I am sure Agamemnon expected to sacrifice a hundred black bulls. But no. The word of the gods was that he must make his own child holy. It is not hard to make things holy with a lamb. But to make war holy with your own daughter?
The army chose Iphigenia, the cousin who had spent a summer at Amyklai and been such fun for Hermione.
I remembered a shrine on Siphnos, clamped to the side of a cliff. Iphigenia must have died at such a place. I am sure she went bravely to the altar. I am sure she tried to make it easier for her father. I am sure she neither begged nor cried out.
But even on the orders of Zeus, how terrible to slit your own daughter's throat.
Had Agamemnon wanted to disobey the god?
Had he screamed at his assembled army—Let Paris keep Helen! Forget the treasure! Forget the insults! Just let me have my daughter, my dear Iphigenia.
But weakness does not make a king.
“A Jew lived here once,” said Andromache.
“What is a Jew?”
“It's a people near Sidon, where Paris had such a brilliant victory and returned with such treasure.”
Where civilized life vanished at a banquet table, I thought, and we were all pirates, and all the world our prey.
“The Jew had a king named Abraham. His god also required that he make things holy with the death of his son Isaac. But at the very last moment, his god rushed out of the sky and said Abraham didn't have to kill him after all.”
“There must have been feasting in that household,” I said.
Talk of war draws young men.
How they loved to prepare. To sharpen the knives and javelins. Practice with the sword. Feint left and shift right. Squint into the sun and make plans for glory.
Chariots were harnessed, drivers dashing toward the sea as if to meet an army, but in fact, just racing their friends and then gathering under the great oak at the Scaean Gate to talk of war.
But the young man I wanted to see was not drawn to war.
“I have not heard from Euneus,” said Hector, all black beard and dark frown. “He will be one with Menelaus.”
“He will be neutral,” I said, although war talk did not concern me and I should not have spoken.
Hector looked at me. “When a friend needs you,” he said, “there can be no such thing as neutral. He has not come to help us, therefore he is against us.”
Friends of Paris gave parties.
Friends of Hector offered strategies, for he would be general over all.
Men from a dozen kingdoms came to prove their valor. When the war ended, they would gain wealth and splendor from the ruin of Menelaus and Agamemnon. Pelasgian sailors arrived. Thracians with their hair all in a tuft. Carians decked in gold. Horsemen from Phrygia and men with boars' tusk masks from Mysia and men with tattooed hands from Paphlagonia.
The tents of the allies stretched for miles on the grass. Now across the plain were a thousand campfires. A new sound filled the air: the din of ten thousand men talking.
And then came the ships of the allies of Menelaus, the greatest gathering Earth has ever seen.
All at once they came, swiftly, fiercely. There were so many that they closed the mouth of the bay, like the jaws of war.
Iphigenia had died well.
Helen knew the ships by their flags and stood on the ramparts with King Priam and Paris, calling out the kingdoms, while Hector, appalled, counted out the ships.
“That flag!” cried Helen. “That's Boeotia!”
“Fifty ships,” whispered Hector.
“The Locrians!” she said gleefully.
Forty black ships.
Argos and Tiryns. Eighty black ships.
Twelve from Salamis, fifty from Athens, eighty from Crete.
When Paris and his thirty-three ships had pulled up on foreign land, Paris had faced his ships outward so he could flee. But these ships faced the shore. They were not leaving in haste.
“All these captains,” asked Priam, “took oaths in the Blood of the Horse to defend you?”
“Yes,” said Helen, glowing with joy.
No, I thought. Menelaus corrected you. They took oaths in the Blood of the Horse to defend him.
“Those are interesting ships,” said Priam, pointing. He might have been admiring acrobats at a feast. “They are painted not just with eyes, but with red cheeks.”
“The ships of Odysseus of Ithaca,” said Helen. “A crafty man and dangerous.”
And then came the ships of Menelaus himself. Sixty strong.
And the ships of Agamemnon. One hundred.
Every ship was its own procession to war.
As each vessel drew close, its sail was furled and stowed. Its anchor stone was tossed into the sea and its cables made fast. Its crew climbed out into the breaking surf, leading the sacrifice.
I was so proud of Menelaus. He would not pull up on strange soil without making it holy. I wondered where he had obtained so many white heifers, so many black bulls.
“He bought that stock from Euneus,” said Hector.
“Euneus will be neutral,” said King Priam cheerfully. “It's all right. If the war lasts more than a day or two, we might need to exchange prisoners or some such thing. Euneus will handle that.”
Cassandra had said the war would last ten years. Nobody believed her. Only Hector seemed to believe it would be more than one battle.
“Already,” said Hector gloomily, “based on counting the oars, there are five of them for every one of us.”
“We can stay inside our walls,” said Priam reassuringly. “We have more supplies than they could possibly bring by ship. They can't get at us and we don't need to fight.”
“Of course we need to fight,” said Hector. “They will slaughter our people, Father. In the city below. In fields and hills, in marsh and forest.” Hector paced back and forth. He was huge. There was no room for anyone else on the battlements when he marched around. “Do you think they are civilized, these Greeks?” he demanded. “They are animals. Wild dogs in a fever. They will kill the innocent to force us into battle.”
Menelaus would never kill the innocent! I wanted to shout. You Trojans are the ones who murder a host. We wouldn't do that.
Cassandra was suddenly next to me. “You are thinking of Paris,” she said very softly. “Paris murders. Hector, never. He is just and fair, honoring at all times the best in his fellow man.”
From what I had seen, war produced the worst in my fellow man, not the best.
“Cassandra,” said her father the king, embracing her. Priam did not ask why she was not in her tower. He did not send her back.
Helen was furious.
Not only was Hector gloomy, but Cassandra and I were the two girls Helen least wanted to remember during her hour of triumph. With Cassandra literally under the king's arm, however, Helen could do nothing about that god-swept princess.
I was easier.
To Aethra, Helen snapped, “Shave her skull again tonight and bring her for me to look at. She is no princess. I know she has stolen a birthright.” To me, she said, “The gods will punish you, girl.”
“And the seven ships now sailing into the harbor, Helen dear?” asked Priam. He might have been asking about a variety of rose—whether the bloom was double or single, pink or yellow.
Helen forgot me and looked eagerly to see who else had come to fight over her. The hulls of the seven ships were black with pitch. Their sails were red. Their insignia was a twisted blue fish.
“From rugged Olizon. I do not know their captain. They are experts with the bow. They appear to have fifty rowers to a ship, so before you are three hundred fifty brilliant shots.” Helen was trembling with joy. For this had men stood in the Blood of the Horse: to die for her.
But the men of the twisted fish would die for me.
I WALKED AND AETHRA HOBBLED, holding my arm. We were no different. My heart was hobbled. I was so proud of the hair I now had. It had grown several inches and the curls were beautiful and tight. Andromache
said that any woman who used a curling iron would be jealous; any warrior preparing for battle. Andromache thought I could go without the turban now. She said I was lovely and very feminine and would be the envy of all.
I did not risk explaining that my hair was short because I had offended Helen.
I loved my hair. I wanted Euneus to see it. I wanted him to smooth it down and wrap it around his fingers and… and if Aethra did not obey Helen, she would be punished.
We went to the house of Paris. It was empty. Every royal resident of Troy was on the battlements, entertained by the sight of the Greeks. The other residents of Troy were standing below the walls, getting a view wherever they could. Only Hector seemed to take the prospect of war seriously. Everybody else expected a party with some dead Greeks at the end of it.
The courtyard was lovely, though small; the inner room beautiful, with so much gold and amber that it glittered even without torches. The only other chamber was the bedroom of Paris and Helen. A tiny cradle awaited the new birth.
I felt sick and worried. “Where does Pleis sleep?”
Aethra pointed. Behind a jog in the wall, and up two steps, was a little closet, too small even for a slave to curl up. A fleece and a few toys filled the floor below a single window. The window opened into an alley so narrow that almost no light came in.
O my Pleis. “Where do you sleep?” I whispered.
“There is an attic. Very low ceilinged. You cannot stand upright. But then, my spine is so twisted I cannot stand upright anyhow. I am better off than the rest of the slaves.”
“Does Kora sleep there?”
“Kora sleeps in the courtyard.”
“Outside?” I said. “All winter?”
Aethra shrugged. “She is just another dog to Paris.” Aethra found a sharp blade among the possessions of Paris, and we went out into the courtyard for the light and Aethra began to cut off my hair while I began to weep.
As every gleaming curl fell to the paving stones, I felt weaker and weaker, as if it were my blood falling there; as if this were my death. I had to sit on a stone bench and grasp the rim of a great jug full of flowers.
“Lovely,” said Aethra sadly. “Like the petals of a rose. Your glory.”
Everyone used the word “glory” now. Each soldier hoped for glory. No one seemed to understand that for one man to attain glory, another man must die. Cassandra too had mentioned glory. The gods will take your greatest glory.
“Aethra, what if my hair doesn't grow back?” I whispered. “Cassandra said the gods were laughing at me even now. That they would take my greatest glory just when I thought I was safe.”
Aethra stared at my bald head. Then she rested her old wrinkled soft cheek against it. “Poor child. I am so sorry.”
“It couldn't happen!” I cried. “The gods would not be that mean!”
“The gods are always mean,” said Aethra. “Does the life I lead make you think of gentle loving gods? Does the body I live in look like one blessed by a kind god? When I missed my grandsons by two days, was this arranged by a generous god? And Nicander—when he angered the gods with that egg of lead, did the death of five infant sons come from a forgiving god?”
We are told to fear the gods. I had forgotten to be afraid.
On Siphnos, when I chose not to tell Menelaus the truth, I had known the gods would punish me. I had shrugged. It is never good to shrug when a god is there. “I didn't do anything so very bad,” I whispered.
“What did you do?”
“I lied. Helen is right, Aethra. I am no princess. I stole the name and birthright of Callisto. I am just a hostage from a rocky isle without a name whose parents did not want me back. I had no value, so I took Callisto's value, that I might not be made a slave.”
Gently the old queen kissed my naked head. “We all bargain with the gods, my dear. They, however, do not bargain with us.”
The ships of the Greeks continued to arrive. Along came support and supply ships, bringing timber and tents and slaves, barrels and crates and sacks. There had not yet been a battle, but Troy no longer controlled the water: not the Hellespont, not the far shore of the Hellespont, not the Aegean, and not the nearby islands in the Aegean.
King Priam was not concerned. “Our allies who had to come by sea are already here,” he said. “The remaining allies will approach by land anyway. And no matter how much food and water they bring by ship, we will always have more food and water.”
“No soldier signs on for free,” said Hector. “Every one of those Greeks expects to be paid, and not from the treasury of Menelaus. They expect to be paid from our treasury, when they sack our city.”
“Then they will die poor,” said Priam, smiling.
As for the poor of Troy, they seemed no more worried than their king. They did not leave their huts below the citadel, their children still played ball in what would surely be the battlefield, while their tiny flocks of sheep and goats nibbled grass where the attack would begin. No mother packed the family goods; no father carried his children to the safety of the great walls; no girl stopped spinning.
The greatest worry of Troy was that Menelaus might want to fight Paris in single combat.
A duel would be proper and just and there would be no way to avoid it. Nobody had come all this way to watch two men jab at each other. Troy's allies fretted that they might not get to fight. Not to mention that Paris would lose. If Menelaus requested a duel, they would try to make him fight Hector, because Hector would win.
Luckily, Menelaus made no such offer and Troy was spared the humiliation of admitting that the prince who had started this was not prince enough to end it.
By day, the two armies would fling taunts, preparing for the hour in which they would fling spears.
“When we have broken down the walls of Troy,” yelled the troops of Menelaus, “we will take the faithful wives of your dead. Every princess in Troy will pay for the deeds of Paris!”
It is the promise of the battlefield—the winner gets to rape the wives.
Since the Greeks had not brought any women, the Trojans could not make the same threat against them. Trojans had to be content with describing what would happen to the men they slaughtered. “Your bowels will spill into the sea for eels to devour! When we feast after our swift and easy victory, Trojan vultures will feast on your eyes.”
“Shut the window,” said Andromache. “I hate this. What if something happens to Hector?”
It will happen to you, I thought. You are the princess they refer to.
We spun. You can spin as you walk, as you sit on a donkey or lean on a wall. We spun in fear. I had done nothing but spin since Aethra had shaved my head again. I was terrified of Helen now, terrified of all gods and all punishments. Terrified even of Andromache, who one day would pluck off my turban to admire my red curls, my glory.
There would be a great feast this evening. It had been arranged that battle would take place in the morning. Priam wished to celebrate the coming victory.
“Menelaus and Agamemnon and their tens of thousands will also feast,” said Andromache suddenly. “I look at their camp every night. Their fires are a fence of flame. Tonight, those soldiers will crouch in the shadows around Menelaus and Agamemnon, planning the death of Troy.”
It was true.
“Planning the death of Hector!” cried Andromache.
This too was true. Hector would be a greater enemy in war than Paris.
“You love Menelaus,” she accused me. “You want him to win!”
I remembered the kingly courtesy with which Menelaus rescued me from Siphnos; the warm smile when he'd bought me the magic jar. How he cuddled Pleis and teased Hermione and roughhoused with Aethiolas and Maraphius. It was a strange word—“love.” The love I felt for Euneus, whom I had known only hours, had sustained me through the long winter. The love I felt for a puppy named Anthas, which I had snuggled only for minutes, still tugged on my heart. But the love I felt for Menelaus, whose careless kingship had brought us to this
terrible pass, was sad and tired.
“I want to be neutral, Andromache. Like Euneus.” I felt neutral. My hair was not growing back. My scalp was as smooth as the palm of my hand. I could hate neither the gods for their punishment nor myself for my lies. My heart was as flat as the plains around Troy. Even when I thought of Euneus, my heart did not leap. I had not even the strength to plan the demise of the men of the twisted fish. What would be, would be. Some would win, some would lose. I would just exist.
Neutral is a terrible thing to be.
“Hector says Euneus is a traitor.” Andromache was weeping. “And you, too, Callisto, are a traitor. I, daughter of the king of Cilicia, have adopted Troy. Helen, daughter to one king of Sparta, wife of another king of Sparta, has adopted Troy. But you, daughter of Siphnos, have not. Yet Troy has been good to you. I have been your friend. Hector has been your friend. And you do not swear to be a daughter of Troy.”
“I would never betray Troy, Andromache. I treasure your friendship. Deeply do I respect this city and her people.”
We spun.
“Helen is right,” said Andromache. “You should not be among us.”
No, my princess. It is Helen who should not be among you.
But Andromache, my friend, waited for me to go.
“I thank you for this winter of friendship,” I said to a real princess. “I too weep. I shall find a place in a distant hall and trouble you no more.”
The future queen of Troy did not say goodbye. She did not call me back.
I was not so neutral, after all.
I wept.
Stumbling down dark halls, I rushed to the bedroom I could no longer share with Andromache and retrieved my Medusa and my fleece. I had never returned the mud-stained divided tunic of the squire nor the ugly cap. I took them, too. And my slingshot, just in case.
There was only one person in the world now who loved me.
I went to the palace nursery, where the toddlers and babies of the princes were being watched during the feast. Pleis was not there. “He's with Kora,” said a maid, “in the house of Paris and Helen. No royal parents want the son of Menelaus playing around their children. You won't see him here again.”