by Iliffe, Glyn
Despite the warm breath of the sea, the foamy water was cool as it washed over Helen’s toes and soaked the hem of her long dress. It was a pleasant feeling, she thought; it made her feel alive and free, just as Paris’s hot, rough hand in hers made her feel safe and loved. She turned her head slightly to look at him from the corner of her eye, only to find him doing the same.
He smiled. ‘What is it? Having regrets about marrying such an ugly man?’
‘Of course not,’ she replied with a slight frown. ‘Anyway, you aren’t ugly.’
‘Oh no? Since when have flat noses and livid pink scars been considered handsome?’
Helen raised an eyebrow and her mouth twitched sideways into a little grin.
‘I like your face – isn’t that enough?’ she asked, touching the bridge of his nose where the scar crossed it. ‘It has character. Those young men who gaze at me in the streets of Troy may be good-looking, but they’re just boys. These lines and scars you bear show you’re a man.’
‘Menelaus was no mere boy,’ Paris countered.
‘Ah, but you forget I was awarded to Menelaus like a prize. He didn’t steal me from a heavily guarded palace as you did. You risked everything for me, Paris, and no woman could want more than that.’
Paris smiled at her praise, which he knew was heartfelt, but he had not finished teasing her yet. ‘And how will you feel about him when he brings an army of Greeks to Ilium, just to rescue you?’
‘Don’t joke about such things,’ Helen said, facing her new husband with a troubled look in her eye. After a moment she looked away. ‘Fortunately for us, I doubt the Greeks will bother these shores for my sake. I hope they’ll have forgotten all about me in a year or two.’
‘Hector will be disappointed,’ Paris said. ‘He was starting to think a Greek attack might be the answer to his prayers – expend the might of Sparta and possibly Mycenae against our impenetrable walls, then send a Trojan army across the Aegean to claim the Atreides brothers’ kingdoms for himself.’
‘Your brother,’ Helen sighed, putting her arms about Paris’s waist and pulling his firm body against hers. ‘He reminds me so much of Agamemnon. Take last night, for example: a head full of your most potent wine, seated next to Andromache in that beautiful dress . . .’
‘With that perfume,’ Paris added.
Helen nodded enthusiastically. ‘And all he can talk about is the threat of Greek expansion across the Aegean, bringing their foreign gods and – don’t be offended, sister – their uncouth ways to our shores.’
Paris laughed at her impersonation of his brother’s gravelly voice. Her ability to mimic others was one of the many hidden delights of his princess: her imitations of Apheidas and Aeneas were hilarious, while her talent for sounding like Hecabe and Leothoë was uncanny, so much so that Paris had nicknamed her Echo after the chattering nymph who could only repeat the words of others. Still smiling, Paris lowered his lips to hers in a soft kiss.
‘I know my brother better than you do, my dear,’ he said, pulling away and looking into her large eyes. ‘And I can tell he likes Andromache. No, don’t laugh, he does.’
‘But he barely looked at her all evening, and the only thing he could talk about was Troy this and Troy that.’
‘That’s natural – Troy is his first love. But when Andromache spoke he listened, and on two occasions he even asked her opinion.’
‘So what?’ said Helen, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. ‘Isn’t that just being polite?’
‘Not for Hector! He’s rarely interested in what others think, and I can’t even remember the last time he asked someone for their opinion. But we shouldn’t mock him; if the Greeks do come, Hector is the best defence we have. He is worth more to Troy than all our allies put together.’
As Paris spoke a horn sounded on one of the towers behind him, followed by a second and then a third. He turned to look in consternation at the city walls, from which the deep, low notes were still reverberating. Several small figures were running along the battlements, and as he watched them more calls followed.
‘What is it?’ asked Helen.
‘They’re sounding the alarm,’ he answered, his voice calm but edged with uncertainty. ‘I used to hear that call every other day when I was on the northern borders, but it hasn’t been sounded here since Heracles attacked – when my father was just a boy.’
He looked over his shoulder at the tall galleys in the bay. The mists were beginning to lift and the dark vessels were clearly visible now. The few men left aboard were pressed to the sides, looking across at the soaring walls of the city as if expecting to see an army drawing near, or to hear the clash of arms ringing out across the empty plains. But nothing had changed beyond the thinning of the clouds above and the appearance of a first few beams of sunlight. They gleamed golden on the parapets and towers of Troy, occasionally flashing off the bronze helmet or spear-point of a soldier.
‘It’s Menelaus,’ Helen said, looking nervously towards the mouth of the bay. Through the haze she could just see where the headland sloped down to reveal the wide north-easterly gulf and the open sea beyond. ‘He must have come for me.’
Paris stroked her cheek and smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s not Menelaus, I promise you. It’s something else, a mistake or some kind of . . .’
‘Some kind of what?’ Helen asked.
But Paris’s attention was focused over her shoulder, forcing her to look back and see for herself what had silenced him.
‘Aphrodite save us,’ she whispered.
Where only a moment before the sea had been empty, but for the mist that crept over its surface, now she could see dark shapes emerging from the wall of swirling grey. At first there were just three or four, moving with calm menace towards the mouth of the bay, but with each nervous breath that filled Helen’s lungs more appeared, and then more until the whole ocean teemed with them. Their broad sails were filled with the warm breeze that a short while before she had been pleased to feel on her face and in her hair. Now she cursed it, for its gentle breath was ushering death and destruction towards her new home. Suddenly the strength left her legs and she fell forward onto her knees in the surf. More horn calls reverberated from the towers and walls of Ilium.
‘Come on, Helen,’ Paris said urgently. The sight of his wife collapsing released him from his shocked stupor, and he leaned forward and lifted her to her feet. ‘Come on, love. We must go.’
‘Why?’ she retorted, trying to push him away. ‘What good will it do? Menelaus has come to take me back, and the walls and armies of Troy won’t stop him.’ She looked in desperation at her husband and there were tears in her eyes. ‘Go back, Paris. Go back to the city and leave me here. If I give myself up to the Greeks they’ll depart in peace and you’ll be safe.’
Before he could stop her, she ran towards the surf-edged waves as if it were her intention to swim out to the Greek fleet. Paris caught her before she was knee-deep in the water, then lifting her into his arms carried her back up the sloping beach towards his chariot. The horses stamped and snorted at his approach, pleased to be in the presence of their master again.
‘You’re my wife now, Helen,’ he said, setting her down in the chariot, ‘and for good or evil we have to face the consequences of what we’ve done. But I’m not letting you go back to him, even if it costs the blood of every man in Troy.’
Overwhelmed with fear, she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in the rough wool of his tunic. Behind them, the crews of the Trojan galleys had abandoned their vessels and were now rowing in dozens of small boats to the shore. Further out, an endless stream of Greek warships was pouring into the mouth of the bay, the motifs on their sails now clearly visible. There were a hundred and fifty of them at least, Paris estimated -eight thousand warriors heading for his home with murderous intent.
From the walls of Troy another horn call erupted, but it was not the long, sonorous warning of the alarm. This time the sound was clear and high, repeated in short burst
s, and as it rang out in defiance the gates of Troy swung open and streams of horsemen came flooding out to the attack.
Odysseus and Eperitus stood in the prow of the galley as a warm breeze swept the deck, bellying out the dolphin-motifed sail and pushing them relentlessly towards the shores of Ilium. The sky above was covered by a thin layer of cloud, ploughed into long channels that screened the early morning sun, while all around them the surface of the ocean was covered in a blanket of fine mist. It condensed in their hair and on their eyelashes and made their woollen clothing damp to the touch. Everywhere they looked, packs of black-hulled ships nosed forward through the white fog as if sniffing out their prey.
Eperitus looked over his shoulder at Arceisius and Polites, who sat together on the nearest bench. Arceisius’s eyes stared out nervously from his pale face, making Eperitus recall the look of uncertainty he had seen on the lad’s face when he had killed his first man on Samos. Did his young squire have the stomach for the coming fight, he wondered? Then, reading the look on Eperitus’s face, Polites placed a long, muscular arm reassuringly about Arceisius’s shoulder and began talking to him in his slow, deep voice. Eperitus smiled to himself: the Thessalian was telling him not to worry; whatever lay ahead, he would look after him.
Behind them the deck was crowded with anxious Ithacans, fully armoured in greaves, breastplates and helmets. Most wore their broad leather shields across their backs whilst they sat patiently on the benches, thinking of the battle ahead and the families and homes they had left behind. Their spears lay at their feet and their swords and daggers hung from their belts; for most it would be the first time they had used them in anger, and as they sailed towards the unknown experience of battle, fear and worry gnawed quietly away at their courage.
But many also took heart from the words of their king as the Ithacan soldiery had waited on the beach at Tenedos, ready to board their galleys in the pre-dawn light. Odysseus had stood before them in the full garb of war and spoken of their island homes – of Ithaca, Dulichium, Samos and Zacynthos – knowing full well now, after all his efforts to stop the war, that it was his spoken doom not to see them again for twenty years. He named the hills, woods, harbours and beaches that were so familiar to all of them, evoking images of faraway places that were ever near to their hearts. His voice breaking with passion, he told them they were not merely a body of soldiers – they were a band of countrymen! The dried chelonion flowers they wore in their belts were there to remind them that they were Ithacans. True, they might only be fishermen, farmers or herdsmen by trade, but they were also friends and neighbours: a common identity and a shared homeland bound them to one another. And though for many this day would be their last – dying in a strange country for a woman only a handful of them had ever seen – the glory they reaped that morning would be theirs forever.
Eperitus leaned forward and peered into the mist. The Ithacans were on the far left of the fleet, with the Spartans in the centre and the Myrmidons on the right; but the vanguard was made up of forty ships from Thessaly, led by the brothers Protesilaus and Podarces. Odysseus and Achilles were deliberately holding back, conscious of Thetis’s prophecy that the first man to land would also be the first to die. The fact that Menelaus was not spearheading the attack, though, could only mean Achilles had also shared his mother’s words of doom with the king of Sparta. Then, as Eperitus pondered these things, calls broke out from the leading ships and moments later a line of low black hills appeared through the swirling fog. The sight of land brought excitement to the Ithacan benches, but a barked order from Odysseus quickly restored silence.
The mist was dissipating before the seaborne wind to reveal a spur of land, beyond which was a broad harbour filled with warships. The sight of the high-sided galleys brought a shock of fear and tension to the approaching Greeks. Shields were pulled from backs and spears readied; archers fitted arrows to their bows and gathered in the prows of each ship, ready to fire at the Trojan crews; long lances for fighting ship-to-ship were passed forward. Then they saw the sails were furled and spars stowed. The Trojan fleet was sleeping, and with a mixture of relief and delight they realized their attack was not expected.
Suddenly the attention of every man was drawn away from the dormant enemy vessels to a new sight. Rising above the skeins of fog beyond the mouth of the bay, at last, were the battlements and towers of Troy that they had feared and dreamed of for so long. They shone white in the sunlight that was now breaking through the fine clouds, and here and there fierce flashes of bronze reflected from the weapons of the sentinels that stood on the walls. And as they looked on in awe, horns began calling from the city – deep, sad notes that rolled towards the Greeks like a dirge.
‘They’ve seen us,’ Odysseus announced.
Eperitus could see the king’s knuckles whiten as they gripped the shaft of his spear, but if he felt fear or doubt as they approached the enemy harbour he showed no sign of it. Eperitus, however, felt his mouth grow dry and his stomach stir with nerves. His armour was suddenly heavy as it hung about him, as if the familiar leather and bronze had been transformed to lead. The high fortifications that he had looked up at in admiration on his first visit now seemed menacing and insurmountable. This was the city for which his daughter had been brutally slain, and for which many other terrible sacrifices would soon be required. For the sake of its walls, Odysseus was doomed to spend twenty years away from his beloved family and homeland. Even the great Achilles would perish, forfeiting the sweet joys of mortal existence to die in battle and gain eternity through the songs of bards. Many others would die also, to crowd Hades’s halls with their miserable spectres.
And yet few rued the war, whatever their rank or ability. For the lowborn soldier it was a chance for plunder and riches exceeding anything he could earn with the plough or the fishing net. For the professional warrior there was the exhilaration of battle, for which he had trained most of his life. For those of noble blood, immortal renown called, while for the high-minded there was the hope of restoring the pride of Greece. Agamemnon would fulfil his desire for power over the Greeks and the subjugation of their enemies, and his brother would regain the wondrous wife without whom his life had lost its meaning.
From the first rumours of war, Eperitus had been enticed by the prospect of battle. The love of combat burned in his blood like a fire that could only be quenched by slaughter; and the fire was intensified by his desire to make a name for himself, a name that would outlive his brief time on earth. But since Mycenae, he had realized that such a desire was empty without someone to fight for, someone to cherish his memory and pass it down to others. That hope had perished with the death of Iphigenia, and he knew her loss had changed him. Once, his craving to abandon himself to danger had been driven by a nagging need to prove himself, to survive by the skill and strength that he possessed. Now his joy of battle was powered by other motives: to serve and protect Odysseus and ensure his safe return to Penelope and Telemachus; to honour the memory of Iphigenia, who had always looked on him as a fearsome warrior; and finally a snarling lust to avenge her death. And since he was sworn to protect Agamemnon, it was the soldiers of Troy who would have to bear the brunt of his vengeance.
The Thessalian ships were now pouring through the wide mouth of the harbour. Men appeared on the decks of the Trojan galleys, shocked at the sudden appearance of the Greek fleet. Within moments they were lowering boats into the water and rowing for the shore, while others jumped overboard and swam in their desperation to escape. A few of the Thessalian archers took hopeful shots at the half-naked figures, but the distance was still too great and the arrows clattered harmlessly off the decks or sank into the calm blue waters. By now the Ithacans, Spartans and Myrmidons were cramming into the entrance to the bay. There was a cacophony of noise as, in their haste to reach the undefended beach, hulls scraped against each other and men shouted warnings or angry threats. Then a series of new horn calls erupted from the towers of Ilium, high, quick notes that made men’s blood
race and their breath quicken. Every head turned towards the city and a moment later the gates burst open to release a deluge of cavalry. The Greeks stood and watched in excited horror as file after file of horsemen galloped out from the Scaean Gate to the south of the city, forming long lines before the western walls. Ranks of spearmen and archers exited at the same time, pouring onto the plain like an army of irritated ants whose nest had been disturbed.
On the ships, kings and captains bellowed orders to their crews and the decks burst back into life as soldiers readied their arms and sailors manoeuvred their craft into lines. But the Thessalians, who had already reformed, did not wait for their allies and surged forward to the attack. Foremost among them was the ship of Protesilaus, who had ordered his crew to lower their oars and get the galley ashore as quickly as possible. The sibling competition between Protesilaus and Podarces was well known to the Greeks, and it was no surprise to see the ship of the younger brother follow the example of the elder and make for the beach with all speed. But Protesilaus would not be caught. He wanted the honour of being first to land on Trojan soil and now he was visible to the whole fleet, standing alone at the prow of his ship as it raced towards the sand. He was a tall man whose head was covered in ringlets of black hair tinged with grey that hung down to his shoulders. Though his shield was on his arm and he wore breastplate and greaves, his helmet had been cast aside so that all could see him and know who was leading the attack against Troy.