Paris’s hand touched my shoulder gently. “We grieve together.”
I looked into his eyes. I thought I saw—but the light was dim—the old Paris looking back at me.
L
The streets of Troy seethed with agitated crowds, crowds filled with restless desire to burst out of the walls and pursue the Greeks, take action, any action, while at the same time bracing to defend themselves. Winter was drawing on. The soldiers wanted to strike a blow before the Greeks departed—as depart they must, as the sailing season closed; older councilors warned that it was wise to let nature do their work for them. But there is no glory in winter sending an enemy home while a warrior’s bronze lies unused, losing its luster, in his storeroom.
Our household priest gave the snake a ritual burial and there was some comfort in that. We did not replace him—how could we? There could be no others for us. I would incorporate him in my weaving, give him life again there in the limited way that memorials can give life, but he was gone, and with him, one of the most precious parts of my past.
Paris seemed to rally as time passed after the loss of Troilus. He still did not laugh as he used to, but he stopped lying on his couch and brooding, and even acted lovingly toward me at times. But it was only at times, and I could never predict when those times would be. At first, especially after the slaughter in the grotto, I was grateful for what seemed the rebirth of his love. But as it came and went, disappearing and reappearing like the moon on a windswept and cloudy night, I felt myself withdrawing bit by bit, to a place where he could neither reach nor disappoint me. It was safer thus.
Then the refugees began flooding into Troy. It came as a shock—one autumn day, across the empty plain where the trade fair should have been, a mob of people fled toward our gates. Standing on our flat rooftop I could see the crowds streaming across the meadows, but could not make out even whether they were armed or not. The sentries on the walls and towers yelled out at them and they cried back that they were from Dardanos and Arisbe and Perkote and their villages were being raided by the Greeks; they begged for protection.
Priam and Hector dispatched officers to set up camps around the outer defenses of the city where they could stay and be attended to. There were mainly women, children, and old men. The young men had been killed, they said, the livestock raided, many women taken captive and force-marched to the Greek camp. Then their homes were set afire or demolished.
Hector stood looking out at the people. “There are hundreds,” he said quietly. “So the enemy has made massive raids. There is more to this than just wishing for supplies for their homeward journey.” He leaned forward on the ramparts, gazing out like a bird of prey. The wind, chill from the sea, ruffled his hair.
“They mean to stay the winter.” Standing beside him was the truculent Antimachus. He sounded incredulous. Had this taken the experienced war planner by surprise?
“This is most unlooked for,” said Hector. “We did not reckon on this. So they have attacked the nearby towns. I heard one of the women saying they had raided the islands of Tenedos and Imbros as well. That is grim. How far afield will they go?”
“There is a limit as to how far they can raid,” Antimachus assured him.
“What do our spies say?” Paris joined them on the wall. I had not known Paris’s whereabouts this morning; I had left him sleeping.
“They will be returning as soon as it is safe,” said Hector. “Then we shall know more. In the meantime, we must somehow feed these people. Inform the quartermasters. Set up a grain supply for them.”
Antimachus cleared his throat. “But we cannot deplete our own stores for them.”
“We must do something,” said Hector. “It is because of Troy that they have lost their homes.”
I was grateful to him for leaving me out of it. Hector never blamed me for the sorrows I had brought with me. He alone of the Trojans seemed to accept me as faultless and as much a plaything of the gods as they were.
But for the rest of his family, the death of Troilus had been a turning point, as it had been with Paris. Up until then they had tried to make me one of them; when their own true brother and son had perished, they realized that Helen could never truly be a part of their family. I would always be an outsider, a foreigner, a stranger, and the person who would fulfill the overhanging curse embodied in Paris. We had become the instruments of one another’s, and Troy’s, destruction.
The people—the ones who had cheered me as their “Greek treasure” not long ago—cast baleful looks at me as I passed them on the streets, shunning me as if I carried a curse. Perhaps I did. As I wandered through the city, through the squares and the small byways, past the tomb of Troilus, I looked at all the little ways people trimmed their lives with beauty: the little pots with herbs at the doorsteps, the painted shutters, the woven rush seats of their stools. Sometimes swaggering warriors would push past me, overturning the stools or breaking the pots. Already things were being destroyed in Troy, and the Greeks were still outside.
Just when the dread sacrifice I would have to make settled itself in my mind, I cannot say. I only know that one morning when the sun was barely painting the sides of the houses I looked at them and thought I would always be seeing them, and by the time twilight had come and torches were flickering against those same walls I knew I must banish myself. I must save Troy from myself. I must return to the Greeks—even though I vowed to die there by my own hand.
How nightmarish it is to plan to end one’s life, to leave all that is dear. I must leave Paris, so that he could live. And Priam, and Hector, and my only friend amongst the women, Andromache, and . . . Evadne and Gelanor. As I sat enumerating them, I was saddened to realize that I could count so few here in Troy who would be even the least sorrowed by my loss, even though I had lived for some time amongst them.
I resolved to do this, and then set a time of thirty days in which to wait, to be sure that this was what I must do. It was not something to be undertaken on a whim.
During those thirty days I saw Troy differently, through faraway eyes, bidding it farewell already. I heard the thunderings in the council chamber about the raids; I saw the milling and despair of the refugees who were living in makeshift camps near the walls; I could smell the burning villages surrounding us. In vain I cast about searching for some sign that I should stay, but there was none. Everywhere I turned, I could see only improvement if I suddenly disappeared and the war was halted.
And Paris? He was better, now, grieving less over Troilus, but how would he cope if someone else dear to him was killed? And there would be further deaths. Paris himself would, perhaps, even follow them. So to give him life, I must leave.
How odd it was to hug such a secret to myself, to pass amongst them like a ghost already gone, but no one yet could discern that I was a ghost. I savored the times I sat before the hearth talking to Hector and Andromache, cherished the attention old Priam lavished on me, because those times were soon to be no more.
As for Paris, I could now forgive him anything—his moodiness, his coldness, his unpredictability. Those things were set against the shining gold of his entire person. I had caused these shadows, now I would lift them, and he would revert back to the Paris he was before. Only I would not see it.
Iphigenia, so it was said, at the last moment stopped struggling and laid down her life so that the Greeks might sail for Troy. Could I do less, if by my actions I could protect my new countrymen from those very Greeks?
Paris suspected nothing. I was surprised—not pleasantly—to find how easily I could play a part. After the first days when the very thought of leaving Troy stung me in the heart, that heart hardened and I could bear it. I felt that my own pain counted so little in the scales against the pain awaiting others if I did not go, I must not even consider it.
When to go, how to go? The wall was well guarded even at night. The stretches between each tower, manned with keen-eyed guards, were easily visible. Only in the few days when there was no moon did the flank
s of the wall lie in darkness, and even so, soldiers would be alert for every sound. Someone trying to scale the walls would quickly be discovered. Was it even possible to get up or down them? They were as high as five or six men and faced with smooth stone that allowed no foot- or handhold.
Well, then, what of the watercourses? We had two wells inside the walls, so there was no weak spot in the defenses for the water supply. Wastewater flowed down through a large drainage channel and then out at the base of the southern walls, but that had been fitted with a grid to prevent anything larger than a sewer rat from passing through it.
Perhaps, then, I could pass out during the day to attend to some task and then fail to return in the evening. But I would never be permitted out without guards, and in any case there were no tasks considered worth the risk these days, not after Troilus. If I responded to a bogus request from the Greeks for an audience? Again, the Trojans would never let me accept what they would consider a transparent ploy to kidnap me back.
I dared not enlist any help in this plan, for I knew I would be betrayed. I was back to my first thought: that somehow I would have to descend over the walls undetected, with no accomplices.
As the term of the self-imposed thirty days drew to a close, my resolve almost collapsed, quite unexpectedly. I was trudging uphill to the palace when I was suddenly overcome with a desire to grasp onto a post and never let it go, as if some malevolent force were trying to pull me away, as if it had not, all along, been me myself. I wished never to leave Troy, I wished to cling to every pillar and stone so nothing could part us. But I knew the only way those pillars and stones could remain was if I left them.
Ahead of me, the palace seemed lovelier than ever before. Paris was waiting inside. That night he was in one of his good moods; the old Paris held court. He greeted me effusively, telling me that we would have guests that evening who would please me. He bustled around eagerly, setting up little braziers against the chill so we could be seated in a smaller room than the drafty megaron. As always with him, it was not what he did but his joy in doing it that was the truly pleasurable thing.
“Your second winter in Troy,” he said. “That qualifies you as a true Trojan.”
Was this why he was celebrating? The dear man, who could make the ordinary so special. Helen’s second winter! I took his head in my hands and kissed him. “I love you,” I said, laughing. At the same time my heart felt like a heavy stone in my breast.
Hector and Andromache were the guests he had prepared for; they stepped across the little space separating our palaces and entered. I noticed they had dressed as if the visit entailed a formal journey, rather than a short few steps. It was their way of showing their brother that they treated his invitation with respect. They were like that, Hector and Andromache: thoughtful and proper. Gravely they divested themselves of their cloaks and joined us. Hector was attired in a warm wool wrap as well as wool leggings, and Andromache was wearing a long garment of the sort I had never seen before. It was blue and had tiers of yellow fringes all around the skirt. She told me it was a fashion from Crete, where flounced and beaded skirts were worn everywhere. It flattered her, as she was tall enough that the skirt could fall like a column to her feet.
“Come, come.” Paris ushered them toward inlaid chairs with matching footstools.
Hector took his seat and leaned back. Even in relaxation he looked poised to leap up. “Yes, dear brother? What is this occasion?” The unspoken question: What is so important to have called us here for a social evening in the midst of this war?
I, the shade, sat impassively. I, the shade, soon to pass away. I had secured my rope—long enough, I thought, to reach to the base of the northern wall—had bundled up my sturdy sandals and dark cloak beside it. I had selected the northern wall as the one least watched, as it was so high the guards assumed no Greek would attack from that side. There was no lower city around it, nothing but open fields. It was near the palaces, but the temple of Athena, dark and unguarded close by at night, meant I could approach it without being sighted.
“I merely wanted to see you in private,” said Paris. “We have met on the walls, at the funeral, at Father’s palace, and at war councils, but have seen little of each other as men.”
“I fear that is the way of war,” said Hector stiffly.
“Then I long for the day when peace will come again and permit us to be normal,” said Andromache. She leaned forward on her chair. “We have a secret—but it is a secret I must tell you, Helen. You were with me on Mount Ida. We—I am with child!”
Shade though I was, I leapt from my chair to embrace her, dizzy with joy for her. “Oh, Andromache!” She had so longed for this. And now I would not be with her to see the face of her newborn. But no one must know that, and it did not subtract from my happiness for her.
“A son of Hector!” said Paris. “At last!”
“We do not know if it is a son,” Hector said, but the slow smile around his lips showed how pleased he was even to be thinking of it.
“Son or daughter, the child will bring great pride to Troy,” said Paris.
Andromache bowed her head. “I will petition the gods every day for a safe delivery. Helen, will you be with me?”
“Yes,” I said, without thinking. I hated to lie, and seeing her eyes lighten with pleasure made the guilt even worse.
The rest of the evening passed as a dream, a dream in which I was an outsider. I heard the conversation, even participated in it. They discussed the mysterious person who had locked me in the well, and drugged Paris, and killed our snake. No one had been apprehended, and they concluded it was a person who disliked us personally. That left most of Troy as suspects.
They fretted over the increasing aggressiveness of the Greeks in attacking the surrounding countryside. Andromache was worried about her family in Plakos, but Hector assured her they were out of reach, as they were so far south, beyond the Smintheum near Thebe. They spoke of measures to curb the raids, but only I knew of the measure I planned to unleash. If Helen surrendered, that would end it all.
Every time I looked at Paris, I had to look away. How could I leave him?
Afterward he remarked, “You seemed sad.”
I rushed to assure him I was not. All I wanted was to spend one last night with him in our bed, with hours to hold him. Tomorrow night was the dark of the moon. That was when I must make my escape.
Never had Paris looked more precious than when he stood, happy and ignorant, by the side of the bed, gazing at me. All I wanted was to live with him, be happy with him, and grow old with him. But no, Agamemnon had made sure that could not happen. His vile excursion here to terrorize innocent people would get me back, but only for a little while. No one would embrace me but the grave.
But for now, I lived and wanted and touched. I embraced Paris, holding him as close as possible, and as we made love, slowly and several times, I savored each caress, each sensation, each murmur. I knew how little time we had left together and I was determined to wring from it every drop of sweetness it could give me.
LI
The following day—my last in Troy—I rose early. I did not want to miss a moment to savor it, painful as it would be. Paris slept on, and I leaned over to kiss his cheek, clutching my robe around me.
Like a sleepwalker, I went out onto the streets of Troy. I meant to walk all the streets, to memorize them, to look at every detail. Peering over the walls, I saw that the Greeks were still camping halfway across the plain. When I scrambled down over the northern wall, I must make my way toward one of the tents. What matter who took me into custody? Soon enough Menelaus would dig his fingers into my shoulders.
Should I wear the dreadful brooch he had left for me? I vowed to fling it back at him, and so I must. Just to make it all the more difficult, the day, even though it was late autumn, was perfect, with a clear cloudless sky and a brisk—but not sweeping—wind. Troy, Troy! I wept inwardly. How lovely you are!
The sun swung overhead, started its downward
slant. Priam, Hecuba—should I bid them farewell in my mind by seeing them once more? But no, it might arouse suspicion. This must seem an ordinary day.
When shadows fell and the city pulled back into itself, a purple-blue peace descended on it. There had been no attacks that day, no reports of raids elsewhere. All was peaceful.
Paris and I had a quiet supper, saying very little. I cast surreptitious glances at him, trying to memorize his face. When he looked up and caught me, puzzled, I looked hurriedly away.
Paris slept soundly beside me. I waited until I heard his breathing become deep and regular. Then I sat up slowly, testing him to see if he would rouse. He did not. I slipped my shoes on and rose from the bed. The movement still did not disturb him. I wanted to kiss him, but I did not dare to risk it. You have said your goodbyes, I told myself sternly. It is over. You must go.
I pulled on a stolen pair of Paris’s trousers—deemed effete Eastern dress, which he wore only in privacy—to make my descent easier. Who ever heard of someone in a gown sliding down a rope? This would enable me to wrap my legs around it.
I stole away. I could not look back. I slunk out of the palace, not by the main door, which was guarded, but out through the kitchen and back quarters. I had hidden my rope and dark cloak there, just to one side of a grain storage jar. They were still there—no one had discovered them.
Tucking them under my arm, I crept as quietly as possible toward the great darkened temple of Athena. No priests or priestesses were on duty, and all the columns were shadowed and empty. Just beyond the temple was the highest point in Troy, the great bastion and lookout on the northeastern side. But I did not mean to descend here, as I would be easily seen from the tower. A bit farther to the west and I would be invisible.
I had already secured a large rock that would serve as an anchor for my rope. I looped the rope around it and strung it over the side of the wall. All was silent. The sky overhead was utterly dark, the moon having fled, abandoning the heavens for a few days.