Goddess of Yesterday: A Tale of Troy

  I left the palace, elbowing through packed streets, deafened by the curses being thrown at Menelaus. Time and again my fleece with its pathetic treasures was nearly jostled from my grasp. So many soldiers filled the city that I was invisible. I did not have to worry about being seen by a princess. No princess would go out in this wild drunken spear-swinging crowd.

  But Kora would. There she stood, over a great trencher of roast lamb, dipping each piece in salt and rosemary.

  Kora had left Pleis unattended.

  I hastened to the house of Paris. The door opened easily and without sound. They do not bolt their doors in Troy, for they are all one family. The place was empty. Paris and Helen were undoubtedly on the battlements, and the slaves were in the street, eating greedily and well.

  Pleis was in his little closet. His dinner had been set on the floor, as if he were a dog. He was playing with blocks and had not eaten much. I had not eaten much either and reached for the bread.

  Between the bread and yogurt, something gleamed. It was wet, round at the edges. It did not look like food. I was puzzled.

  “Silver,” Pleis told me. “Pretty.” He smacked it with spread fingers. The puddle split into silver raindrops. Pleis pushed them together with one clumsy finger until they became one again and he beamed at me, proud of his trick.

  Quicksilver.

  Poison.

  Set before a child who still put most things into his mouth.

  Even I could not believe this of Helen. Surely she did not know. But Paris knew.

  Evil man, I thought. Paris wants you to die the day of your father's arrival, my Pleis. Perhaps he wants to deliver your little body to your father, Menelaus.

  I wanted to burn the halls of Paris to the ground. Stab him with his own spear. Hold his corpse in the air for the vultures to pick over. I was as angry as any god. I was not neutral.

  I slid the quicksilver onto the slab of bread and flung it out the window. When Kora returned, she would think Pleis had eaten it.

  I did not want Pleis to be hungry anytime soon, so we went out into the city and joined the festive crowd. I fed him sweet cheese and thick dark bread with honey. I fed him plump raisins and made him drink cups of goat's milk. We got back to his little cell just as the servants began returning to the household. He was full and sleepy. “Night, night, Calli,” he murmured.

  I didn't ask Pleis to keep my visit secret. I doubted if anybody wasted time talking to him, and tonight of all nights, Helen would be thinking of other things.

  I left by the window. Vaulting up to the sill made me think of the great high horse, and the rich scent of its sweat; of Euneus, and the warm clasp of his arm.

  I slept in the alley. I was not alone. Hundreds of infantry slept in the streets also.

  When the sun rose, I found an inch of space on ramparts jammed with spectators, that I too might watch the mighty conflict.

  Paris had had his hair done. All the warriors had, of course, for none dared ask the blessing of the gods and then not be at his best.

  No kingdom resembled another in the modeling of hair. Some warriors wore braids, some achieved curls with hot irons. Some brushed their long flowing locks or divided their hair into topknots. Paris was partial to an arrangement of gold wires, knotted with great skill so his head was tasseled like a robe.

  I was jealous of every one of them.

  I hoped anger would sustain me all the days of my life, because certainly beauty would not.

  Two squires helped Paris arm. How fine were the buckles and straps that held his gleaming breastplate, how tall the plumes of his helmet. He carried two spears, his reflex bow on his back and his battle sword at his hip.

  From the camps of the allies came ten thousand. Cavalry and infantry, bowmen and spearmen, darters and slingers. Hundreds of generals. Hundreds of horses.

  From their ships came the Greeks. Even though we had counted ships, and knew how many rowers per ship, we trembled. They were ants pouring from a hole in the ground, and like ants were without number. Like ants, could they be stepped upon?

  I did not think so.

  Nor did the Trojans. Every man stroked his weapon, testing the sharpness tested only minutes before. Whereas in the night I had heard ten thousand murmuring voices, now I could almost hear ten thousand pounding hearts.

  From the ramparts high above his fifty well-armed sons, King Priam prayed.

  His voice was old and shaky, so his heralds, standing at the corners of the vast walls, repeated after him, shouting the prayer phrase by phrase over city and fields.

  “Send me a bird of omen!” cried the king to the gods. “Let me see the eyes of your eagle! Prove that your power flies over Troy.”

  But no eagle came.

  No hawk.

  No falcon.

  Not even a sparrow.

  The wind blew. The grass leaned down. And the sky was empty.

  Without warning, clouds covered the blue sky and the sky swelled yellow like pus in a blister. As a turtle pulls in its head, so did two armies hunch down, uncertain of the plans of Zeus.

  But Hector ignored the terrible omens. “Open the gates!” he roared, and the gate with the snarling horse was pulled to the side and an equal roar came from the throat of every ally.

  Paris was pale. “Hector, we have to postpone the battle. The signs are against it.”

  “Bird signs,” Hector said in contempt. “The only omen is whether you fight for your country.” In a huge voice, he shouted, “My soldiers! Beat these invaders into the sea!” Hector charged like a boar.

  Paris, hundreds of armed and eager men at his back, left the gate more rapidly than he had planned. If he had planned to leave at all.

  The horse's head gazed after him.

  As flood seizes the river in spring, overflowing its banks, tearing away the soil and turning the clear water to mud, so came the armies.

  They met in a whirl of blood. Far down the battlements from where I stood, Andromache screamed and covered her eyes, while Helen slammed her fists down on the battlements and, like a soldier too long in the trenches, swore with joy.

  Shield hit shield with a crash as of cymbals. Stones hit faces, darts punctured lungs, spears found bellies. Men screamed in rage and pain. Horses shrieked like men. When a soldier fell, the hordes leaped upon him to rip off his armor.

  The Trojan habit is for brothers to handle a chariot. But the enemy knew how to meet a charge of chariots. The brother who drove would get an arrow through the eye and with the terrified horses out of control, the brother who held the spear was spilled to the earth and swiftly killed. Trojans died two brothers at a time.

  Hector fought like ten men. He forced himself through a wall of shields, bringing so many Greeks to the ground that around his feet was a quivering mass of plumes.

  But the Trojans pushed nobody into the sea.

  The Greeks were stronger. Relentlessly, they pushed the Trojans toward the walls on which we stood.

  Helen was as god-pierced as Cassandra, swaying to the rhythm of war. Above the clangor and death, above the terror and pain, her voice rose. “I am Helen of Troy! This is my battle! Fight for me, you men. Suffer and bleed for me. Die for me.”

  They were afraid of Helen on the ramparts and edged away from her, shivering as one does at the beginning of fever. But they were slow to be afraid of the battle. Slow to grasp that Troy was losing.

  The peasants who had not abandoned their outlying huts had no time to correct their error. Whole families met the springing tip of the spear, their fallen bodies crushed by plunging horses as if they'd been grains of wheat on the threshing floor.

  Trojan hearts sank. Trojan hopes were dashed.

  “Menelaus is murdering our children!” shouted Paris, from a rather safe spot near the gates. I had not been aware that Paris cared about the safety of children. “Menelaus tramples our children in his path!” he shouted, arousing the men to greater fighting. “Menelaus stabs to death the helpless infant!”

  Who
were the Trojans to claim they protected the weak? If Paris or Priam, if Hector or Aeneas had cared about mothers and babes, they would have ordered every peasant into the city and closed the gates behind them.

  But as a rallying cry, it had no equal.

  It had never really mattered what had happened between Menelaus and Helen. Never really mattered whether Paris had robbed a temple. But children mattered.

  “Swear to the deathless gods,” roared the heralds from the towers, “that Menelaus will die!”

  Troy surged back, heart renewed and resolve quickened.

  The Greeks lost ground. The men of Sparta closed ranks to keep Menelaus safe. He would receive the protection of thousands.

  But the son of Menelaus had no shield.

  THE BATTLE DID NOT go to the strongest.

  The battle went to sunset.

  No one can fight in the dark. It is not possible to tell friend from foe. The sky turned purple, the Greeks crossed back over the Scamander River, and a truce was arranged for the next morning so the bodies might be gathered.

  The wounded were carried into the city and laid out in rows, filling the main avenue. No one considered using the great space of the Palladium. A man would rather die than lie there.

  The city of Troy was in shock. They had believed Paris, that war would be a dance, a party; that the only dead would be the enemy. All night the people wailed in grief and the wounded moaned in pain.

  A boy in a dirty wool cap and a barbarian's divided tunic is good for carrying. All night I brought buckets of water from the city well for washing the blood off the wounded.

  When dawn came at last, each side buried its own. Warriors put down their weapons. Work parties lifted corpses and closed the eyes of the dead. Horses pulled body carts instead of chariots. Trojan mourners streamed toward Mount Ida, for the holiest burials would be on her slopes.

  Hector and the princes and their generals gathered just outside the Scaean Gate to plan the strategy for the next battle. Only Hector had understood that there would be a next battle. It was late in the morning before Helen was back on the battlements. No doubt it had taken her that long to fix her hair.

  I left my bucket by the well and went to the house of Paris, but Kora stood in the door.

  I went in by the window instead.

  Pleis was alone in his tiny room. I held my finger to my lips so he would stay silent, but he was overjoyed to have company. “Calli!” he shouted happily. “Sto!”

  I lifted him onto the sill, boosted myself up and dropped us both down. A few quick turns in back alleys and we found a stream of mourners to join.

  I was just another slave boy in a short tunic and closefitting cap. Boys, however, care for sheep, not babies. I told myself that the eyes of mourners were too filled with tears to wonder about Pleis and me.

  The son of Menelaus sat comfortably on my hip and chatted in the way of tiny children proud of new words. “Bunny bunny bunny,” he told me. “Long ears. Long, long, long.”

  He was right about that. I wanted no long ears in Troy to hear us. “Shhh,” I whispered. “Be silent as a bunny. Wiggle your nose, not your tongue.”

  Pleis loved having his nose tickled. His high silly giggle blended into the keening wails of the mourners. They left by the Dardan Gate, which led to Mount Ida. We walked among them for a quarter mile and then I slid into a thicket and clambered down the steep grassy hill.

  I found the path Andromache and I had taken to the horses. The horses had been herded to safer more distant pasture, but the fences remained, thick with thorns and flowers.

  Since I had watched the battle from the ramparts, I knew that anyone up there could see us perfectly. I could only hope they thought nothing of it.

  We waded through long grass. My heart was racing so fast I was out of breath. My hands felt slippery.

  “Down, Calli,” said Pleis, wiggling. “I get down. Down down down.”

  “Not yet. Be my good bunny rabbit.”

  The grass ended. I was on the battlefield. The earth was churned and torn. We were utterly exposed. I was a boy with a child in my arms, crossing a field of corpses.

  The day was hot and dusty, the sky a thick hazy exhausted blue.

  We crossed a hundred feet, and then another hundred.

  We skirted a party of Trojans lifting the much-stabbed body of a friend onto a cart.

  We passed a soldier turning over an unknown corpse and discovering that it was a friend. To the music of his weeping, we took another hundred steps. Here and there, a shrub or patch of reeds had survived the feet of war. I aimed for each tiny thicket. The ships seemed no closer.

  I prayed to my goddess but felt no presence.

  I prayed to Apollo and to Athena, but they had never been my gods.

  O, Nicander, my king, with your grave in the sand. Petra, my queen, your fate surely hard. Callisto, my princess, burned alive. Give me grace to save this boy, as I was not able to save you.

  We were reaching the end of the battlefield. After this final work party, we would be in a no-man's-land. Still a quarter mile before we reached the ford in the river.

  Now there were only six or eight Trojans between me and my goal.

  Thousands of Greeks. To reach Menelaus we would have to pass hundreds of beached ships. How would I prove our identity to those captains? They were not men to waste time on questions. Truce or not, they would pick up the nearest spear and dispose of a spy in an excellent disguise— childhood.

  Pleis shifted on my hip and looked back at the city. “Mama,” he said, astonished and happy. “Look, Calli. Onna wall. Mama.”

  He had learned a new skill. He had learned to wave. “Mama,” he called, waving.

  I caught his hand. “Shhh, Pleis, be a bunny rabbit, don't make a sound.”

  The Trojan party were laboriously shifting a dead horse to reach the body it had crushed.

  Pleis was too little to connect his mother with the loneliness of his little cell. He loved her. He pulled his hand free and waved again and called much more loudly, “Mama!”

  On their knees around the dead horse, the Trojan men looked up. One was Zanthus. He knew me right away. “Callisto?” he said, puzzled. “Pleisthenes?”

  But the Trojan next to him closed rough hands around my wrists. “The little Greek princess,” he said, spitting in my face. “A spy for Menelaus, are you? Taking his vermin child with you?”

  King Priam heard my case as if it were any other; as if it were a dispute over a bad debt or the location of a fence. Some of his princes were there. Paris. Deiphobus. Hector. His queen was there, and Helen, of course.

  They had taken Pleis from me. I would not get him back. Menelaus would not get him back either.

  I remembered saying to Bia at Amyklai, Helen will kill me. Yes, Bia answered. Delay that as long as possible. I could postpone my death no longer. There was but one thing I might still accomplish. I could take down the men of the twisted fish.

  “As I crossed the plain to bring his son to Menelaus, I overheard a plot, my king,” I told Priam. “There are seven ships from Olizon. Their men plan to sneak into the city where the wall is weakest, by the fig tree. During the night they will break into the sacred temple of Athena and steal the Palladium. Thus would Troy be defeated.”

  People paused. All Troy knew that the city would fall without the Palladium.

  “No,” said Paris. “That is your plot, girl. You were going to organize that expedition. You would betray Troy.”

  “I would not betray this city!” I cried. “Troy has been kind to me. With your women have I spun. With your princess have I shared a joyful winter. I too worshiped at the Palladium and dedicated myself to the goddess. I tell you this to save the Palladium. You must kill the men of Olizon.”

  King Priam, in his sweet elderly way, seemed actually to consider my words.

  “You lie!” said Helen, flinging words as she would have liked to fling a knife. She turned to Priam. “The girl was traitor to me, my dear father.
Me—whom she claims to serve. She snatched my sweet son from his crib.”

  I knelt before Helen. “I do not plead for my own life, O queen,” I said, “but for the life and safety of Pleisthenes. Your sweet son is in grave danger. He—”

  Helen whirled upon me. I thought she would slap me, as she had Cassandra, but she took hold of the woolly cap and yanked hard. There was a collective gasp from the court. I knew how my naked skull must gleam. Shame joined terror in my heart.

  “Daughter!” exclaimed Priam, getting to his feet. His sons sprang up to steady him and he bustled forward. He took my hand and raised me up. He laid a hand on my smooth scalp. He kissed my cheek.

  I do not know who was more amazed—Helen or me.

  “Thea!” called Priam.

  It is a name meaning “divine” and, in Troy, is given to the head priestess of the Palladium. This Thea was large and dignified, in robes woven of scratchy coarse thread. She too laid a hand on my head and kissed my cheek. “Welcome, child. You said you had dedicated yourself to the goddess, and so you have. You have surrendered your hair, your greatest glory. Thus does a maiden display her love for the goddess.”

  Thea placed her thumb on my forehead to bless me, exactly where Petra had done it all those years before. “You will serve the Palladium all the days of your life, daughter. You will experience poverty, because along with hair, you will lose all earthly things. You will not see daylight again,” said Thea dreamily. “Beneath our temple are long dark tunnels, which lead to cisterns of water and great stores of treasure. There will you serve, in the bowels of the earth.”

  Truly, the gods had spit upon my prayers.

  But Helen of Troy was smiling. A life of poverty and a bald skull were certainly a punishment to her taste. “I shall walk those temple steps, girl,” said Helen, “and know that you are under my feet. Toiling in the dark. Forever my slave.”

  The sacred temple had been cut into bedrock. Narrow steps laddered down and down and down. Water dripped from walls and oozed out of cracks. Moss grew, and fungus, and slime. The hem of my novice's robe was wet. I curled it up and over my arm to keep it dry and Thea said, “No. The water is a gift from the goddess. The rest of your life, your feet will be chilled by that sacred water.”