Helen leaves, suitably subdued but whispering under her breath.
‘He’s not my husband.’
And when she enters the room and sees him lying expectantly on the bed, she lets him have it.
‘Back from the battlefield, are you, dear? I thought you were fighting my husband. But I saw you run from the better man – the man I was mad enough to abandon to follow you here and be the mockery of the world. It was the fog that saved you. Why don’t you be a man and get back out there and face him?’
‘I will,’ said Paris, ‘on another occasion. And I’ll be luckier next time.’
‘Lucky? You escaped with your life – by running away!’
‘Aphrodite looked after me. I was born in her ascendancy, and I offered up a golden apple on her altar. She won’t let me down.’
‘Golden apple! Not that old story again. She didn’t give me to you – you took me. From my husband. You took me when I was alone and vulnerable.’
Paris rises swiftly from the bed.
‘I took you because you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and you still are. I wanted you then and I want you now. I’ve never wanted you so much, not even on that first night – do you remember it? – the first time we were really free, when I brought you aboard and we sailed off from Sparta and spent the whole night in each other’s arms on the high seas, and later made love on Kranai.’
She flushes suddenly. He seizes the moment and her, clutching her flanks and crushing her to him.
‘Helen, I’ve just escaped death. Do you know how that makes a man feel when he’s with the woman he loves? I’ve never before felt such a wish to live, such a desire to lose myself in your sweet body. I love it! I love life! I love you!’
He takes her by the hand and leads her towards the bed. She follows him without another word, responding to his urgency with her own sudden urge. She follows her own nature as the creature of the moment. Soon she is panting under him, her legs in the air.
Such is the warp and the woof – a weave of truth and lies. Aphrodite? There was no Aphrodite. The goddess was a mere metaphor for what lay between Helen’s legs, simple as that – an open, insatiable cunt.
EIGHTEEN
Down in the field, a truce was still technically operational, and up on Olympus Hera was busy urging Athene to use her powers to make the Trojans break it. Three scenes then, a triptych: Helen under Paris, fucking like a rabbit; her husband foaming at the mouth as he rampages through the ranks, shouting for Paris to show his cowardly carcass and fight again. And now Athene, shooting like a star from high Olympus, leaving behind her a sparkling track, a wake of sheer radiance to dazzle the army. Landing in the ranks, she turns herself into a Trojan and whispers something in Pandarus’s ear. With one hand she’s pointing to his bow, with the other to Menelaus. It’s easy to guess what she’s saying.
‘Look at him, the fool, prowling up and down looking for Paris. He’s completely exposed because of the truce. Why not pick him off with an arrow? Shoot him down right now, the idiot! There isn’t a soldier wouldn’t thank you. No husband, no Helen, don’t you see? No need to return a woman to a dead man, is there? What’s a corpse going to do with a live woman? Can a corpse fuck? Go on, get him – now! To hell with the ceasefire!’
It didn’t take a god to put any of that into Pandarus’s head. Sheer fucking perfidy, that’s all it took. He looked at his bow. A beauty it was, made from the horns of an ibex that he’d shot in the chest. Pandarus smiled to himself as he remembered how he’d lain in wait for it then brought down the beast as stealthily as he now aimed at Menelaus.
Not that we saw any of that. But Penelope did, close up and in slow motion. He drew back the ox-gut till he felt the notch touch his chest and saw the fearful bronze point come all the way back to the bow. The ibex horns were now a circle. He let go, the string sang its terrible song, and the arrow went whistling down the wind, its feathers fraught with agony for Menelaus.
‘Fuck!’
‘What’s the matter, brother?’
‘Some cunt has conned us! I’m hit!’
‘Shit!’
But Menelaus’s day hadn’t come. The arrow had struck him on the belt, but the wound was shallow. It looked bad enough, though. All we saw was the dark flood running down his legs and thighs, as if he was pissing blood.
‘Those fucking truce-breakers! They’ve fucking done for you!’
Agamemnon saw it all in a flash – Helen unreturned, the expedition futile, the war abandoned, a retreat in empty ships, his brother’s bones left mouldering in enemy earth and his own name a mockery among boasting Trojans.
‘So much for the sons of Atreus, they will say, kicking up the dust over your grave and pointing out to sea. One a corpse on the plains of Troy, under the starry sky, and the other gone home empty-handed after a dead venture. All a waste of life – and time.’
But Menelaus was laughing as Machaon the leech quickly exposed the wound and examined the gash.
‘A scratch. Look, it’s hardly gone in any depth at all. Right, Machaon?’
‘Right. But another inch and it would have done enough, you lucky cunt!’
Machaon eased out the point, sucked the blood and slapped on a handful of herbs. Woundwort, birthwort, old wine and garlic to fight the infection, willow bark, poppies by the dozen, dozy with sedative, to send Menelaus to Morpheus while the blood-clotting yarrow did its work. He dressed the wound with sheep-grease and honey. Helen wasn’t going to be a widow after all, at least not today. And the war was still on.
You don’t see much of a battle except what’s in front of you and what you can catch out of the corner of your eye. For the big picture and the exclusive scenes, for the mass and individual slaughter outside your range, you have to go to the web. All put together from debriefing and intelligence, all a construct, a blend of fact and fascination with a bright dash of fantasy.
The two Ajaxes led the biggest combined force: Little Ajax the Locrians and Big Ajax the soldiers from Salamis. They were joined by the Cretans, led by Idomeneus. The massed men at their backs glowered menacingly, like the cloud a goatherd spots from his weather-tower in the hills, bearing down on him from the sea, driven by the west wind and turning pitch-black as it speeds his way, making him shudder and drive his goats quickly into the nearest cave. And there wasn’t a Trojan soldier alive looking at that cloud of men who didn’t wish he was a goat safe in a cave with the flock rather than facing the Ajaxes and Idomeneus on the open plains of Troy.
Fantastic detail? Not out of a field report, for sure, but no less true for all that. Not untrue either that the Greek battalions rose like the waves gathering on an echoing beach to crash on the shingle or smash into the base of a cliff, sending the bright spume flying upwards and the white fire licking the crags. Not untrue that the Greeks and Trojans picked up speed and sounded like two massive mountain rivers on the move, tumbling to meet in some deep ravine with a clash and a roar, the shuddering shock of sudden contact, bronze on bronze, the bosses of the shields slamming and ringing together as the first screams rent the air. Nothing imaginary about those brutal screams.
Simoisius screamed when Big Ajax killed him, hitting him in the chest with his spear. Until he ran into Ajax, he’d been a fine young soldier, born by the banks of the river Simois amid a flock of sheep. Tickled and nuzzled, Simoisius had been his mother’s little nipper. He’d grown tall and slim-built, and when Ajax’s spear plunged in by his right nipple, he went down slowly like a stately poplar in a riverside meadow, felled and left to season by the wainwright to make felloes for fine chariot wheels. Except that a tree has some use when it falls, whereas a man when he falls has no use at all. So now Simoisius lay useless in the dust, unable to repay his mother’s tenderness. But the tears she shed for him were caught in the web and held there trembling, like drops of dew, and not untrue.
I made a good kill myself – one of Priam’s bastard sons, Demokoön. He never saw my spear coming and never even knew he’d been
hit. The bronze thudded in at one temple, drove right through the brain and came out at the other: the perfect hit, the perfect way to die. Wiping the brains from the bronze, I glanced up and caught the Thracian captain, Peiros, hurling a jagged lump of rock. I dodged it, and it hit Diores, the Epeian captain, on the right leg, close to the ankle. The rock broke the leg-bones brutally. He toppled over on his back, screaming and helpless and stretching out both hands. But Peiros was too quick; he sprang out and jabbed his spear into the fallen man’s belly, close to the navel. When he wrenched it free, the intestines poured into the dust in a neat pile just beside him.
But Peiros took too long about it, admiring his handiwork and even stopping to remove the helmet and kick Diores savagely in the head before turning to make his dash back to his place in the ranks. He was stopped by Thoas. The spear sank deep into a lung. It would probably have been enough to kill him, but Thoas made sure of his man by kicking him over and stabbing him deep in the groin and again in the chest.
‘There you go,’ said Thoas, ‘that ought to do it.’
He fancied the armour, but the top-knotted Thracians quickly moved in to defend their chief’s corpse, and Thoas got out just before the knotheads surrounded him.
And so the two captains, Thracian and Epeian, lay stretched out side by side, two kings united by death, and by a cause that concerned neither but had brought them together briefly to die together in the dust – almost as if they were not enemies at all, but fallen friends. That was far from true, although it had a kind of truth, a truth of its own, known only to soldiers. All Penelope’s images have a truth of their own, even if the web can’t convey the feel of the thing, the sheer thrill of the kill, the euphoria and insanity of survival.
And yet the web provides something that’s missing from the hell and high kicks of action. All that comes out of a battle is a win or a loss, and a long casualty list. A cold roll-call of names, nothing more. The honoured dead. Nothing frostier than honour, nothing so impersonal, nothing so aloof. But Penelope, however briefly, looks at each man as he dies. She looks at how he dies, takes note of his name, his kin, those who survive him and mourn him. Hers is a remembering web, a funeral tribute, a means of grieving. It is an endless cortège, allowing space and face to those who fought and died, saying something, however minimal, however ephemeral, about their moment in history, and so transcending the terrible abstraction that is death. History can so quickly trash our missing persons, overwhelm our dead in the dust of fallen towers. Penelope freezes the moment, makes a picture, bears witness. Remember that. Remember it as you contemplate all that follows, the bloodshed, the butchery, the human loss.
SCENES FROM THE WEB: FOR THE FALLEN
PHEGEUS and IDAIUS, the two sons of Dares. They came at Diomedes in their chariot and Diomedes tried to take them both out. He caught Phegeus in the chest. He crashed out of the chariot and his brother jumped after him – not to help, but to escape the second spear. Their father was a priest of Hephaestus; maybe the lame god decided his venerable old priest shouldn’t be crippled by a double loss and so spared the second son. Or perhaps Idaius was just lucky that day: he got back to the ranks, brotherless but with his life.
ODIUS, leader of the Alizones. Agamemnon aimed at him as he turned his chariot. The spear slammed between the shoulder blades. Odius looked down in disbelief and saw the point sticking out of his chest. He fell from the chariot without a sound, under the stamping hooves of his own horses, and his skull was quickly crushed inside his helmet.
PHAESTUS, son of Borus, who’d come from the lush lands of Tarne and never returned to them. Idomeneus saw to that. The force of the javelin toppled Phaestus right out of his chariot. He crashed, gasping, to the ground and the dust swirled up and the loathsome dark engulfed him.
SCAMANDRIUS, son of Strophius. He was a great hunter, trained by Artemis herself, so they said. He could bring down anything from the skies above the mountain forests. But the long shots he was famous for were of no use to him now. Nor did Artemis appear on the scene to offer any assistance when Menelaus’s long lance went clean through his back between the shoulders and cut through the chest. He’d discovered all too briefly, all too bitterly, what it was like to be the hunted rather than the hunter. He fell face down, the force of the fall driving the spear back out again, thick with his blood. His armour clanged and night descended on him.
PHEREKLOS, son of Tecton, Harmon’s son. He was an expert carpenter. Nobody had nimbler fingers. A great favourite of Pallas Athene too, so it was said. He’d built all those trim ships for Paris when he’d sailed to Sparta on that fateful trip. But he was a better shipwright than a runner. Meriones ran after him and stabbed him hard from behind. The spear drove all the way through the right buttock, and the bronze, missing the pelvic bone, bit into the bladder and pierced it through. Phereklos dropped to his knees, screaming, and fell on his face, the nimble fingers clawing the dust. He left behind him the trim ships, his pride and joy. Also a trim young wife, the love of his life. She was very badly raped when the city fell and did not survive.
PEDAEUS. He was one of Antenor’s illegitimates, but to please her husband the lovely Theano had brought him up as if she’d borne him herself. She even suckled him when she was nursing one of her own. But she wasn’t there to nurse him when he received his death-blow. Meges caught up with him as he ran for his life and thrust the spear two-handed into the nape of the neck. The spearhead sliced between the jaws, splitting the tongue at the root. He could still scream, though, and did so as he struck the dust face first, biting with clenched teeth onto cold bronze, the hateful taste of death.
HYPSENOR, son of Dolopion, priest to the river-god Scamander, killed by Eurypylus, who ran after him and slashed at his shoulder with his sword as if he were reaping. The entire arm dropped in the dust, useless. Hypsenor stopped running and stood and looked at the arm, feeling the bleeding stump in grief and disbelief. Then he stopped looking as Eurypylus slashed next at the neck. The head hit the dust too, its lips still saying something about the arm. There was no need to complete the sentence. Eurypylus had saved him from that and from a much slower death.
ASTYNOUS and HYPEIRON, both killed by Diomedes in spite of an arrow wound he took in the shoulder from Pandarus. The spear struck Astynous above the nipple. Then Diomedes swung at Hypeiron with a huge sword. It hacked through the collarbone and split the shoulder from neck and back. He left both men lying there, bleeding to death.
ABAS and POLYEIDUS, the sons of a very old man, Eurydamas, the dreamer. He saw visions and believed in them. But he was short on visions when they went to the front. He never dreamed that they’d be stretched out headless in the dust after Diomedes had caught up with them.
XANTHUS and THOÖN, also slain by Diomedes and also sons of an old and ailing father, Phaenops. These fine young striplings were the fruits of his winter loins. But they dropped long before their time, far from ripeness, leaving the old man lonely and broken-hearted and with nobody left to whom he could bequeath his considerable wealth; it all went to distant cousins. He never saw his handsome lads again, except in the bitter dreams of age.
PANDARUS, another victim of Diomedes. Pandarus watched the missile all the way and positioned his shield correctly. But there was a spin on the spear, and the sun was in his face. Skimming the top rim of the shield, the spear split open his nose, close to the eye. It cracked the jaw, sliced away the tongue, shattered the white teeth and came tearing out under the chin, ripping the dear life out of him on its way. Pandarus had had plenty to say up to that point, but though he was still alive when he hit the ground, he spoke no more words. The armour clattered on him, making the dust fly up around his last agonies. Night came down and closed his eyes.
AENEAS, wounded by Diomedes, but not killed. He’d leapt from his chariot to protect Pandarus, and Diomedes caught him on the leg with a jagged boulder – a massive and accurate throw. It tore the flesh and broke the sinews, completely crushing the cup-bone, where the thigh turns in th
e hip. He crumpled up in the dust. And would have died there if Aphrodite hadn’t saved him. Even then he’d never have fought again. But the white arms of a goddess can work wonders. They wound round him and whisked him off to another section of the web, where she magically healed her son’s hurts. A good story. How else could a Trojan escape a Greek, except by divine intervention?
DEICOÖN, killed by Agamemnon. No magic for him, no divine help. The javelin pierced both shield and belt and sank deep into the abdomen. He thudded to the ground with a clattering of armour. Agamemnon ran up and wrenched out his spear, twisting it savagely. The bowels came spilling out of him and he lay wriggling in a spreading pool of blood that darkened the white dust around him.
MYDON, killed by Antilochus. He smashed him on the elbow, excruciatingly, with a heavy lump of rock. Mydon cried out as the reins, with their lovely ivory trappings, slipped from his limp hands and trailed on the ground. Antilochus followed up the throw with the quick dash, tumbled Mydon out of his chariot and leapt on him like a beast. He drove his sword through the man’s head by the temple. Mydon fell for the second time, this time with a great sigh, and was trampled by his terrified horses. He was crumpled up with both head and shoulders buried in the dust, but the horses’ hooves soon flattened him out.
AMPHIUS, killed by Ajax. He was the son of Selagus, an extremely rich landowner in Paesus who would have given all his lands to get his son back safely from the war. But that was impossible once Ajax’s javelin found its mark. It penetrated Amphius’s belt and drove in deep. Amphius crashed on his back screaming, the spear swaying in his belly. He’d never inherit all that wealth, never take an old man’s walk through those expansive cornfields stretched out glittering in the evening sunlight. Instead, young Amphius lay stretched out on the plains of Troy, a rich and powerful man, but powerless to change his destiny.
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