The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  I could not take my eyes from this ambassador of masculine perfection. My heart had been punctured by an arrow of Eros as surely as those in Alexander’s quiver could inflict lethal damage on a hart or hare. From that first moment, I desired him. Thoughts of luscious impalement caught me unaware and imprisoned me as though I had been ensnared within a fisherman’s net. Paris Alexandros. His very name was music and flowed like liquid silk across my tongue. “You have caught us at a most auspicious time,” I told him. “Our festival of Kronia begins today.” And then, I remember so well, my mouth went dry, my words tumbling out like pebbles kicked up by the wheels of a chariot. The queen of Sparta had been robbed of speech by a stranger.

  Menelaus laughed. “We Spartans pride ourselves on being excellent hosts, but during Kronia, you will receive more honors than you have dreamed of. The finest of everything is at your disposal. We will hear of your errand tomorrow, after the First Night’s feast. For now, enjoy a respite in your quarters and we will look forward to seeing you again at the banquet tables this evening.”

  The Troyan prince and his cousin were escorted from the Great Hall and shown to their rooms; they would remain in Sparta until their diplomatic mission had been concluded. Messengers were sacred to the gods and were always treated well. Ambassadors such as these from Ilios would not even be permitted to discuss their business until they had feasted at the elbow of their host. And I . . . I was undone. Never before, not even with Theseus, had I experienced a connection so immediate and so powerful. I was on fire. Great conflagrations raged within me that I could not quench no matter how much water I consumed. I retired to my rooms and bathed again to rinse the sweat from my burning skin.

  Aethra thought I was unwell; perhaps the first flush of another pregnancy. But I knew that could not be the case. Menelaus and I had enjoyed separate sleeping quarters since the desecration of the temples. Despite his attempts to mollify the people of Sparta after those raids, I could not forgive him for cavalierly despoiling my family’s tomb. Besides, if I was carrying another child, by now my figure would have begun to show the signs. No, these sensations were something altogether unfamiliar, a sea change within me that I was unable to contain, desired not to confess, and over which I had no control. A religious person would have said for certain that Aphrodite had taken possession of my body at the moment I saw Paris Alexandros, and from that instant I became her servant, willing or no. But Aphrodite was ever my patron goddess; and the embers that lay banked inside me from birth, flaring only once when I chose to visit Theseus’s chamber, now flamed even higher and burned hotter and more brightly. If the Fates had delivered the ultimate temptation, it rested with me to choose whether to accept or reject the gift, however exquisitely wrapped.

  Aeneas remained quiet throughout much of the First Night meal. His spirit was less boyish than Alexander’s, although I guessed that they were about the same age. The cousin had the air of a settled man: thoughtful and perhaps even taciturn when necessary, whereas Paris Alexandros possessed the exuberance of a wild stallion. In some ways he reminded me of my brothers, who brought their passion for the untamed beauty of the countryside into the cool and stately chambers of the palace.

  The Troyan ambassadors were surprised to find the women eating alongside the men during the banquet. In Ilios, they explained, the women ate in a separate hall, joining their men to enjoy the entertainment once the meal was over. I found myself surprised that in such an advanced city as theirs, far more cosmopolitan than Sparta, such backward views of women prevailed. “Then you rob yourselves of pleasant and soothing company to aid in your digestion,” I teased. “Here in Greece, our men are never deprived of our companionship at mealtime.”

  “And more’s the pity!” exclaimed some loutish friend of Menelaus, with particular reference to the short-skirted flute girls who had just entered the Great Hall. “Are we never permitted a moment’s peace from your flapping tongues?”

  “Then, for the first time in twenty-six years of life, I regret that I am not a Greek, for the flapping tongue of the queen of Sparta would be pleasant enough company during any meal.”

  My heart stopped. Time stopped. The motions of the serving women and the flute girls . . . all . . . stopped.

  “You are fortunate to be a guest during the celebration of Kronia, my man,” said Menelaus, clapping Prince Paris on the back in a hearty display of camaraderie. The servants resumed their bustle. The musicians recommenced their melody. I exhaled.

  Smiling gamely, I supported my husband. “You are fortunate indeed, Paris Alexandros—the laxness of Kronia or not. Were you not an ambassador from foreign shores, you would not have enjoyed such a mirthful response for so boldly referring to the person of the queen and the wife of your host.”

  “A thousand pardons,” Paris said, humbled and blushing. “I am still unused to the ways of the court.”

  “I thought you were a prince,” Menelaus said, his eyes glazing over from the quantities of Rhodian wine he had consumed thus far. He called for his favorite liquor, a potent mixture of wine tinged with pine resin, then became momentarily distracted by the entrance of the acrobats. The lightly clad serving girls passed plates of honeyed figs, leaning forward as if to invite the diners, male and female alike, to sample more than the confections they carried. It amused me to watch how hard they tried to gain the attentions of Paris Alexandros. He spoke to Menelaus when directly addressed by him, but for the rest of the evening he had not taken his eyes from my face and form. I admit that I did nothing, my tart comment aside, to discourage his attentions. I remember how he admired the new fresco I had commissioned and, pointing to the goddesses depicted among the wedding revelers, murmured, “Remind me to tell you a story about them.” He smiled as though he held a secret the way a young child traps a butterfly within his cupped hands.

  “I am a prince,” Paris said after the acrobats took their bows. Menelaus himself refilled his guest’s golden wine goblet and offered him a taste of the retsina as well. “But we Troyans are a superstitious lot and the royal family lays great store by dreams. My mother, when she carried me in her womb, had a prophetic dream one night that she gave birth to a burning brand that brought destruction to Wilusa in a holocaust of smoke and flame. It is quite a story and makes for a good after-dinner tale. Nevertheless, Queen Hecuba believed the nocturnal visions that had visited her, and after giving birth to me, she and my father, King Priam, handed me to a trusted retainer, a shepherd named Agelaus. Agelaus was ordered to leave me on Mount Ida to die, but the old man and his wife took pity upon a helpless infant and raised me as their own. I grew up a shepherd boy in the mountains beyond Troy, and even today,” he added with a boastful grin, “no man is better than I am with a bow.”

  “Then how did you discover you were really a prince?” I asked him.

  “Last year, King Priam’s representatives came to Mount Ida seeking prize bulls for their annual festival games. Agelaus and I had raised one, a perfect white specimen of which we were particularly proud, but I was reluctant to let the king’s men rob us of our best beast with only meager compensation. We were mountain people and did not live as they did. We bred our livestock and survived on what we hunted or slaughtered. We were expected to consider ourselves honored that our bull had been chosen for the sacrificial centerpiece, as bulls are the sacred emblem of the city you call Ilios. Seized with what I can only describe to you as wanderlust, I insisted, despite Agelaus’s vehement protestations, on leaving Mount Ida and accompanying our prize bull to Troy. There I beheld the festival games and could not resist entering the sporting competitions. As a poor shepherd, ill-accoutered and meanly attired, I incurred the mockery, and then the enmity, of the great princes Hector and Deiphobus, the latter being particularly intolerant of outsiders. And yet I bested them all. I shamed them in the footraces, wrestled all comers into the dust, and with my bow, I easily outshot them.”

  I glanced at Menelaus. Where I had feared he might feel overmatched by this golden prince, h
e was instead impressed, a reaction that I admit completely surprised me. I believe he decided right then that he had found a protégé in Paris Alexandros. “You will wrestle me, young Troyan,” Menelaus said. “Mock combat is one of the chief diversions of Kronia. You came at the right time, my new friend!” Was it the wine speaking, or had my husband truly found a prospective companion for the next few days? I had never seen Menelaus so animated. “I am eager to learn the end of the tale. Go on,” he urged Paris Alexandros.

  “The spear, alas, has never been my best weapon, and there, the first and third sons of Priam triumphed.”

  “The spear is my weapon as well,” my husband interrupted excitedly. “The spear-famed Menelaus, I am called.”

  “Then I am heartily sorry you were not there to have come to my defense,” Paris Alexandros replied. “For Deiphobus played me false and ordered the doors of the arena bolted shut so there was no escape, and then he aimed to kill. After both spears were thrown, he blocked my exit and had drawn his knife to strike the fatal thrust when old Agelaus created an uproar by hobbling onto the field, waving what I thought was a white flag of surrender.”

  “It wasn’t?” I asked. It didn’t matter to me what the old shepherd carried. All I cared about was that Paris Alexandros had obviously survived and was here to speak of it. To my ears, his words were like the sweet golden honey that coated my fingers after devouring the figs.

  “It wasn’t, my queen. Agelaus brandished the cloth in which I had been swaddled when he was charged with the errand of leaving me to die atop the harsh summit of Mount Ida. He insisted that King Priam and Queen Hecuba hear him out before Deiphobus made another move to strike the stranger whom he held at knifepoint. The story of my childhood and my youth was disclosed, and I was immediately embraced as the lost prince. I have since taken my place as the second son of Priam. Although I must confess,” Paris demurred, “that my elder brother Hector is still the idol of my parents’ eye. Sometimes it is hard to wear the mantle of a second royal son and still make a name for oneself!”

  With those words, the fate of Paris Alexandros as a kindred spirit to Menelaus, second son of Atreus, had been sealed. My husband raised his goblet to the gods. “Helen,” he exclaimed, “our guest’s arrival is fortunate indeed. And may this Troyan prince show me how to distinguish myself from the much vaunted achievements of a renowned older brother!”

  SIXTEEN

  The following day, while Aethra bathed me with fragrant essences, I lazed in my tub with my eyes closed, the better to summon images of the magnificent Troyan prince. After dressing in shades of lapis and turquoise and setting a golden diadem in my hair, which I had ringleted in the Athenian style, I descended to the Great Hall, answering a summons from Menelaus.

  “Prince Paris has requested your presence this morning,” my husband said, leading me to the chair beside his throne. “I had assumed his errand regarded the trade concessions I had spoken of with his father, King Priam, but it appears that he comes to talk of other matters entirely.”

  Then Aeneas spoke up. From his expression, I could tell that he found the situation uncomfortable. “Ordinarily it is not for a woman—even the queen—to hear our embassy, but as it directly concerns another woman, we hoped that you would be more inclined to find sympathy for King Priam and might be persuasive in helping to make the case to King Menelaus.”

  I was intrigued by his words. Paris Alexandros then spoke eloquently for one who had so recently led a sheltered shepherd’s existence. “Many years ago,” he began, “when my father was only a boy, the renowned Heracles attacked Wilusa, damaging part of the western wall of the citadel, sacking the city and pillaging our possessions.” He went on to explain that the great Heracles rewarded one of his most valorous warriors, his cousin Telamon of Salamis, with a captive Troyan princess as his bride. The young woman was Hesione, elder sister of young Podarces. “Heracles was planning to enslave Podarces, but Hesione, who was granted one parting wish by the conquering Achaeans, purchased Podarces from Heracles with her golden veil, and then set her brother free. Podarces, reaching his majority, called himself Priam and claimed his birthright, the throne of Ilios.” Although Hesione had been gone for decades, bearing sons to Telamon, including Teucer, who was one of the unsuccessful suitors for my hand, Priam still viewed his sister’s absence as having been brought about by abduction and force. Now, he insisted upon her return. Paris and Aeneas had come to Sparta to seek the aid of Menelaus in the form of ships and men pledged to join forces with a Trojan armada that would invade Salamis and recapture the aged Hesione.

  “We have little to spare,” replied Menelaus after several minutes of grave consideration of the Troyans’ request. He told them about the depletion of our stores during the drought, the necessity of requisitioning all items of bronze to be found anywhere in Sparta to satisfy his brother’s orders, and the expenses of repairing the dwellings, including the palace, that were damaged or destroyed in the earthquake. “Much as I would like to entertain the particulars of your embassy, my first allegiance is to Sparta,” he continued. Catching my dubious expression, he added, “Although . . . my brother Agamemnon frequently exercises his fraternal prerogative, as well as asserting his status as High King, in requesting Sparta’s aid and support in supplying men and materiel for his ventures.”

  “You were right to request the ear of the queen,” said Aeneas, smiling at his cousin. “So, what says Helen of Sparta?”

  What would Theseus do, were his counsel solicited on such a matter as this? I remembered the Dioscuri demanding my own release and forfeiting the requested ransom; although, unknown to them, I would have happily remained in Athens. But Theseus had staged a legitimate abduction. I was not a spoil of war, as was Hesione of Troy. I recalled Hesione’s son Teucer’s version of events when we had spoken nearly a decade earlier; back when he had been one of forty-five suitors for my hand. They have always seemed very happily married, he had said of his parents. The echo of his words now filled my ears.

  “Has King Priam ever sued for Hesione’s release?” I asked the Troyan ambassadors. “Ever sailed to Salamis before now to negotiate her return to Anatolia?” Paris looked to Aeneas, who shook his head. “Has Hesione ever sent word to her brother, however couched, indicating her wish to return home? Perhaps she now calls Salamis her home and has no desire to come back to Troy. Perhaps she is quite happy to be Telamon’s wife. Has King Priam considered that he may be funding an expedition for a fruitless quest and that it might be he who would be abducting Hesione after all these years have passed?”

  The Troyans could not answer my questions. I was reluctant, I told them, to spend my credit with Menelaus by encouraging him to aid in rescuing a woman who in all likelihood had no wish to be rescued. No doubt she had despaired of her lot at first, being taken from her homeland and given as a captive bride to a man she didn’t know or love; but since that time, many decades had come and gone. By now, Hesione’s children had children of their own.

  Paris bit his lip in disappointment. He had been so certain of my support. But in all good conscience, I could not see committing Sparta’s resources to endorse his father’s venture. “Well, it cannot be said that the woman doesn’t speak her mind,” he said.

  “Laconian women are renowned for their outspokenness. It is something my Mycenaean husband has, after nine years of marriage, finally begun to accept!” For different reasons, Menelaus and I had come to the same conclusion regarding the Troyans’ petition. My husband claimed we lacked sufficient capital at this difficult time, where I believed that Priam’s mission was self-serving and that the interests of the woman at the center of the controversy had not been taken into account and would not be honored by it.

  Menelaus was more reluctant to let his new princely friend depart in haste than he was to aid King Priam. Learning that they had no comparable festival in Ilios, he insisted that the Trojan ambassadors remain for the duration of Kronia, or at least through the first nine days, where one lived for
nothing but pleasure. This, too, I supported, though once again for entirely different reasons.

  “I understand you Troyans know something of horses,” I said, recalling the white Trojan mare Theseus had given me as a wedding gift. “Perhaps you two would like to ride with me later. I will show you the mountains where I played as a girl.”

  Aeneas demurred, preferring to talk of politics with Menelaus. “We are the best breeders of horses in the world,” boasted Paris Alexandros. “In fact, my brother Hector’s nickname is ‘Tamer of Horses.’ ”

  “My late brother Castor was called the ‘Breaker of Horses’!” I said with a laugh of recognition that quickly metamorphosed into a nostalgic stab of pain. Everything I had just wished for was everything I most feared. Only Paris and I would ride out together. As it was Kronia, it was not considered unseemly for the queen to be seen alone in the company of another man, particularly a foreign ambassador.

  We sent a servant to fetch our horses and walked out into the sunlight. “The Spartan king surprised me,” Paris said as we waited for our steeds.

  “Why? Did you really expect him to give you the ships?”

  “Yes. But that’s not what I allude to. He is a livelier man than I had been led to believe. And fonder of his wife, too, than I had imagined.”

  “It is you, not I, who has brought my husband’s conviviality to the surface. He sees in you a kindred spirit. And his mood is doubly light because he adores Kronia. For nine days a year he permits himself to be a boy again. It is the sporting contests and the mock combat that he most enjoys,” I added, hoping to convey my subtext: that it was not Kronia’s sexual libertinism that appealed to Menelaus. “And when his heart is light, he even praises me. For the rest of the year, he is a victim of his jealousies, and he does not hide from me how burdensome he often finds it to be married to the most beautiful woman in the world. I am a weighty possession then, but now he sees his chance to flaunt Sparta’s greatest treasure before a prince of powerful Troy.”