The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  “Sh-shhh,” I soothed. “If it salves your conscience, Menelaus played you false, coming up behind you like that and grabbing your helmet. But you miscalculated him. He is not a gentleman on the field of battle. He fought to win at any cost, but fought dishonorably.” I helped my husband into the bath and sponged the dirt from his flawless golden skin, caressing each part of his body as though its mere existence was a gift to me. And then I stripped bare, letting my robe and gown puddle about my feet in a swirling eddy of sea-green silk and climbed into the great tub opposite the owner of my heart. I wrapped my legs about his waist and drew him toward me. “Thank you for staying alive,” I whispered into his mouth. And when I felt the greatest manifestation of his mortality pierce the soft flesh between my thighs, his life had never been dearer to me than at that moment.

  Later, lying on scented sheets, our idyll was interrupted by a messenger bearing urgent news: Paris Alexandros having fled from the field, Menelaus had proclaimed himself the victor, striding pridefully through the Troyan ranks, taunting them for their prince’s cowardice and demanding my immediate return. Although they bore no love for Paris Alexandros, Menelaus’s gloating so angered the Troyans that one of their number, Pandarus, a master archer, took aim at the son of Atreus and let loose a deadly shaft. It hit the target but did not bring death, merely wounding Menelaus in an unprotected area of his shin.

  It was enough to reignite the battle, bringing to a swift conclusion the all-too-brief ceasefire. That day, Ajax the Greater and noble Hector fought to an exhausting draw. Diomedes, a butcher with his sword, twice slashed the valiant Aeneas, Alexander’s kinsman, one blow slicing dangerously close to his eye, the second gash leaving a deep wound in his chest.

  Lying on the battlefield surrounded by the clash of arms and hovering between life and Elysium, Aeneas had a vision of his mother Aphrodite lifting him from the fray. But no sooner had she borne him aloft than Diomedes lunged for the goddess, slicing open her soft white hand. The dark ichor spilled copiously from her wound, causing her to release her precious burden. As Aeneas plummeted toward the bloody earth and his injured, sobbing mother soared home for Olympus, the dying Troyan was sure that the lord of light, Apollo himself, had descended into the skirmish and swept him to safety, for Aeneas could not recall how he came to be brought home to his bed.

  Paris Alexandros and I prayed for his swift recovery; a few days later we were gladdened to learn that Aeneas, although still feverish and in tremendous pain, had cheated Thanatos from his mortal grip. Yet I derived no consolation from believing that the life of loyal Aeneas had been spared so that he might once again set foot upon the open plain.

  For those who still seek to blame me for all the years of carnage, I wish to remind them that just once, for a few terrifying moments under the blazing Anatolian sun, did the only two warriors with a genuine stake in the conflict take up arms to fight for Helen.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  And the violence continued to escalate with vertiginous speed. Achilles still refused to fight; and his pride, which served us well, cost the Achaeans dearly. Hector had never been fiercer or more formidable. Numberless Greeks were silenced by his spear, demoralizing the enemy even further. There was rejoicing within the walls of Ilios the day our herald reported to Priam that Agamemnon was considering decamping and returning to Argos. His men had been decimated by death, casualties, drought, lice, and plague, and still the Argive host was no closer to their goal. Ilios remained impenetrable.

  What the Achaeans did not realize was that this shining citadel of their warlike dreams no longer gleamed. The quarters Priam had constructed to house the citizens from the lower city had quickly become repositories of filth, stench, and squalor. The lower city was now almost empty of its residents, and in the low buildings within the upper city’s battlement walls, several relatives, and sometimes more than one family, dwelled in a single room.

  Food was rationed. Decisions were made to cease leaving cuts of meat at the sacred altars because the people needed it more than the gods. The pithoi that contained the hoarded stores were dug up from the floors of beaten earth where they had been embedded in order to make room for the dead. The tiny bodies of stillborn babies or those who died soon after their birth, were buried by their mothers beneath the floors. Pregnant women prayed to Athena to send them boy children only, for life had become so hard that girls, who of course would never become soldiers, were considered unnecessary mouths to feed and were taken to the mountaintops and abandoned.

  Nearby villages and islands, having been plundered for years by both armies, had become so depleted that they had no more bounty to yield. After such a lengthy siege, with all supplies of grain and produce, dried meat and fish, wine and water having dwindled substantially or become fully exhausted, the citizens of Ilios were slowly starving. Neither was the royal family immune from deprivation. Silks and brocades, perfumes and unguents, gold and jewels, could not fill our bellies, nor could they be sold to purchase food that simply did not exist.

  As a military strategy, we endeavored to hide our condition from the Achaeans.

  Old Nestor of Pylos tried to convince the demoralized Agamemnon to remain in Troy. The Greeks had suffered so much for so long: How could they return home with nothing? He was sure that the Achaeans were losing the war because the High King had angered Achilles. If the proud young warrior and his fearsome Myrmidons would fight once more, the tides would most certainly turn in the Achaeans’ favor. After a great deal of agonized deliberation, Agamemnon heeded his aged confederate’s counsel. Choking on his own hubris, he made grand overtures to Achilles in front of the entire army, offering him numerous lavish gifts of goods and slave women, including Briseis, if he would return to the field.

  High in the citadel we held our breath, awaiting the young hero’s response.

  Achilles said no.

  Zeus was on our side. Or so we believed.

  Many of the Achaean ships had been damaged over the years by the weather. The devastating drought had further dried the wood until the hulls cracked and split. Hector elected to hasten their demolishment, organizing a campaign to burn them. And it was sweet music to the Troyans’ ears to learn that Achilles still refused to fight unless his own vessels fell victim to the Wilusan torches.

  Down by the ships, the skirmish begun in darkness raged on. Firebrands shot from the beachhead under cover of the tamarisk bushes immolated some of the desiccated hulls. The sailors slumbering on board awakened to terrified cries of “Fire!” Rubbing the sleep from their encrusted eyelids, they raced on deck with their bows and spears. By dawn, Achaean and Troyan alike stained the golden sand with their winedark blood.

  By Hector’s orders, Achilles’s ships were spared. And the proud and petulant Thessalian warrior, true to his word, remained in his tent, strumming his lyre and serenading his flowing-haired kinsman, the sweet-natured Patroclus.

  We had lost many men on the beach, but the Achaeans’ deaths greatly outnumbered ours, and Priam was jubilant. Hector had carried the day. The most glorious news of all was that Achilles had decided to take his ships and his Myrmidons and sail home on the next day’s tides.

  But war is a fickle and unpredictable monstrosity. The battle on the beach resumed the second day at first light, but this time there was no cause for celebration. Priam’s herald reported the worst. It appeared that Achilles had changed his mind.

  Hector had been in the thick of the skirmish when a shout rose up among the Achaeans. Bearing down on the Troyans like a fiend released from darkest Tartarus was their greatest nemesis, his unmistakable bronze armor glittering in the bright sunlight, the majestic horsehair crest on his shining helmet nodding defiantly in the sea breeze.

  The Troyans seized their opportunity to vanquish their most formidable adversary, and, nearly to a man, set him in their sights. But Achilles was a fighting machine that day, and countless Troyans were felled by his two spears and his silver-studded sword of bronze. Toward dusk, one of Hector’s men
, Euphorbus, wounded the great Achaean warrior with his spear, finding a chink in the great breastplate just below the collarbone; as Achilles’s weapons failed him, Hector himself struck the fatal blow with his sword, plunging the blade to its hilt into his adversary’s belly.

  The splendid helmet toppled to the bloody earth. Its wearer collapsed in the dust, and noble Hector released an anguished cry. For it was not the spear-famed Achilles who had succumbed to death at the point of Hector’s sword, but his kinsman Patroclus.

  Believing that once the enemy glimpsed his armor, they would draw back in fear, thus giving the exhausted Achaeans a chance to regroup, Achilles had acquiesced to Patroclus’s request to don his elaborate arms and go forth amongst the Troyans. And once in the thick of the fray, the young man who had seen little of the battle, having reluctantly remained under the aegis of his cousin, had become a force to be reckoned with. It was as if the very act of wearing Achilles’s armor had somehow given Patroclus his kinsman’s near-mythical skill and strength as a warrior.

  Nothing is simple in the heat of battle. Although Patroclus had decimated our number with demonic fury and thrice attempted to scale the citadel wall, Hector in fact repented delivering the final, fatal blow. “It should have been his better,” he said of the lesser warrior whose courage that day had admittedly been nothing short of daunting.

  But no one within Troy’s walls grieved for Patroclus as I did. Indeed, he had slaughtered men I’d known, granting them neither mercy nor reprieve, and for that I accounted him an enemy. But in a corner of my mind, perhaps even in a tiny chamber of my heart, there was a place where dwelt the memory of a gentle youthful stripling, not much older than a boy, not yet a man, who was the only person I had ever known who I can truly say possessed a spaniel’s unfaltering loyalty. Even though Patroclus was a few years older than his cousin Achilles, he had always been happy to submit to the stronger man’s will; happily reversing custom to be the eromenos to the younger man’s erastes, looking up to him as a superior and following his lead with devotion and constancy. So clearly I recalled our conversations of nearly a generation ago when Patroclus had rhapsodized about his beloved wild horses that galloped so proudly across the Thessalian plains. Despite his butchery on the battlefield, I would somehow forever remember him as a gentle spirit.

  My tears angered Paris Alexandros. He believed them treacherous and thought that they bore out my true allegiances. I remember the bitter words that flew from his mouth; how they stung me like nettles. “Go to them, then, your Greeks! And see if they welcome the woman they call ‘Helen the harlot of Sparta’ the way the Wilusans have embraced you all these years.”

  “My people are here, within these walls,” I insisted. “How can you possibly doubt my love for you, for your father, and for noble Hector? As for the rest of your kin and countrymen, I look upon them as my own and have done so for many years, despite their reluctance to accept me, despite their vicious accusations that I am the scourge of their existence and the author of this savage war. Have I ever given you cause to question my fidelity to you and to all of Ilios?”

  Begrudgingly, he acknowledged that I spoke the truth.

  “I mourn a time of innocence and lost youth as much as I grieve for Patroclus,” I added. “This war has changed all of us. I am not the woman I was when I left my husband and homeland for the ecstasy of your arms. I thought then that I would never know a greater pain than the one I felt at having chosen to abandon my children. Since then, I have seen, and heard, of loved ones slain, the blameless slaughtered.” I thought of poor Iphigenia and was racked once more with sobs. “You have been by my side every day. I have no greater confidant; yet you can never comprehend the depths of despair to which I have on occasion descended. To now challenge my love and loyalty is to give me even a moment’s regret for my decision. It is an unwise test at best.”

  He was silent for several moments. Then Paris Alexandros reached for my hand and gently drew me close. He was never one to remain vexed; certainly not with me. His anger would flare like a lightning bolt but diffused nearly as swiftly. He drank my tears of anger, tears of sorrow, and made love to me so gently that night it was as though he were afraid that I might snap apart in his arms.

  My tears for Patroclus were but drops in the blue Aegean compared with those of Achilles. And his fury knew no bounds. We learned that he had rent his garments and torn his hair like a woman, blaming himself for permitting Patroclus to don his all-too-recognizable armor. Although the High King had finally returned Briseis to him, Achilles no longer needed Agamemnon’s bribery in order to take up arms once more; in fact, he thirsted for Troyan blood, especially eager to spill Hector’s. Spoiling to fight and vowing a bloody and swift retribution, Achilles paced in his tent like a tiger, impatiently waiting for another set of armor, for Hector had stripped the corpse and now wore Achilles’s armaments as his own, a customary spoil of battle.

  After a day and a night had passed, Achilles emerged, wearing such spectacular armor it was whispered that the god Hephaestus himself had forged it as a favor to Achilles’s immortal mother, Thetis. The elaborately wrought shield depicted in minutest detail scenes of city life and pastoral idylls. It had a triple rim, five folds thick, and was constructed of gold and silver, bronze and tin. Even his shield strap had been cast from silver. The corselet gleamed like the sun; his leg armor was fashioned from pliable tin. The magnificent helmet was massive in size but fitted close to the temples with a golden ridge along the top. It, too, bore lovely and intricate tool work. His weapon of choice was the ash spear of his aged father Peleus. It was longer and had greater heft than other javelins, and only Achilles was said to be able to throw it, for it was too unwieldy for any other warrior. Fascinating to me, who knew nothing of soldiering, was that despite the ornate carapace that protected nearly inch of his body, Achilles, like the other Achaeans, preferred to fight in sandals rather than in sturdier footgear, such as the boots worn by Paris Alexandros and many of the other Troyans.

  With Achilles’s return, the morale in the Achaean camp increased a hundredfold, and the Troyans, led by noble Hector, struggled to maintain their resolve. Never, he reminded the warriors, could the residents of Priam’s glorious city countenance their subjugation by the Achaean High King, whose greed knew no bounds. And as long as the men of Ilios fought so fiercely to defend their homes and families, I was safe, despite my fears.

  Andromache despaired more than ever for her beloved husband’s safety. She took to remaining at home, all but clinging to her loom, rather than venturing out on the wall to observe the warfare as she had so often done before. She was weaving a lavish bloodred robe and insisted, in the faraway tone a woman takes when her mind is troubled and unwell, that she had to finish it before Hector returned home from the field. Although her elder son Laodamas, who was nearly thirteen and still too young to fight, spent much of his days in the company of his numerous cousins, Andromache no longer left little Astyanax in the care of his nurse, but kept the baby beside her all the time, singing softly to him in his carved wooden cradle as she skillfully worked the warp and weft of the carmine-colored cloak. Naturally, she shunned my overtures to ease her spirit. Every day we feared the worst for our lords and should have been able to cleave to each other like sisters in our time of anguish, but Andromache still wanted nothing to do with me.

  Of course, my own sister had never provided any loving reassurance or a calming touch, and I suppose I always craved that kind of affection, having lost my mother when I was too young to fully appreciate the bounty of maternal love. Aethra had been wise, but ever judgmental, and once we left Aphidnae in the company of my brothers, she had become my inferior. From time to time I wondered what had become of Theseus’s mother. She would have been well advanced in years by now. Had she crossed the river Styx or did she still dwell among the living? Was she well? I had not received news from Sparta in years.

  During the first morning of Achilles’s return to battle, several brave Troyans ga
sped their last, having tasted the tip of his Pelian spear or the point of his sword. One of those who lost his life was Polydorus, the youngest of Priam’s fifty sons. Years earlier, Achilles had encountered the youth; impressed with his beauty, and out of respect for his noble lineage, he had spared him, selling him into slavery instead on the isle of Lemnos. But Polydorus had managed to escape his masters and return to Ilios; and in their second encounter on the banks of the river Xanthos, Achilles, in his rage and grief over the death of his beloved Patroclus, was unmerciful. The great Achaean vowed, too, that he would behead twelve young Troyans and pile their mangled corpses on his kinsman’s pyre as a fitting tribute of his love.

  It went hard for our warriors all day. Helios, passing above us in his chariot, scorched the earth with his blistering rays, dehydrating the men, who had neither refuge nor respite from the sweltering heat.

  In mid-afternoon, the encounter that everyone on both sides most anticipated—and most feared—finally happened. After ten agonizing years, after countless men had fallen to the dusty earth, choking on their own blood, the greatest Achaean and the finest Troyan, both wearing Achilles’s armor, faced each other.

  Hector’s supreme nobility and bravery, even in his direst moments, were a credit to his unimpeachable honor and that of the House of Priam, for in the thick of the fighting he drew Achilles toward him, allowing the Troyan ranks to take cover behind him and retreat to safety within the city walls. Paris Alexandros then climbed the wall and joined me on the battlements. After every one of his warriors was inside the great Scaean Gate, Hector stood his ground and faced down his most worthy adversary. His giant ash spear was formidable to behold: eleven cubits long, with a shining bronze tip and a ring of gold to hold it. His massive shield was covered by an entire ox hide. His young son Laodamas, eager to prove himself a hero, once tried to lift it and collapsed under its weight.