by Amanda Elyot
After a couple of years, when it was evident that no end to the conflict was on the horizon, and the Troyans’ ranks were being decimated, Priam emptied a goodly portion of his treasury and hired mercenaries. From the East came the Khita horsemen, sallow complected, small and fearsome, hairless but for their thin black beards, long mustaches, and flowing raven locks. Hatred blazed in their almond-shaped eyes. Even their horses were no larger than our Troyan ponies, but they managed to cut through the Achaean flanks, never flinching from the ceaseless clash and thud of leather, bronze, and wood.
In what might have seemed a joke, were it not that the deadly business of war had brought them to fight for the same army, the proud Nubian warriors led by Memnon, their glorious chieftain, were as tall as the Khita were diminutive. Rumor had it that the Nubians had marched to Ilios on foot all the way from their land well to the south of Egypt. These colorfully clad warriors, who fought bare chested and whose skin was the shade of carob pods, were renowned for their prowess with the spear. It was for that reason that Priam had solicited their aid, but things did not fare as well for them as the old king had expected. For one thing, the Nubians and the Khita distrusted one another, although both mercenary armies were fighting for the same side. The Achaean infantry were also far more formidable against the Nubian spears than any of the Troyans had imagined. And in what proved to be the most crushing blow of all, prideful Achilles cut down the giant Memnon with his great ash spear, the gift from his father Peleus, leaving the Nubian warriors entirely demoralized and subsequently vulnerable.
The situation was looking more dire for us by the day. And then one evening, I felt the bottom drop out of my world.
TWENTY-ONE
Along with the other Troyan royal wives, I had joined the men in their feasting hall and was approaching Paris Alexandros to take my customary position at his feet and to recline my head in his lap. He always looked forward to my appearance; it was his favorite part of the evening, when I would glide toward him with all eyes upon me, and he would favor me with a look that was loving and proud and desirous, as if to say to his kin, This is my woman, this vision. Can any of you dare to believe himself as fortunate as I?
But that night, he did not look in my direction. He did not even glance when I entered the room. His gaze was fixed upon another with the same passionate intent that I remembered transfixing his face on the night we met. He was rapt; his full attention given to an extraordinary-looking woman. And she was everything that I was not. In fact, I did not even realize that Paris Alexandros was listening to a woman until I drew nearer to them. Her dark hair was shorter than most of the men’s locks. Her body, even seated, was long and lean, like that of a runner: supremely athletic. Her attire was more manly than feminine as well. And yet she wore an air of feminine danger as if it were a cloak made from the skin of a mountain lion. How had this woman been permitted to dine with the men? And why was she here? Moreover, how had she so enchanted my husband—the man who continued to risk everything for my love?
Suddenly I was assaulted by an enemy I had never truly known: jealousy. It came upon me like a laurel-winning wrestler, grasping me about the midsection and leaving me gasping for air. This was no fleeting tinge of anxiety about the shepherd girl Oenone. The room swirled in and out of focus, and I nearly lost my balance. Had the last few years of my life led me to this? I had given up home, homeland, and family; I had abandoned my children. Was this my punishment, this woman the gods’ revenge for my infidelity to Menelaus?
She was everything I feared. I had always known that no woman could compete with my immortal beauty and my desirability. The gods had made sure that it would be so. No other female who might also have embodied every womanly charm had a chance. But somehow I sensed that one day there would come a woman who would personify everything I was not: lean where I was soft and curvy, boyish where I was feminine, and a fighter—where I was a lover.
I had to make a grand show of clearing my throat in order to secure Alexander’s attention. He looked up and clasped me by the hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing the tip of each lacquered fingertip. I felt a bit better. “Who is your new . . . lady acquaintance?” I inquired, my words honey coated. “Forgive my confusion, love, but I have been under the impression ever since you brought me to Ilios that women were not permitted to dine amongst the men.”
“No doubt you have heard of the Amazons,” said Paris Alexandros, still caressing my hand. Now I sensed that he was overcompensating and my terror returned. “They have volunteered to fight alongside us to defeat the Achaeans, as there is no love lost between them.”
I suddenly recalled that Theseus’s great love, Antiope, had been an Amazon princess. Were Amazon women always to come between me and my two great loves?
“This is Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons. Their archery is unsurpassed by any man, including myself,” he added, favoring the woman with a reverential gaze. “She has brought twelve of her warriors to join the Troyan forces on the battlefield.”
A warrior. Of course. She dined with the men because they somehow did not regard her as a woman. I was quite certain that all of her feminine charms were, however, perfectly functional; for those who believe that the Amazons lopped off a breast, the better to pull the bowstring, they are mistakenly deluded. Penthesilea had high, small breasts, barely larger than an adolescent’s, that assuredly would have presented no impediment to her marksmanship.
“You are fond of her,” I remarked to Paris Alexandros as we readied ourselves for bed. I had dusted our sheets with finely milled talcum scented with bergamot and left the oil lamp still burning so that we could see every plane and curve of each other’s anatomy by its golden light. In the gentle glow, Alexander’s eyes glittered like polished onyx.
“Is my Helen envious?” He reached out to brush a tendril of hair from my forehead.
I could not tell whether he was mocking me or truly incredulous that such a thing might be so. “I won’t give you the satisfaction of knowing the truth.”
“You are!”
I turned my face away from him and hid my head. Embarrassment was something I had banned from my life when I banished shame so many decades earlier. Now it crept back like a pest that bedevils the grain stores.
“You can’t mean to begrudge me an admiration I have for a fellow warrior?”
“You are wrong on both counts.”
“I have no idea what you mean. Helen, you confound me sometimes.”
“I’ll parse it out for you, then. First, I know you better than anyone has ever known you, and you looked at the Amazon with an ‘admiration’ that went far beyond an appreciation for her military and athletic prowess. I was once quite an athlete, too, if that’s what strikes your fancy nowadays. Second, you are not a ‘fellow warrior.’ In fact, you never cease to remind me—and your noble brother Hector, who has often urged you to don your armor—that you are a hunter and most emphatically not a warrior.”
Paris Alexandros released a defeated sigh. “All right, then. If I admit my attraction to Penthesilea, will there be an end to this silliness?”
He reached for me and I bristled at his choice of vocabulary. “Oh, no, my darling. I’m afraid it will be only the beginning.”
“My love, my life—my wife—Helen, there is no other woman in the world I would rather be with. Now, or ever. I swear by all the gods!”
I touched my finger to his soft lips to end the discussion. I wanted him to bed me right then, to reassure me; and yet, that seemed like the desire of a desperate woman. I was too proud for that. And so, for the first time since that life-altering night in Sparta’s sacred grove, Paris Alexandros and I did not make love.
Despite his apparent infatuation with Penthesilea, which I thought would have led the two of them to form a redoubtable partnership of archers, Artemis and Apollo incarnate, Paris Alexandros remained reluctant to engage in combat. He knew that the Troyans were at war not because of our love, but because of Agamemnon’s greed and Priam
’s stubbornness. Maintaining his belief that battle engendered nothing but death, Paris stayed above the fray. My husband found no harm in bringing down a beast with his great curved bow but saw no reason to kill a man.
But not too many days after she first dined in Priam’s hall, the Amazon did convince Paris Alexandros to make an appearance on the battlefield. I was terrified; if I lost my beloved, I lost everything. My own future, and my safety, were inextricably tied to his. I reminded my husband that it was not cowardice to abide by his beliefs. He was girding for battle not because he suddenly agreed with Hector that he was honor-bound to fight for his country, but because Penthesilea had challenged his manhood. The great siege of Ilios had become, for Paris Alexandros, an archery competition.
He excelled, however. Having witnessed his marksmanship on Mount Ida, I did not doubt but that he could bring down an Achaean with equal skill. My fears were not that his arrows would fly wide of the intended target but that my love himself would be felled by a bloodthirsty Greek. Once they could identify Paris Alexandros on the dusty plain, not even Hector could protect him. Word spread throughout the enemy camp that Paris had finally come out to fight, and nothing could surpass their hatred for him. With Paris Alexandros on the field, not even Hector, the greatest Troyan warrior, had as big a bounty on his head.
The twelve Amazons were formidable and fought valiantly for the Troyan side, but they were no match for an entire army of Achaeans. One by one, they fell, and their sisters-at-arms took their corpses from the field before the Greeks could defile them, until only their queen remained.
Amid the endless casualties and fatalities, the bloodcurdling battle cries, the thundering hoofbeats, and the harsh clang of bronze against bronze, amid the ugly symphony made by the sounds of dying men—death rattles, moans, the choking gurgle of blood emitting from the throat or frothing from a festering wound, and the smell of rotting or burning flesh—Paris Alexandros and I sought to take comfort in each other. Daily he reassured me of his love; knowing that he would be girding for battle the following morning, I feared that each night would be our last. Our bed was piled high with the softest fleeces, rugs, and sheets of purest linen. It became a haven, a safe harbor, from the horrors that surrounded us. In the midst of all the death, we celebrated life, exalting the beauty and sensual grace of each other’s bodies while below us on the plain, where horses once were pastured, men saw their final glimpse of Helios before they blinked their last and their eyes were closed forever.
How inextricable were the intimacy of battle, the passionate grappling and entwined limbs, and the intimacy of bed. How fascinating, and frightening, that the word which describes the collective frenzy of an army on the brink of war, or trapped within its throes, is the same one that defines a burning sexual passion: eros. Carnage and carnality were sons of the same sire, both words born in blood.
When Paris Alexandros fought, I was torn between watching his performance from the battlements and clinging to the shelter of my loom, pretending the world outside was a far different one. To occupy my darkest thoughts, I would prepare and scent his bath myself to welcome him home from a grueling day in the service of Troy. Even the slightest scratch I attended to with a potion of milk mixed with the juice of figs to ensure that the blood clotted properly and that his beautiful skin would fully heal.
My envy did gain the upper hand where Penthesilea was concerned. It possessed me like a dark spirit and suffocated all reason, like a fantastical creature that warps the psyche and distorts the mind, and I finally understood what drove Clytemnestra all those years.
After all her sister warriors had been killed, Paris Alexandros took it upon himself to look out for Penthesilea, something which, it pleased me to note, did not sit well with the fiercely independent Amazon queen. She was quite a sight on the field, her muscled golden body shown to advantage in her short tunic; her long legs laced into high sandals, protected by decorated greaves. Her quiver, too, was elaborately decorated, and she wore a crested, plumed helmet like the men. Indeed, she was a brave and admirable warrior, possessed of a courage that was daunting. But Paris Alexandros could not prevent the inevitable.
Achilles was on the plain, cutting down the Troyans and our mercenaries as if they were complacent cattle. I had heard that he admired Penthesilea almost as much as Paris Alexandros did; but to the spear-famed Achilles, the warrior queen was a glittering battle trophy. One afternoon, as the departing Helios cast his passing shadows on the open plain beyond the city walls, the last Amazon tasted the brazen tip of Achilles’s spear. From the south tower I watched her fall, her taut body crumpling to the dust. And then, the unthinkable happened.
As Penthesilea appeared to be gasping her final breaths, the powerful Achilles claimed his prize. Despite the clamor raging about them, the Achaean knelt; and straddling the Amazon’s broken body, forced himself upon her, spilling her virgin blood as the winedark lifeblood poured forth from the wound in her chest. Stripping the fallen enemy’s armor as a spoil of battle was an accepted custom. But where in the rules of engagement was it written that a warrior could rape the dying—or already dead—body of his opponent?
I was sick. It was not the overwhelming summer heat that made me vomit all over the smooth paving stones. I would have killed Achilles myself and vowed to do so if I ever had the opportunity.
Penthesilea’s death and defilement at the hands of brutal Achilles drove Paris Alexandros deeper into the fighting. Where the entire Greek army thirsted for his blood, because—under Agamemnon’s exhortation—they accepted our elopement as a personal insult to every marriage in Achaea, Paris Alexandros, with a murderous rage I had never seen, took the violation of Penthesilea as a deeply personal affront and cut down every Achaean who came within range of his arrows.
There are no “good” days during a war. Even when your army claims to have inflicted more injuries and caused more fatalities than they have suffered themselves, it is not a fit time for rejoicing. Every one of those mangled bodies, while anonymous to the rest of us, had a mother who pushed that once-tiny, nearly helpless being through her narrow loins, screaming from the agonizing pains of childbirth; her body should not have had to experience such pain anew at the loss of the son whom she was doomed to outlive.
By that time, if my son Idaeus had been a Spartan, the elders would have already whisked him off to the agogi. I was glad that no such system existed in Ilios, where the emphasis was placed on nurturing families rather than on breeding soldiers.
Andromache was a wonderful mother, lavishing affection and attention on her young son Laodamas, without turning him into a spoiled little boy. For this she was much admired by her many sisters-in-law, and I sought to emulate her maternal behavior with Idaeus. In truth, I treated Idaeus with no less love than that which I had so happily bestowed on my Spartan sons; but I somehow reasoned that if I was seen by the royal household to be as good a mother as Andromache—as wise, as benevolent, as doting—that my children and I would finally gain their favor. I was more concerned for my children than for myself. Idaeus and little Helen suffered from ostracism similar to that which I had so painfully endured as a girl. I understood their sorrow as well as their outrage.
Hector, the voice of reason, commanded tremendous respect, and it was to him I quietly sued. Of the royal multitude, only Hector somehow managed to find the time to make my children feel as though they were part of his enormous family. He would teach Idaeus how to build a toy boat, or he would carve a doll for little Helen; and for his generosity of spirit as well as his gifts, I was grateful. But Hector could not influence Andromache or the other women of the great family to emulate his gracious, avuncular behavior. Queen Hecuba and Andromache held sway in the domestic sphere, and their comportment in all things concerning home and hearth was roundly imitated by the other wives and mothers.
My outcast children were innocents, caught in a web fashioned by their own extended family. The Troyans’ behavior was of course designed to torment me and Paris
Alexandros as well. My beloved petitioned his parents to put a stop to the cruelty. Priam, who was usually kind to me and who bore my children no particular ill will, laughed at his son for daring to trouble him with such trivialities. Hecuba, their own grandmother, replied that Idaeus and Helen only got treated as they deserved. In denying our children their royal birthright, Hecuba was still punishing Paris Alexandros for living. Fated to bring ruin to his homeland, he was supposed to have died on Mount Ida. Had Paris Alexandros perished there, the queen maintained, perhaps the Achaeans would not be butchering his brethren outside the city walls.
Hecuba was punishing me for being faithless. In her eyes I would always be the Spartan harlot, still wed to Menelaus. She outranked her son and me, and thus could wield her power over us. The indomitable Hecuba placed the utmost store in marital fidelity. How, I wondered, had she made her peace with the daily reminders of her husband’s dalliances, in the persons of Priam’s numerous bastards sired on his concubines? Those offspring did not suffer the humiliations that my children did at the hands of their own relations.