by Ben Blake
*
The palace was typical Greek, all lowering walls and narrow doorways with heavy lintel stones thrown across them like barricades. A guard was standing at the one Paris found, his spear in one hand while the other scratched idly at his backside. There were twenty yards of open space between him and the shrub where Paris hid. Plenty of time for the guard to raise an alarm.
Paris took careful aim and shot him under the jaw. The man went down making a strange gobbling sound in his throat, feet scrabbling on the stones until one of the soldiers reached him and thrust a knife into his heart. The guard went still and two men dragged his body away.
“Take his armour,” Paris whispered. “Stand in his place. We’ll only be a few moments.”
Thirty of them went inside. Antenor had given them a map of the palace so they didn’t need to spread out much. They followed a corridor past silent rooms and along the back of the megaron, empty at this time of night except for an old servant sleeping with his head on the table, and snoring so loud it was a wonder the roof beams didn’t tremble. A soldier gestured towards him and drew a finger across his own throat, but Paris shook his head. No sense taking a risk now, even such a small one.
Just after that they took the right-hand corridor when it branched, following it up a flight of half a dozen steps and around a corner. Then the warriors did fan out, surrounding the queen’s chambers that they knew lay just ahead. Paris gave them a minute and then padded up to the door, eased it open, and slipped silently into Helen’s rooms, one soldier at his heels.
It was obvious immediately that Helen had decorated here. The style was so different from the rest of the palace that it couldn’t be missed. No battle axes hung on the walls, or armour stood in corners; that was to be expected, of course, in a woman’s place. Men were not to enter here, except the lady’s husband. It was an insult even to try.
This was a working room, the gynaikon where women did their weaving and entertained friends. But Helen had floored it with an expensive wool carpet from Egypt, to judge by the style, and hung linen draperies on the walls in streams of colours; soft yellows and greens, lilac, a splash of blue near the window. That was more Minoan than anything else. Paris wondered if Menelaus knew what his money had paid for, here. The king of Laconia was an uncultured oaf, and Antenor said he might be so dazed by his wife’s beauty that he wouldn’t even know what she was doing.
Paris had decided not to believe the tales of Helen’s beauty until he could judge it for himself. Two doors stood in the far wall. He chose the left and pushed it open, very slowly so the hinges didn’t creak. The room beyond was dark, the windows shuttered, but he could just make out the shape of a bed. He stepped forward, away from the wall.
And stopped suddenly, keeping very still, when someone laid the blade of a knife against his throat.