by Byrne Fone
At that moment I think I loved him. Though I knew it was futile.
Book Five: Trojan Women
“Helen and all her wealth is the prize for whom I will battle with Menelaus”, said Paris. “Let him who shall be victorious and prove to be the better man take the woman and all she has.”
---Iliad Book 3
Andromache stood by Hector, weeping and taking his hand in her own said. "Dear husband, you pride and valor will bring you to destruction; think on your son and your wife, who may soon be your widow. I shall have nothing left to comfort me when you are gone, save only sorrow. Have mercy upon me; stay here in Troy; do not make your child fatherless, and your wife a widow.”
--Iliad Book 6
Hecuba. Mother of Hector, and her women went to the temple of Athena. Hecuba lifted up her hands to the goddess with a loud cry. "Holy Athena" she cried, "protectress of our city, mighty goddess, protect my son and I will sacrifice in your temple, if you will have pity upon Troy and the wives and l children of the Trojans.”
–Iliad Book 6
Cassandra, fair as golden Venus stood upon Troy’s high walls and saw her dear father Priam in his chariot and what was lying upon the bier. With a loud cry she said, "Come Trojans, men and women, and look on Hector; if ever you rejoiced to see him coming from battle when he was alive, look now on him dead who was the glory of our city and all our people." Foremost among them mourners was Andromache who led their wailing as she clasped the head of mighty Hector in her embrace
-Iliad Book 24
Chapter 21
Hecabe
Here in Troy I watch and bide my time. What else have I to do? I no longer go outside the city. “It is too dangerous, Majesty,” the captain of my guard says to me. My husband forbids it and I am bound to obey him, king and husband that he is. Every morning when I rise I look out and see the city, many-towered and gated, brooding and impregnable behind our huge high walls. They were built before men reckoned time by King Laomedon. who called upon the gods to aid him. It is said that Poseidon did the work while Apollo watched the king’s flocks and played the lyre to make music for the labor. That Laomedon cheated Poseidon of his pay is never talked about, but Kassandra—my poor mad daughter--foretold that sooner or later that perfidy would cause the Trojans heartbreak for because of it Poseidon is no friend of Troy. Perhaps she is right. But no one, of course, wants to believe her. I begin to think I do.
How well I know this golden city. The citadel rises up above the city, its towers, as poets have said, almost cloud-capped. Highest of them all is the Tower of Ilios. Broad streets lined with mansions bisect the city and lead to the Scaean and the Dardanian Gates. The greatest mansion of all, our palace where I live with Priam my lord and husband, is the wonder of the citadel, its roofs of cedar richly painted and gilded, supported by marble colonnades fronting the polished porticos and doors of chased and polished bronze worked in intricate patterns designs. The palace is so huge that it is said that no one has ever seen it all, for it houses vast suites reserved for us, for Priam and Hecabe, and for the Royal Kindred, fifty chambers for Priam’s fifty sons and their wives. Endless corridors lead to room after room filled with the wealth of all the ages, brought to Troy for a thousand years.
In the vast throne room marble floors of deepest purple reflect like a mirrored pool, making the expanse seem vast and seem surely endless to one coming to an audience with the king as they walk, weak with fear to the foot of the throne and prostrate themselves before Priam as protocol demands. Majestic, richly robed and glittering, the king is wreathed in incense and seated on the Throne of Troy, high-backed lion-armed, cushioned in rich fabrics of purple and red and blue, canopied with cloth of gold, and wrought of silver, electrum, and precious stones, and raised on ten broad steps above the level of the room. Here Priam presides over the riches that Agamemnon has come to despoil.
Upon rising from the prostration and just before they move closer to kiss the toe of Priam’s scarlet sandal, no supplicant before the throne remains un-awed by the frescoes that cover the walls, colors like jewel tones, that tell of the lineage of our ancient house. There is Zeus in majesty and Dardanos, his son, first of Troy’s kin to come to the Troad. He married a daughter of Teucer, who was king there, and it was he who gave Dardanos a site for a city, called Dardania, that still stands on Mount Ida’s slopes not far from Troy. He was founder of the royal line and thus we Trojans call ourselves Dardanians and through him our kings claim descent from Zeus and say that they are divine. Shield in hand, spear at the ready, lion skin about his shoulders, Ericthonios, Dardanos’ son strides the wall next after his father. It is he who brought riches to the city, and his herds of horses covered the plains- and ever after we have been known as horse tamers. It was this king who sent his ships filled with the rich products of our lands—pottery adorned with scenes of gods and daily life, weapons of bronze, intricate jewelry worked in gold and produce from our fields---across all the seas of the world even so far as Egypt. When his son Tros succeeded him, he began to build and it is from him that the name of Troy derives. Zeus favored Tros and when he saw Ganymede, Tros’ son, more handsome than any boy has ever been, he loved him and swooping down from Olympus like the eagle upon the prey, took lovely Ganymede up to heaven and to his bed where he serves him for all eternity.
It was Ilus, the next king, who built the empire that is called Ilium, and it was to him too that the Palladium was given, for when he had traced the boundaries he prayed to Zeus for a sign that what he had done was good. As the frescoes show, the next day he found, half- buried in the earth, that object so sacred it must never be described to profane ears. And to him came the voice of Apollo saying, “Guard this well, Ilus, for it bestows the favor of the Goddess and so long as you preserve it you will preserve your city. Keep it, for it carries empire before it.” And so near to the palace, Ilus commanded that a great temple dedicated to Pallas Athene should be built, the largest building on the citadel after our palace, and therein the Palladium was reverently placed. The temple glitters with gold, every boss and facing is inlaid with it, every architrave and plinth is rich with its glow, and the colors of its painted walls and columns, when the sun catches them right, casts a rich and mellow wash of red and ochre and blue upon the marble pavements surrounding the temple precincts. In it, I, as Queen of Troy, preside also as High Priestess, first among the devotees of the Goddess.
Beyond our huge walls—from which rise at intervals high watchtowers--- the side of the steep escarpment upon which the city stands drops down to the lower city, spreading out below and outside of the citadel walls. When he was young—when we were first married, Priam’s wisdom and prudence caused the city to grow even larger. New houses were built, seemingly every day, some of mud and wattle faced with painted clay, others larger and more pretentious. A newly rich merchant’s house perhaps, two floors high, of smooth-faced stone, carved and polished, and with a columned and painted portico to lend prestige to his new status. If he had good fortune exporting wool from Trojan sheep, or finely made jewelry, he could sit beneath a silken awning upon a terrace with his wife and concubines and watch the “little people” pass below. He could keep an eye on the port, embraced by the protecting arm of the Sigeum promontory, into which merchant vessels sailed from around the world. If he sees a sail, what a scramble it was then as he rushed to the port so as to be first on the spot to buy or sell to his brother traders who come from Crete or Egypt or far Assyria.
But now the Achaeans sit in their camp and stare at Troy, at us. And what of us here in Troy? We can, for a time, afford to wait behind our walls, for our strength lies there and not in the size of our army. We know that to opt for all-out man-to-man battle might be foolish even to contemplate. But we have time, and we have provisions: seemingly endless water from the springs that gushed within our walls; more than enough to eat, since we can still draw upon the rich farms and herds of cattle. We can still rely on vassals loyal to us scattered throughout the Troad to
the north of Troy to provision us, vassals out of the range of Achaean foraging parties and patrols. And so we wait behind our high walls, safe, for now, in our gleaming city. We walk our broad avenues lined with palaces full of treasure—gold, jewels, bronze axes, ancient statues of the gods that date back to the most ancient days of the race of men---inestimably valuable things that are the real objects of this war—and for which we Trojans are prepared to die. It is all about gold and we all know it, for no one cares a fig about aging Helen.
Chapter 22
Helen
I live grandly in this great and glittering city, so rich and so old and so arrogant, in a vast palace that seems never to end. I have myself never seen the half of the rooms. I have a huge suite of rooms in the Ilios tower filled with treasures from time beyond time and from nations now disappeared from men’s memory--marble statues, rich hangings, gold cups on golden tables. There are women to wait upon my whims and my days blend one into the other, days filled with incense and the sounds of the cestrum, the slow silent pacing of processions, the stately movements of a royal family ancient beyond time and it seems to me lost in hopelessness, for all know the oracles, though none will believe them.
I attend all the ceremonies for I am first among the women of royal rank after the queen, and so I await upon her rising and preside at the enrobing. At the sacrifices to the gods in Troy’s great temple, so old that none can tell its age or who may have built it, after the king and Queen I am the first to adore the Palladium, first to cast the incense. At audiences with whatever king or ambassador has managed or dared to seek Priam out, I am given a chair near the throne, for it is due my rank. For I am Queen of Sparta of which I made Menelaus king. I am sacred and my person is inviolable for I am Leda’s daughter who lay with Zeus. I am more royal than Hector or Andromache, certainly more so than my husband the handsome Paris who came a-begging to my Kingdom, where to my ruin I gave him what he wanted. I am Helen.
And I wait, but I do not know for what. For news of the slow progress of a battle? For that insolent servant girl to bring a tray of sweetmeats that I commanded this morning? For intelligence of some foray against the Achaeans? For more death and mayhem? For the arrival of some bit of costly silk, shimmering with Tyhrennian purple and edged with gold thread, brought from a distant land through the Trojan uplands that the Achaeans do not control? Or for the war to end? For Menelaus to take me back? Or for my death when he does?
For nine years I have paced the dark halls of this place, going out into the city only in a closed chair, always with a guard, never allowed to leave the walls to walk by a stream or through the perfumed forests, for fear that Troy's prize—Helen, Leda’s daughter, beloved of Paris —will be found and taken by some Achaean band in foray back to Menelaus. I wonder, though I know in my heart what the answer is, how I would fare in Menelaus’ hands? I have heard he has vowed to kill me for dishonoring him. How can I blame him for that? Dishonor him I did.
How long ago was it that Paris took me? He took me, but it was not against my will. Even then I was not all that young—I had a daughter who was nine and a son. I have now been in Troy a decade – or is it more? My mouth was not petulant then but willing, so long ago, when he said, “My Helen, My Helen, be mine. You are the world to me.” He traced my name and wrote, “I love you” in wine on the amber top of a table as Menelaus presided just a few feet away at a feast for the Trojan prince. I feared that Menelaus would see, but he was either too drunk to notice, or too preoccupied with what he always grandly and self-importantly called “affairs of state that women wouldn’t understand.” Indeed the next day he sailed off to Crete to attend upon the funeral of a much-beloved and very rich grandfather and to see no doubt if he had profited by the old mans death—an affair of state that anyone could understand.
That night, again as we dined, Paris picked up the goblet from which I had just drunk and put it to his lips, pressing them to the rim at the very spot which mine had touched. I saw that some at the table noticed this, and I signed to Paris to be more discreet. Dipping his finger in the wine, he wrote again on the tabletop: “Come away with me.” I was breathless. That night I saw to it that he came to my chamber. Handsome and golden he was, his eyes as blue as the bluest deeps of the sea. His skin was fair and soft and glittering as if covered with gold dust. I wanted him and I took him. The next day I threw caution and common sense aside for what I thought would be an eternity of love and passion. I left bandy-legged little Menelaus and that grim and humorless Spartan court behind. I left my daughter too. Paris saw to it that we did not leave unburdened and enough palace treasure for a lifetime was loaded aboard. Nor did he forget, though I protested that it was impiety, to strip Apollo’s treasury of its gold as well. For that I have bitterly paid.
I did not resist Paris, let it be said. Indeed I invited him with my eyes, those eyes so famous in the tales they now tell about me. The dark eyes that seduced Paris (and Theseus too, but that so very, very long ago) are now brightened by drops to make them clear. My hair that was so often stroked by Paris is no longer as soft or lustrous as it once was. “Oh Helen, Helen” he said as he ran his hands across my body, caressing my breasts, cupping my face with his hands, tangling them in my hair. “Oh Helen I love you so,” he said as we lay naked and desirous on a silken bed beneath the stars of a honeyed night on the high deck of the red-painted ship. Its silver sail billowing in the wind, it bore us away from the dull routines of Sparta and me from the clumsy embrace of Menelaus. Paris touched me then, stroked my hair, and I thrilled to his touch, to his body rich and sweet and strong, his manhood inflamed and eager, and I was eager too. I was more passionate than Aphrodite as I taught him arts that he—younger than I–had never imagined. We sailed into desire that night and into love, our bodies wildly keeping time with the swift beat of the oar-master’s drum as it urged the rowers to make all speed away from Sparta.
Now my body is touched only by servant’s hands, pummeled and pomaded every day to keep me supple. For it has come to be that I, Helen, am now in middle age. Middle-aged Helen! My face so famous it is said a thousand ships were put to sea to bring me back, is now lined around the eyes with little crow tracks. My hair is now touched only by the juice of certain barks to give it luster and hide the gray. The corners of my mouth, its lips no longer kissed with love, turn down a bit in a petulant way. So as to deceive the multitude into believing that I remain forever young, my women work hard each morning to apply a mask—no King’s royal golden mask this—but one of thick kohl and rouge and powders and paint. But for whom? Certainly not for Paris, who now never comes to my door.
But I must look, as they say, “my best.” I am required at all the audiences when subject Kings or ambassadors come to offer treaty or tribute. As they rise from the prostration before the throne of the King, I can always feel their eyes on me. They see the king robed in majesty, mysterious and masked, seated before them wreathed in clouds of incense. And then they look for Helen. Helen the beautiful, Helen the figure out of myth. Though their business may be with the king, they really come to Troy to see my face, the serene and youthful face of the incomparable beauty that they have seen engraved on some ivory amulet, found perhaps in the jeweler’s market of their distant land and given as a gift to a favorite. They look for the legend; look for she for whose love all the lives in all the world have been forever changed.
I know it is always a bit of a shock to them when they catch a first glimpse of me. I sit on a low chair at the left of the throne. Not the right, for that is reserved for royal Trojans, for Hector and for Priam’s Queen. I am surrounded by my handmaidens. A handsome boy fans me. I wear a diadem and rich silks, sheer and in soft hues. They set off my body well, I like to think. But the shock remains, for the face they see is – how shall I say it – careworn. They see a woman, tired, and aging. My eyes, despite the cosmetic arts, are dark with lack of sleep and I stare fixedly into space. I try not to hear the whispered reactions as they stand in the crowd of onlookers t
o which they retreat after the final obeisance. But of course I can hear them. “Is that Helen? She is old now,” I hear them say.
Because of the inevitable confrontation between legend and fact, I find on days of audience that it helps to take wine mixed sometimes with a posset of calming herbs and poppy juice. This sweet draught allows me to wander in other worlds even as the world comes to Priam. It calms the serpent that gnaws at me, stills the small Furies that tangle my vitals in knots so that my hands tremble. I sit silently in my chair as men pass before me. I watch as the rituals of audience unfold. I wait for the effect of my morning drink to deaden my fear. I hope none see me grip the armrests of my chair until my knuckles are white.
But I am still beautiful compared to the other royal women. Hecabe is as old as Priam, she is dowdy and her breasts sag and she can hobble about only with difficulty, though her bright eyes never cease to scan the sky for omens and the plain for news. Andromache, still stately, was never really beautiful. Hector and she are middle aged too. Kassandra is quite mad; a hag is how best to describe her, hair disheveled and eyes wild. Some say she was beautiful once and that she received the power of prophecy as a gift from Apollo, who desired her. But less kind gossip is that she was raped in Apollo’s temple on the day she came of age-- but by whom no dares to say --and this drove her mad.
I know they talk about me. Sometimes when I enter the family dining hall, the talk falls silent. Hector rises and nods distantly, always courteous but never close. Andromache rises too, for I am a queen and she a princess. Priam looks vague, not always seeming to know just who I am. Paris kisses my hand, but avoids my eyes. Sometimes though he seems on the verge of inviting me to join him near his couch. But he never does. I enter, take my place; we all speak of inconsequential things. I toy with my food, and when I can no longer bear it I retire. As I move from room to room of the palace, or as I stand waiting to take my place in a procession, a passing court chamberlain, fussing with the order of protocol, bows low, but not quite low enough and I sense the hostility. For though I am Helen, I am not a Trojan. And by sign and gesture and miniscule insinuation, a nuance of tone, a glance from under an eyebrow, a slight hesitation in making the obeisance due to me, they—Priam, Hecabe, Hector, Andromache, the countless royal sons, the chief ministers, even the servants--- let me know that I am foreign, unwanted, and the cause of all their woes.