say openly that Helen would bring disaster to Troy.”
“What of Hector and the other princes?”
“Oh, they expected Menalaos to demand his wife back. They thought that perhaps Menalaos would enlist the aid of his brother, Agamemnon. None of them dreamed that all the Achaian kings and princes would band together to make war on Troy.”
How could they have foreseen that? I asked myself.
“It was the old pact that Tyndareos had made all of Helen’s suitors swear to,” Apet said. “Agamamenon demanded that all of them come to his brother’s aid. It had been Odysseos’ idea to keep the peace among the Achaian lords. But now Agamemnon used it to make war on Troy.”
“So that he could wipe out Troy,” I said, “and end its command of the entry to the Sea of Black Waters.”
Apet shrugged. “What ever their reasons, the Achaians sailed against Troy and devastated the lands of Ilios.”
I looked up at the starry sky. Almost, I felt the eyes of the gods upon us.
“Tomorrow the war begins again,” I said, starting to get to my feet. “I’d better get some sleep.”
“But you have only heard part of Helen’s story,” Apet said to me, holding out a lean, emaciated hand to keep me from standing.
“Part of her story?”
“There is more,” she said. “The real tragedy of her life was yet to unfold.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “Isn’t this war tragedy enough? Thousands of Achaian warriors assailing the walls of the city? Men dying on that worn-bare plain every day? What more tragedy could there be?”
“More, Hittite,” said Apet. “More. For Helen, the ultimate tragedy.”
Despite my awareness of the battle that would begin in a few short hours, I sat down on the sand again and listened as Apet unfolded the rest of Helen’s tale.
6
So the barbarians brought their black boats to these shores—Apet renewed her tale—ravaging coastal villages and even striking deeper inland. At last they camped here on the beach by the plain of Ilios and besieged Troy itself. Prince Hector led the Trojan troops into battle on the plain, day after day. More than once the Achaians drove his men to the city’s gates, but Troy’s high strong walls always held the barbarians at bay.
The fateful morning came only a few days ago.
I accompanied Helen as she climbed up to the battlements of manytowered Troy to take her place with the other royal women atop the Scaean Gate. Outside the gate, on the plain, the Trojan warriors were assembling in their chariots, with their footmen behind them. From their camp along the beach the Achaian chariots were wheeling into formation. Another day of blood and mayhem was beginning.
But this day would be different. This day Helen would feel her heart break within her. This day it would become clear to her at last that her Trojan husband was a coward. And that she loved the one man in all the world she could never obtain.
For many months Helen had thrilled to see the men riding out to do battle on the plain of Ilios in their magnificent war chariots, splendid in their bronze armor and plumed helmets, the morning sun glinting off the points of their tall spears. She endured the stares and whispers of the other women; what of it? She was a princess of Troy, wife of handsome Paris, well loved by his mother, Hecuba, the queen.
Like a giddy child she watched Paris, Hector and all the other princes of Troy as they rode across the bare, dusty battlefield to meet the besieging Achaians. Paris was the handsomest of them all, although his older brother Prince Hector commanded the most respect.
With the foot soldiers and archers trailing behind them, the Trojan chariots advanced across the windswept plain toward the shoreline, where the Achaian invaders had drawn up their black ships.
In the distance, the Achaians came forward in their own chariots and brightly plumed helmets. We could not
