Goddess of Yesterday: A Tale of Troy

  “It's my sister Cassandra,” said Paris irritably. “Pay no attention to her, Helen, she has to be locked up for her own safety. She thinks she can see the future. She's just insane. Fifty brothers, twelve sisters, I suppose it is to be expected that one of them would go mad.”

  As if she had been dropped into a glass jar, Cassandra remained visible and yet disappeared. She was just there, thin and wavering against the sky. The crowd went back to celebrating and shouting.

  Dozens of young men trotted forward to greet Paris and to admire Helen at close range. Helen looked slowly at each man. Each quivered and flushed, dropped his eyes and caught his breath and stared again. Her beauty was impossible. Even for me, it was impossible. They could not talk to Helen. She was overpowering. They could only talk around her.

  “You missed Menelaus and his embassy by only two days, Paris.”

  “The king of Sparta was demanding Helen's return and the return of his treasure. We told him we didn't know a thing about it.”

  “Paris, did you really scrape the palace of Menelaus dry?”

  “Did you actually dare empty out the temple of Apollo?”

  Paris embraced one man, calling him brother, and then did so again, and again, and it dawned on me that all these young men were his brothers! Priam really had fifty sons.

  “We laughed at Menelaus behind his back,” said another, “but we were cordial in public. Any embassy deserves honor.”

  “I wasn't cordial,” said the next brother, embracing Paris. “I voted to kill Menelaus. The man will just come back a second time and be even more trouble.”

  They vote? I thought. How curious. Is there an assembly of princes? How could that work?

  “Deiphobus,” cried Paris, leaving Helen's side to move to this brother. They embraced and studied each other gladly. He had a very strange name. It had the word “fear” in it, but also the word “loot.”

  “Menelaus brought criminal charges against you,” Deiphobus told him. “Our father beseeched him to go more slowly. Priam said he could not charge a man who was absent and unable to defend himself.”

  “I'm here now,” said Paris, touching the hilt of his dress sword. “Let Menelaus come. I'll defend myself.”

  Helen smiled and took Paris' arm and together they moved forward into the city of Troy.

  On the tower above, the dark-haired girl leaned into the wind, as if hopeful of being taken to heaven.

  Aeneas wanted to know more about this embassy of Menelaus and questioned Deiphobus closely. Aethra and I were stuck behind him and could not move on. The old queen was shaking with exhaustion. I did not know how much longer she could stay on her feet.

  Deiphobus listed the men who had accompanied Menelaus on his embassy. I knew a few of the names from song, but the name I had expected was Agamemnon, and he had not come.

  “And two young boys,” said Deiphobus. “The sons of the great hero Theseus. It turns out that when their father was murdered, Elpenor took the boys in. They hadn't known that their grandmother Queen Aethra was alive and servant to Helen, and Menelaus hadn't known the boys had been spared. The youngsters came hoping to ransom their grandmother.”

  Aethra and Pleis and I stood for a long time while the crowd flowed around us. Aethra was as wooden as the horse on the gate.

  If only we had gotten to Troy a few days earlier.

  But Aethra was not grieving. Her face was set in anger. “Cassandra, sad sister of Paris, was gifted with prophecy by Apollo,” said Aethra. “On the same day, Apollo also cursed her. Cassandra always tells the truth, because she always knows the truth. But no one ever believes her.” Aethra twisted painfully so that she could look all the way up to the little tower, but the ledge was empty.

  “You and I are different, Callisto. We believe. The noise of Helen's name will shatter these gates.”

  And Aethra smiled grimly.

  King Priam was very old. His beard was entirely white, soft as lamb's wool, while the hair of his head was sparse from great age. Hands which had clenched the shaft of many a spear had stiffened, and his knuckles and fingers were twisted like knots in a sailing rig. He could get up from his throne without help, but staggered a few steps until he had his balance back.

  His sons loved him.

  You would think every one of those fifty sons would be waiting for him to finish up and die. You would expect them to have formed alliances and hatreds among themselves, fifty little cities reaching out for power. Yet every son regarded the tottering father with affection.

  Priam looked past all those sons and all their wives. He looked past all his daughters and all their husbands. His eyes fixed on Helen.

  The hall of Priam was perhaps a hundred strides north to south and only about twenty east to west. Its high balconies, jammed with spectators, nearly met in the middle. Narrow slot windows high above their heads let in a chilly breeze and little light.

  I could no more keep my eyes off Helen than could the shivering strangers on the balcony. Could this be the same woman who had turned her cheek half an inch to receive the lukewarm kiss of Menelaus? She was a cloud of gold and a storm of beauty.

  As a swan upon the water, she glided from Paris to the king of Troy. The court was entirely silent, drinking in the sight of her. She knelt before Priam and grasped his knees, as if she were an ordinary woman with an ordinary request.

  “I beg of you, dear king,” she said in a new voice, an intoxicating compelling voice like a nightingale, “to accept me as your daughter. Permit me to love you and serve you. Forgive whatever trouble I may have caused. Bless my adoration for your fine son Paris. Give us a wedding, Father, and your blessing, and assure us the blessings of your people.”

  Helen shone in the dark megaron as a sapphire on a ring.

  A sigh of pleasure came from the throat of the whole crowd.

  “Daughter,” said the king of Troy, “you are bride to us all. There can be no trouble. Beauty such as yours will bring only joy. You are welcome indeed.” He motioned his son Paris forward, and as a groom kisses his virgin bride at the altar of the gods, so Paris kissed Helen in front of the whole court, the kiss long and slow, and every one of us in the room kissed with them, lips aching and hearts full of envy.

  And Helen turned to those hundreds of strangers, and smiled upon them, and they were no longer strangers. They were hers.

  For some time Helen and Paris conferred with the king, and when they left, there was still more business to transact. Aeneas revealed details of the army and navy of Menelaus. An officer described the precise geography of the kingdom of Sparta, listing towns and temples still to be looted. Still another had investigated half a dozen ports while Paris had distracted Menelaus and Kinados.

  If Menelaus did not attack Troy, Troy would certainly attack Sparta. It had been so easy for Paris; so clear to the Trojans that Menelaus was weak. They hadn't murdered him only because they didn't fear him.

  O my king. Did you realize that?

  Which of my kings had had the worst of it? Nicander— buried in the sand? Or Menelaus—palace, family, temple, kingdom and dignity stripped by his wife?

  Aethra had left the room in Helen's wake. Perhaps I would drift away with Pleis, meld into the city, find a hut, some little corner. A son of Menelaus in the city that had declared him an enemy…

  But the next order of business was Pleis.

  I set him down, praying that he would neither whine norcling, and took him by the hand to the throne of Troy. I knelt to the king while Pleis, in his sober openmouthed way, stared around. “I am Callisto, O king. Daughter of Nicander and Petra of Siphnos. I beg your permission to serve this child.”

  I did not repeat out loud the lineage of Pleis. I would have had to begin with Menelaus.

  “My dear princess, slaves will nurse the boy. You will share a room with the princess Andromache, who is betrothed to my dear son Hector.” The king smiled proudly at Hector.

  Hector was the largest man I had ever seen. I didn't like looking
at him. He was too big, as if he were partly bear. His hands were too large, as if they broke oxen instead of bread. His black eyes were shadowed by a forehead too jutting and his beard was not trimmed, let alone braided, but left furry like wild goat hide.

  Pleis hid behind my legs at the sight of Hector. How the court laughed at fear in the son of Menelaus. He's only two years old! I thought, picking him up and comforting him. “My king, the little prince loves me. I have been his nurse for many days in many desperate moments. I beg you—”

  “No,” said Priam, still smiling. “Helen made these arrangements.” He leaned into the word “Helen,” caressing it. She had asked for this; she would have it. She would have anything Priam could give her. “Set the boy down,” said the king of Troy.

  With Menelaus I would have argued. Perhaps even with Agamemnon.

  But the power of this trembling old man was drawn in the smoky shadows to the fine point of a knife. I set Pleis down.

  “I am so glad that you and I will live together!” cried Andromache.

  Her name was complex. “Andro” means “man,” but “mache” means “battle.” An drom ah kee. I puzzled about it. A girl over whom men fought battles? But that was surely Helen.

  “There will be four of us princesses in one chamber,” said Andromache. “Troy is very crowded. Well, what did King Priam think would happen when he had fifty sons? But someday I will finally be old enough to marry Hector and then we'll have our own house. Actually Hector already has a house; it's a fine palace, but I can't live with him yet. King Priam wants me to wait another three years. They say you're fifteen, Callisto. I am fifteen also. Waiting is boring, don't you think? I want to get married and I want to get married now.”

  She was small and dark and soft, with no sharp lines. She was as cuddly as Pleis. I could not imagine her with Hector.

  Her chamber appalled me. Anywhere else, it would have been called a wide place in the hall, not the boudoir of a princess. And this space was to hold four of us? Each girl had a trunk, but to save room, bedding and fleeces had been rolled up and stacked on top of them. It was just as well I possessed nothing.

  “You have nothing, Callisto!” said Andromache. “This is dreadful. But that's what happens when you travel on the water. The storm blows your fine things into the waves and the rest rots from the salt. How you must have suffered! In my experience, sailing is merely another word for suffering. I came here by ship and I was sick the whole way. I hope never to stand on the deck of a ship again. You will find Troy a very healthy place, though. We are high above the marshes and the wet poison of their air. The wind that comes steadily from the north? You can hear it now, banging every shutter? If you look out that window, you'll see every flowerbed protected by a fence. The only plant that wants to grow here is grass. But the same wind blows every illness out to sea. Now, do not worry for a moment about your wardrobe. Queen Hecuba loves me; you have not met the queen yet, she is quite old and rests a good deal, but Hecuba will do anything for me. I'll see that you have all the gowns you need and lots of jewelry. I love jewelry. And perfume. I love perfume.”

  Andromache and every other Trojan woman I had seen wore exceptionally long gowns whose hems trailed on the stones. It was a sign of great wealth, for the cloth would quickly wear out, and few households could support that luxury.

  “Now let me see your hair,” said Andromache. “I love how you have twisted that scarf into a turban, but it isn't fashionable, Callisto, and we must have my hairdresser come. Hector's hair is very black and he doesn't bother to braid it. He doesn't even comb it. He doesn't like Paris' hair; he says only girls spend that much time on their hair. Your hair is—” She broke off, alarmed by the sight of my scalp, just beginning to bristle with hair. “What a fever you must have had, Callisto,” she said very softly. “But do not refer to it. In this city, it would be trouble.”

  She seemed to have trouble herself, thinking of a bald head, and I understood. It was kind of her to say I had suffered a fever and been shaved to let the heat out. She certainly knew it was more likely that I had been prepared for some great shame, like slavery.

  I wondered how long I would be treated as a princess. Why had Helen not given King Priam instructions to enslave me right away?

  I rewound the turban.

  Once my head was covered, Andromache became cheerful again. “Now I will show you Troy. We will run on the battlements and visit Cassandra and stop by the weaving room and of course—” A dimple poked in one cheek and she shot me a marvelous smile. “And of course, we'll end up wherever Hector is. I'm not allowed to visit Hector that often. The king says it's forward. But you're with me. You'll be my chaperone. Now, don't be afraid of Hector. He's easy to be afraid of; he's sort of like the handle of an ax, don't you think, or maybe the blade, but actually he's just a puppy.”

  I collapsed in giggles. “I have never seen anybody in love before,” I said. “I love love. Another princess and I, long ago, used to talk about falling in love. And you've done it.”

  Her laugh spilled around me like water from a fountain. “Helen fell in love,” she pointed out. “Paris fell in love. You watched them, Callisto.”

  In my heart, I introduced myself properly. My name is Anaxandra, I wanted to tell Andromache. No, not Alexandra. Anaxandra. Most people get it wrong the first time.

  I did not think Andromache would get it wrong. I was dizzy with the desire to tell her the truth. But truth of another sort leaped out of me. “Helen loves only herself,” I said. “I agree with that princess on the tower. Helen inside your gates is danger inside your gates.”

  The sparkle went out of her dark eyes and she looked away.

  I had torn the fragile fabric of a new friendship. Helen was their bride—their new sister—their new daughter. I should not have said a word against her.

  It dawned on me why Helen had not destroyed me today. She entered Troy as beauty: all beauty, wholly beauty. To whip or enslave a princess, while common in war, is not an act of beauty. Helen did not want Priam to witness her as a hard woman. Not yet.

  “Show me what you embroidered on your voyage, Callisto!” cried Andromache. “Is this what you were working on during the long days at sea? Oh, Callisto, it's simply beautiful! You are so good with a needle. You must show me how to make this stitch. It looks like a star.”

  I was not holding anything. I had not had needlework on the long voyage, only a lap full of salt water or Pleis. Andromache put her own needlework into my hands.

  “This,” said Andromache, folding the needlework over so it could not be seen, and lifting her eyes and chin in a gesture toward the door, “is one of our serving women, Kora. Kora, this is the new princess, Callisto, who comes to us from Siphnos.”

  Kora was a bear of a woman with pocked skin and fingers like sausages. She could have been twin sister to Hector, she was that big. Her nose was squashed and her lips puckered inward. She had lost her teeth.

  “Kora often has the honor,” said Andromache brightly, “of tending Prince Paris. No doubt she will now assist the Lady Helen.”

  I could imagine Kora in the slaughterhouse, cutting up a lamb. I could not imagine her tending a prince or a princess in the bath.

  Andromache held my eyes until I grasped the manner in which Kora tended Paris.

  Much as a prince might wish for it, walls do not have ears. If a prince—Paris, say—needs to listen in on the conversations of others, he must send someone. Kora would take up as much space in a hall as three pillars. Yet I thought this ugly pudding of a woman would arouse no more notice than that, either.

  “You were about to tell me about Cassandra,” I said to Andromache.

  “Oh, poor Cassandra. She and I used to weave together, but the gods blew breezes through her mind. Now she swears at the people and screams at the gods and beats her head against the wall. Cassandra isn't supposed to have visitors and she isn't supposed to leave the tower. Of course, nobody pays any attention, especially me. I go up to gossip and bring
her more embroidery floss, and sometimes we play ball on the parapet and now and then we go to the temple together. I will take you to the temple in the morning, Callisto. The Palladium is very dear to my heart.”

  I was not sure I really wanted to see the Palladium.

  Andromache nodded. “It is frightening,” she agreed. “Hector's grandmother was one of the women who saw it come down from the heavens. She thought it was a shooting star, but it got brighter and closer. Do you know it actually screamed with pain when it entered the world? It was Athena herself, and she left us her image. The image is attended by many priestesses and acolytes. The temple is the highest place in Troy. Beneath it are the treasuries, connected by tunnels, and far, far below are springs of cold water, and even deeper are the shelves where the acolytes sleep. They're never allowed out in the sun, you know, once they have given themselves to the goddess. They'd be killed if they were seen.”

  Andromache took my hand. She moved like a spindle whorl, twisting faster than the eye could see, and I whirled after her, and we toured Troy like two little gusts of wind.

  The city was almost entirely roofed. Polished pillars and long colonnades lined streets as narrow as threads. Houses were stacked haphazardly upon and against one another. The stairs were not long fine stretches, but steep uneven steps thrown against a wall here, spouting up inside a room there. Floors followed the tilt of the hill, some floors as steep as a goat path and others with a step in the middle.

  We came suddenly upon the main avenue. Its cobblestones were shiny brown in the sun. It was a dramatic road, stretching from the Gate of the Horse up to the palace, swinging right and then stepping up to the Palladium. I shuddered, thinking of acolytes in the cold wet dark, kneeling before a goddess who had thrown herself out of heaven.

  “The palace has enough bedrooms for all fifty sons,” said Andromache, “and on an upper floor, for the twelve daughters. But of course some sons have gotten married and they have children of their own and their wives insisted on moving out. People sleep in every corner of the palace by night, and by day they explode into the halls like the seeds of a flower when you shake it in the wind. Now this palace in front of us belongs to Deiphobus. He's everybody's favorite brother.”