The bones and ashes were ceremonially conveyed to the tomb, libations left, the lid opened and closed. Paris inside. Vital Paris—how could he rest content there? But we know nothing of the dead, what they want, what they feel. We only know they are profoundly different from us. Even those we love are changed into something we cannot fathom.
As we trod through the streets afterward in our sad procession, Priam fell back to walk beside me. Deiphobus, as the foremost surviving son, took his place beside Hecuba.
How stooped and frail Priam had grown! I remembered the sunlit day I had first encountered him, how muscular and strong he was, even at his age. But that day was with Paris. Paris beside me, Paris proudly presenting me, Paris protecting me! “Helen . . .” Even his voice was thin, old-man thin.
“Yes, Father,” I answered.
He fumbled for my hand. He must have something momentous to say.
“Some would say the war is now over,” he said. “Paris, who violated the sacred laws of hospitality—although we all recognize that love-madness can overturn peaceful laws—has relinquished you. You are now his widow. We must make our way without him.”
I stiffened. Now he was going to ask me to make the sacrifice of returning to the Greeks, to Menelaus. What else could it be? It was the only sensible response. Troy would be saved, as its original reason for punishment was removed.
He was finding it difficult to frame his words. I would help him. “Dear Father,” I said, “you need not force yourself to say the hateful words. I will do whatever lies in my power to save Troy. I will return to the Greeks.” How could he know, after all, that a dead person did not care what she did, where she went? There is no abasement when you are dead. And I had died with Paris. “I will go to Menelaus, bow before him, and then the Greeks will have to leave the Trojan plain.” I cared nothing for what happened to me. Let Menelaus kill me. Then I could join Paris, and be spared Menelaus.
“No, there is another way,” he said. “You must marry Deiphobus.”
I jerked my hand away. “No! I am Paris’s forever.” The words poured forth before I had a single thought.
“It will put heart into the resistance,” he said.
“The best resistance is for me to end the war. Its pretext is gone.”
“Deiphobus demands this.” He forced the words out.
“As a price for what?” Surely he had no basis for demands.
“As a price for defending Troy.”
“So he would turn traitor if he cannot have Helen?” I could not keep the disdain from my voice. “What sort of son have you sired?” And to think they dared call Paris coward, ignoble!
His reply was abject. “I sired many sons, but few, it seems, who are heroes.”
I started to make a sharp retort, then I heard the failure in his words. To have so many sons, and so few in whom one could have pride. “I cannot wed Deiphobus,” I said.
“You must,” he insisted.
On both sides of us now, in the falling twilight, people were lining the street, leaning forward and calling out. We could speak no further, and I believed my silence would serve as adequate refusal.
I sat in our bedchamber. The megaron was still occupied by the foreign allies and refugees; most of them had dutifully attended the funeral games, and I was grateful to them.
In accordance with my wishes, I had been left alone. No attendants fluttered about, no family members kept me company. The chamber seemed, somehow, more deserted now, as if the shade of Paris had obeyed the mourning ritual and duly fled into his tomb. I had expected to return to this retreat and find him waiting for me here, but he had melted away.
I circled the chamber like one of Priam’s hunting dogs seeking a place to lie down. Only there would be no resting place for me again, no matter how many times I lay down. I sank to one of the chairs, and stared out in the darkness.
If only we had had a child . . . if only he had left something behind to indelibly recall him . . .
If only I could speak to him, see him once more.
I rose, went to our bed. I stretched myself out on it, hoping for surcease. But not for sleep, only for utter oblivion. Should I do as my mother did, knot a length of rope around my neck and let them find me swinging in the dawn? Never see another moonrise, never see another noonday, be spared the entire black road stretching out before me?
I could feel my breathing, feel my chest rising and falling.
In—out. In—out. Soft as a whisper, but it meant I lived and Paris did not. The chamber was dark, dark. The doings of the day closed in on me, swirled me away. A tunnel is sucking my feet away, making me slide down it.
Paris, I follow! I follow, I fall down the tunnel with you.
Long, black, close sides in the tunnel. So close I can claw at them. It is over, then. It is over, and without the ugliness of dagger or rope. Helen is gone.
I land, softly. Still it is dark. I pick myself up, my legs trembling, and see nothing. Something brushes against my legs and I reach down to touch it. Asphodel. The flower of the fields of the dead. I am here at last.
These are the new-dead souls, awaiting passage. Mother, Troilus, Hector, have all passed over. But Paris . . . Paris must still be here.
All I see is a great confusion of souls, their mouths open as they gesture for libations to succor and feed them, their arms reaching. They are pale, as pale as the asphodels surrounding them, and waving like those flowers on their thin stalks before a strong wind.
I see no face here I recognize, and I wave them away, deflecting them like darting, swooping bats. Then, out of the gray murk, a pale shadow approaches, his face like that of Paris. The original face of Paris, not the horrid one of the death chamber.
I cannot help myself—I gasp with the delight of seeing him again, knowing that we are together.
“You have come.” His voice is odd, soft, obscured as if it came from deep inside a cave.
“I am here. Nothing can part us.” I reach out my arms to him, but they pass through him.
Sadness stains his face. “You are still of the daylight above,” he says, as if it were a betrayal.
“No, I tell you, I have lain down in darkness and was taken here.”
“But when the light comes, you will rise.”
“Not if you teach me otherwise, how to avoid it.”
“By your own hand, wife, by your own hand. You have the strength.”
This is not the Paris I have known. Has death, then, so changed him? “Paris, I cannot live in your absence. My life has fled with you,” I said.
“Then do what you must to truly enter here, rather than cheating by clutching life to yourself.”
“Why are you still here, on this farther shore of Hades?” I burst out. “The funeral rites, they should have released you.”
“I was waiting for you.” He looks at me. “You are here. But you have not had the courage to truly follow me.”
This wraith, this accusatory shade, is not truly Paris. Now I feel, more deeply than ever before, that Paris is gone forever. Death has changed him into a stranger. Paris is no more.
“Get away from me!” I cry. “You are not Paris, but some other vision. One I do not wish to see.”
I scramble away, in such haste that I trip and fall into the stiff stalks of asphodels. They are real enough. Why, oh, why, is not Paris?
The journey back was instantaneous. I blinked and was back in my chamber, lying rigid on the bed, shaking and muttering. An unutterable misery descended on me. I had fled from Paris. I had beheld him, but I had fled.
No, I had fled from what he had become, pacing that sterile dark shore.
Paris is gone. Those three words, embodying all the truth I needed to know, pranced, jumped, jeered at me: Paris is gone.
I heard my own breath. I was alive. Helen was alive. Helen must soldier on, alone. That is what living is—to soldier on. There is no virtue, no solace in the afterworld, thus no merit in hurrying there. And Paris, the Paris that I had loved, was
not even waiting for me there.
It was still dark. We were a long way from dawn; I lay waiting for the light to steal in, solacing myself with the knowledge that no light, no matter how feeble, ever penetrated down into Hades. I must learn to treasure the light.
“Helen.” It was Evadne again, bending over me, a robe fluttering in her hands, ready to envelope me. “Helen.” I could hear the fear in her voice. I was lying so still.
“Yes, dear friend,” I said, sitting up to reassure her. She smothered me with the robe, as if I were so delicate I would perish in the chamber air. I wanted to tell her I had journeyed to the boundary of the underworld, had seen Paris. But she would say it was only a dream.
“Helen, they are waiting. Everyone—Priam and Hecuba and others.”
Ah. It was the others that I dreaded, one other in particular.
“Gelanor begs to be admitted as well.”
“Admit him first.” I forced myself up off the bed. My legs felt weak. “But not before I have dressed and taken some food.” I was not hungry, but I needed strength.
* * *
Wearing my robes of mourning, with no jewelry or adornments, my hair bound and covered to be invisible, I welcomed a somber Gelanor. Uncharacteristically, he bent and took my hand, kissing it. Then he straightened and looked at me.
“It is over, then,” he said. “I mourn your sorrow. Although—I will not pretend—in the beginning I thought coming to Troy ill-advised, what is done is done, and if it brought you happiness, then for yourself you chose wisely.”
“Gelanor—I cannot believe he is gone!” I burst out.
“It is the hardest thing on earth, to be severed from those we love. May he find peace.”
He has not! I wanted to cry, but Gelanor would also say I had but dreamed last night.
“Priam wants me to marry Deiphobus! That sweating, leering man. As if I could ever—”
“You must,” he said bluntly. “Close your eyes, hold your nose, extend your hand, and pretend to acquiesce.”
How could he desert me like this? “No!”
“You are a prisoner of Troy now,” he said. “You came here freely enough, but now you are a prisoner and they can do with you as they like. And what they like is to reward the sole remaining warrior son of Priam, so that he will soldier on.”
Soldier on . . . we all would be soldiering on, then: nothing but a slog through mud and rocks and steep barren hills for the remainder of our lives.
“How could they expect me to allow him to touch me?”
“Prisoners allow all things.”
I began to weep. How could I ever treasure the light that shone itself on this? Perhaps Hades was preferable after all.
“Helen, do not. I cannot bear it.” Gelanor’s voice was gentle. “You persuaded me to come here, and now I must behold . . .” He shook his head. “There is something you can do, if gentler means fail. I will prepare it for Evadne to give you.” He looked glum. Did he mean poison? “If Troy prevails, if the Greeks sail home—I have heard that a contest over the arms of Achilles ended in a fight between Odysseus and Ajax. The arms were awarded to Odysseus; Ajax went mad and then killed himself. The Greeks are at a breaking point, as we are. I shall send my last weapon amongst them—the plague shirts. That may prove the final blow that sends them home. I will have them delivered in bundles tied up as treasure. You know how greedy they are. They will fall on them, rip them open, and then . . .” He gave a grim smile. “Agamemnon will probably be the first to tear the largest package apart. He will claim he has the right, as overlord and commander.”
I would like to see that man felled in a mass of boils and welts. He had sacrificed his daughter, torn her from my sister’s side. But even the most agonizing and humiliating death would not repay that.
“May it happen as you envision.” Thus I gave him permission to loose this cruel weapon.
“In the meantime, you must placate them here. It will be brief. Keep yourself from Deiphobus, say you have taken a vow—are you not allowed a certain number of days for mourning?—and before he can claim you, the Greeks will have run from these shores.”
“And then? Will I not still be bound to Deiphobus?”
“Only briefly, as I said. For when the Greeks are gone, you are no longer anyone’s prisoner.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. I had led us down this road, and now there was no turning back.
LXVII
I bowed my head in false obedience to Priam. I would never truly embrace Deiphobus, but by this action I could rally the spirits of Troy. Priam walked haltingly over to me.
“We will proclaim the forthcoming wedding,” he wheezed.
“Not until my forty days of mourning for Paris have passed,” I reminded him.
“Yes, my daughter,” he said. Hecuba, by his side, looked at me sadly. She had lost Hector and Paris because of me, and now I was to wed one of her last remaining sons. She knew the dowry I brought was death.
The forty days passed too quickly, and they paralleled that of the dying year. The cold gathered in the stones of the city and worked their way into our bones. The color faded, like a sunset, from the fields as they awaited the stillness of winter.
Deiphobus did not bother with courting, presenting gifts, or calling. He was content to wait until I would fall into his hands like a late-season fruit—or so he believed. While he waited, I kept mourning for Paris, conjuring his image in my mind all throughout the day. But I did not attempt to follow him beyond this world again.
The wedding. Should I even dignify it by that grand word? Deiphobus led me from my palace to the open space between Hector’s palace and mine. The wind was brisk, lifting our cloaks. Crows were calling one to another. They were the only birds abroad these blustery days. Their raucous, deep voices sounded like bickering merchants in trade booths. (Trade booths, days of peace. Would I ever hear such merchants again?)
My face was covered by a dark mourning veil. Deiphobus raised it, peering at me. Triumphantly, he flung it back. “Your period of mourning is ended!” he announced.
Had I seen his face in a market or on a street, he would have passed for handsome. He even resembled Paris a bit in the way his hair, shot through with gold, grew on his head. But there the resemblance ended.
“My mourning will never end,” I said as loud as I could.
“But now you will embark on a new life. You will board the ship that is my life voyage.”
“Is that so, my prince? I understood that you were to move to my palace.”
Deiphobus, eager to escape from the courtyard of Priam’s sons, expected to move into my home.
“It is symbolic,” he muttered. “I did not mean our actual dwelling place, but our station in life.”
“I see. Then I am to take it you will be my guest and the guest of your departed brother?”
“No. I shall be your lord and husband. Where I exert this privilege is unimportant.” His mouth was a straight ugly line. I could not bring myself to respond.
The ceremony dragged forward—the vows, ritual phrases, ceremonial gestures. I fulfilled my obligations in lifeless fashion. We exchanged gifts. He crowned me. There were no living flowers in the fields now, so he used dried, dead ones. He grasped my wrist in the age-old assertion of marriage.
At the banquet, unable to eat, I watched others feast. My heart longed for Paris. I would never, could never, celebrate the attempt of others to sever us.
In the chamber—the very one I had shared with Paris—we retired after the tedious day. He was eager. He threw off his cloak and approached me, arms outstretched. I brushed him aside, dissembling. It was too much for me. My womanly modesty had been overtaxed. I bade him forgive me. Then, before he could protest, I bolted myself in the inner chamber I had prepared.
Let him wait.
The next morning, when Evadne came to me, my shut door, the draped cloak of Deiphobus, and his sandals in the outer room told all the story. She held out a covered jar. “I see, then, that yo
u will need this. Gelanor had hoped it would not be necessary.”
I took the jar and peered into it. A short thorn-covered branch lay curled within it. I drew it out.
“Careful—do not allow the thorns to prick you.”
I held it by the end of its stem. “Poison?” I said. This was not what I wanted—I had no stomach for murdering Deiphobus.
“Of a sort,” she said. “But a selective one. It kills only his . . . ability. Not his military ability, I must add. It will disable only the one that threatens you.”
“Oh.” Gelanor had refined his skills impressively. “Does it affect women as well as men?”
“I would not take the chance, my lady. That is why I warned you.”
She seated herself on a chair next to my bed. “When he comes near,” she said, “you must draw the thorns across his bare skin. The smallest scratch will suffice.”
“Is the damage lasting, or does the ability revive?”
“I believe it is lasting.”
For the next few nights he kept away from my chamber. But every night he crept closer, until the night came when he pushed on the door and stood possessively on its threshold as it slowly swung open.
The disgrace of being barred from Helen’s bedchamber was clear in the belligerent expression on his face.
“Wife.” He held out his arms and advanced toward me.
I turned away, retreating farther into the chamber, luring him after me. Avidly, he shut the door. It thudded into place on its hinges, and he dropped the bolt into place. “Now,” he said, “we begin our life together.”
When I reached the darkest part of the room, I stopped. He kept walking toward me, and when he reached me, he embraced me. I shuddered at his touch—it sent little wriggling snakes of aversion all over my body.
“Are you cold, my sweet?” He sounded solicitous. “Let us draw closer to the brazier.” In a corner a round stone brazier was glowing faintly with its coals.
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