the wall. It was still early in the morning.
So it is done, I said to myself. The city has fallen. What ever gods the Trojans prayed to have done them no good. I felt no exultation, no joy at all. Killing a thousand men and boys, burning down a city that had taken so many generations to build, raping women and carrying them off into slavery—this is not triumph.
Slowly I pulled myself erect. The square before the gate was empty now, except for the mangled bodies of Paris and the other slain men. Up the rising main street, behind the first row of columned temples, I could see flames soaring into the sky, smoke billowing toward heaven. A sacrifice to the gods, I thought bitterly.
I looked down at what was left of Paris. We all die, prince of Troy. Your brothers have died. Your father is probably dying at this very moment.
But my sons still live. And my wife. I’ll take them to night. Whether Agamemnon agrees or not I will reclaim my sons and my wife and leave this cursed city.
Then I thought of Helen. Beautiful Helen who was the cause for this slaughter, the woman who used me as a messenger, who used all the men around her to do her bidding. But what else could she have done? How else would she have survived? She was fighting for her life, using the only weapons the gods had allowed her.
Where is she? Is she waiting in the temple of Aphrodite, as Odysseos told her to do?
I decided to find out.
13
I strode up the main street of burning Troy, sword in hand, through a morning turned dark by the acrid smoke of fires I had started. Women’s screams and sobs filled the air, men bellowed and laughed raucously. The roof of a house collapsed in a shower of sparks. I thought of my father’s house, where he lay buried beneath its ashes.
Up the climbing central street I walked, my face blackened with dust and smoke, my shoulder caked with my own blood. The gutter along the center of the cobbled street ran red.
A pair of children ran shrieking past me, and a trio of drunken Achaians lurched laughingly after them. I recognized one of them: Giant Ajax, lumbering along with a wine jug in one huge hand.
“Come back!” he yelled drunkenly. “We won’t hurt you!”
I climbed on, toward the palace and the temples, past the market stalls that now blazed hot enough to singe the hairs on my arms, past a heap of bodies where some of the Trojans had tried to make a stand. Finally I reached the steps in front of the palace. They too were littered with fallen bodies.
Sitting on the top step, his head in his hands, was Poletes. Weeping.
“How did you get here?” I was stunned with surprise.
He looked up at me with tear-filled eyes. “I rode on the back of a chariot. I had to see for myself …” His voice choked with anguish.
Sheathing my sword, I asked, “Are you hurt?”
“Yes,” he said, bobbing his bald head. “In my soul.”
I almost felt relieved.
“Look at the desolation. Murder and fire. Is this what men live for? To act like beasts?”
I grasped him by his bony shoulder and lifted him to his feet. “Sometimes men act like beasts. They can build beautiful cities and burn them to the ground. What of it? Don’t try to make sense of it, just accept us as we are.”
Poletes looked at me through eyes reddened by tears and smoke. “So we should accept the whims of the gods and dance to their tune when they pull our strings? Is that what you tell me?”
“What else can we do?” I replied. “We do what we must, old moralizer. We obey the gods because we have no choice.”
Poletes shook his head.
“Go back to the camp, old man. This is no place for you. Some drunken Achaian might mistake you for a Trojan.”
But he didn’t move, except to lean his frail body against the pillar behind him. Its once-bright red paint was blackened by smoke and someone had scratched his name into the stone with a sword point: Thersites.
“I’ll see you back at camp, to night,” I said.
He nodded sadly. “Yes, when mighty Agamemnon divides the spoils and decides how many of the women and how much of the treasure he will take for himself.”
“Go to the camp,” I said, more firmly. “Now. That’s not advice, Poletes, it’s my command.”
He drew in a long breath and sighed it out.
“Take this sign.” I handed him the armlet Odysseos had given me. “It will identify you to any drunken lout who wants to take off your head.”
He accepted it wordlessly. It was much too big for his frail arms, so he hung it around his skinny neck. I had to laughed at the sight.
“Laughter in the midst of the sack of a great city,” Poletes said. “You are becoming a true Achaian warrior, my master.”
With that he started down the steps, haltingly, like a man who really didn’t care which way he went.
I walked through the columned portico and into the hall of statues, where Achaian warriors were directing slaves to take down the gods’ images and carry them off to the boats. Into the open courtyard that had been so lovely I went. Pots were overturned and smashed, flowers trampled, bodies strewn everywhere staining the grass with their blood. The little statue of Athene was already gone. The big one of Apollo had been toppled and smashed into several pieces.
One wing of the palace was afire. I could see flames crackling through its roof. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to picture in my mind the chamber where Helen had spoken to me. It was where the fire blazed, I thought.
From a balcony overhead I heard shouts, then curses. The clash of blade on blade. A fight was going on up there.
“The royal women have locked themselves in the temple of Aphrodite,” a man behind me yelled. “Come on!” He sounded like someone rushing to a feast, or hurrying to get to his seat before the opening of the final act of a drama.
I snatched my sword from its scabbard and rushed up the nearest stairs. A handful of Trojans was making a last-ditch defense of a corridor that led to the royal temples, fighting desperately against a shouting, bellowing mob of Achaian warriors. They were holding the narrow corridor, but being pressed back, step by bloody step.
I realized that behind the locked doors at the Trojans’ backs must be the temple of Aphrodite. Aged Priam must be waiting for the final blow in there, together with his wife, Hecuba, and their daughters and grandchildren.
And Helen.
I saw Menalaos, Diomedes and Agamemnon himself thrusting spears at the few remaining Trojan defenders, laughing at them, taunting them.
“You sell your lives for nothing,” shouted Diomedes. “Put down your spears and we will allow you to live.”
“As slaves!” roared Agamemnon.
The Trojans fought bravely but they were outnumbered and doomed, their backs pressed against the doors they were trying so valiantly to defend. More and more Achaians rushed up to join the sport.
I sprinted down the next corridor and pushed my way through rooms where soldiers were tearing through chests of gorgeous robes, grabbing jewels from their gold-inlayed boxes, pulling beautiful tapestries from the walls. This wing of the palace would also be in flames soon, I knew. Too soon.
I found a balcony, climbed over its balustrade and, leaning as far forward as I dared, clamped one hand on the edge of a window in the rear wall of the temple wing. I swung out over thin air and pulled myself up onto my elbows, then hoisted a leg onto the windowsill. Pushing aside the beaded curtains, I peered into a small, dim inner sanctuary. The walls were niched with small shrines, each lit by a flickering candle. The tiles of the floor were so old
