The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  “Who comes from Ilios into our encampment?” he demanded.

  The voice was one I could never forget no matter how many years had come and gone. It was Menelaus who had spoken. My heart leapt from my chest into my throat. I turned away so that I could not be identified in any way. My former husband did of course recognize Priam. “Who is that?” he asked the king. He must have been inquiring about me.

  “No one. A slave,” answered Priam. “Once he has delivered me to the great Achilles’s tent, he will not stir from where he sits. I give you my pledge.”

  It nearly broke my heart to hear the proud king refer with veneration to the butcher of so many of his sons. How much he adored Hector to so abase himself!

  Menelaus let us continue on our errand but walked silently alongside the wagon as though he were an honor guard. I wanted to look at him, to see from a closer vantage than the walls of Ilios how the years had changed him, but I dared not even toss so much as a single glance in his direction.

  We then encountered Odysseus, who exchanged a few words with Menelaus about Priam’s visit; then Menelaus turned away and headed for his own tent, leaving us in the company of the crafty Ithacan. Time had not altered my opinion of that man. I still mistrusted him.

  I drove on until we came upon the tomb of Patroclus, ringed with flaming torches that had been planted in the sand. Facedown beside it lay the dirt-encrusted body of noble Hector. Even in his death, the gods must have looked upon his form with favor, for his face and limbs had not been disfigured by decay.

  Priam wept openly when he saw his son’s corpse thus abused. I halted the mule beside a clump of tamarisk bushes, and Odysseus helped him descend from the wagon. Achilles’s tent was the one closest to his kinsman’s pyre. A fire blazed from a hearth at its center, and through the fabric I discerned the forms of three men and a woman.

  The king told Odysseus that he needed to give his slave some orders, then approached me where I sat atop the wagon, the reins still in my hands. “Pray for my success,” he murmured.

  “You go in alone,” I whispered to Priam in the Phrygian tongue. “I’ll stay by the wagon as you promised them. I can see and hear everything from out here.” I never intended for the Achaeans to know that Helen was there, not unless it was absolutely necessary—something I feared might come to pass.

  Odysseus parted the leather flaps, and Priam stooped to enter the pavilion. The shadow of Achilles rose to greet him. A few moments later, Odysseus, two warriors, and the woman, who I guessed was Briseis, left the Troyan king and the Achaean hero alone.

  Achilles’s shadow brought forth a stool for Priam, and the king seated himself. I heard him commence a recitation of the wealth that lay in the wagon just beyond the tent, offering it to the young warrior as a ransom for Hector’s body. Achilles shook his head, and Priam buried his between his hands. Then, like a suppliant, he prostrated himself before the slayer of his sons; taking Achilles’s callused fingers in his own trembling hands, he kissed the killer’s knuckles.

  “Think of aged Peleus,” he pleaded. “If your father came to Hector, came to me, and implored us to return your body to your family for the proper honors, we would not hesitate to grant his request.” Seeing Achilles appear to soften at his words, Priam embellished his entreaty. “I sired fifty sons,” he told the hero. “And all fifty of them are dead, many at your own hands. I have no more sons to give to this bloody cause. At least give me Hector’s corpse so that his mother and I can say farewell before he journeys to Elysium.”

  Whether from grief or hope, the ancient king had said too much. Achilles commanded Priam to rise. “Where then is the craven Paris Alexandros? And the warlike Deiphobus? Where is Helenus the seer? Where is Polites? And young Prince Troilus has yet to celebrate his twentieth year. You had my sympathies just now, old man, but I will not be dealt with falsely. Hector’s body will remain here and will feed the crows ere long. And do not presume to waste my time again.” He dismissed Priam from his presence, and the Troyan king, stumbling forward in the sand, unseeing through his tear-dimmed eyes, collapsed beside our wagon.

  I leapt from my perch and helped him to his feet, and then, although he would befoul them with his stinking garments, I cleared a place among the sumptuous textiles where he could rest. “Wait here,” I cautioned. “Sleep if you can.”

  I tiptoed to the tent and let myself inside it. Achilles turned when he heard my footfall, and I removed my shawl. “Shhhh,” I whispered, putting my finger to my lips. I pointed to the stool where Priam had so lately sat. “Sit there.” More stunned than surprised to see Helen in his tent, he obeyed me.

  “Achaeans and Troyans believe the same thing,” I said. “We both know that the soul of a dead person cannot pass into Hades without the proper funeral rites and lamentations. You do yourself a disservice with the gods by violating their laws. A man’s immortality is assured by the glory won and honor done on earth, deeds the bards will sing about for generations to come. And even if a man or woman is not blessed with demimortality as we are, they can live on in legend long after their bodies have been entombed and burned. Do you desire the brilliance of your legacy to be forever tarnished by this?” I asked, pointing toward the area outside the tent where Hector’s corpse lay in the sand, his shade wandering between this world and the next. While I spoke of weighty things, I favored Achilles with the full measure of my charm, renowned for softening even the hardest hearts.

  The Achaean listened to me, his expression inscrutable. I could not yet discern the effect of my words. I continued to measure them, careful not to overstep as Priam had. “Achilles, we have much in common, being half mortal. But even we are not above the sky gods, nor should we even imagine ourselves their equal, for there is no greater hubris.”

  “You speak well, daughter of Zeus. And were it a contest between us for immortality, we have fought to a draw. You have bested me on lineage, however. The progeny of the king of high Olympus far outstrips the son of a sea nymph. But make no mistake: Zeus was as smitten with my mother’s beauty as he was with yours. But the Oracle had prophesied that Thetis’s son would become greater than his father, so the powerful Zeus smothered his lust for her.” Achilles’s volubility and change of humor was proof enough that my magnetism had put him off his guard. He pointed to an enormous golden cauldron. “To this I owe more of my godliness than anything else.”

  “I don’t understand,” I whispered, smiling, as though we demi-mortals shared some secret joke.

  “Imagine old Peleus’s face when he saw my mother plunging my tiny newborn body into the roiling contents of this cauldron.” Achilles took a small bronze statue of a young man, a kouros, from a low table and gripped the figure by the left ankle, plunging it into the pot. “My father thought my mother was drowning me. He pulled her away from the cauldron before I was scalded completely, then chided my mother for what he thought was an act of attempted murder. Furious that he did not believe that she was ensuring my immortality, as she had done with all their other demimortal children—my six brothers—Thetis abandoned him forever.”

  I suppressed a chuckle. “And yet the bards immortalize their marriage and not their separation.”

  “The surprise appearance of Eris at their wedding changed their destiny,” Achilles said curtly.

  “The arrival of Lady Strife that day changed all our destinies,” I reminded him. I stood above him so that my perfume wafted gently toward his nostrils. “It is said that I am the most beautiful and desirable woman in the world. You are perhaps the greatest warrior of our age. Regardless of the truth, the bards will invent a new destiny for us: a marriage of the bravest and the most beautiful in the history of all Achaea. Ares and Aphrodite incarnate.”

  The proud Achilles looked somewhat startled.

  I rose and moved toward him, so close that he could feel my breath upon his face. “I will offer you a trade,” I said. “Hector’s body . . . for mine. Helen of Troy, the fantasy of every man who knows her name, is in your tent, off
ering herself to you like a humble supplicant.” I dropped my cloak and unclasped the brooches that secured my gown. The liquidy silk pooled at my feet. Entirely naked and vulnerable, I stood before him.

  Our gazes met. Achilles licked his lower lip involuntarily, enjoying the humiliation in my eyes. “Kneel.”

  Trying to disguise the trembling in my legs, I sank to my knees and raised his finely woven tunic past the origin of the line of nut-brown hair that snaked up the center of his abdomen. Like a lowly camp follower or a slave girl captured as a spoil of war and taken home to warm her master’s bed, I took him in my mouth. I wished I had been able to pretend it was not me, that it was another Helen, who had willingly submitted to this degradation.

  Achilles clutched my hair as my lips and tongue worked their magic, but after a minute or so, he jerked my head away. “Kneel,” he said again. It took a moment for his meaning to penetrate my benumbed brain. Achilles shoved me down onto the floor.

  He took me like a boy.

  It is frightening how history can be distorted to serve the poets. The tongue of man is a twisty thing indeed. Hermione, if you ever hear that your mother was “married” to Achilles, read my words and learn the truth.

  I remember kneeling on all fours, trying so hard not to cry out and thus betray my presence. The excruciating pain, the humiliation, and the shame that I endured that night to earn the release of Hector’s body will always be imprinted on my memory. I will forever remember another thing, too. That the only place for me to fix my gaze was straight ahead, where Achilles’s armor lay. I focused on his leg greaves of supple tin, with their shining silver buckles, the lowest of which when fastened would fall about three fingers’ width above the heel.

  First I would redeem Hector’s body.

  And soon I would exact my revenge.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Wordlessly I rose to my feet. It was easy to locate a hand mirror among the amenities in Achilles’s tent, and I availed myself of it, drying my tears and washing away the rivulets of kohl that had trickled down my cheeks. While I performed these perfunctory ablutions, Achilles strummed his lyre, paying me no more heed than he would to a common slave girl.

  I dressed and covered my head with the midnight-blue shawl. “Priam will be overjoyed to learn that you have agreed to exchange Hector’s body in return for his wagonload of treasures. I will send him to speak with you directly about the particulars.” Achilles gave no indication that he had heard my words, but skilled at reading men, I understood that was his way. His immortal fame was a certainty, but his earthly goal was power. That was how he derived his pleasure, and I had permitted him to dominate me. King Priam and his family would never know the depths to which I descended to win the battered body of their most beloved hero.

  With halting steps I approached the wagon and gently awakened the Troyan king. “Hector will come home,” I told him. He did not ask how I achieved the mission at which he had so miserably failed. I suppose he assumed that my earlier hypothesis, which posited a common understanding between Achaean-born demimortals, had succeeded. The vilified Helen turned out to be of use to Ilios after all.

  I hid behind the wagon while Priam once more entered Achilles’s pavilion; a few minutes later both men emerged. Achilles ordered two of his Myrmidons to unload the cart and carry the ransom to his tent. Then he commanded a pair of slave women to wash Hector’s corpse and anoint it with olive oil.

  “You must be hungry, old man,” Achilles said, this time referring to Priam’s age with the cocky respect begrudged by a beloved son. The great warrior slaughtered a sheep and spitted it, then made the Troyan king partake of it with him, according to the customary laws of hospitality.

  As they ate, they spoke of diplomatic matters. Priam requested a unilateral ceasefire to allow for a proper period of mourning for Hector. “I will hold off an attack for as long as you bid me,” Achilles replied. The hero then parlayed with Agamemnon, exchanging but a few words with the High King, and the aged Troyan ruler’s request was honored.

  After they had feasted, Achilles ordered the serving women to bathe Priam and make up a bed of soft fleeces and purple linens as an honor to his royal status. “You have endured much this night, especially in your enfeebled condition,” Achilles said. “Sleep here until sunup, and I will personally guarantee your comfort and your safety.” Nothing was said about Priam’s “slave,” but I was well aware that the undertaking of this unheralded driver had brought about Achilles’s stunning volte-face.

  I had slept in the shelter of the tamarisk bushes and awoke, sore and aching, at the first rosy light of Eos. Without the cover of darkness, my disguise was no longer as effective. I crept behind Achilles’s tent and, lowering the timbre of my voice as much as possible, I called to Priam in the Phrygian dialect and told him to rise and hasten.

  He emerged from the tent, Achilles following and giving orders to have Hector’s anointed body placed upon the mule cart. As soon as the corpse of the Troyan prince was in our care, and Priam seated on the wagon beside it, I drove us out of the camp as swiftly as the mule could take us over the sands.

  The royal guard at the lower gate rejoiced to see the wagon returning and blasted their horns to announce our success to the keepers of the Scaean Gate. Those soldiers at the entrance to the citadel trumpeted our accomplishment as well, and now all of Ilios knew that Hector had come home to his family.

  Cassandra was the first to see her brother. At the second blast of the horn, she came running out of Apollo’s temple, her hair streaming down her back, tears of joy commingled with those of grief staining her rosy cheeks. She threw herself upon her father and then upon the lifeless Hector as though her embrace could bring him back from the dead. Andromache and Hecuba flew down the tiered steps of the palace and with the utmost tenderness lifted Hector’s body from the wagon. Queen Hecuba was as jubilant to see her husband alive as she was to see her dead son restored to her.

  Just inside the Scaean Gate was an enormous altar. While there were individual temples to several of the sky gods within the walls of the upper city, this central altar served as the sacrificial site to all of the Olympians in the name of Ilios. The elevated altar was surrounded by six pedestals, and a few yards beyond lay a cult house for burned sacrifices. Hector’s mother and his widow had his body placed atop the great altar, resting on a sumptuously carved bed.

  Later that day, the royal family gathered around the altar to deliver our eulogies. Paris Alexandros and I had quarreled about the appropriateness of our children being present. Idaeus was now twelve years old and had adored his uncle, hoping to follow in his footsteps as a great and noble warrior, so I did agree that he could be present. I thought the spectacle would be too much for our daughter, though. Young Helen was a painfully shy child who hated crowds and loud noises, as introverted as her mother was convivial; and I tried to keep her as far away as possible from the horrors of the war and its aftermath. Despite Alexander’s protests, I left the little girl in the care of her nurse, who would watch Aganus and Bunomus as well. Those two little mischief-makers, who had seen but four and three summers, respectively, were far too young to be exposed to funeral rites.

  Andromache, who was the first to speak, approached her husband’s body. Clutching her left hand was their elder son Laodamas, the very essence of his noble father in miniature, and cradled in the crook of her right arm was the infant Astyanax. “You were the light of all my days, my beloved. When all alone I came to you from Thebes, you were father, mother, brother, and husband to me; and after my family was slaughtered there, you became even dearer. Now, Achilles has killed everyone I ever loved, save my children. I see no hope for Wilusa now. I fear your sons will not fare well, never grow to manhood, never claim their birthright. For myself I see no future beyond a life of slavery and toil . . . and crave the day when my broken spirit will be reunited with yours.” Even as her voice wavered, she tried to comfort her children, and in her grief I saw no greater dignity.

  Que
en Hecuba approached the corpse and offered her parting words. “Dearest—and bravest—of all my sons, you did not deserve such foul treatment at the hands of mighty Achilles, for there were other princes—brothers who could not hold a torch to your magnificence and your integrity—who were dealt with far more gently. The Achaean demon captured and sold them into slavery in Lemnos, Imbros, and Samnos, but he was never so brutal, never showed so little respect or accorded so little honor as he did with you.” She was more angry than tearful, seeking to lay blame, and unconcerned at how her obvious bias for Prince Hector might fall upon the ears of her surviving sons.

  Of course, one of her sons, Deiphobus, was not a lovable man. He walked about bemoaning his unmarried state, but it was certainly evident to me why women would have nothing to do with him despite his regal lineage. I glanced at Paris Alexandros to gauge his reaction to his mother’s bitter words. He seemed stricken, truly wounded by them. With overwhelming sympathy, I met his gaze again and whispered that I loved him. I knew too well what it felt like to be the less-loved child, regardless of my accomplishments.

  A murmur undulated through the crowd when I stepped forward. It was clear they felt that I did not deserve to speak. I chose to address that situation rather than ignore it. “After nearly thirteen years I am still regarded as an outsider in Ilios. Of course you are entitled to your thoughts, but the man for whom we grieve did not share your opinion, and to dishonor Helen is to dishonor noble Hector. I lost my brothers many years ago, when I was no older than Polyxena,” I said, referring to Priam’s youngest daughter. “And when my beloved Paris Alexandros brought me to these foreign shores, although my beauty had been much vaunted, I myself was vilified; reviled by those who thought the love my Troyan husband bore for me would come to no good end. Although King Priam is a gracious man who always treated me with respect, it was Hector first—and only Hector—who looked upon me with a kindly and forgiving eye. It was Hector first—and only Hector—who understood the true reasons why the Achaeans might sail to Ilios in Helen’s name. It was Hector first—and only Hector—of all my husband’s royal brothers, who became a brother to Alexander’s wife. Although he was the greatest warrior in Troy’s illustrious history, he had a gentle heart. You had only to see him at play with his infant son to see how tender he was, how mild and sweet his words. Hector fought so valiantly not because his commander, his father, told him to. He was a marvel on the battlefield because he was driven by love: for his family and for Troy. His reverence and respect for his religion, his compassion, his sense of honor, and his modesty of spirit were unparalleled by any man. He was indeed the embodiment of the concept of aidos. I have never known the heroic Hector’s equal and expect I never will.”