The War At Troy
Page 17
‘We should offer our condolences,’ Paris said.
Aeneas reached out to stop him. ‘In good time,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see the king has his hands full right now? He’ll speak to us before he goes.’
So Paris had to wait and watch while, through constant interruption from his counsellors and stewards, Menelaus spoke softly to Helen, holding her by the arms and brushing a tear from her cheek with his thumb. Eventually he embraced her, looking about the hall as he did so until his eyes fell on his Trojan friends. With his arm about his wife, he crossed the marble floor to join them. ‘Forgive me, friends, but grievous circumstances call me away.’
‘We’ve been told of your loss,’ Aeneas said, ‘and our grief goes with you. It’s clear you have much to attend to. Please don’t concern yourself about us. We shall shortly make our own preparations for departure.’
‘By no means,’ Menelaus demurred. ‘I shall return within the week and will bring Agamemnon back to Sparta with me. Then we can give our minds to what most concerns us at this time. In the meantime, Eteoneus will see to all your needs, and I have asked my queen to show you royal entertainment. I cannot hunt today, alas, but you certainly must. Listen -- the dogs insist on it.’ He glanced, smiling, at Paris’s pallid face. ‘If you have the head for it, that is! What is mine is yours. Make free of my home till my return.’
‘May your gods go with you,’ Paris said, ‘and give you comfort in your loss.’
Menelaus nodded, clapped a hand about the shoulder of each man, and turned to Helen, who glanced up at him in dismay. ‘Be of good heart,’ he said. ‘I entrust my friends to you. Honour them as you would myself.’ Then, after making a few last arrangements with his ministers, he was gone.
Was Aphrodite so ruthless in pursuit of her ends, Paris wondered, that she was prepared to kill off an old man so that a young man’s heart might thrive? Perhaps it was so. Perhaps King Catreus had long been ready for the grave.
But what mortal understood the workings of a god? The only certain thing was that Menelaus was far from his palace now and his wife had said nothing to arouse his suspicion.
Paris feigned sick that day. He told Aeneas that he had no stomach for the hunt, but the day was clear, the pack baying to be freed, and the huntsmen ready, so Aeneas must certainly go. ‘I know you’re eager to discover what game these Spartan mountains hold. And I’ll be well by the time you get back. Bring me a bearskin to amuse Menelaus!’
After Aeneas had left, Paris remained in his chamber for an hour that seemed endless before going down to look for her. Helen was nowhere to be found. He came across the place where the women of the house worked at their looms and spindles but he could see her nowhere among them, and the women giggled so much at his unexpected arrival in the weaving hall that he quickly withdrew. Nor was she walking in the gardens of the palace, or visible anywhere among the streets of the market-place.
By mid-afternoon, when the halls of the palace had fallen quiet in the heat of the day, he decided to risk entering the private rooms of the royal apartment.
He found the principal receiving room with its tall throne empty. A glance into a side chamber along the passage showed a plump serving-woman snoozing on a couch with the child Hermione in a cot beside her clutching a rag doll in one hand and sucking the thumb of the other as she slept. He pulled quietly away. The studded door to the next room was securely locked -- Paris guessed that the king’s treasury was here, or an armoury perhaps. Knowing that he must now be approaching the royal bedroom, he stole along the corridor scarcely able to breathe, and came to a trembling halt before the bronze-bound double door. He knew there was no excuse he could make if someone other than Helen was in there, sweeping the floor or changing the linen on the bed. But it seemed improbable at this hour and he could hear no sound through the door, so he threw the latch. It clattered in the still air. The doors swung open and he was looking into an airy chamber filled with light from a balcony that looked across the gardens to the river and the mountains far beyond. A huge bed built of cedar-wood, inlaid with gold and ivory, and with a pair of leopards carved at its head, looked towards the balcony. It was covered with plump pillows and gorgeously woven throws. A wooden chest stood at its foot. On the wall above the bed-head hung a tapestry of the Three Graces dancing together in a meadow of asphodels and violets. The other walls were painted in carmine, blue and gold. Against one of them, the iridescent hues of a peacock-feather fan shimmered in the breeze from the open window.
This was where she slept and dreamed. This was where her husband made love to her each night. He had expected to be tormented by the thought, but he was now so certain of the invincibility of his own claim to Helen that he remained unruffled by it. Menelaus might have lain with Helen, and even sired a child on her. But the woman in his bed was not the real Helen of Sparta because Helen herself did not yet know who she truly was. How could she when the secret of her true life was known only to the goddess and himself?
Paris crossed the room to where a pair of inner doors opened on two separate closets, one of which was Helen’s dressing-room. He could smell her perfume on the air. Many garments hung in racks there. He took the soft material of the nearest in both hands and clutched it to his face. Then he crossed to the table where her rich collection of cosmetics was assembled with the brushes, powder-puffs, files and combs neatly ranged beside them. There were posset-boxes made of sandalwood and many small apothecaries’ flasks. Several caskets opened to reveal a small treasury of rings and bracelets, necklaces and earrings, finely worked armbands, brooches, diadems, jewelled hair-nets, clasps and fastening- pins. He looked for, but could not find, the jade necklace that was his token to her. Had she cast it aside, or put it somewhere secret for safe-keeping? But then his eyes fell on the silver scent- flask figured in the shape of Aphrodite holding a dove that Helen had prized among the other gifts he brought.
Clearing a space on the dressing-table, he lifted down the polished bronze plaque framed with dolphins that was her mirror, and laid it there. Then he took the stopper from the spout of the flask and in a thin drizzle of the perfume tried to write I love you across the face of the mirror, but the letters refused to keep their shape and began to evaporate on the air. Looking about he found a pot of the paint with which she must darken the lashes of her eyes. He took a brush, wetted it on his tongue, and began to write. The words were crudely done, and he had no time to worry, as he licked the brush again and again, whether or not the paint was poisonous. If it was, so be it: at least his message would survive him. And even his failure with the perfume proved a kind of success, for he had used so much of the costly stuff that the atmosphere of the closet had changed. It no longer smelled of Sparta, but of Troy.
When he opened the double doors of the bed-chamber to let himself out he heard the child whimpering in the nursery, a small noise but loud enough to wake her nurse. Furtively he slipped along the passage, peered through the hinge-crack of the half-open door and saw the nurse stooping to lift Hermione from her cot. She was tutting and shushing as she did so. Paris slipped quickly past the door and on to the end of the passage. He had just reached the foot of the stairs and was about to step out into the garden when a male voice behind him said, ‘Was there something you wanted?’
Startled, Paris turned and saw Eteoneus frowning at him from the doorway that led to the kitchen quarters at the end of the hall.
‘I was just . . .’ Paris found the easy smile with which he had so often charmed the world, ‘I was wondering where I might find the Lady Helen.’
‘My lady understood that you were ill,’ Eteoneus answered. ‘She left instructions that you were to be visited every two hours if you did not appear. Her wise-woman Polydamna has been given care of you. She knocked at your door earlier. As there was no answer, she assumed you were asleep.’
Paris was on the point of agreeing that must have been the case, when he remembered he had been seen walking the streets. ‘I was feeling better and thought I would
take the air,’ he said instead. ‘That must have been when the woman knocked.’ He smiled again. ‘Tell me, where can I find her?’
‘Polydamna is in the women’s quarters. Shall I have her called?’
‘I meant the Lady Helen.’
‘Ah! My lady is at her devotions. She is making offerings for King Catreus, whom she greatly mourns. She would not wish to be disturbed.’
‘And doubtless she prays for her husband’s safe return?’ Eteoneus nodded, wondering a little at this puzzling Trojan s smile.
‘I understand. Then I must patiently wait on her pleasure.’ Paris glanced out into the bright sunlight. ‘In the garden perhaps. I see there is a shrine to Aphrodite there. I too have devotions to make.’
With a courteous nod he turned away and walked across the pillared terrace into the garden. The grapes were fattening on the vine-trellis, and cypresses and tall plane trees shaded his way through oleanders and hibiscus to the distant myrtle grove where Aphrodite had her shrine. Entering the grove, Paris smiled at the statue of Priapus, a bearded, misshapen figure carved from fig-wood, who stood with his left hand resting on one hip, while his right hand held a flask of oil from which he anointed his impressively swollen member. Someone -- a hopeful amorist presumably -- had left an offering of pomegranates and quinces there. A blackbird chattered at Paris’s approach. Then he was through into the sacred precinct of the goddess.
For a long time he knelt in silent meditative prayer where the small marble statue of Aphrodite overlooked a spring pouring from the rocks. The goddess stood on a plinth, dressing her hair amid the sharp, sweet scent of deep pink damask roses. Above her head, doves flapped loud wings from tree to tree across the glade or basked in sunlight murmuring. Somewhere in the distance a donkey sawed and wheezed its complaint against its load. But Paris was listening for Aphrodite to whisper encouragement and counsel in his ear.
After a time he got up to sit on the bench in a sheltered arbour woven from sweet-smelling myrtle switches. The sensuality of the place, the stillness of its scented air, the sound of water in the heat of the afternoon, everything conspired to fuel the desire for Helen that was aching through all his limbs. His prayer became a magical incantation. He was summoning her now.
But it was a child’s voice that came to him through the trees, the voice of a little girl: Hermione! If Helen was walking her daughter through the garden it was unlikely she would bring the child here. Paris got to his feet. After a moment’s hesitation he walked swiftly out of the grove, past the Priapus, in the direction where he could hear the child prattling.
He came out between two bay trees and saw Hermione romping in a patch of sunlight as she threw a ball to the fat nurse who stood across the grass from her. ‘Catch it, Chryse,’ she was calling, ‘you have to catch it.’ But the ball fell short. Sighing, the nurse bent to pick it up and when she threw it back, it came too high, passed between the child’s raised hands, bounced once, and then rolled across the grass to where Paris stood in dense shade. With her eyes fixed on the ball, Hermione came running his way, calling back over her shoulder, and noticed him only when he stooped to pick up the ball. Laughing, he made to throw it gently back to her, but the child had come to a shocked halt, and was staring up at him as though a ghost was standing there.
‘Catch,’ he invited, bending a little, gesturing with the ball.
The child’s face shrank with fear. She brought both clenched hands up to her mouth and let out a frightened cry. Dismayed by the response, he took a step towards her, but Hermione turned on her heels and ran back across the grass towards the nurse, crying out, ‘Save me, Chryse, save me from the foreign man!’ Then she threw her thin arms around the hips of the nurse. The woman put a hand down to the little girl’s head where it was now buried in her skirts, and said, ‘What’s the matter with you, child?’ Hermione raised her face briefly to glance back where Paris looked awkwardly on, and he was horrified to hear the child whimper. ‘It’s the man who kills children. I want my daddy, I want my daddy,’ before she burst into a noisy torrent of tears.
The nurse looked up at the foreigner in dismay, made the sign to ward off the evil eye, then picked up the squalling child and hurried away.
Paris was left shaken in the garden’s shattered peace.
He was still there half an hour later, utterly downcast by a chain of thought that had begun with the realization that for Helen to have a child was a far more complex matter than he had calculated, and all the more so as the child seemed possessed by an irrational fear of him.
He went back into the myrtle grove to contemplate his problem, but apart from the infant Eros, who was of quite a different order, he saw that Aphrodite had as little to do with children as she did with morality. She was the single-minded goddess of sexual passion and desire. Her duties ended where conception began. What possible help could she be against a hostile child?
Yet he found it impossible to believe that Aphrodite had brought him here and spirited Menelaus so swiftly away without some larger plan in mind. The alternative -- that after such an auspicious start, a tearful five year old should stand as an insuperable obstacle between himself and Helen -- was a torment too bitter to contemplate. Surely he had charm enough to win the child round?
He was considering how best to set about this when he heard the sound of someone approaching through the garden. Expecting Eteoneus to come with a disapproving frown across his face, Paris leapt to his feet from where he sat in the arbour and saw Helen striding across the grass towards him. Her face was flushed, her hair in disarray. His first exclamation of surprise turned into a wondering smile, but she had reached him before he could speak, was lifting her hand, and then she smacked him hard across the face with all the strength she could command. Paris stood, blinking back the tears that jumped from him, shaking his dazed head. The skin of his cheek smarted like fire.
Startled by the crack of skin against skin, a flight of doves were scattering their bright wings about the grove.
‘How dare you?’ she was gasping. ‘How dare you?’
Against the ringing in his ears he said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten the child.’
She stared at him as though his mind was impaired. Her eyes were flashing the fiercest glitter of sea-blue-green that he had ever seen outside a sunlit tempest off the Dardanian coast. He was trying to say that the child must have overheard something about him and misunderstood, but Helen erased his words with a furious gesture of her open palms across the air. ‘To go into our private rooms, to finger my things, to leave the spoor of your absurd message for any chambermaid to smell! How could you? How dare you?’
Before he could stop her, she cracked her hand across his cheek again.
He pulled back, raising his arms to defend himself from further attack, and then he was laughing, laughing out loud through the sting of pain as he fell back onto the bench under the myrtle boughs.
She stared at him, appalled by his laughter, more beside herself with anger than at any time in her life before. ‘If you ever dare to do such a thing again,’ she hissed, ‘I will stab you with my knife.’
The laughter stopped. They were both panting as they stared at each other across the trembling space between.
‘Then do it.’ Paris raised his open hands exposing his undefended chest. ‘Bring your knife and kill me now, for if you will not love me I’m already a dead man.’
Her hands were both gripped tight -- tight as knots, tight enough to hurt - as though only so could she restrain a fury that had already made her a stranger to herself and was now threatening to drag her, like the muscular currents of a flood, into a chaos beyond recall. If there had been a knife to hand in that moment she would certainly have used it.
As it was, all she could do was gasp -- as much to herself as to the deranging man across from her -- ‘I would do it, I will do it.’
Again, after a shocked moment in which he realized that she was speaking her truth, he laughed.
‘Believe me,’ he answered at once, ‘there is nothing I will not say or do to make you love me. If that is madness then, yes, I am mad.’ Helen pulled her body to its full height. Her heart was a mallet pounding her, strike by strike, like a stake into the ground where she was making her stand. ‘I am Helen, Queen of Sparta,’ she said, ‘not some easy chit of a Trojan girl to lure into your bed. Do you believe I could ever love a man despicable enough to betray his friend while his back was turned?’
‘Yes,’ he hissed. And again, ‘yes.’
‘A man who would feign sickness and tell lies and steal about my house like a common thief.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then as well as a madman, you’re a fool.’
‘Then let it be so,’ he said. ‘But if I am mad, then I’m mad for love. If I’m a fool, I am a fool for love.’
Somewhere in the myrtle boughs around them, a dove clattered its wings.
She stood, trembling under the entreaty of his eyes. Knowing that he was gone beyond all reason and that if she remained longer in that glade she too might lose all dignity and control, she said, ‘It would be best if you went from Sparta. But you are my husband’s guest, not mine.’ She heard her voice shaking as she added, ‘If you choose to stay, do not expect to find me here.’ Helen drew in her breath and turned to walk away. But she had taken only three strides when he called, ‘Why did you not tell him what passed between us last night?’
Had she walked on, a world might have been saved; but she stopped, and the accusation in his question caught her by the ankle like a hobbling rope.
She turned again to face him, fiery-eyed, ‘Because you are his friend,’ she said. ‘Because Menelaus loves you and it would break his heart.’