Goddess of Yesterday: A Tale of Troy

  “Let her be a slave, Helen,” he said, “and care for your dear son. He is happy enough with her and we have much travel before we are safely in Troy. Before I show off the most beautiful woman in the world to the most beautiful city.” He stepped back to admire her. “Come, my goddess queen. Let us show the world how the gods have smiled upon us.”

  They walked out together, two stars in the night sky. But Helen paused in the door and turned to look back. “I do not like the girl's red hair,” she said. “The color reminds me of someone I would prefer to forget. Shave off the hair. Do not permit her to have hair again.”

  Aethra held Pleis as they removed my hair. Pleis had never had a haircut himself and I suppose had never seen one. He was upset by the auburn curls and braids that piled on the floor as the sharp knife cut them away. He screamed when the knife pared close to my scalp. The king of Sidon's barber shaved my head smooth.

  Many people gathered to watch.

  Hair is the glory of man and woman. Even a slave may have fine hair. A warrior always prepares his hair before battle. Now I stood like an old man, comic and bald.

  When it was done and people had finished laughing at me, Aethra oiled my bare scalp as one oils the feet. “Listen to me, princess. I have wept much over the years, and I am wise, for when they have dried, tears are the source of wisdom. Helen will do no more to you.”

  I was a slave and bald. What was left?

  At least Aethra looked well. Perhaps for her, the sea air had been a tonic. I thought of Rhodea, whose last breath of sea air had been mixed with seawater. “Aethra, I am glad you are all right. We had a terrible voyage on the Ophion. They threw Rhodea overboard. Aethra, she was trying so hard to take good care of her little prince. Why didn't the gods help her?”

  “Gods move only in the best of society,” said Aethra. “No god yet has cared what happens to a slave. Therefore, my Callisto, never forget that you are a princess.”

  But I was weak without my hair. They had sliced away my courage. I could not keep from crying.

  Aethra pressed her thumb against my forehead, exactly where the bloody print of Queen Petra had blessed me six years before. She raised her voice so all could hear. “Now, my princess, I give you a turban. See how finely this scarf is woven, eight feet of scarlet and purple lace. I twist it around your head like so; tuck it here; pin it there. And now, my princess, look into this mirror of silver held by your slave. See how dramatic and striking you are in such a turban.”

  Every person in the room had heard Paris refer to me as a slave. But Aethra was not going to let it stand.

  She is an island in the sea, I thought. She is my goddess of yesterday, or sent by my goddess.

  How unexpected were the messengers of gods. Angelos is the word. I had met two of them that day, Zanthus and Aethra.

  A squire poked his head into the room. “Are the prince and princess ready?” he asked. “The king has sent me to escort them to the banquet.”

  I could understand that the king of Sidon was confused. Was the girl from Ophion a princess or slave, daughter of Helen or child from a rock? Certainly Aethra was not going to make it clear. “They come,” Aethra told him.

  I could not appear in the king of Sidon's court as if I really were Hermione. Helen would rip the turban off my head. Then she would rip my head off my shoulders.

  “When you bring them into the dining hall,” said Aethra to the squire, “you will announce first the prince Pleisthenes, son of Menelaus, and you will announce second the princess Callisto, daughter of Nicander.”

  The squire bowed, as if Aethra were still a queen.

  And she was.

  A corps of musicians stood between us and the banquet. As one, they lifted their rams' horns and blew hard. Each sounded a different note. In the great room all of stone, the music echoed and trembled, hanging in the air after the horns were lowered.

  Hundreds of citizens had to look. They were pressed against each other, against immense plastered pillars painted with battle scenes, against high walls flaring with torches. Many were the seated nobles and many were the slaves moving through the crowd, serving food.

  Nobody was being announced. Aethra had not known, or, knowing, had been giving me status in front of the slaves and placing courage in my heart.

  Aeneas, the cousin of Paris, beckoned. We were brought to his table, which I thought oddly placed for so important a prince. Deeply shadowed, half hidden by a column of stone, Aeneas sat with his back to Paris, facing the crowd.

  Aeneas, you dog tick, I thought. You walked Menelaus to Gythion, pretending to be his guest-friend, and you waved him off to Crete, and then you turned around to attack his city. “My prince,” I said politely.

  “A lovely arrangement, Hermione,” said Aeneas, smiling at my turban. “You are so tall and elegant in that.”

  No one had had time to explain the situation to Aeneas! And no doubt I did look familiar to him. He half recognized me from that dinner party at Amyklai, when there had been more discussion of Callisto than of Hermione.

  He would learn soon enough. Helen, however, would not bare my skull or my secrets in this packed room. It would take attention away from her. In a crowd, I was safe.

  Aeneas took Pleis on his lap and the little boy found a cup on the table and began banging happily. I was glad to have Aeneas baby sit, since it took all my attention to keep my head level. I thought the worst thing that could happen was that the turban would shift.

  I was slow to realize that something was very wrong.

  A stillness had come over the great hall. Aeneas put his hand on the cup so Pleis could make no sound.

  It seemed that the king of Sidon had not understood that his beautiful guest Helen was wife to Menelaus. He had not understood that the prince of Troy had in fact snatched a queen away from a living king. He had certainly not understood that this had happened when Paris was guest-friend to that very king.

  A king wants every other king shown the respect that the gods handed him at birth.

  “Helen is my bride now,” said Paris. “Be easy in your mind, my host. Our wedding will take place as soon as we reach Troy.”

  At least Paris intended to wed Helen. A woman taken by force is generally made concubine, an ugly word for a woman who matters less than a wife. Helen was too fine for any title except bride, even though she had already been one, and to another man. The fact of Helen's husband did not bother Paris at all.

  It bothered the king of Sidon. “Scoundrel!” he said, smashing his cup down upon the table. It was real gold, I saw, because the force of the slam dented it badly. “You had hospitality at Menelaus' hands, Paris, and yet you did the unholiest thing! You came at your host's wife.”

  “Now, now,” said Paris easily. “Such is the habit of great warriors. Many before me have done the same. The men of Crete stole the Lady Europa from the Phoencians. Jason and his Argonauts stole Princess Medea from Colchis.”

  Trojan men were nodding. It was a mark of good health if you could entice another man's wife, and Helen was not just another man's wife.

  Paris went on and on, extending his list of queens taken in battle. “Of course there's Io,” he said, “and Ariadne and Hesione.” The same lost princess over whose fate Menelaus and Paris had argued.

  The king of Sidon had yet another version of her story. “Hesione was not taken in battle, which would have been just and proper!” he shouted. “Hesione had to be sacrificed to stop a plague!”

  This is one of the purposes of royal children, since they have more value than ordinary children. If a hundred white calves will not please the gods, a king's daughter will.

  “The oracle ordered the sacrifice, but the king—your grandfather!—wanted to cheat, didn't he? Didn't want to kill his own daughter, did he? Wanted to kill the daughter of some lesser noble, didn't he? As if any god ever wanted lesser things.” The king's voice was as loud as his trumpets. His Greek slumped and hobbled like an old donkey, but we understood every word. “But th
e wise nobles of Troy had already sent their children abroad for safety. Did not my own family shelter half a dozen princesses of Troy? So the old king—your grandfather!—had no choice. He bound Hesione naked to a rock in the sea. And there she was rescued by the hero Hercules. A greater warrior than you, Paris.”

  I thought any warrior would be greater than Paris, but his own men did not see it that way. They sucked in their breath, a unison sound, like a chorus warming up.

  The king held out his dented cup for more and drank deeply. A good servant would have watered his wine to nothing. This was no time for a king to get drunk.

  Aeneas transferred Pleis to my lap and freed his long hard legs from the prison of the table. He caught the eyes of other Trojans. Every man would have left his weapons in the forecourt, spear point up against the wall, until all the weapons of all the visitors had made a glittering bronze fence. To reach his weapon, Aeneas would have to get past several hundred Sidonians and many doors and halls.

  And yet I thought Aeneas was actually considering it. It would be suicide. There were barely fifty Trojans in a room with hundreds of Sidonians.

  The king of Sidon did not back off. This time when he slapped his cup down, the wine flecked everyone near him with purple, even Helen. “You, Paris, pretend to valor?” he bellowed. “Pig of a Trojan! You are no warrior, but a thief. I give you three days to quit your anchorage. After that you will be treated as enemies.”

  Paris leaped to his feet, wrenched a spear from the unready hand of a Sidon guard, and plunged it through the chest of the king. As blood erupted from that noble heart, so did battle erupt in that hall.

  The walls and ceilings seemed to fall in. Men fought with fists and feet and fingers. They fought with chairs and tables.

  Aeneas did not have to run to the forecourt for weapons. Trojan soldiers burst through every door. Thirty-three ships of men had been armed and waiting for a signal. Paris had faced his ships out for the worst possible reason: He had planned to kill and loot.

  The body of the king of Sidon lay like rags over the royal table. Poor king! He had been told, in detail, that Paris was a guest who would rob and rape. Yet still the poor king had believed in the power of guest-friendship and had left his gates open.

  In another life, I had worried because Callisto cut her bread with a knife. Truly I had been as simple as a peasant.

  What you must worry about is the perfidy of man and woman.

  Pleis and I survived because Aeneas did not leave us. Pushing us under the table, he drove a spear through many chests. The men of Sidon had nowhere to run. When the slaughter was complete, Paris and two score of his men surrounded Helen and headed for the ships. Aeneas held Pleis in his arms and me by the hand, while his men swarmed around us.

  Outside, we found that the battle had spread into the town and across the wharves.

  As on Siphnos, so here. Old women mending nets and children playing with toys were killed, soldiers and servants cut down, boats torched and roofs fired.

  The Trojans cut a swathe for us. Pleis and I were handed over to Zanthus while Helen and Paris were safely taken aboard Paphus.

  Helen stood on the prow, but that was not high enough, and she had them lift her to the roof of the little cabin for a better view.

  They die, and she rejoices, I thought. She wanted them to fight over her. Just as at Amyklai. And there will be more of these battles. Menelaus will go to his brother, the Lord Agamemnon, and those two kings together will attack Troy, and again men will die for her. At Troy she will have the greatest excitement of all: husband and lover on the same battlefield.

  When the battle for Sidon ended, Troy had lost two ships in the harbor and thirty-eight men in the palace. On his flagship, Paris stood hardly sweating, the only marks upon him the stains of blood and wine from the king of Sidon.

  The corpses of Trojan soldiers were laid out on the sand. Helen walked among them, speaking as if they could hear, praising them for dying to protect her holy name.

  She bandaged the wounded. I thought she did not touch those grisly wounds to heal them, but to have blood upon her hands.

  And the living Trojans did not spit upon her nor revile her. They were proud of the risks they had taken and the damage they suffered and the pain they endured. They too would die to have the honor of her touch.

  The dead were piled and set afire. Usually a dead warrior's weapons and armor are divided among his companions, but this was different. A man who died for Helen was too fine for his gear to be handed about like a used pottery bowl. Eagerly the Trojans flung every single possession of the dead into the flames.

  Regally, proudly, Helen walked out the stone jetty toward Paphus, pausing to survey the harbor. You would have thought she had built the breakwaters, constructed the ships, trained the rowers. “We will have sons, Paris,” she told him, the finest boast a woman can make.

  The men burst into a great cheer.

  “Our sons will be as strong and valiant as you, Paris. Our sons will bring back spoils stained with the blood of men they have slain, and make our hearts rejoice.”

  A great stomping of Trojan feet applauded this, feet against decks and docks, against stone and wood. The noise almost drowned out the next words of Paris to Helen. “Our sons,” he promised her, “shall rule by might over Troy.”

  O Paris. It is you they should drown on the voyage home.

  Poor Troy. You too have left your gates open.

  Paris will destroy you.

  THE LAND OF TROY was dull and smooth like a sheet spread on a riverbank to dry.

  Fields stretched for miles and miles. Only a few ancient tombs bothered the grass. Far to the south lay a low strip of mountains, dark and sullen, shifting like uneasy shoulders.

  But O, the city of Troy!

  Amyklai had been dwarfed by the upthrust mountains. Gythion had skittered on the edge of a great sea. Siphnos had perched on a cliff.

  But Troy simply stood there, a warrior alone on the field. It did not cringe inside its walls.

  Troy was the wall.

  The hill it covered was barely a hundred feet high, but the immense walls were half again that high. They crushed the hill beneath their weight, as they would crush an enemy daring to advance. Towers, thick and muscular, squatted at each corner.

  The sky was deep straight-to-god blue. Wind yanked white clouds out of the north and threw them violently.

  On the battlements appeared hundreds of soldiers. Every one held a spear longer than an oar, and in unison they thrust up and out. A thousand bronze tips pierced the sky.

  As from one throat came the shouts of victory: Men and women and children poured out of that great city while trumpets and ram horns and flutes and pipes wailed.

  Paris!

  Helen!

  Troy!

  “I am here, my people!” called Paris. “You have back your bright and shining son. I bring a bride. Welcome my Helen, your daughter.”

  Helen accepted bouquets of roses and sheaves of wheat.

  Paris accepted the roars of the troops. He had adorned himself beautifully, wiring his pale hair in silver and gold. His armor bore the royal insignia of the king of Sidon. Helen's braids fell like gold tassels and she was dressed all in white, like a swan.

  Only yesterday had we sailed past the island of Tenedos, whose son had warned me about swans.

  The parade moved slowly over a vast flat meadow.

  On an earthen bridge, we crossed a very deep man-made ditch. No enemy chariot or horse would get past that. Through wooden palisades we went, entering a lower city of workshops and potteries, sheepfolds and bakeries, crowded houses and tiny huts, stacked cords of wood and the gardens of the poor.

  Aethra used me for a cane. Pleis sat on my hip, holding tight as he stared.

  Every soldier, pirate and thug of Troy stomped his feet to drum a welcome for Paris.

  The magnificent walls started with boulders at the bottom and rose in layers, each of slightly smaller stone, but even the
smallest was more than I could ever have lifted. I was surprised to see that the walls raked slightly. If I had still been on Siphnos, still half shepherd boy, I would have scrambled right up them.

  Truly there was no end to the number of kings who were sure they could not be beaten. But perhaps Troy really was different.

  The road became a steep ramp. Fastened to the great gate before us, on a door thicker than an ox and taller than an oak, was a great carved horse head, snarling like a wolf.

  Troy put her history in my hands. I could feel her ancient battles and hatreds. The ground seemed stained by blood.

  A hideous shriek came right out of the sky. In this godswept land, I would have believed anything. I held Pleis even tighter and pulled Aethra against me and found the courage to look up.

  Jutting from the heavy watchtower that bulked out above us was another, more slender tower, built of wood. Against the great stones, it almost seemed built of splinters. Standing on a ledge so narrow it seemed safe only for birds was a girl. Dark hair swirled around her head. Her gown was flung in the wind like the white wings of many doves. Stretching her arms straight to heaven, she screamed, “Noooooooooooooo!”

  The people ceased their welcome. The parade halted. The sun closed its eye. The wind turned cold, as if a thread of ice connected the girl on the tower to the gods.

  The girl's voice cut like a curved blade across the throat of a lamb. “Do not take Helen in!”

  Paris gritted his teeth, snarling like the wooden horse on the gate.

  “The noise of her name will shatter our gates!” screamed the girl. “That woman is loathed of God.”

  The girl was not looking down. High as she was, sixty or possibly eighty feet, she stared directly out. I balanced myself on the slope and looked to where her eyes went, north beyond the bay, out into the sea, past distant bright islands. Her eyes were fastened on the mountain peak of Fengari, where the blue-haired god of the sea rests when he comes out of the waves.