The War At Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  The two ships put out at dawn, Paris in the Aphrodite and Aeneas in his own vessel, the Gorgona. At first the air was so still that the crews had to take to the oars, but as the day brightened, a breeze got up, and soon the two ships were cutting under sail through white-capped waves while dolphins plunged and shone about them. The pale blur of the coastline at their backs dropped below the horizon, and they were racing into open sea. Leaving his ship-master to watch the helm, Paris stood alone at the prow, taking the bright spray from the bow wave in his face and staring ahead into the blue-green glitter of the day. Hours passed without him uttering a word, and later, by night, he lay far from sleep on the afterdeck, gazing up into the steep black deeps where countless stars tipped and swirled about the tinkling masthead. The voyage itself was quickly proving restorative. With each dip and surge of the ship he felt the shadows of Troy fall from him, as though he was quietly decanting the past from his soul in order to fill it with a future.

  As he watched the surf break in spindrift at the bow, or fall shimmering off a dolphin’s back, he was thinking of Aphrodite and how the goddess had taken her name from the white curdle of foam in which her naked beauty was born.

  So he was following her now through her native element. She was both the vessel that bore him and the foam on which it floated, and her presence was manifest in the quick glances of the shining breeze and the sparkling light that lifted off the sea. With the force of returning memory it came clear to him again that in the same moment that he had chosen her, Aphrodite had chosen him, and he was held as securely in her embrace as was the infant Eros figured in her arms at the prow of the ship that bore her sacred name.

  Yet that thought brought the picture of little Antheus back to his mind. His soul was not yet cleansed of that death, but he would submit himself in Sparta to the rites of purification, and once that was done he would be back inside his destiny again. If the blood of a child had been shed in his ship, then perhaps it had been a dreadful kind of sacrifice after all. For only through the death of innocence could his life be entirely consecrated to the service of that single-minded goddess, and he was utterly at her mercy now.

  The realization came to him in almost the same moment that a sailor at the yardarm of the Gorgona shouted that he had sighted land. Aeneas waved cheerily across the gap between the ships. Paris raised his own hand in reply.

  They sailed among the islands off the coast of Attica, and across the uneventful waters of the Gulf of Argolis until they made landfill in a harbour on the Laconian coast. As the yardarm of the Aphrodite creaked down and the ship nudged her way towards the strand, Paris stood at the prow with both arms holding the painted figurehead of the goddess. He was looking north-eastwards to the rampart of mountains ringing the Spartan plain. Somewhere beyond those summits, not more than twenty miles away, lay the palace of Menelaus, and somewhere within its walls Helen would be going about her business, utterly unaware that an envoy sent by the goddess of love was thinking about her now, and with a heart that strummed as tautly as the full-bellied sail had done only moments before. The salt air quivered about his head. All his senses were alert. Each breath he took felt fresh with destiny. Yet strangely he felt more at peace with himself now than at any moment since Menelaus had sailed away from Troy. He had placed his life once more in the hands of the goddess. Aphrodite Pelagaia, She of the Fair Voyage, had brought him safely to Sparta. It was for her to decide his fate.

  News of the arrival of the Trojan embassy reached the palace of Menelaus long before the visitors themselves came down through a high mountain pass to look upon the fertile plain of the Eurotas. To their amazement Paris and Aeneas saw how, beyond the rolling fields and groves, the city of Sparta stood unwalled. Though a gleaming acropolis crowned a low hill on the west bank of the river, the estates and houses of the city were scattered around it in small village communities across the valley floor with no apparent thought for their defence. Still further to the west, the late afternoon sun declined towards a range of mountains steeper than those through which their little cavalcade had just passed. Far beyond the tree-line, its summits reached for the burnished clouds, twice as high -- Paris estimated in some awe -- as his homeland mountain range of Ida.

  With an ox-drawn wagon-load of gifts trundling behind them, the Trojans were following the river-road across the valley when a single chariot pulled by two black horses sped towards them from the city. The driver’s red hair was blowing in the breeze, and long before the chariot skidded to a halt they had made out the burly, unarmed figure of Menelaus at the reins.

  ‘I thought I should bid you welcome here in Sparta as informally as you once welcomed me to Troy, Paris,’ he called. ‘And you, friend Aeneas, do you recognize these horses? It’s the pair your father gave me. Now they’re the fastest team in all Argos. Even Agamemnon covets them. Come, leave your wagon to follow on -- it’ll be safe enough. Let’s get you bathed and dined. My Lady Helen is impatient to meet my Trojan friends.’ With a tug on the reins he wheeled his horses about, gesturing towards the citadel. ‘Tell me, how do you like my land? Is it not beautiful?’

  ‘Fairer even than I expected,’ Paris answered, ‘but Aeneas and I have been surprised to find that Sparta has no walls.’

  ‘What need for walls,’ Menelaus laughed, ‘when the gods gave us this ring of mountains? Men think twice about invading Sparta when they know they will be cut down in the passes long before they set eyes on hollow Lacadaemon. My friends, you have entered the most contented kingdom in the world. What I have is yours to enjoy. I beg you to make free of it.’

  In order that they might recover more easily from their journey, Menelaus had decided to spare his guests the demands of a public banquet that night, so they were to dine alone with the king and his wife in a private chamber. The Trojans soaked for a long time in hot baths and were massaged with aromatic oils by serving-women before being dressed in the fresh raiment put at their disposal. While they waited for the Queen of Sparta to appear, the two men strolled with their host through the nocturnal fragrance of a pleasure garden overlooking the city. They could see the river gleaming in the moonlight, and an expanse of olive-groves, orchards and wheat fields stretching away to the wooded foothills of the surrounding mountains.

  When Aeneas turned to remark on the majestic pillared temple standing above the palace courtyard, Menelaus told him that he was looking at the Bronze House of Athena, the city’s guardian deity.

  Fearful that if he let this moment pass he might feel too compromised to ask it later, Paris made a sign of respect and self-protection. ‘Then I stand near the sacred ground of the goddess in trepidation. Without intending it, I have given offence to Grey-eyed Athena.’ He took in his host’s frown of concern and opened his hands. ‘I have come to Sparta, as you once came to Priam’s city, with a boon to crave.’

  Menelaus put a hand to Paris’s shoulder. ‘Haven’t I already said that what is mine is yours? Speak freely. Anything I can do for you shall surely be done.’

  Paris drew in his breath. ‘My father has counselled me to abase myself before you as Athena’s sacred priest in Sparta, for in the eyes of the goddess -- as in my own -- I am still polluted by a crime. I beseech you to cleanse me of it in Athena’s holy house by whatever rite you think proper.’

  ‘This is bitter news,’ Menelaus answered gravely. ‘Come inside, friend, take more wine, and tell me what ill fate has fallen to you since we last met.’

  The three men sat down together in the shifting light of many oil-lamps and Paris recounted the events of the day on which Antheus had died. ‘The boy was the much-loved child of my father’s counsellor Antenor, who is well known to you,’ he ended. ‘And the pity of it is he was scarcely five years old.’

  ‘I remember Antenor fondly,’ said Menelaus quietly. ‘A wise man, whose judgement I respect. I grieve for his loss. And all the more so in that I have no son of my own. But how is it that this ill fortune has offended Athena?’

  ‘Antenor’s wife,
Theano, is priestess to the goddess in her most sacred shrine at Troy. I have sworn on my own wretched life that the child’s death was an accident, but there’s no denying that the fault of it was mine, and Theano has hardened her heart against me. Since that day the Furies have roosted in my mind and no one at Troy can cleanse me of the guilt. I must carry it for ever unless your rites here in Sparta can free me of it.’

  Paris looked up into the solemn eyes of his friend. Menelaus was about to answer him when a woman’s voice spoke softly from the open door. ‘Is this King Priam’s son, my lord -- he who gave you his protection when you first set foot in Troy?’

  ‘It is, my lady, and this is his cousin Aeneas, son to the Dardanian King. My friend Prince Paris was just telling me . . .’

  ‘I heard,’ said Helen, ‘and like yourself I was so rapt in his sad story that I was aware of nothing else.’ Smiling softly at her husband, she added, ‘Does our city not stand greatly in this prince’s debt -- as I most certainly do myself?’

  Paris had already jumped to his feet. Now it felt as though the room was afloat as he stared at the thrilling beauty of this woman where she stood in the lamplight, wearing a simple dress of Tyrian blue that hung in graceful folds from the lines of her body. The dark fall of her hair was bound up in a golden fillet that seemed to brighten the blue-green of her eyes. Paris had forgotten how to breathe. Everything had vanished from his mind except the living presence of the woman he had seen in his vision on Mount Ida. And it was as if that moment and this were continuous in time, and the long space between of no more significance than so much sleep. Surely she too must feel the power of that confluence?

  But if she did, Helen gave no sign, and somewhere in what had become the far distance he could hear Menelaus speaking. ‘It does indeed, and we are mindful of it. I think my queen and I are already of one heart in this matter.’

  Helen smiled. ‘Then surely we must do all we can for our friend in his hour of need.’

  But every thought of guilt and shame and grief had gone from Paris’s mind.

  He was standing awestruck in the presence of Helen of Sparta and he could hear the whisper of his goddess in the jasmine fragrance from the night outside. ‘Is it not as I promised you?’ she was saying. ‘Was ever a lovelier woman seen across the surface of the earth?’

  In the same instant he became aware that countless men before him must have looked on Helen’s face in exactly this way. He sensed too that she had never learned how to respond easily to the unintended impact of her beauty, for he could see the confusion already gathering behind the tender solicitude in her eyes as she glanced away, smiling, and brought her hands together just below the white hollow of her throat in a demure gesture of self-protection that made his heart swim. When he looked back to her face he saw that the smile had swiftly withdrawn behind a mask of proud reserve -- a pride he might have taken for arrogance had he not observed that earlier chink of vulnerability - and in those brief moments Paris knew that the rest of his life would be worth nothing unless he did everything in his power to make this woman his own.

  ‘I see that all the minstrels’ reports are true,’ Aeneas was saying. ‘The Lady Helen is as gracious as she is beautiful.’

  Helen smiled at him, shaking her head. ‘If you take the minstrels too seriously, Lord Aeneas, they will have you believing I was born from the eggshell of a swan!’

  ‘Because such beauty is so rare,’ Paris said in a hoarse whisper, ‘that they must reach for figures to encompass it. And still they fail. As all the rich gifts that Troy has tried to find for you will also fail to match such grace.’

  ‘I’m sure that too is far from true,’ Helen reached out a slender, white arm to take her husband’s hand. ‘And your friendship to my Lord Menelaus is already gift enough.’

  ‘Then come,’ Menelaus beamed, ‘let us drink to friendship, and be joyful tonight, for tomorrow we will turn our minds to sober things.’

  Paris slept hardly at all that night, and when he did so, it was only to start awake again minutes later. His body was filled with such appetite for life that it balked at every instant lost to consciousness. Such was the agitation of his heart and senses that he found it hard even to keep to his bed, so he wandered out to the balcony of his chamber where the air was heady with the scent of moon-flowers, and a star brighter than the rest -- Aphrodite’s star -- dangled beneath the ripe moon like a jewel. He tried to recall every instant of this first encounter with Helen, every alteration of her face as he spoke to her, or as she became aware of his gaze observing her when the conversation moved elsewhere. He tried to remember every word she had spoken, sounding out each sentence for hidden signs or meanings, but though it exalted his heart simply to think of her at all, again and again he came up against the dispiriting truth that nothing she had said or done gave him a glimmer of hope that she regarded him as anything more than a welcome guest who deserved every courtesy because he was her husband’s friend.

  Still worse, if he was honest he was forced to admit that Menelaus’s uxorious delight in Helen was met, on her side, by a devotion that seemed just as true. Divine Hera had brought this man and woman together in a marriage as unshakeable as Sparta herself, and its calm, ceremonious contentment was ruled by Athena’s wisdom as the presiding deity of the city. There appeared to be no room left for Aphrodite’s intervention.

  Yet somehow Helen must be his. His life depended on it now. Helen was his life. Without her beside him, he would wander the world like some hungry shade tormented for ever by the thought of what might have been. The thought was not to be borne. Yet to yearn for the removal of the obstacles that stood between Helen and his desire felt like wishing for the death of a friend. A friend who had freely consented to cleanse his soul of guilt.

  And so, as Aeneas slept on untroubled, Paris wandered the night, lurching from hope to despair and back again, finding rest neither inside nor outside himself. At one point, unable to lie on his bed any longer, he left the chamber altogether and walked back through the hall to the intimate room where they had dined that night. He sat where he had sat earlier and gazed across at Helens chair as though she still reclined there, sipping from the chased silver of her drinking-cup or pushing back a stray lock of her hair. He remembered with what fond admiration she had smiled at Menelaus when Aeneas told the story of the manner in which the Spartan king had saved his life during the boar- hunt in Dardania -- a story that she was evidently hearing for the first time. And he winced at the thought of her naked body now lying next to her husband only a few short yards away.

  Aware how foolish and impotent the act, he crossed the room to kneel before the chair Helen had occupied at dinner as though some trace of fragrance from her musky perfume might still be discernible there. But there was nothing, only the carved wood and studded leather of the chair and the soft cushions embroidered with figures dancing the spiral dance. His chest felt huge with her absence.

  Paris stood up, his mind hot with desperation, reminding himself that he had both a divine commission and the temporal authority of his father to steal the woman away by force if all else failed. This city seemed lax and complacent about its defences. Once out of the citadel there were no gates, no walls. A dash by night to the sea, and Helen was his. It could be done.

  In a turmoil of conflicting feelings, he was about to return to his bed when he heard the sound of someone stirring in the hall. His heart leapt to the thought that Aphrodite had acted immediately on his prayer and drawn Helen from her sleep to come to his room. Furtively he moved to a place where he could look out into the hall. What he glimpsed there was not the woman of his dreams but the broad figure of a man in a loose night-robe moving from the chamber door that was just closing behind him to the stairway that led up to the royal apartment. The light of the small oil-lamp he was carrying glistened like bronze off the ruddy gleam of his hair.

  The Madness of Aphrodite

  For what seemed like hours he had endured the full sunlight of the courtyar
d in the sacred precinct as he waited to be admitted through the great bronze doors of Athena’s temple. With Aeneas at his right and Eteoneus, the king’s minister, to his left, Paris stood barehead and barefoot, wearing a simple white tunic over a loincloth. Earlier, under the curious gaze of the Spartan crowd, he had poured libations and offered sacrifices to the goddess at the stone altar at the foot of the steps before the porch. His forelock had been cut and burned. He had been ritually beaten with birch branches, then bathed for the third time that day and asperged with holy water and oils. Now, from inside the temple drifted the chanted strains of the hymn to the divine one who had sprung fully armed from the head of Zeus, and was about to pass judgement on whether or not this stranger in the land could be cleansed of the pollution he had brought there with him.

  Alone of all the people assembled at the temple, Paris knew that there was more than one occasion on which he had given offence to Grey-eyed Athena, and that his rejection of her in favour of Aphrodite on the slopes of Mount Ida might weigh more heavily with her than did the hapless death of Antheus. The knowledge filled him with increasing dread.

  At last a priest had appeared at the head of the stone steps to summon him inside the temple. Accompanied by his two attendants, and with his head bowed low in respect and abjection, Paris entered the cool shade of the Bronze House of Athena. The priest signalled for Aeneas and Eteoneus to remain by the door as Paris walked in silence between the lines of priests and priestesses, their ministers and choristers, to kneel before the impressive figure of Menelaus who was dressed in the ritual garments of a priest and carried a golden staff. Behind the priest-king stood a tall statue of the goddess, helmeted and wearing the aegis over her snake-robe, with a gorgon-embossed shield over one arm and her long, bronze-tipped spear leaning in the other. As Paris raised his open palm to his brow in the gesture of adoration, the air hung heavy with the swirl of incense about his head.