I tested the rope. It seemed strong enough. I lowered it over the wall, and looked down to see how far it fell. I heard a dull thud as it hit the ground—far below. Very far below. I sucked in my breath and took the rope between my hands. It was bristly and rough, and immediately its fibers cut into my hand. But no matter.
I approached the side of the wall. It was high. It would require that I clamber over it. Thank the gods for Paris’s trousers. I grabbed the rocks and hauled myself over, wishing my arms stronger. I prayed I would not lose my grip and crash to the ground. But what matter? I would die a little early, but I had planned to die nonetheless.
I began to slide down the rope. I bounced against the hard stones of the wall, which were shiny and unyielding. Already I was bruised, but so be it. Bounce, hit, jounce. I swung back and forth on the rope, hitting the wall time and again. I knew this created noise, but I hoped no one could hear.
It was utterly dark. No one would be able to see me, suspended there on the rope. I was halfway down. The ground below loomed into my vision. It was covered with brush and scrub. Something to break my fall, I thought. For my arms were aching and I did not know how much longer I could hold on. The ground opened up before me.
I fell. I landed heavily on my back, missing all the cushioning of the bushes and hitting hard rock. A pain ripped through me. For a moment I did not think I could move, but I willed myself to. You are here, you must walk, you must reach your goal, I told myself.
Gingerly I rolled over and tested my legs to be sure they would still obey. They trembled a bit but held me up. On to Menelaus, then. On to Menelaus. I staggered down the small incline. Somewhere, not so far away, were the Greek tents. I stumbled over the rough ground. Troy was high behind me. The great northern wall looked like a sheet of bronze, high and impenetrable. It was gone. Troy was gone for me. Before me were the mean little tents of the Greeks, sheltering mean little men.
Mindlessly, I pushed forward to a place I did not wish to go, commanding my legs to carry me.
“Stop right there!” A harsh voice rent the air. It must be a Greek sentry. Now I would give myself up. Wearily I turned to face the speaker.
Someone grasped my arm painfully. Let him. What matter? I did not care how I was batted around, smacked, misused. It would be over soon enough. A torch was thrust up into my face. I winced and turned away.
“By all the gods!” An angry voice.
Yes, it is Helen. Take me, punish me, convey me to Menelaus. Get on with it. I was suddenly anxious to have it take place. Put it in motion, let it run its course.
“Helen!” Antimachus stuck his face up into mine. “What is this?”
Antimachus! I shrank back.
“A traitor, then?” he cried. “Slinking off to join the Greeks?” He pulled painfully on my arm.
“No, it is not so!” I cried.
“I see a rope. I see an escape. I see escape clothes.” He stared at my trousers.
I drew myself up. “I wished to sacrifice myself for Troy,” I said. “This was the only way. If I were returned, they would have no more cause of war.”
“You stupid little fool!” I thought he would break my arm off in squeezing it. “That is not why they are here!”
“That may be, but it is their excuse. I meant to remove that excuse from them.”
“So you were ready to go back to Menelaus, snuggle up to him in bed?”
The thought made me gag. “No. I would have ended myself before that happened.”
He snorted in disbelief. “So, who knows of this?”
“No one,” I said.
“So you told no one? I do not believe a woman capable of that.”
“Believe what you like. It is true.”
“So only you and I know of this?”
“Yes.”
“You are going back to Troy, my lady, and right into the bed of your husband, and no one must ever be the wiser.”
“It must end!” I cried. “Only I have the power to make it end.”
“It is too late,” said Antimachus. “No human can end it now.”
He got me back into Troy through the tiny gate at the base of the northeastern tower. He forced me to cover my face and head with my cloak so that the guards would not recognize me, and hugged and leered at me so they would think I was a prostitute. He enjoyed doing this, I could tell. The city still lay quiet in the hush of night, and my palace was close by. He shoved me toward the door, after hissing, “Your secret and mine, lady.”
I had no choice. I had to go back in. But I held my head high and indicated to him that I would choose the entrance, not him. I wanted to go back as I had come; I did not want to alert the guards at the front door.
Through the porch and vestibule, then up the stairs to our chamber, where the wind was sighing softly through the pattern in our wooden shutters. Paris still sleeping, one bare arm trailing to the floor, his face turned away. It was all as I had left it, and I felt like a soldier returning to a home he thought never to see again. Now, as Antimachus had said, the war itself would dictate its own course, and I was powerless to steer it or change it.
I was just bending to pull off the trousers when Paris suddenly sat up and stared at me. I froze, hoping he would lie back down and think this only a dream, have no memory of it later. I held my breath. But he cried out, “What are you doing?”
When I did not answer, he reached for his brass bell to call a guard. I rushed to him and muffled it, twisting it out of his hand. He fell back onto the pillows. “Helen! Helen!” he cried, clutching at the trousers.
I threw myself across him and stifled his cries with my hand. “Be quiet,” I warned him. I must think of some harmless tale to tell him, but nothing came to mind. And I was weary of the effort of lying, and had no cleverness left. I would have to tell him all.
“Why are you wearing my trousers?” he whispered when I took my hand off his mouth.
“I was trying to escape from Troy,” I confessed.
As I had feared, he let out a wail. “Leave?” he cried.
“Only because I believed it was the only way to stop the war and prevent more deaths.” I leaned back, my knees underneath me, rocking nervously back and forth. I did not need to tell him that I had thrown my life into the bargain as well.
“And what of my happiness? You know I cannot live without you!” He stopped my rocking and clutched me to him. “How could you abandon me like that?”
“That was the most difficult part. I—I barely had the courage to do it,” I stammered.
“I wouldn’t call it courage, I would call it cruelty.”
“I was cruel to us so that others would not have to suffer.”
“But you are here. You did not leave after all. Why?” He was longing for me to say I changed my mind, not that I had actually done it but been intercepted.
“Antimachus caught me. The man must never sleep. He was patrolling the base of the northern tower.”
Paris gave a howl of pain. “You were already out of the city!”
“Yes.”
“You betrayed me. You left me. Without even a farewell. And you expect me to forgive you?”
“No, I do not expect that. I feared it was a price I would have to pay.”
“But you were willing to pay it!”
“Yes, I told you.” Oh, this was so dreadful! Oh, if only he could have been spared this knowledge.
“You like leaving your husbands at night, I see. You were sneaking away from me as you snuck away from Menelaus. I can never trust you again!”
“That is my punishment,” I said. I did not blame him. I knew how it looked. I would have felt the same.
He jumped up from the bed and gathered his blankets. “I cannot share a bed with you,” he muttered, descending the steps and leaving me alone in the darkness. I heard his footsteps padding across the vestibule below and then they were swallowed up in silence.
Shaking all over, I lowered myself down onto the bed, where I lay rigidly until day s
tole into the chamber. I had been ready to give all this up, but I was deeply thankful I was waking up to these walls instead of the walls of Menelaus’s tent. And I was also thankful that I could continue to draw my breath without thinking that each one was numbered.
Paris had disappeared by the time I was dressed and came down in the morning. The attendants indicated that he had gone out “to see about the war.” Yes, the war would provide all the opportunities he needed to lose himself and avoid me. At least it would keep our separation from being known. But I must keep the attendants from suspecting. I must find an excuse for Paris having his own sleeping quarters. Perhaps it could have something to do with the cold, or braziers, or noise—all mere reasons of comfort, with no hint of a quarrel. I would have sought out the solitude and peace of the household shrine, taking comfort from the wisdom of the snake, but now the empty chamber deepened my gloom.
I was bruised all over; my whole body felt tender from banging myself against the wall. It was all I could do not to limp, and I was thankful that in this cold weather I was well swathed by thick wool cloaks and wraps. I called Evadne and together we set out to see Gelanor. Perhaps he knew the turn the war was now likely to take. I could tell him of my thwarted plan and ask his advice. He never judged; or, rather, he did judge but he never censured.
We caught him just as he was leaving his house, hurrying toward the central storage depot of weapons. Nonetheless, he looked pleased to postpone his errand; he put his sacks down gently. “My scorpion bombs,” he said. “Let us not disturb them! I was just about to test them out. But they will keep. You look troubled,” he said abruptly. “What is it?”
I would have thrown myself in his arms for comfort, but that was unthinkable. “Oh, Gelanor. Everything is as wrong as it can be!”
“Everything? Surely not.” He stepped back and cocked his head. Usually this gesture was charming, but now it annoyed me in its cool detachment.
“Yes, yes, it is!”
He turned and unlocked his door and ushered us in. It was useless to keep walking in the streets. I sank down on a stool, grateful to ease my aching muscles. “You move as if you are a hundred years old,” he said.
“I feel it,” I moaned. “I am battered all over.” Before he could ask questions, I held up my hands. “Let me tell you direct. I tried to leave Troy, to turn myself over to the Greeks.”
Both he and Evadne drew in their breaths with a whistle.
“It was the most vile thing I have ever asked of myself. But I had passed through the streets of Troy, had seen the frightened refugees, the angry Trojans, heard the toll of the attacks on the villages, seen Troilus—oh, I could not bear the responsibility for all this, and more yet to come. The burden was greater than any one person could carry. If I went to the Greeks, that would end it. I had to. Only I could do this, and only I would do it, do what thousands of soldiers could not.”
“How deluded,” Gelanor said tartly. “And so you tried to climb over the walls and were promptly caught. What happened—did your gown catch on a stone?”
So even he underestimated me! I wanted to smack him. Why did everyone assume I was so hapless, so stupid?
“As a matter of fact, no, for I was wearing trousers!”
He burst out laughing.
“Stop laughing!” I ordered him. “I didn’t wear them for your amusement, but to allow me to climb better.”
“Trousers!” He could barely catch his breath, and wheezed, holding his sides. Finally he gasped and said, “Since you were caught, I assume they did not protect you.”
“I was caught later, by that hateful Antimachus, who was lurking outside the walls. What he was doing, I don’t know. I only know that suddenly there he was.”
“Perhaps he’s a spy,” mused Gelanor. “Perhaps you caught him as he was going to the Greeks himself, and he had to make a show of discovering you. Antimachus . . . who would suspect him? A perfect spy, then.”
Could it possibly be true? Our most stridently warlike general? But it was he who had baited the Greeks and been the loudest in refusing to consider handing me back. Could it be . . . ? “No!”
Watching my face intently, Gelanor went on, as if talking to himself. “That is why I say that you are deluded. It is in the interests of many people on both sides for there to be a war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Only Menelaus has the pure purpose of recovering you. For him, the war would end if you returned. But the others would fight on, and you would have turned yourself over to Menelaus in a vain sacrifice.”
Evadne leaned forward. “I understand why the Greeks might want this war, but not any Trojans.”
“I know you have lost your eyesight, but you must have lost your hearing as well,” said Gelanor. “In the beginning the streets resounded with the cries of young men eager to go to battle. It must be in the nature of youth to want to take up arms. Now, if Antimachus could help assure that the war would take place, he would indeed be a friend of some of the Trojans and all of the Greeks. Not necessarily in collusion with them, but certainly working toward the same aim: to have spears flying and skulls split open. He clearly has a keen appetite for it.”
Evadne shook her head. “But as the deaths have mounted, the Trojans are losing that appetite.”
“True,” said Gelanor. “But I think I will have an announcement soon that will revive it.”
Being Gelanor, of course, he refused to tell us what it was. At the same time I was relieved that he did not pursue my lament that everything was as bad as it could be. He assumed I meant only my thwarted escape.
But Evadne had not forgotten. On our way back to the palace, she asked me and I told her about Paris.
LII
The private war between Paris and me was swallowed up in the wider war raging around us. Not only were we never alone—for the palace was filled with our allies who had fled from the butchering raids—but everything in our lives was suspended while the war swelled like a monstrous spider and ingested our days and nights. No one noticed on what floor Paris slept, or, if they did, they assumed it was done to accommodate our allies. My chamber was now shared with several princesses and ladies from Phrygia and their younger brothers and cousins found rest in Paris’s new quarters.
Aeneas and his family arrived, and then, most ominously, a stream of frightened and wounded people from Lyrnessus near the home of Andromache far to the south, babbling about a massacre. At first there were only incoherent recountings about a sudden attack by a contingent of warriors, named something like Myr—Myr—They meant the Myrmidons, then. Achilles’s contingent. So he had taken his men and raided that far afield. Then they told more stories about the towns around them being attacked, the killing and looting and burning. The men were all dead, they said, except the youngest and the oldest and the crippled, and many women were carried off as prizes and slaves. Achilles had so many rounded up it was like a herd of cattle. One emaciated woman, her bleeding feet being rubbed with ointment by my workers, muttered that if he took his turn with all those women, he would be an old man before he was finished and there would be no war. She shuddered in thinking of falling into his hands.
Others told us that Assos had been raided as well, and the shrine of Apollo at Chryse had been violated and the old priest’s daughter carried off, “like Hades did Persephone,” one said. But what of the king of Thebes? What had happened to him, and his queen, and his sons and daughters?
Then we heard: killed, all of them. In one day, all of Andromache’s family had been slain by Achilles himself. Her father King Etion had been killed in his courtyard, hacked down as he clutched the altar of his god, and he became the sacrifice before the stones where he himself had sacrificed for so many years. The seven brothers, peacefully tending their cattle and white sheep on the hills, were taken by surprise and died fighting the Myrmidons, but for each of them Achilles had driven in the bronze that killed them, and they fell in the meadows on the mountain flanks.
I rushed over to Hector’s palace through
the throngs in the vestibule and courtyard to be with Andromache. Hector was just leaving the chamber when I arrived, and he was grim-faced. He was thankful I was there, he said, for she needed me, and they feared for the child with this shock. He could not linger now, he must be out on the ramparts.
Andromache was lying on her couch and looked dead herself. Her face was wan as unworked wool and her eyes, though open, seemed to be staring sightlessly. I touched her arm and it felt cold. I covered her more completely with blankets and asked that a brazier be brought closer. I rubbed her wrists and whispered her name. At length, very slowly, she turned her head and looked at me, and the look in her eyes froze me. There seemed almost to be no life there, and what little remained was pure sorrow.
“Helen,” she whispered. “I am slain.”
I took her hands and blew on them to warm them, to fan the flame of life. “No, you are here, and safe.” I kissed her cold forehead. “Safe within these walls of Troy, safe behind the shield of Hector, your husband.”
“Not only my husband but now my father and brother and mother as well,” she said, her voice so faint I had to lean over to hear it. “He is my only family now.”
“Not your only family,” I said. “You and Hector will soon have a child.”
“It will never live. Even if I live to bear it, Achilles will cut it down. And he will then honor it in death, a death he created. Do you know what he did?” She sat up, shakily, on her elbows, and stared wide-eyed like a hunted animal. “He gave my father a proper funeral.” Deep from within her throat a ghoulish laugh burst out, grew louder. “He dressed him properly in his royal robes and laid him respectfully on a pyre and then made his Myrmidons build a burial mound and even”—now her coughing, gasping laughter sounded demented—“had them plant a grove of elm trees around it. To make a sacred site. Oh, that is what the ceremonious warrior will do to Hector and to our child. He kills, then he bows before what he has killed to do it honor.”