by Ben Blake
*
She was in Miletos.
It had been two days now, and still Helen was overwhelmed by it. She had come to believe, before the sudden appearance of salvation in the unlikely shape of Trojan raiders, that she would never leave Greece in her life. Probably she’d only leave Sparta once or twice, when Menelaus wanted to show her off to his fellow kings in Mycenae or Argos. Even then she’d be driven through the streets and then left inside a castle much like her own in Sparta, to maunder away her days with nothing to do and no hopes to fulfil.
Choosing Menelaus as her husband had been a mistake.
The gods knew, there had been other options. She’d just judged them wrong, that was all. She’d thought Diomedes of Argolis too flashy, too concerned with his appearance to other lords. Ajax of Salamis was handsome but intimidatingly huge, and his voice was more a bear’s growl than anything human. Menestheus had seemed to preoccupied, Agapenor too tempestuous, and marrying Idomeneus would have put Helen in Crete, far from all she knew and wanted to be part of. There had seemed to be something to dislike in all of them – except Menelaus. He’d struck her as just right, not too arrogant or too quiet, handsome enough but not a preening peacock.
She knew now that he was simply ordinary. Boring, even. A good hunter, but not a great one; a fair but not exceptional warrior; a reasonable administrator who never saw the nuances. Helen did, she’d learned it from her father, and she knew – she knew – she would make a better ruler than Menelaus. But she wouldn’t be given the chance. He didn’t ask her advice, wasn’t interested in what she thought or knew about Laconia. She was never wanted.
And then she’d been awake at night, as she so often was now, when Paris came stealing into her rooms.
It was easy to believe the gods were watching over you, when a life changed so abruptly. She’d been sitting in the dark, alone and sorrowful; ten minutes later she had a bag of jewellery in her hand and was slipping through the corridors of what had been her father’s palace, surrounded by Trojans in cuirasses with spears ready, on her way to a new life. Now a week later she was in Miletos, a city she’d never thought to see before she died.
She knew of it, though. Every Greek knew of Miletos, since what had happened here when she was a child.
It had always been a city that attracted foreigners. A little like Troy itself, she supposed, though she’d have to judge that for herself when she was there. At first a Phoenician outpost, Miletos had slowly been transformed by the Leleges, a local people who learned their culture from more advanced neighbours. Lydians had moved in, and then later Minoans came in numbers, establishing themselves as the dominant force in the city. Later still the Hittites had made Miletos capital of a client province, again much as Troy was, and an influx of their own people had changed the city again.
Then the Greeks appeared, first raiders from Locris and Boeotia in search of easy plunder. They found the land plentiful and the defenders weak. Twenty years ago they returned in numbers, fifty ships loaded with warriors who burst into the city and took it for their own. In their wake came families, artisans, all the people who made a city work. Local people were driven out of their shops and off their land. More simply left, migrating to other cities north or south: Halicarnassus, Sardis, Ephesus. Some of them warned that vengeance would come. None of the Greeks listened.
Then the Hittites appeared.
Their army was vast, a hundred thousand men some said, though Helen’s father had thought less than half that. It was too many, in any case; too many by far. The defenders were swept aside. And then the Hittites killed every Greek they could find, warriors and farmers, women and priests, children and babies alike. All. They slew and butchered until the city streets were wet with blood, and gave no quarter to any Greek, for any reason. Helen could still see the scars of those days: chips in the corners of buildings were swords had struck, new cobbles where the old had been smashed by thrusting spears, and homes rebuilt in the wake of fire.
The Hittites had nominated a new king, and rebuilt the walls of the city in stone. And then they’d gone away. They had bigger concerns than a minor Greek incursion, greater enemies in the shape of Assyria and Egypt. They hadn’t bothered to make any demands, or send any warnings to Greece. Probably they considered the slaughter at Miletos warning enough, and it had worked. In the years since there had been an occasional raid, small in scale and quick, but nothing more. No town had been attacked at all.
Greeks needed land as badly now as they had twenty years ago. Greece itself had too many people and too little land, and food was always a little scarce. Not urgently so, most of the time; the harvests were reliable, at least. But even a small upset in the weather could cause a serious shortage of grain, for example. Greece needed new supplies, and secure ones, before a really bad year spread famine through the land.
Today they found their new fields in the west, on Sicily and the coasts beyond, where there was no empire to rebuff them.
But Helen was had come east, to walk the streets of storied Miletos with four soldiers as her guard. She hardly noticed anymore when people stopped to stare at her, mouths slightly agape and eyes wide. Her beauty was something she lived with, and the reactions of men not worth her attention. She looked instead at the Harbour of Mermaids, and the island fortress of Lade beyond it, shining white in the sunlight. She crossed the Meander River by a bridge made of bronze, a thing she’d never even heard of before and wondered at, amazed by its beauty. In the south of the city she roamed the great stadium, a semi-circle cut into a hillside and lined with tiers of seats, and she gawked at pillared halls and red-tiled houses, and ate slivers of spiced duck from a street vendor until juices ran down her chin and she laughed as she wiped them away.
In the market she sold some of the jewels Menelaus had given her. A set of pearls from Egypt, and lapis from far India. Probably she took less than they were worth, but that didn’t matter. It was important to be rid of them, those reminders of her time as little more than a pampered slave, or a captive. If her life was beginning anew then let it be so, with no baggage from her former existence left to weigh her down as she walked.
She used some of the coin to buy diaphanous silk scarves, and some simple silver bracelets. At a sweet-smelling stall she stopped for a hair lotion scented with jasmine, and lotus-blossom soap. She was aware of her guards watching her, no doubt imagining how she would look wearing only those scarves and her perfume, but she ignored them. None of this was for their benefit.
She went to Paris’ rooms that night, for the first time, and when he looked up she slipped off her robe to reveal her body clad only in the scarves, her jasmine-smelling hair a tawny cascade down her back.
In the next hour she learned that Menelaus was an ordinary lover too. He’d been her first, and until tonight her only; that was the reality of life for noble women in Greece. A princess who took lovers would never be marriageable, and once wed there was no opportunity. Helen had always been trailed by guards and handmaidens, alone only when she slept. Because of that she’d never known whether Menelaus was delicate or clumsy, compared to other men.
As Paris touched her, and kissed her skin, she learned. Her husband was simply inept in bed, at least compared to Paris. Twice Helen found herself gasping under Paris’ dextrous touch, before he’d even entered her. When finally he did she clawed at his back and cried out, calling Aphrodite’s name.
It was a long time before she felt able to speak, after. She lay in a welter of sheets with Paris’ head on her stomach, stroking his hair and looking at the red weals on his shoulder blades. I made those, she thought wonderingly. She’d never done anything like that before.
“We’re married now,” she said at last. “Even before the priests speak the words. We’re married.”
His head moved slightly. “I promised we would be.”
“In Troy?”
“Right now, if we can find a priest to set aside your vows to Menelaus,” he said. “I little coin should make that p
ossible.”
“Then now,” she said. “But, Paris. Don’t ever mention his name in our bed again. I don’t want even his memory here with us.”
He sat up, a sheet tangled around his waist. He was a smaller man than Menelaus, perhaps equal in height but more trimly built. “All right. I’ll take you to places where he never went, and they’ll be just for us, Helen. Memories only we share.”
“Take me where?”
“Egypt,” he said. “My brother Lycaon has been there. He still talks about the great pyramids west of the river, shining white in the sun. They’re thousands of years old, and no one remembers now who built them, or why. I’ll show you Tyre, in Phoenicia, a city built on an island off the coast. I’ll take you to Hattusa, the City of the Lion; and to the Euxine Sea and all the lands around it, even Colchis itself. We’ll drink the forest wines and watch men draw sheepskins out of the rivers with gold heavy on the fleece.”
“I’d like to see Crete,” she said.
Paris shook his head. “That’s too dangerous. The Argives will be looking for you. I don’t think you should go near the Greensea again, at least until all this settles down again.”
“Ephesus?”
“We’ll go home that way,” he promised. “Overland, so we avoid Argive pirates. The road runs through Ephesus and Cyme, and if there’s time I’ll take you to the carpet bazaar in Sardis. They have a glass roof there, each pane coloured so the light dances on the floor.
“And in each place,” he went on, before she could speak, “I’ll show you another pleasure of the bedroom.” He drew her closer. “And you’ll forget him a little more each time.”
She opened her mouth to his kiss, and was already reaching for him as he laid her back down on the bed.