He went on, laughing, “When will they declare an open hunting season on heralds? I think they should all be exterminated, like Kentaurs.”
“Paris, son of Priam, I bear a message for you from Menelaus of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon, Overlord of Mykenae—”
“I know perfectly well who Menelaus is,” Paris interrupted him. “You don’t need to explain, nor rehash all our grudges against each other.”
“Oh, let the poor man give his message, Paris,” Helen said, in a voice that carried clearly. “You’re making the poor child nervous. He wants at least to sound like a warrior, if he can’t fight like one. He might wet his tunic if you go on, and think how embarrassed he’d be before all these women.”
“Well, if you have a message from Menelaus, go on and give it,” Paris said. The herald, blushing, visibly pulled himself together and straightened.
“Hear the words of Menelaus, Lord of Sparta: ‘Paris, son of Priam, my quarrel is with you, not with Priam or with the great city of Troy. I now propose that we settle this war in a single-combat challenge before all the assembled soldiers of Troy and the Akhaians. And that, if you kill me or I surrender, then you shall keep Helen and such goods of mine as you may have, and my men, including my brother Agamemnon, will be pledged not to fight further, not even to avenge me, but to take their ships and sail away from Troy forever, and this war be at an end. But if I kill you or you surrender, then Helen shall be turned over to me, with her goods and gear, and we will take her home without asking any of the spoils of Troy other than this. How do you say? What is your answer?’ ”
Paris stood at his full height and said, “Say to Menelaus that I have heard his offer; and I will consult with King Priam and with Hector, the leader of the Trojan armies. For it seems to me that there are many causes in this war other than Helen; but if my father and my brother wish to settle it in this way, then I am agreeable.”
There was a rousing cheer from both sides as Paris dropped down out of sight and came back into the little corner of the wall where the women had been watching. Helen stood up without words and kissed him.
Paris said, “Whew! What was the point of that? Menelaus knows as well as I do that there’s more to this war than Helen. How did Agamemnon manage to entice him into this arrangement? Or is it a trick to get me out from behind the wall?”
“I would credit Menelaus with the spite to do it,” Helen said, “but not with the wit to think of it.”
“Well, how do you think Priam would have me answer?” Paris asked. “Or Hector? Hector would probably welcome this chance to have me out of the way so he can conduct the war as he pleases.”
“You wrong your brother, my boy,” Hecuba said.
“May you always think so, Mother,” Paris replied, “and may I always be at hand to argue the point.”
“The heart of the matter is that you can’t fight Menelaus,” said Kassandra.
“Why not? Do you think I am afraid of him?” Paris argued.
“If you are not, you are a greater fool than I ever thought you were,” Andromache said.
“But Hector will so welcome the settling of this war by single combat,” Kassandra said, “that he will probably have Paris accept—but only on the condition that he challenge Agamemnon instead.”
“Well, he might offer to fight Menelaus in my place,” Paris said. “I’ll lend him my cloak, and all the armies are welcome to think it is I.”
“Whatever Hector will think, you may ask him yourself, for here he comes,” Andromache said. Hector and his warriors were coming through the streets of Troy toward the gate. There were about a hundred and fifty armored soldiers, and others dragging Hector’s chariot down the steep streets, to harness it at the gates so that Hector might mount it and ride out. He saw them from a distance on the wall and came up to speak with them.
“What’s happened?” asked Hector. “I heard some yelling in the streets. . . .”
Hecuba told him quickly about Menelaus’ challenge, and Hector frowned.
“It’s probably the best we can do with Akhilles out of the picture,” he said. “Are you going to fight him, Paris?”
“I’d rather not,” Paris said. “I don’t trust him to meet me in single combat; I think it’s more likely that he’s trying to lure me out to have me shot down by a dozen archers, or ambushed.”
Hector scowled.
“Damn you, Paris, I never know whether you’re talking cowardice or plain common sense.”
“I don’t think there’s that much difference,” said Paris. “I take it that means you want me to get out there and fight him.”
“Is there any question about that?” Kassandra could tell from Hector’s expression that he could not imagine why Paris was not so eager that he wasn’t already strapping on his weapons.
“Well, yes,” Paris said. “If I kill him, they’ll all go away and you’ll never have a chance at Agamemnon or Akhilles. That would spoil your fun, wouldn’t it?”
“And if he kills you?”
“I was trying not to think about that,” Paris said. “I doubt that that would particularly spoil your fun; but they’d certainly gloat over you while they carried off Helen and anything else they happened to fancy in Troy. And as I say, it might not be the kind of fair fight you’d feel honor bound to give Akhilles if he challenged you.”
“Helen,” Hector said, “you know Menelaus better than any of us; is he likely to abide by his word?”
She shrugged. “I would think so; I doubt he could think up a trap. Of course, I have no idea what Agamemnon may have thought up; that’s another matter entirely.”
“Well, Paris, it’s for you to choose,” Hector said. “I can’t force you to fight him; on the other hand, I don’t want to be responsible for refusing the challenge.”
Paris looked down to where Menelaus in his crimson cloak was still pacing up and down before the wall. He said, “Helen, what do you want me to do? Shall I fight him for you?”
“Hector will give you no peace unless you do,” she said shrewdly, “so I think you had better. But we must manage a way of escape for you; perhaps we can persuade some Immortal to intervene.”
“How will you do that?” he asked.
“You had better not know,” she said; “but I do not think that the Goddess of Love and Beauty brought me here to be dragged home in disgrace at the tail of Agamemnon’s cart. But as you fight, keep watch, and one way or another we will get a rope ladder over the wall. And if the Goddess gives you a moment to get to it—well, do not let the opportunity pass unless Menelaus is already dead at your feet.”
Paris shrugged, went to the wall and shouted down to Menelaus that he would meet him in an hour, if he wished.
Then he put on his armor and went down to the field with Hector. When they saw him in the chariot, the Akhaians broke out into a cry.
“What are you going to do?” Kassandra asked, approaching Helen. Helen grasped Kassandra’s hands.
“You are his twin sister and a priestess,” she said. “Now join me in chanting and praying that the Sea-Born may send us one of Her sea-fogs. Hecuba, I beg you, if you love your son, send for a strong rope ladder; we cannot ask the Goddess to do for us what any ropemaker could do for a copper coin.”
Hecuba dispatched a messenger for a rope ladder, and when it came, Helen went and stood with Kassandra at the very edge of the wall, watching Paris and Menelaus arming themselves while their heralds exchanged insults.
Menelaus and Paris paced carefully around, marking off the circle into which no other fighter on either side might enter while either of them lived. That done, they bowed to each other ceremoniously. A trumpet sounded, and they began to fight.
“Chant!” Helen urged. “Pray! Beseech the Goddess to send us Her sea-fog!”
The women began to chant. Kassandra was so busy watching the men swing their swords that she could hardly form the words of the prayer, though this was simple magic enough. At first the men seemed fairly evenly matched. Paris was
taller and had a longer reach; but though Menelaus seemed to have grown soft from inactivity, he was as quick as a mongoose. They circled each other, exchanging blows, carefully taking each other’s measure but not yet seriously joined in battle.
Kassandra’s eyes ached. Was it dust in the battle circle before them? Or was it actually a swirl of sea-fog drifting up from the shore? She could not be sure. Helen stepped to the edge of the wall and let the rope ladder down; she had hooked it for security around the edge of the wall’s stones. Then she rose to her full height and called aloud: “Menelaus!”
He turned his eyes upward briefly and stopped in midstroke. Helen slowly unfastened the neck of her garment and let it drop till her breasts were bare.
As she stood without moving, it seemed to Kassandra that the air was filled with faint glowing golden sparkles, as if the veil between the worlds grew thinner. Helen, touched with that golden shimmer, seemed to gain height and majesty and to glow from within with a beauty beyond anything human. It was no woman but the Goddess Herself standing on the wall.
As for Menelaus, he stood as if his feet had taken root in the earth beneath them.
Not so Paris. As his eyes fell upon Helen standing there in the form of the Goddess, he broke away, sprinting for the foot of the wall. From the ranks of the Akhaians came a great cry of awe and longing; then Paris was atop the wall and pulling up the ladder. With everyone’s eyes on Helen—or rather, on the Goddess—Kassandra realized, probably no one had seen him climb the ladder at all. He bundled it up and tossed it down inside.
Helen still stood unmoving, her body glowing with light. Then in the flicker of an eyelash, the illusion—if it had been illusion—was gone, and it was only Helen who stood there, her face a little sunburnt, fastening up her dress. She came to Paris and said, “You are wounded.”
“Nothing serious, Lady,” he said, his eyes still wide; but the stripe of red just outside the edge of his leather armor was dripping now.
She said, “Come along; I’ll care for it,” and led him away.
There were shouts from the Akhaians now.
“Paris! Where did he go? Coward!”
But through and beyond it all there were cries of, “The Goddess! She appeared before us on the wall! The Beautiful One, the Sea-Born!”
Hector’s chariot rumbled back through the gate, and the next minute he was striding up the stairs built into the wall. He looked around and demanded, “Where is he, then?”
Hecuba said, her voice quavering, “Did you not see the Goddess take him?”
“That’s what they said in the Akhaian ranks,” said Hector, “and when I asked my own charioteer, he swore he had seen Aphrodite stoop down from the walls and fling Her cloak over Paris and snatch him away. As for me, I don’t know what it was I saw; maybe just the blaze of the sun in my eyes. Where is Helen?”
“When the Goddess returned Paris here, She saw that he was bleeding,” Andromache said, “and took him to Her rooms to bandage his wound; by now they’re probably in the bath.”
“I don’t doubt it a bit,” Hector growled; “but I wish if Goddesses are going to interfere, They’d wait till things were properly settled. If the Goddess came Herself to snatch Paris to safety, I wish She’d snatched Menelaus—and Helen too—all the way back to Sparta. If She’s capable of the one—and notice, Immortals, I’m not impious to say She couldn’t do it—She’s capable of the other. Kassandra, what did you see? Are you going to tell me fairy tales about the Goddess on the wall snatching him away?”
For a moment, Kassandra was overjoyed: Hector had appealed to her as if she were a trustworthy witness.
“Not a bit of it,” she said. “But it looked to me as if Menelaus had some kind of vision; he stopped fighting and stared at the wall, and Paris ran for his life.”
Hector sighed and said, “Well, it’s too late for any more fighting today; but wait till this gets around. But of course, if the Goddess intervened—even by giving Menelaus a vision—no one can blame Paris.”
But he did not sound altogether convinced.
VOLUME THREE
POSEIDON’S DOOM
1
BY TWILIGHT everyone in both armies, and most of the civilians in the city, had heard the story, which of course did not grow less in the telling.
According to most of the eyewitnesses, the Goddess had appeared on the city wall and snatched Paris from under Menelaus’ very sword, delivering him from a certain death-stroke; in one version, Menelaus had sliced Paris in one stroke from chin to pelvis, and the Goddess had healed him at a touch; She had bound up his wounds with nectar and ambrosia and transported him into Helen’s very chamber.
Kassandra, when asked, replied only that she was not sure what she had seen; the sun had been in her eyes.
Privately she was certain that somehow the Goddess had intervened. But she was no longer certain quite how it had happened, although she was perfectly sure that for a moment at least, Helen had worn the semblance of the Goddess. It would not be, after all, for the first time.
For two days the city talked of nothing but the duel, and the supposed intervention of the Goddess. Hector and Aeneas came back from councils saying that the Akhaians were insisting that Menelaus had won the duel because Paris had fled, wounded.
“What did you answer them?” Priam asked eagerly.
“What do you think? We said that it was obvious that Paris had won, since the Goddess had intervened to save his life,” Hector replied.
Kassandra, who had watched from the walls during part of the day, remembering her own arms-training and thinking that she could probably do as well as most of the Akhaian soldiers or any of the Trojans, asked, “What was that all about this afternoon? I saw two soldiers I did not know stand out for combat, and before they ever got to fighting, one of them started unarming and ended by stripping off his clothes down to his loincloth. Did they decide to wrestle instead of fighting with swords?”
Aeneas chuckled.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Do you know Glaucus the Thracian?”
“I have spoken with him,” Helen said. “He was the sailing-master of one of the ships that brought us here.”
“Well, he stood out and challenged any Akhaian to give him a fight, and Diomedes accepted. So they began calling out their lineage, in order to find out if they could meet honorably in single combat, and before they reached their great-grandfathers, they discovered they were cousins.”
“So did they decide not to fight?” Kassandra asked.
“Didn’t you see?” Aeneas asked.
“No; I was called away to the Temple. One of the great serpents is about to shed her skin, and needed special care; a serpent is blind at this time and cannot be handled by strangers,” Kassandra said.
“They agreed they must fight for the honor of it; but they decided to exchange armor. Diomedes said that his ordinary armor was not handsome enough for an honorable gift, so he sent back to his ship for a precious set of silver armor with gold inlay, and then of course Glaucus had to trade around with his comrades for a fancy set to give him a gift of equal worth. They sounded like a couple of old men in the flea market haggling over the value of some trinket, and it went on and on—and of course they did the fighting in their old battered fighting armor, with the two fancy sets hanging up to be admired. . . .”
“Who won?” asked Helen.
“I have no idea; I think they knocked each other down a time or two, and then it got too dark to see, so they embraced each other, thanked each other for the handsome gifts and went off to dinner.”
Hector chuckled. “No advantage either way, I suppose; but it passed the afternoon. Of course, we had nothing better to do anyway today; until the councillors on both sides have decided whether Paris or Menelaus won their duel, everything else is simply for amusement anyhow. Glaucus and Diomedes would have done better to make it a wrestling match; at least we could have had some bets on that one. I’ve been tempted to challenge Big Ajax to wrestle—he’s the bigg
est man on the Akhaian line. I don’t know if he can wrestle—”
“He can,” said young Troilus. “He won the garland for wrestling at their Sacrificial Games.”
“Then I shall certainly challenge him,” said Hector.
“Watch out you don’t get an elbow in the face; his specialty is breaking teeth,” Troilus said.
At dinner, Hector asked Priam, “Sire, what will happen if the Council decides that Menelaus won the duel?”
Priam shrugged.
“Nothing,” he said. “The Akhaians will refuse to accept the decision and the war will go on. They don’t want to settle; they’re not going to give in till they break down the walls of Troy and sack the city.”
“Why, you sound like Kassandra, Father.”
“No,” said Priam, “I know what Kassandra thinks.” But for once, as Kassandra raised her eyes, struck again by that terrible fear, and the vision of Troy in flames which came between her and the living world, Priam smiled at her kindly, as if to try to dispel her fears. “I have heard her say often enough that she believes that they will destroy us. But that is not true.”
“Can they break the walls of Troy, Father?” Paris asked.
“Not unless they can persuade Poseidon to help them with an earthquake,” Priam stated.
Now Kassandra felt it through all her body: the walls would fall to the wrath of Poseidon, His earthquake. She should have known all along that no ordinary efforts of men could break the walls of Troy; only a God could tear down the great high citadel.
“Then we should sacrifice to Poseidon as soon as possible,” Hector said, “for He is the only God who can help us.”
“Yes,” Kassandra said quickly, “let us make sacrifices at once to Poseidon and beseech Him to aid us in our cause! Is He not one of the guardian Gods of Troy?” Not knowing what she was going to say until she heard it flooding through her mind like a scream of anguish, she cried, “Paris! You—oh, beware of the earthquake! Sacrifice to Poseidon! Make Him pledges, for it is you He will destroy—destroy—destroy!”