The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  Clutching Alexander’s arm, I watched the standoff from the wall, alongside the fearful Priam and Hecuba. Andromache, having willfully retreated to the safe little world inside her mind, remained at home. We held our breath. Queen Hecuba was gripping her husband’s hand, her knuckles clenched so tightly that her skin had turned a bluish white.

  Suddenly, like a mountain hare, Hector began to run, sprinting around the high walls with Achilles in hot pursuit, the Achaean unable to unleash his great spear for fear of missing his moving target. They passed below our watching point and headed for the windy fig tree. Around the walls they raced as we scrambled to follow their progress, dashing across the battlements from one side to the other. By the river Scamander, two natural springs, one hot and the other cold, jetted up the salty waters, the warriors swiftly passed them, flying toward the stone hollows where, in peaceful times, the Troyan women did their washing.

  As fleet as Hermes, Hector led Achilles on a harrowing chase. After a second circuit of the citadel walls it was evident that he wished to tire his enemy before the combat began in earnest. The noble Hector then began his third revolution, maintaining just enough of a distance between himself and his pursuer to prevent Achilles from throwing his javelin.

  But—to our dismay—Achilles did not flag, and on the ramparts we clutched our robes, or one another, and called upon the gods to maintain Hector’s strength and grant him victory.

  By the time Hector had passed the wellsprings for a fourth time, he was clearly spent. He halted, staggering, and called Achilles’s name, daring the Achaean to do his worst.

  Achilles unleashed the great Pelian ash spear, and Hector, ducking from its trajectory, dropped to one knee. High above them on the sunbaked wall, terror gripped our throats. Perhaps we looked away for the briefest of instants and shielded our eyes from witnessing the unthinkable, as if to prevent its occurrence, but somehow Achilles’s spear, though it had fallen wide of Hector’s body, was now back in the Achaean’s hand.

  Hector rose to his feet and opened his arms. He taunted his opponent, telling him that he would meet his spear head-on, and then let fly his own. Hector’s aim was true, and peeking through parted fingers, we watched it sail toward Achilles.

  Thumph! The javelin struck the Greek’s enormous shield, lodging in its center. Hector called for another spear, as if another warrior stood beside him waiting to do his bidding. But there was no one else on the dusty ground except himself and his nemesis, and with his life in the balance, not another moment could be spared.

  His spear gone and lacking another to replace it, Hector drew his sword and lunged for Achilles, hoping to swoop beneath him and discover a vulnerable chink in the elaborate armor.

  He continued to slash and Achilles jumped back, increasing the distance between them. And then . . . as if each fractured movement had been slowed by time . . . Achilles raised his arm, his gazed fixed on Hector’s corselet—on the very hole near the collarbone that Hector himself had located two days earlier, enabling him to dispatch Patroclus to Hades.

  The brazen head, so sharp, so deadly, plunged into Hector’s pliant flesh, his blood erupting from the puncture as though it were a crimson geyser. I flung my arms around Paris Alexandros; cleaving to each other, we wept bitter, anguished tears. Hecuba shrieked and sank to the paving stones, clasping her aged husband about the legs like a suppliant. Priam raised his fists, roaring and raging at the sky gods as though his own life were ebbing from his lungs. His firstborn son’s final words echoed off the city walls. “Give my body to my family,” Hector gasped. “You must permit them the proper funeral rites. And Priam will give you riches beyond measure, slave women . . . gold . . .”

  And that was all.

  I saw Achilles shake his head and toss his spear beside Hector’s lifeless body.

  The noblest man I’d ever known had met his end. I was not the only one in the city who believed that as Hector went, there went Ilios. The Achaeans began to gather around the fallen hero and gaze upon him as if he were a mythical curiosity, like a centaur, half man, half beast. I could have killed Diomedes with my own hands for sneering that the worthy Hector was not so formidable after all.

  Someone summoned Achilles’s chariot and I thought that perhaps, if for no other reason than for the respect he bore him as a warrior, the victor had decided to honor Hector’s dying request. But hatred had taken up residence in Achilles’s heart. With the tip of his spear, he bore holes straight through Hector’s tendons between the ankle and heel. He unbuckled his fancy tin greaves and unlaced his sandals far enough to rip off two lengths of ox hide, which he fashioned into thongs, threading them through Hector’s mangled ankles; then he secured the defiled corpse to the axle of his chariot. This accomplished, he stripped the armor from Hector’s body and tossed it in to the horse-drawn car.

  Hecuba had staggered to her feet, using her husband’s feeble form to help regain her balance. At the crack of Achilles’s whip, the horses bolted forward, dragging noble Hector’s body across the dusty plain, and the proud queen tossed her headdress upon the paving stones and tore out fistfuls of her hair.

  I reached out to embrace her. I, too, knew what it was like to lose a child to brutal death, although I had not witnessed my Iphigenia’s slaughter. Hecuba and Priam had seen most of their sons cut down by the Achaeans, but the firstborn Hector, dearest son of all to Hecuba, had been the hope of Ilios, and now his light was dimmed forever. Cruelest of all was Achilles’s vengeful debasement of his body, conduct unbecoming the Achaean’s illustrious reputation. And yet I should not have been so surprised at Achilles’s behavior, given his brutal rape of Penthesilea as she breathed her last on the blood-soaked field. Hector and Achilles were indeed the finest warriors in each of the two opposing armies, but Achilles was as dishonorable as Hector was noble.

  Someone had to tell Andromache the devastating news. Priam and Hecuba still clung to each other in horror as they watched Achilles savagely drag their son’s corpse around the walls of the city in hideous mockery of the chase on which Hector had led him just prior to their combat.

  “I will go,” I said, cradling Alexander’s face between my hands as if to search there for some sign of Hector. “She cannot despise me any more than she already does. And perhaps I do deserve the full measure of her fury and her grief.”

  “Let me accompany you,” insisted Paris Alexandros, his eyelids already swollen with weeping for his beloved brother. “As I am now the first son of Troy, it should be my duty to bear the bad tidings.”

  As we descended the wall, he momentarily lost his footing and stumbled into me. I steadied him, and looking into his eyes, saw that they were still misted over with tears. We lingered several minutes on the steps, and I held my husband close, his anguished tears drenching my breast. “I wish I had known him all my life,” he said between muffled sobs. “I never believed I had missed anything by growing up on Mount Ida, but now I realize how much I lost. There never was a better man, a better warrior, a better father, than Hector.”

  “And a better friend,” I added, for surely no one else in Ilios had befriended me when I arrived so many years ago. I, too, loved Hector like a brother. “Let’s dry your tears,” I suggested to Paris Alexandros, “before we enter Hector’s home.” We did our best, but our red-rimmed eyes betrayed the dreadful outcome of the combat.

  We found Andromache at her loom, weaving elaborate figures into the bloodred robe. Beside her, little Astyanax fretted in his cradle, but she appeared deaf to his whimpering. “I heard the hue and cry from the walls,” she said numbly, not turning from her weaving. “I must hurry up and finish.” Her fingers worked the weft at a feverish pace. “I must be ready to greet Hector when he comes home.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Unfortunately, Andromache had too much time in which to complete the garment that would become her husband’s shroud. The next day, Achilles once again hitched Hector’s broken body to his chariot and dragged it over the sand, around the pyre he’d ere
cted for the fallen Patroclus. At dusk, he dumped the battered corpse outside his tent, beside the monument. At sunup the following morning, he repeated the day-long defilement.

  Meanwhile, beyond the walls of Troy, the battle raged on, and down by the ships, the Achaeans hosted funeral games for Patroclus. Prizes taken from the spoils that lay stored within their vessels’ hulls—weapons, cauldrons, and tripods, as well as horses, cattle, mules, and even slave women—were awarded to the victors.

  Perhaps an understanding of the nature of warfare is necessary to admit this irony: that a man heralded as a paragon of gentleness and compassion can be a bloodthirsty demon from dawn to sundown on the battlefield. That which the vanquished call butchery is considered valor by his comrades-in-arms. Over his anointed body, Patroclus’s loving spirit and unshakable loyalty were lauded by his countrymen. It was said that even his two beloved horses wept at his death.

  True to his dastardly promise, Achilles slit the throats of twelve Troyan youths and piled their bodies atop the pyre. Two of Patroclus’s favorite dogs and four horses also forfeited their lives to grace the tomb. Finally, the funeral mound was torched, and when the acrid flames died out, the pyre was doused with wine.

  Above them, all of Ilios was devastated by the loss of our greatest warrior. Even I, whose love for Paris Alexandros never wavered, could admit that Hector was our finest man in every way. The loss of twelve boys, innocents in the conflict, further angered and saddened us. But there had been no greater insult to Troy than Achilles’s repeated and prolonged debasement of Hector’s body.

  Andromache chopped off her flowing chestnut tresses and walled herself within her home, refusing to step outside or to speak to anyone. Even Priam and Hecuba could not console her.

  During the nearly thirteen years that had passed since I’d come to Ilios, Hecuba had never been more than civil to me, and often far less than that; but though we had never made peace with each other, I sought to mourn with her, hoping she would accept my words of condolence. However, she rebuffed my overtures, berating me for cutting only a few locks from the ends of my hair, rather than submitting myself to be shorn like a sheep, as was the custom for women in mourning. Even when my beloved brothers died, I did not divest myself of my flowing tresses. That was never my way. I did not appreciate my devotion to the dead being questioned or challenged by those who sought to dishonor me as well.

  Priam, having scarcely slept since Hector’s death, looking even more aged and defeated than I had ever seen him, rolled himself in dung and refused to bathe or change his garments. He cursed his surviving sons, including Deiphobus and Paris Alexandros, berating them for their ineptitude as warriors and wishing they, too, had been killed alongside Hector. He had sent his herald to Achilles’s tent to offer him untold wealth; and the youngest Troyan princess, Polyxena, who had once fancied the illustrious Achaean, having discovered that he loved wild horses as much as she did, sent word that she would bestow Achilles her golden bracelets as a keepsake, or else as an offering for Patroclus’s tomb. But Achilles was deaf to Priam’s overtures and entreaties by proxy. For twelve days he drove his chariot around his kinsman’s pyre, dragging the corpse of Hector behind it.

  I was in the Great Hall when Priam decided to make his petition in person. I remember how Hecuba railed at him for his foolhardiness. “How simple would it be for that butcher to run you through with his spear? If he lacks all respect for Hector, how do you think he will treat the hero’s father who never once took the field himself and now comes to him like an ancient stable boy reeking of manure, imploring the mercy he has so flagrantly denied us for a dozen days?”

  But Priam would not hear reason, not even from his beloved wife, who undoubtedly wanted her son returned as much as he did. Hecuba retreated to their living quarters, and Priam dismissed his counselors and remaining sons, including the pugnacious Deiphobus, who looked less sorry about Hector’s demise than I thought he should. I told Paris Alexandros that I wished to take a moment to speak privately with his father, promising to meet him at home as soon as our talk had been concluded.

  The aged patriarch, who once appeared so regal and imperious now seemed dwarfed by his great throne and his bull-horned crown. He looked very much alone. Inured to the stench of his person, I approached him, divulging only the portion of the plan to ransom Hector that I had so painfully devised. I had not made such an agonizing decision since I had resolved to abandon my children in Sparta. Neither were choices I had made lightly, and each time the risks were at least as great as the reward.

  “Relieve your herald of his duties tonight. I will make the journey to Achilles’s tent with you,” I told him. “The young warrior and I are both Achaean, both half mortal. Because of that common ground, I expect that he will hear me out. No one but you and I—not even my beloved Paris Alexandros—will know that I have accompanied you. Nor can they ever learn the truth. Sire, you have always been kind to me,” I added, lowering myself to kiss the foul hem of his besmirched robe. “I ask you to trust me now. Hector was a brother to me, my first and only true friend in Ilios. For the sake of the love I bore him, I want to help you reclaim his corpse.”

  Reluctantly, Priam agreed to my request. But I could not be certain that its secrecy would be honored. The king’s age as well as his grief made him prone to babble.

  Ordinarily, it is a blessing when spouses are so well in tune that a husband can easily detect the slightest anxiety in his wife’s countenance, in the sound of her voice, and in the nearly imperceptible shift in the language of her body. But Paris Alexandros most of all had to remain ignorant of my design. I had never been dishonest with him, never given him cause to doubt my love or my devotion, but I knew he would despair if I had told him that I was going to enter the Achaean camp with Priam. He might even try to prevent my leaving, or insist on joining me, thereby putting his own life in jeopardy.

  I boiled a handful of Anatolian poppies, distilling the liquid into a tisane. Since Hector’s death, Andromache and Hecuba, seeking solace from their grief, had consumed such a brew in abundance. Before we retired for bed, I brought a cup of the tisane to my beloved lord, holding him until he was carried off by Hypnos into a peaceful and innocent slumber.

  Then I anointed my body and hair with fragrant oils, perfuming my skin with an irresistibly aromatic elixir and artfully applying my cosmetics. My softest silk chiton floated over my bare skin like a whisper. Over that I donned a robe the color of night and covered my face and shining hair with a heavy woven shawl. Carrying my sandals, I noiselessly crept out of our home and met Priam outside on the pergamos.

  Another lifetime ago, once or twice I had managed to convince Menelaus to let me drive one of our chariots. The experience had not especially prepared me to manage a mule cart; but I could not permit a servant, or even Priam’s herald, to see me leave the citadel and descend into the Achaean encampment; therefore, I had to take the reins myself. Priam had loaded the wagon with the treasure he intended to give Achilles in exchange for Hector’s release. We hoped to be able to bring back his battered corpse on the emptied cart.

  When I arrived at the wagon, it had already been laden with a dozen each of robes, mantles, blankets, white cloaks, and tunics. Added to that were ten talents of gold, a pair of shining tripods, four copious cauldrons, and an ornately wrought Thracian goblet.

  Suddenly, I heard a sound coming from the direction of the palace, and I darted for cover amid the darkness.

  Hecuba came running down the steps with a golden cup and a mixing bowl. “You must first pour a libation to the gods,” she implored. “In our grief, we must not forget to propitiate them.” Priam mixed the wine with water and spilled it on the paving stones, staining them purple. The queen threw her arms about her husband’s neck, and kissing his forehead, eyelids, mouth, and cheeks, and then what must have been every hair in his long white beard, she urged him to be ever vigilant on his most dangerous errand. “For the Achaeans are treacherous and untrustworthy,” she reminded
him, “and would not think twice about seizing their opportunity to murder you or to detain you in their camp and hold your enfeebled body for ransom.”

  Priam managed a brave chuckle. “After so many years of marriage, you have so little faith in the king.” Once more he embraced the weeping Hecuba. I watched her climb the palace steps and waited until she was safely indoors before I emerged from my hiding place into the silver-blue moonlight; then I helped the old king onto the wagon.

  Priam’s guards opened the Scaean Gate, and we passed through its enormous jointed limestone blocks. We crossed the plaza where Hector had so bravely met his end, the dust now still and silent, unyielding of its secrets. I could have approached the Achaean encampment from the south, driving across the plain whose thirsty earth had absorbed the winedark blood of so many thousands of warriors over the years, but I chose to drive the wagon through the lower city instead. It had been so long since I had visited the winding narrow streets, the houses densely set together, the marketplace. I was shocked to find it so deserted. I realized that the town was quiet not because its residents slumbered, but because most of the homes themselves had lain empty for ages. The wind hissed eerily through tattered sheets that had been hung to dry several seasons ago. The clatter of our wagon as it rolled and bounced along the cobbled lanes echoed off the mud and brick walls of the abandoned buildings and surely would have disclosed our presence had there been souls to hear it.

  When we reached the second gate, Priam gave a signal and it was opened by his guards. Another group of royal guards bridged the trench with wooden planks, and we drove over it and descended the bluffs, riding down the beach into the Achaean camp. The Greeks had fenced themselves in with pickets and a bolted gateway. Our wagon was halted and Priam identified himself. He was scoffed at, disbelieved, and we were ordered to wait. Many agonizing minutes passed until, finally, we were approached by one of the commanders.