Goddess of Yesterday (14 page)

Rhodea his nurse told Pleis that he would nap.

“Perhaps you and I will also nap, my swan,” said Paris to Helen.

I saw now what had made Helen's hands flutter in the megaron. What had gone through that beautiful body like mountain wind. What had pierced a heart as bleached as marble.

It was love.

The heat of the day passed and the sun went down.

The dusk turned to dark and the moon rose, dropping silver light on the great walls.

My thoughts were too sad for sleep.

I climbed a long stone stair to the battlements and sought answers in the first stars. Not only did the people of Sparta name their stars, they were planning keeping-track lines for each star.

From the parapet I looked down upon the snarling lions over the gate. The gate was open. Menelaus had left open the gate of his marriage, too.

The air stood still, thinking its own thoughts. Every distant mountain peak, every deep ravine, seemed as infinite and dangerous as the gods.

Far away and very low in the sky traveled an unusual row of flickering stars. Hundreds were colliding and flaring, then vanishing like wicks of oil lamps being blown out. I knew of no such stars in the sky.

Time passed.

No guard walked by me.

No night watch closed the Lion Gate.

One by one, much nearer now, the strange stars appeared again.

I stood alone at the battlements, a child in the dark, and said to myself, “Surely not.”

But yet I knew the truth. Not stars—but torches in the hands of men.

Briefly I had seen them. Then they had entered the black forest and disappeared and now were out of it, and fast approaching Amyklai. It is risky to walk at night—wild beasts, bad footing and evil spirits. But with hundreds of torches, these men were safe from robbers and wolves.

Aeneas the cousin of Paris had not spent the night in Gythion. As soon as Menelaus and Kinados had sailed away, Aeneas had gathered the very warriors Kinados had feared and the Trojan army was marching upon Amyklai by night.

Aeneas' men
were
the robbers and wolves.

I ran to warn the queen. Clattering down stone steps, racing across courtyards, throwing open one door after another, to the women's wing I sped. I flung myself toward the barred wooden door of her bedroom, to beat my fists against it until she came.

But the door was open and in her fragrant well-lit room, Helen admired herself in a silver mirror.

“O queen! They have broken their guest-friendship,” I cried. “The Trojans come armed with Aeneas as their general. You must protect yourself. Paris is your enemy, not your friend. In your husband's stead, you must call out your soldiers. I have seen what pirates can do. You must—”

“Paris is not my enemy.”

“He is, O queen. I know you do not trust me. I beg you to trust me now. For the sake of your children. For your own dear sake. The Trojans have come for Amyklai.”

“No,” said Helen, angling the mirror and smiling at what she saw. “The Trojans have come for me.”

S
IX DOORS STOOD BETWEEN
Helen and the treasure of a kingdom.

She unlocked them herself, sliding the narrow curved arms of the key tree into the slot, and turning it carefully to catch the edge of the bar within. Paris stood beside her, breathing deeply, his laughter waiting inside his chest until he heard the bar scrape upward.

“How dare she!” breathed Hermione. The little princess was trembling with fury.

I was not sure which of the many things Helen should not dare to do that Hermione was thinking of. I was stunned at how easily Helen dealt with her own soldiers, the soldiers of Menelaus. She spoke not one word. White arms bare, her hair bound up with a golden veil, Helen dismissed her own men from their posts. With her fingertips, she touched the lips of a guard about to argue, and he hung his head and said nothing. She took the hand of the soldier trying to block a door and gently guided him and he let her. Sweetly she shook her head when another guard stepped forward, and she waited until he had stepped back.

It was treason.

Helen was the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta.
Sister-in-law of Agamemnon, lord of lords. Mother of three princes, heirs to Amyklai.

Yet, just as she might toss grain to a singing bird in a cage, Helen tossed the wealth of her kingdom to the enemy.

The nobles of Amyklai were in their own homes, asleep behind their own barred doors, and they did not emerge. A dozen soldiers of Menelaus allowed themselves to be tied up. The Trojans barely knotted the ropes, as if Menelaus' men were a joke. A dozen more allowed the Trojans to herd them into a room and lock them there. A dozen more surrendered weapons without using them.

Paris and his companions swaggered, as pirates do when they capture beautiful women. But the tips of the spears with which they saluted one another were unblooded.

Hermione was a phantom, all staring eyes and white shocked face. “Mother,” she whispered, “the Trojans will take you as slave. Just the way Castor and Pollux so long ago took Aethra. The way Telamon of old took Hesione. The way Callisto's mother Petra was taken.”

Helen neither saw nor heard her daughter. She swung the final door and held it open for Paris, guest-friend of her husband.

“My men have commandeered every cart and donkey,” Paris said, waving his troops into the glittering storeroom. “Aeneas, meanwhile, is removing the temple gold.”

“The temple gold!” cried Hermione. “Mother! Prevent this! Apollo attacked our kingdom with plague for two years! Father has only just rescued us from disease! What will Apollo do when we let foreigners carry off his honors?”

“We are not foreigners, little princess,” said Paris, smiling. “We are Apollo's own children. We are taking his gold back where it belongs. Troy.” Standing on the threshold of
Menelaus' storeroom, Paris kissed Helen. “We'll be in Gythion by tomorrow night, my swan, and the following day, we will sail for Troy.”

Hermione bunched up her muscles to hurl herself against Paris, but in the end, she did nothing either. The Trojans would laugh at her and her own mother would not bother to look. I dragged Hermione into the shadows.

“The gold veil on her hair?” said Hermione, jabbing a finger toward Helen. “It was a wedding gift. My mother is wearing her wedding veil to loot her own palace.”

I felt weak and hopeless. How Helen hated Menelaus.

“I will kill her,” said Hermione.

I could think of only one thing worse than a queen handing her kingdom over to the enemy. The murder of that queen by her daughter.

“No, Hermione,” I said, although I understood. I had wanted to kill a pirate once and Helen deserved to die as much as that backstabber. In fact, she was a backstabber, kicking Menelaus as that pirate had kicked my king. O my kings, my kings. “I cannot let you commit that crime, Hermione. Come, return to the women's wing. Something will set these men off, ours or theirs, and fighting will begin. We must be sure your baby brother is safe.”

I knew that little Pleis was safe. Rhodea and Bia were no fools; they would bar the doors. It was Hermione I had to keep safe.

We emerged in the largest courtyard. The moon still crossed a black sky. It may take years to build a palace and fill a treasury, but in one small part of a night, it may all be destroyed.

Hermione wanted to storm across the wide space but I held her back. We would work our way from shadow to
shadow. In the end, the Trojans were nothing but pirates after loot, and in the end, a princess is the best loot of all.

By the flickering light of torches, we saw Pyros storming up to a squadron of the enemy. I had not seen the overseer since we arrived in Amyklai. He carried only his mule whip. “Stop this, you Trojans!” the overseer shouted. “I demand that you cease!”

My heart found room for Pyros, whom I disliked. He alone on that black night placed his loyalty with his king. But an overseer is not himself free. Pyros might be feared by other slaves, but he evoked no fear in the soldiers of Troy.

“You have been welcome guests in the palace of Menelaus!” yelled Pyros, lifting his mule whip. “You have broken his bread and drunk his wine. Behave yourselves!”

The Trojans laughed and shoved a spear through his belly. When the spear was yanked back out so the soldier could use it again, the guts came with it, spooling onto the grass. Pyros tried to stuff his intestines back in, but the dogs got there first and ate eagerly.

I put my hand over Hermione's mouth, to stifle her scream. We must not let these Trojans see her next. They had tasted blood. Hermione tried to bite me.

Fifty steps away, Helen and Paris reached the doorway we had come out of.

From the ground, the dying Pyros raised up on one elbow. “Helen of Sparta!” he shouted. “I curse you!
You
ordered the gates to be left open!
You
are a traitor to the king your husband! May the gods eat
your
belly! May you—”

Paris left Helen's side and jogged forward. Snatching a spear from one of his men, the prince finished Pyros off. Then he thrust his spear tip skyward in the jagged fist action
of victory, as if he had risked his life; as if this had been a well-armed hero, a man on his feet, not a slave three quarters dead on the ground.

Helen swiftly crossed the pavement and stood beside him in the moonlight.

“There is no Helen of Sparta!” called Paris, adjusting the gold veil over the queen's hair. “There is Helen of Troy, and she is mine.”

Thus did the guts of a slave shame the men of Amyklai. The battle began. The Spartans were raging and the Trojans were glad.

Where is the joy of strolling in and taking? You want to fight, burn and slash. You want to hear groans and screams, see terror and submission.

You want to earn that gold you rip from the treasury; earn the pretty girls you pull from their beds. No longer could the Trojans pretend this was a dinner party.

They killed many as the day dawned and the morning brightened. They slashed the throats of men they would have left quietly tied up; raped the women they would have ignored; threw over the battlements tiny children they would have forgotten.

And Helen smiled.

Two armies were fighting over her. Shouting her name in love or in hatred. Dying for her.

She was everywhere, like weather, passing through the chaos as a goddess, untouched. She wore a white gown, and it was never sprayed with blood.

Hermione and I stumbled up the long stairs to the women's wing. “I know you keep a knife in your fleece,” said
Hermione. “Give it to me, Callisto. I have seen that blade. Long and thin and sharp. Even I am strong enough to shove it through soft flesh and into the softer heart.”

“Helen's heart is not soft,” I said. “It is stone. She cannot be killed. And if you did kill your own mother, the gods would never forgive you. They would go like wind through your ears and make a wild gale of your thoughts. The gods would destroy you.”

“First I will destroy her,” said Hermione.

Bia stood at the top of the stair. “Thank the gods!” cried Bia. “You are all right!” She was bulky in a comforting way, all bosom and waist. The thickness of women can be so warm and safe.

“I am not all right,” said Hermione. “I will never be all right. Not even after I kill Helen. Get out of the way, Bia.” The nurse didn't move fast enough, so Hermione shoved her. “Apollo has not struck down one Trojan! Not even the ones who attack his own temple! I believe that Apollo himself is on the side of these Trojans. When I think of the sacrifices my father has made to him! Callisto, pray to your goddess of yesterday. I shall need her with me to accomplish the death of Helen of Troy.”

I tasted the smoke of torches meeting the damp of stones. I saw the shadows lifting in the first light of dawn.

Helen of Troy.

That her own daughter, princess of Sparta, child of Menelaus, could call her that! And yet it was true. In heart and word and deed, Helen had already left Sparta.

I obeyed Hermione in part. “Goddess of yesterday!” I called. “Still the heart of Hermione. Quiet her rage.”

I thought Hermione would spit on me but she had already left. As a hawk plunges from the sky, with such speed
did she enter her room and fling my fleece into the air and shake out what I kept there. My Medusa fell safely onto a rug. My knife clattered on the floor and spun away from the princess.

I leaped toward the knife, slamming my foot down upon it. Hermione dropped to her knees to peel it out from under my sandal.

Bia dragged the princess away. “Hermione!” she scolded. “Behave yourself.” Bia was too strong for a nine-year-old. Hermione could go nowhere. I retrieved the knife and wondered what to do with it.

“Why don't you tell my mother to behave herself ?” Hermione's voice shook, but not as a little girl's trembles. Her voice shook as the earth shakes when it throws mountaintops or palaces to the ground. “My mother intends to travel with that Trojan. My mother intends to go to Troy.”

“Well, then,” said Bia sensibly, “let us enter the queen's chamber and discuss it with her. Perhaps we can present arguments that oppose her decision.”