‘Come to Argos,’ Menelaus was already slurring his words, ‘and I will show you ... I will show you . . .’ He blinked at Paris. ‘Tell me, my handsome friend, what do you love most in all the world?’
‘Bulls!’ Aeneas said, and started chuckling. ‘He loves bulls.’ ‘No, no,’ Paris demurred woozily, ‘that was all a long time ago.’
‘But you’re still a bull-fancier,’ Aeneas insisted. ‘You saw him fondling those monsters yesterday, Menelaus. He likes them meaty and big. The bigger the better. Be sure that if Argos has bulls to tame, our Paris is the man for it.’
‘No,’ Menelaus laughed. ‘I think he’s more interested in women! I think he’s a heart-breaker as well as a bull-breaker.’
Aeneas wagged a tipsy finger at Paris. ‘That reminds me. We came across a pretty little thing wandering by the Scamander yesterday. She asked after you rather tenderly. Can’t recall her name, but she called you Alexander. Do you remember her? Or have there been too many others since then?’
Paris stared at his friend. Quite suddenly his heart had capsized and was tipping him out of drunkenness into misery.
‘Oenone,’ he said. ‘Her name’s Oenone.’
‘So hers was the first heart you broke!’ Aeneas shook his head in mock reproof. ‘Ah well, she’ll have more to remember you by than the others. She’s big with child.’ When he saw how Paris’s face had blanched at the news, he added cheerfully, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be the first fatherless brat in Dardania. And I’m sure you’ll leave lots of other by-blows in your wake, like your father before you. No doubt they’ll all claim they’re sons of a god!’ Then Menelaus and Aeneas were chuckling together, the disproportionate laughter of tired and drunken men enjoying the spectacle of a friend on the run.
‘Oh dear, we seem to have fingered a wound,’ Aeneas said. ‘I think she must have been his first love!’
‘Is that right, Paris?’ Menelaus asked more gently. ‘Was she your first sweetheart -- as Helen was mine?’
Paris glanced away. ‘It was the herdsman who loved her, not the prince.’
‘And for this prince,’ Aeneas winked at Menelaus, ‘there will be many others. What else should one expect from a devotee of the Golden One?’
Menelaus smiled benevolently at Paris. ‘The Golden One, eh? Well, the Goddess Who Loves Laughter has beguiling powers, I grant you, but you can burn yourself at her altar. If you are wise you will follow my example. My service is to Athena and to Hera, and I’ve found great contentment there. Take a good wife, Paris. That’s what you need to steady you. A good wife. Do it as soon as you can. A man can look for no surer foundation to his fortunes.’
‘But in that respect,’ Aeneas snorted, ‘you’re the envy of the world. Any man would be content if he knew that Helen lay waiting in his bed. Isn’t that right, Paris?’
‘If everything they say of her is true.’
‘Oh, it’s true all right!’ Menelaus smiled. ‘Had you the patience for it, friends, I could sing Helen’s praises far into the night. But what is the point when words cannot match her beauty and you’ll soon be in Sparta to judge for yourselves?’ He stared deeply into his wine-cup, smiling fondly, as though seeing his wife’s reflection there. ‘In fact, I’m so sure you’ll find her the loveliest creature you’ve ever set eyes on that I’d stake my life and happiness on it.’
‘But wouldn’t that be to lose Helen herself?’ Aeneas laughed.
Menelaus opened his free hand. ‘My point exactly,’ and his bleary eyes beamed at Paris over the rim of his goblet with the serene satisfaction of one who knows himself privileged to be the most fortunate of men.
The Trojan Embassy
In the weeks before he sailed to Sparta, Paris endured a deeply unsettling time. It began on the morning of the day after Menelaus had made his sacrifices at the ancient burial mounds. Rather than returning at once to Troy, Aeneas had suggested that he and Paris take their guest hunting through the chasms of the Idaean mountains where boar were plentiful and bears and lion might still be found. They had chanced on one of the largest boars that any of them had ever seen, a bristling hunk of animal flesh, long-tusked and as nimble as it was muscular. By the time the men came up the blind ravine where the hounds had bayed it, the boar had torn the guts from two dogs, trampled another and unnerved the rest. It stood in dappled light, bleeding from one ear. Paris and Aeneas stood aside, inviting their guest to make the kill. But the boar was not yet ready to die. Even as Menelaus raised his spear, it swerved and lunged for the cover of a thicket to vanish in green shade.
A steep wall of rock rose beyond the undergrowth, preventing escape, so the hunters knew the animal must be lurking nearby. As Paris used his knife to cut the windpipe of a yelping dog, Aeneas whistled in the two remaining hounds, but they had heard the death gasp of their comrade, and had learned too much of this uncanny boar’s ferocity and cunning to risk its frenzy in a confined space. Aeneas was impatiently urging them on when, from an entirely unexpected quarter, the boar made its break. It came crashing out of the thicket, driving its ferocious bulk directly at Aeneas, who lost his footing as he turned, and would have been gored in the belly if Menelaus had not loosed his spear in time to bring the beast down in a gush of blood across the legs of the Dardanian prince. The boar lay there, wheezing out its last breaths under the weight of the long shaft, blinking sullenly at death.
Aeneas came out of the scrape with no more than a gashed calf, and was already laughing as he thanked Menelaus for a timely throw. But Paris had seen everything from where he knelt above the dead dog with the knife in his hand and his spear lying useless on the ground beside him. He was watching still as Menelaus tore a strip from his own tunic to bind the wounded leg. He heard the jocular remarks they made without listening to them, for the day had fallen still around him, and he was struck by a numbing sense that everything of which he had once dreamed was now impossible. Already he had been troubled by the growing warmth of his affection for the Spartan king. Now he owed to that noble-hearted man the life of his dearest friend, and it had become unthinkable to contemplate betraying Menelaus by making off with the wife he so manifestly worshipped.
Paris saw that he had been living for too long with an illusion. His vision of the goddesses on Mount Ida could have been no more than an idle dream brought on by drowsiness and solitude. Now he was awake in the world again, and the world was suddenly a colder place.
The hunters returned to Troy that night, and the Helen of Sparta put out into the Hellespont two mornings later. But even before Menelaus had left to return to his beloved wife, Paris had begun to give over his own nights to a frenzy of love-making among the women of the city. Life had forbidden him to take what he had once dreamed that Aphrodite had offered him. Very well! If Helen was not to be his, he would renounce his foolish abstinence and take advantage of all the other women that the goddess placed at his disposal.
There were many of them.
The lovesick daughters of Troy found his passionate exploration of their young bodies more heart-breaking than his earlier vow of chastity had been, for his interest rarely lasted longer than a night or two. Their coyness lacked the wild innocence he had once loved in Oenone, and he soon tired of their claims and complaints and tears. After one bitter encounter with a young woman whose sultry demeanour was matched only by her temper, he seriously considered turning his back on the city and seeking out Oenone and the child she carried. But the thought of resuming a narrow life among the Dardanian cattle-herders held little appeal now that the whole world stood open to him, and he knew that Oenone would never be at ease among the painted and perfumed women of the Trojan court. So he turned to the courtesans of the city, and from them he swiftly learned the arts that turned him from an ardent animal into a skilful lover. Soon he was making assignations with those wives of worthy Trojan burghers who had made plain their amorous interest in him. The secrecy of these liaisons gave them an air of excitement for a time, particularly when he was juggling three women
at once, none of whom knew that he was bedding the others, but it wasn’t long before he was filled with self-loathing at his own duplicity. He was aware too that, as he grew more careless, he was making enemies among the men he cuckolded, and though his position as the High King’s favoured son might stave off’ any open challenge, it would not protect him from a hired knife in the dark.
Dismayed by these unaccountable changes in his behaviour, Aeneas warned him of the risks he was running, yet Paris merely shrugged off his friend’s concern. With no guiding vision left to direct his life, he had more or less resigned himself to a brief career of meaningless sensual pleasure when he was approached one evening by Hector’s wife, Andromache. She reminded Paris that she had always been among his well-wishers, that she had rejoiced with Priam and Hecuba at the return of their lost son, and that she and Hector had entertained high hopes that he would bring fresh energy to the king’s council and prove a stalwart defender of the city and its interests. Imagine their dismay, therefore, to watch him waste his youth and vigour in a dissolute life of reprehensible affairs. What had become of the native dignity he had brought with him from the mountains? It was natural enough that a young man had wild oats to sow, but Paris was in danger of offending all propriety and of throwing his life away. Did he imagine that such licentiousness was consonant with a proper devotion to love’s service? Could she not prevail on him to ease the anxiety of his mother’s heart by mending his ways?
Andromache left Paris overwhelmed by remorse. He vowed to himself that he would renew his interest in the political life of Troy and take a responsible role in the life of his family. He began to attend his father’s court again, trying to understand the complex web of treaties and trade agreements that under-pinned the prosperity of the city. And he gave some of his leisure hours to sporting with his little brother Capys and his playmate Antheus, who was the son of Antenor, the king’s chief counsellor. Finding in the boys some echo of his own lost innocence, Paris would lead them on expeditions to the rivers and the mountains, where he excited their young hearts with tales of the hunt or of fighting bulls, and of how, as a boy, he had driven off the Argive rustlers.
One day, near the end of the summer, they accompanied him to the shore for a last consultation with Phereclus about his ship, the Aphrodite, which stood complete now in everything but her final details. Paris had drunk too much wine the night before and his head was aching still, so he took little pleasure in visiting a ship that had now lost almost all purpose for him. As the boys clambered aboard and ran about the deck, playing at pirates with their wooden swords, Paris looked up into the eyes of the figurehead and felt a wave of yearning for the days when this was still a ship of dreams, not just the vessel which would shortly take him on a sober diplomatic journey to the Argive kingdoms. In the past hectic weeks, he’d tried to extinguish the vision of Helen from his mind, but the exquisitely carved face of Aphrodite smiled down from the prow with superior knowledge, and he knew the vision was inextinguishable. He would sail to Sparta and find Helen, yes. But the Helen he found would be the loyal wife of his friend, and would remain what she had always been -- a forever unattainable fantasy of his restless heart.
The accident happened so abruptly that he was never quite sure afterwards how it had come about. He had been arguing with Phereclus over some minor detail in the way the after awning was rigged. They were already shouting above the noise of saws and hammers from the other boats in the yard where Priam’s fleet was under construction, when the boys came towards them, clattering their wooden swords together as they jumped from oar-bench to oar-bench, whooping out their battle-cries. Paris told them to make less noise, which they did for a moment, but Antheus poked Capys with his sword and soon their shrill voices were hooting out battlefield insults at each other. Then they were fighting their way back down the benches again, shouting as they came.
In a fit of anger, Paris shouted, ‘Didn’t I tell you to keep quiet?’, and swung his arm to cuff the nearest boy across the ear. The blow landed harder than he intended, Antheus was knocked off the bench from which he had been about to leap and fell, twisting, to the deck below. His thin right arm hit the boards first, bending under the impact in such a way that the wooden sword turned in his grip and entered the socket of his eye. The force of the fall was strong enough to drive the point into his brain.
Paris looked down where the boy’s skinny body lay crumpled in a widening pool of blood with his head propped at an improbable angle on the sword. He looked up and saw Phereclus staring wide-eyed. Beside him, with the fingers of one hand pushed into his mouth, Capys gazed down in puzzled dismay at his dead friend.
No one doubted that the death of Antheus was an accident, and no one could doubt that Paris was responsible for it. Antheus had been the youngest, much spoiled son of Antenor, and neither the kings counsellor nor his wife, Theano, who was high-priestess to Athena in the city, could bring themselves even to look at Paris in the days after he carried their child’s dead body back to them.
Nor could the grief-stricken parents find the forgiveness to cleanse him of his guilt, and no one else in the city had the power to do so. Unable to clear his mind of the dead child’s ruined face, or to silence the sound of Theano’s wailing in his ears, Paris lay awake at night, agonized by remorse, and with the Furies screeching through the darkness round him.
It seemed that his whole life amounted to no more than a vain tissue of futility and betrayal. He had neglected the foster-parents who had reared him, forsaken Oenone and the child she carried, toyed with the hearts of more women than he could recall, and cuckolded many good citizens of Troy. Worst of all, he had disavowed the vision that had once filled his life with meaning, and because of that he had now caused the death of a child -- a deed terrible in itself, and one which added to the grievances that Athena held against him. Perhaps the priest and priestess of Apollo had been right all those years ago and his life was cursed from the start?
The one saving thought was that he and Aeneas would shortly set sail for Sparta. Somewhere out there on the blue ocean, far beyond the only horizon he had ever known, he must find a way either to redeem his afflicted life or to meet whatever end the gods intended for it.
On the night before he was due to sail, his father summoned him to his private chamber. King Priam sat in the chair he had rescued from the burning embers of his father’s palace in Troy many years before -- a flame-blackened throne that he kept as a reminder of Laomedon’s folly and the justice of the gods. Around his shoulders he wore a richly embroidered cloak that was fastened at his chest by a gold chain and clasp, figured with strange, mutually devouring beasts that some Thracian goldsmith had worked for him. The flat of one bony hand supported his chin. The other, gorgeously ringed, trembled where it lay against his thigh. He looked, and felt, very old.
‘It grieves my heart to think that you must put to sea unpurified,’ he sighed. ‘Believe me, I know what it is like to lose a son, but I was luckier than Antenor. His child can never be restored to him. And the blow that killed Antheus has hardened his father’s heart. I greatly fear that your rash act has made my old friend and counsellor your enemy for the remainder of his days.’
Priam’s eyes glanced away across the chamber. Paris merely nodded his head in assent to the judgement. Then his father added wearily, ‘And Antenor may not be the only one. There have been murmurings in the city. My spies tell me there are husbands who say that it is one thing to be a devotee of Aphrodite, but another to sacrifice the lives of children on her altar.’
Paris gasped and was about to protest when Priam silenced him. ‘The death of Antheus was an unhappy chance, I know. But men will look for the hand of a god behind such things, and you have taken many risks in service to the Golden One. It is well that you are going from Troy right now. But we must take thought for your return.’
‘If this city tires of me I will remain abroad,’ Paris answered sullenly. ‘There are even those among my brothers who will be glad to s
ee my back.’
‘Then do not play the proud fool with the father who loves you.’ Priam shook his head. ‘It is time your passions were bridled by cool thought. Consider this: Antenor has always opposed my plans for an assault on Salamis. He fears that to attack Telamon would bring down the whole Argive host upon this city, and he could be right. So you may do something to redeem yourself in his eyes, if you can secure a treaty of peace with Agamemnon through your friendship with the King of Sparta.’ Priam drew his breath in a deep sigh. ‘I am not hopeful of it. The Mycenaean lion has been growing hungry and proud for some time now. I think he smells fat prey in Troy, and it will take more than subtle words to keep him from our gates. But see what can be done, my son. And if -- as I predict -- Agamemnon remains intransigent over the fate of my dear sister . . . well, remember that once you had another plan.’
The eyes of the two men met for a moment in the oil-lamp’s unsteady light. The air of the chamber was very still. In its silence Priam licensed his son, if all else failed, to use the gifts the gods had given him, as lover and as warrior, to make off with some Argive princess that they might hold as hostage for the ransom of Hesione.
‘I remember very well, father,’ Paris answered. But what he remembered brought only a further pang of anguish to his troubled heart.
He knelt, dully, to receive his father’s blessing. Priam laid both his hands across his bowed head and looked down at his son. ‘One thing more occurs to me. Menelaus is a sacred king in Sparta. He has priestly powers, he is your friend and he stands in our debt. By permitting him to offer sacrifices in Dardania we enabled him to cleanse his own land of pestilence. As a true king he will not have forgotten this. So when he makes his offerings at the temple of Athena in Sparta, kneel before him as you kneel now before me, and ask him to cleanse you of the impurity that haunts your mind. Though Athena’s priestess here in Ilium now carries only hatred in her heart for you, the goddess herself is merciful. Menelaus will not refuse you. May the gods go with you, and bring you safely home.’
The War At Troy Page 14