The War At Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  Menelaus addressed the goddess with solemn words of invocation, then turned to Paris and demanded that he render a truthful account of himself and of the guilt he had incurred through the death of Antheus. When his confession ended with heartfelt words of contrition and a ritual supplication of Athena’s mercy, the tunic was unlaced from his shoulders, his hands were bound at his back, and a black hood was pulled down over his head like the sudden thick fall of night. To the plangent sound of music and chanting he was led around the temple until he had lost all sense of direction. He heard a door scrape open, and then he was passing down uneven stone steps where the air felt cold and damp about him. He had not been prepared for any of this. With a searing flash of panic, Paris wondered whether Menelaus had divined his secret intention and meant to do away with him in some dark declivity of this ancient place. His skin was trembling in the chill air.

  When the hood was removed he stood blinking in the torch-lit gloom of a rocky cavern somewhere deep inside the hill. By the unstable light, Paris made out flickering, stick-like pictures painted on the stone and, directly ahead of him, the primitive wooden figure of a goddess. She loomed above a charred altar of rough stone with what appeared to be the head of an owl.

  The air was acrid with smoke, and the hollow of the cave was suddenly loud with what his stunned heart took for the screaming of a frightened child. Then Menelaus appeared before him, red- haired in the torch-light, no longer dressed in priestly vestments, but wearing what might have been a butcher’s leather apron over his naked form. A long blade glinted in his hand.

  ‘Kneel,’ he commanded, and when Paris hesitated, staring up at him wide-eyed, Menelaus spoke again above the terrible shrill of screaming. ‘Kneel.’

  With his hands still tied behind his back, and having no choice now but to pray for the mercy of a goddess whose very face had once been forbidden to the sight of men, Paris did as he was ordered. Words were exchanged in a dialect unknown to him. When he looked up he saw a priest holding a suckling pig by its hind legs in offering. The pale animal shrieked and twisted as it was passed into the grip of Menelaus, then the priest-king lifted its straining body, snout downwards, and drew his knife across its throat. The nerve-splitting squeals fell silent and the hot, bright gush of its life-blood spurted out over Paris’s naked head and face and shoulders.

  In the taut silence of the cave he could hear Menelaus chanting liturgical words he did not understand. The blood stuck in his hair, it splashed in thick gouts across his eyes and face, and dripped from his jaw to his chest. Tight-lipped, shuddering under the warm, sticky smell of its flow, appalled that so small an animal could hold so much blood, he thought he might choke in that hideous, scarlet shower.

  Then it was over. He forced open the clotted lids of his eyes to look through a veil of blood at the ancient figure of the goddess. A priest and priestess at either side of him were pouring water from silver ewers to wash the vivid streaks from his flesh. As the cold streams sluiced about his shoulders, he thought he could feel the pollution of the little boy’s death hilling from him. But when he gazed up again into the piercing, owl-eyed face of the goddess, he felt like a shrew in her talons. With a certainty that struck to the bottom of his soul he knew there was one offence he had committed which remained so grave in the relentless eyes of Athena that, however long his life-thread might run, that insult to her divine pride would never be forgiven.

  Yet he could not bring himself to regret it. He told himself that Aphrodite was there beside him, even in this deep fissure that had been hewn out of the rock at the dawn of time and made sacred to Athena. He stood to be dried, and as the tunic was laced again about his shoulders, Menelaus was smiling across at him, saying, ‘The goddess has looked kindly on you, friend.’ But there was only one thought pressing at his mind: that it could not be long now before he was back in the fragrance of daylight once again, and in Helen’s presence.

  A great banquet was held in the palace hall that night. To the applause of the assembled Spartan nobility, not all of whom had been glad to welcome Paris’s unclean presence in their city, the Trojan princes presented the gifts they had brought for Menelaus and his queen. These were costly and plentiful, and many had travelled along the spice-roads from lands far to the east and south of the Black Sea. The sheer silks, rare perfumes and finely woven cashmere gowns occasioned much amazement and pleasure, as well as thoughtful remarks on the enviable wealth of Priam’s kingdom, and everyone was delighted by a pair of chattering monkeys that were got up in Phrygian robes to look like Paris and Aeneas.

  The last gift of all was greeted with wondering gasps of approval when Paris stood behind the queen’s chair to fasten at her neck the clasp of a golden chain from which hung a gauzy, intricately worked cascade of jade, lapis and other precious stones. ‘I am told that this necklace once adorned a great queen in the east,’ he said, ‘but were it Aphrodite’s kestos itself, it would scarcely do justice to the beauty which graces it now.’

  ‘No words of mine could do justice to King Priam’s generosity,’ Helen blushed with pleasure. ‘I thank him for this gift with all my heart.’

  Amid the loud exclamations of approval, Paris whispered in her ear, ‘The gift is mine. I offer it in ransom for my heart.’

  Before she could catch her breath to reply, he straightened, smiling at Menelaus, and returned to his chair. The King rose to express his own delight at the bounty of the gifts. Promising that his guests would not return empty-handed, he nodded to Eteoneus, who clapped his hands for the musicians to strike up. At a beating of drums and gongs a skimpily clad troop of Libyan tumblers sprang in somersaults and cartwheels across the floor of the hall.

  Paris did not join the loud applause. Turbulent and emotional after the ordeal of his cleansing, he was still trembling from the intimacy of the brief contact with Helen’s skin. Again and again he tried to catch her eye, eager to read some sign of response to his approach, but she was looking studiously elsewhere as she listened to Aeneas and her husband discussing plans for their forthcoming mission to Mycenae. Her hands did not finger the necklace at her breast. Even when a woman approached to admire its jewels more closely, remarking how finely the jade enhanced the green fire of her eyes, she gave no indication of anything more than momentary pleasure. It might have been some trinket she had bought at a fair.

  Paris swigged heavily from his cup. The music clashed in his head. Fighting an urge to leap onto the table and shout at the noisy revellers that he was an emissary not just from Troy but from the goddess Aphrodite herself, he stared as a towering ziggurat of tumblers mounted upwards to loud applause. He was aware that the madness of love was making a base ingrate of him, yet he wanted to threaten these Spartan fools with the fury of the goddess if they did not immediately rise up and demand that their king surrender his queen to the arms of the man for whom fate had always destined her.

  The tumblers were replaced by bangled dancing girls, and they in turn by an Arcadian minstrel who sang first of the hopeless passion of Echo for Narcissus, and then of Pygmalion’s love for Galatea. So the evening wore on with Paris sighing more than he spoke, and drinking more than he sighed, trying again and again to engage Helen’s eyes. When he met only a polite, brief smile or a swiftly withdrawn glance as she turned away to whisper to her husband, Paris found such distant proximity increasingly hard to bear. The fury had long since burned itself out. Overwhelmed by sadness, he got up, making no excuses or apologies, and walked out of the hall to stand alone on a balcony.

  He told himself that a kind of madness had possessed him, and there was nothing to be done about it. And though its claims were both too painful and too beautiful to be borne, bear them he must, for the goddess had offered him love and he had chosen to accept the gift. He had wished this fate on himself, and all the rites that went with it, and not for a single moment did he regret that choice - though it now seemed that it opened a need in his heart that could never be requited. But if that was the price of the exaltation he
had felt on looking into Helen’s eyes, then he was content to pay it. And if he was forbidden to savour the joys of love with her, then he would savour the pain.

  After a time he heard a quiet cough at his back. When he turned, Eteoneus was standing there saying, ‘My lord, the king is concerned lest our Spartan entertainment is not to your taste.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ Paris answered dismally. ‘The wine is strong. I needed to take the air. Tell the king that I will shortly return to his side.’ But he had no heart for it. Minutes later, he was still staring across the river at the misty plain when he heard the soft notes of Helen’s voice at his back. ‘If you will not come of your own accord,’ she said, ‘my Lord Menelaus bids me come to fetch you.’

  ‘Because no man in his right mind would refuse to do your bidding?’ he said hoarsely, the blood beating in his throat.

  Helen flushed a little and glanced away to collect herself. ‘Because he misses your company, and fears that the ordeals of the day may have proved too much for you.’

  Staring intently into her troubled eyes, he said, ‘The ordeals of the day were as nothing compared to the ordeal of this night.’

  Helen took a step back as though at a suddenly opened furnace door.

  ‘Has someone displeased you?’ she asked.

  ‘You,’ he accused her softly. ‘You have displeased me.’

  She stood before him, her chin tilted, her cheeks flushed as though he had struck her. Yet her voice was steady as she said, ‘My lord?’

  ‘I know you heard me when I clasped this bauble about your neck,’ he hissed, ‘yet you refuse me an answer.’

  Angered by his abandonment of all discretion, she withstood his gaze. ‘You are my husband’s friend and I can refuse you nothing that honour permits. Sir, I thank you for this exquisite gift, which I cannot now accept.’ But when she made to unfasten the clasp at her neck, he reached out to prevent her.

  ‘Keep it, I beg you,’ he said. ‘Forgive me. I am not in my right mind.’

  Her throat was dry, her alarmed heart knocking at her chest. Helen glanced quickly about to see if her turmoil was observed. Then she turned her slender body askance to him. ‘I think you must be exhausted from the day,’ she said. ‘Shall I tell my husband that your need is to retire?’

  ‘Tell him that you have looked on a man who is sickening with love for you. Tell him that the man may not have long to live unless that love is returned. Tell him that you have become a stranger to your former self and that his every glance now commands the entire attention of your soul. Tell him,’ he added, urgently catching her wrist as she turned away, ‘that when a god summons us it is madness to refuse.’

  She stood, collecting her wits, her face flushed, eyes bright with the exaltation of her fear. ‘Is Prince Paris so deluded that he thinks he is a god?’

  ‘No. But I serve one, lady. And she is powerful.’

  He heard her breath catch in her throat. He thought he saw a sudden hectic commotion of excitement in her eyes.

  She said, ‘If you do not release my hand, I will cry out that there is a traitor in my husband’s house, one whose thankless heart is utterly unworthy of the kindness and friendship he has been shown.’

  He found it intolerable that she should think of him so.

  ‘And if I do?’ he said.

  Her eyes were turned away. ‘We will forget this. We will think no more of it. We will try once more to be friends, you and I.’

  Paris tightened his grip a moment longer before saying, ‘I cannot promise so much. Say what you like to your husband. My life is in the hand I give back to you now -- but it was already there, long before I came to Sparta. Crush it or set it free to love you. Either way, its desire for you will not be extinguished.’

  Helen’s lips were parted. She held the wrist he had gripped, tenderly, as though his touch had bruised it. Nothing in the world was quite behaving as it should. Even the lamp in the sconce by the door was smoking.

  Then she shook her head and turned back into the hall.

  Paris followed her scent through the din of revelry, watching the sway of her back, triumphing at least in the knowledge that she would sleep no better than he that night. They found Menelaus and Aeneas laughing together with a tawny-haired woman whose breasts hung loosely as she leaned over them to pour more wine. Raising his cup, the king beamed up at his wife. ‘What did I tell you, Aeneas?’ he cried. ‘Helen’s beauty is like a lodestone. It draws all manner of men along with it, whether they will or no. Paris, we have lacked your company. Come, take more wine with us. Or is it true what Eteoneus says -- that you’re finding Aphrodite’s milk too strong for your head?’

  ‘It will be the first time,’ Aeneas laughed. ‘There have been many nights when he’s drunk me under the table.’

  ‘But this has been a strange and powerful day,’ Paris frowned. ‘True,’ Menelaus conceded. Already drunk, he was brimming with affectionate concern. ‘Yet the shadow has passed from you now. We washed it away in the Bronze House of Athena. Be merry, my friend.’

  Before Paris could find an answer, Helen spoke in a firm voice. ‘Prince Paris is weary, husband, and not yet wholly himself. There will be other nights for merriment, but I think that now his need is for sleep.’

  Menelaus made a gesture of disappointment. Blearily he studied Paris’s pallid face. Always a straightforward man, he was sometimes puzzled by the turbid shifts of emotion in his Asian friends. Then a thought occurred to him. He grinned up at Paris, gesturing with his cup. ‘Cast your eyes about the room,’ he demanded. ‘There must be some woman here whom you would like to warm your bed tonight?’

  ‘Were things otherwise . . .’ Paris answered, hoarsely apologetic. ‘But your lady wife is as wise as she is beautiful. I believe she reads my mind aright.’

  Disappointed, Menelaus shrugged, and made a wry face at Aeneas, who was frowning at his side, perplexed by his friend’s unusual demeanour. The Spartan king swayed a little as he got to his feet. ‘Sleep if you must,’ he said. ‘But tomorrow -- Aeneas and I have been making plans. Tomorrow we go hunting. We will camp out in the mountains together.’ He closed his arms round Paris and warmly patted his back. ‘A night or two of wild air will bring you back to yourself. Let’s see if we can’t find another she-bear to suckle you!’ Menelaus was laughing at his jest when he caught his wife’s eye. ‘Dream well, friend,’ he said more quietly. ‘The Furies are gone. Your soul is cleansed. You are free to live your life as you wish once more.’

  Paris was woken from heavy sleep late the next morning by a rough shaking of his shoulder. ‘What’s the matter with you, man?’ Aeneas was saying. ‘You were moaning in your sleep last night, and now with the morning half-over you’re still lying here like a drunkard in the street. Menelaus is waiting for us. He’s eager for the hunt. Rouse yourself or you’ll offend our host.’

  Paris dragged himself up from the bed with his head between his hands.

  When Aeneas pulled back the drapes, fierce sunlight splintered at his fingers. Paris lifted a haggard face to his friend.

  ‘You look like a gorgon’s head!’ Aeneas frowned. ‘Are you sick or what?’

  For a reckless moment Paris was about to confide in him, but he shook his head to clear it and saw that the time was not right. Aeneas was too frank and candid a soul. He was too close in his friendship to Menelaus and would not be able to conceal his trepidation if he knew what desperate plan was on his friend’s mind. And if Paris failed to keep his own feelings under control, the King of Sparta would scent trouble soon enough.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he groaned. ‘My head is ringing like a gong.’

  ‘There’s a wench I know with a pitcher of water to pour over it. Come on, Paris, shape yourself. Menelaus was too gracious to comment on your behaviour last night, but I heard others remark on it -- until Helen took you under her wing, that is. But the king means to hunt today and we’re both eager to leave. Can I tell him you’ll be ready within the hour?’

&nbs
p; Eyes closed under the hand at his brow, Paris nodded. ‘Give me time to wash and make my offering to Aphrodite,’ he muttered, ‘and I’ll be with you.’

  But when he came down to the hall he found a tumult of confusion there.

  The air outside shook to the barking of dogs as they snapped and whined together, impatient for the chase, but a group of old women with faces gnarled as walnuts were moaning and keening in the hall and beating their breasts. Slaves were bustling trunks out to a wagon. Outside in the courtyard, farriers were backing a sprightly team of horses up to the yoke of Menelaus’s chariot. The king himself stood in hurried council with Eteoneus and his other ministers, while Helen looked on, pale with anxiety, clutching her frightened daughter Hermione in her arms.

  Aeneas crossed the hall to meet Paris at the foot of the stair. ‘It seems we’ve picked a bad time to come,’ he said. ‘A messenger from Agamemnon has just informed Menelaus that King Catreus has died. He has to leave at once.’

  ‘King Catreus?’

  ‘He’s their grandfather on their mother’s side. A Cretan. His funeral rites must take place soon, so they have to sail for Crete tonight. The whole palace is in disarray.’

  ‘What about Helen?’ Paris demanded.

  ‘Helen?’ Aeneas seemed surprised by the question. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Will she go to Crete? Is she going with him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Aeneas frowned. ‘I’m not sure if it’s been decided yet.’

  Drawn by the sudden howling of the child, Paris turned to look back across the hall where he saw Helen in urgent consultation with Menelaus. She handed her wailing daughter to a serving-woman for comfort but the child was kicking and shrieking as the woman carried her away. Helen turned back to her distracted husband, evidently entreating him.