He grunted and turned this way and that on the soft bedding and finally admitted, “I suppose so.”
“You’ll yell loudly if anyone tries to enter this room?”
“I’ll wake the whole inn.”
“Can you bar the door behind me and find your way back to the bed again?”
“What difference if I stumble and break my neck? You’ll be with your lady love.”
I had to laugh. “She’s not my lady love. I’ll probably be with her only a few moments. I have no intention —”
“Oh, no, not at all!” He hooted. “Just make sure that you don’t bellow like a mating bull. I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
Feeling like a schoolboy sneaking out to play, I went to the door and bade Poletes a pleasant nap.
“I sleep very lightly, you know,” he said.
Whether he meant to reassure me that no thief would be able to sneak in to rob us, or to warn me to be quiet in Helen’s room, next door, I could not tell. Perhaps he meant both.
I belted my sword to my hip and stepped out of the room, closing the door softly behind me. I waited until I heard the bar behind it slide into place. The hallway was still empty, and I could see no dark corners or niches where an enemy could lurk in ambush. Nothing but the worn, tiled floor, the plastered walls, and six wooden doors of other rooms. My men had taken three of them, I knew, but they were off in the city enjoying themselves. On the other side of the hall was a railing of split logs that overlooked the central courtyard of the inn and its packed dirt floor.
My boys were still playing in the courtyard; I could hear their shouts and laughter.
Very well then, I told myself. And I went to Helen’s door.
12
Feeling more than a little uncertain, I scratched at the smooth wooden planks of Helen’s door.
“Who is there?” came her muffled voice.
“Lukka,” I said, feeling slightly foolish.
“You may enter.”
I pushed the door open. Helen stood in the center of the shabby room, resplendent as the sun. She had put on the same robes and jewels she had worn that first time I had seen her alone, in her chamber in Troy. I hadn’t realized until this moment that she had brought them with her all this way. She’d probably hidden them under Apet’s black cloak that night when she asked me to take her away from Menalaos. In Troy she had looked incredibly beautiful. Here, in this rough inn with its crudely plastered walls and uncurtained windows she seemed like a goddess come to Earth.
I closed the door behind me and leaned my back against it, almost weak with the beauty of her. No one else was in the room; she had dismissed the girls who’d been waiting on her.
“Lukka,” she said softly, “you’ve saved my life.”
Somehow I managed to say, “You’re not safe yet, my lady. We’re still a long way from Egypt.”
“Menalaos must be back in Sparta by now, telling everyone how he killed his unfaithful wife with his own hands and burned her body as a sacrifice to his gods.”
“Or he could be following our trail, trying to find you.”
She shook her head hard enough to make her golden curls tumble about her slim shoulders. “Don’t say that, Lukka! You’re frightening me.”
I stepped toward her. “That’s the last thing in the world I want to do, my lady.”
“My name is Helen.”
My voice caught in my throat, but I managed to half-whisper, “Helen.”
She stood before me, warm, alive, breathing, her clear blue eyes searching mine.
“I owe you my life, Lukka,” she said.
Like a fool, I replied, “Apet told me about Prince Hector.”
Helen sighed. “Hector.”
“She told me that you loved him.”
“I still love his memory. But he’s dead now, in Hades with the rest of the House of Ilios.” She slid her arms around my neck. “And we’re alive.”
I looked down into her eyes and grasped her slim waist in both my hands. Our lips met.
And then I heard my two boys shouting to one another out in the hall. They pounded on the barred door to my room, calling out, “Daddy! Daddy!”
I twitched with surprise.
“Daddy! Open the door!”
Swallowing hard, I released Helen. “They’ll get frightened,” I said, apologetically.
A strange expression came over her face. She appeared puzzled, then angry, then amused—all in the span of a heartbeat.
Helen broke into laughter. “Go, tend to your little boys,” she said, giggling at me. “I can see that my charms are nothing compared to a father’s love for his sons.”
I felt my face reddening. “My lady … they’re only children.”
“Go, Lukka,” said Helen, her laughter tinkling like silver bells. “Do your fatherly duty.”
Shamefaced, I opened her door and stepped out into the hall just as Poletes opened the door to our room. The boys turned, saw me, and ran into my arms. And I was happy to hold them—even with Helen standing alone in her room, laughing. At me.
13
I hardly slept at all that night. Poletes snored beside me on the featherbed, Lukkawi and Uhri slept peacefully on the cots that the innkeeper’s sons had set up for them. I knew that Helen was on the other side of the wall that separated our rooms. Was she sleeping? Dreaming?
Strange thoughts filled my mind. I desired her, of course I did. What man wouldn’t? But did she truly desire me, or was she simply using her charms to keep me bound to her? She knew I could leave her here in Ephesus if I chose to. Leave her alone, defenseless, friendless and helpless in a strange land.
Do I love her? I asked myself. The idea struck me like a thunderbolt. Love her? A princess of Troy? The Queen of Sparta? Then an even wilder question rose before me: does Helen love me?
I lay there on the sagging feather mattress and wondered what love truly is. Women are for men’s plea sure. A wife takes care of a man’s home, bears him children, rears his family. But love? I never knew Aniti well enough to love her, nor could she have loved me. But Helen … Helen was different. What is love? I’ve put my life at risk, the lives of my men and my sons as well, for her. Is that love? Could she possibly love me? I knew it was impossible. Yet I lay there in the darkness, wondering.
Time and again I thought about tiptoeing out to her room. Time and again I could not work up the courage to do it. Yes, courage. I’d faced armed soldiery and never turned my back. I’d followed the emperor’s orders even when they sent me far from my home. But facing Helen was a different matter.
A thousand thoughts raced through my mind. I saw Aniti’s face, sad-eyed, watching me from the gray mists of Hades. I had failed her, and now Helen had offered herself to me. The most beautiful woman in the world. What would happen if I bedded her? We still had months of travel ahead of us, through strange and unknown territory. How could I maintain discipline if we were lovers? The men would want women of their own, surely, and our little troop would bog down into a caravan of women. And my sons. It was difficult enough traveling with them. If the men took women we’d soon enough have pregnancies to deal with. And then babies.
Then there was Poletes. He wanted to stay in Ephesus, but I couldn’t risk allowing him to tell the tale of Troy to these people. They would soon realize that the Hatti soldiers in their midst were harboring Helen, Queen of
