Goddess of Yesterday (20 page)

A hideous shriek came right out of the sky. In this godswept land, I would have believed anything. I held Pleis even tighter and pulled Aethra against me and found the courage to look up.

Jutting from the heavy watchtower that bulked out above us was another, more slender tower, built of wood. Against the great stones, it almost seemed built of splinters. Standing on a ledge so narrow it seemed safe only for birds was a girl. Dark hair swirled around her head. Her gown was flung in the wind like the white wings of many doves. Stretching her arms straight to heaven, she screamed,
“Noooooooooooooo!”

The people ceased their welcome. The parade halted. The sun closed its eye. The wind turned cold, as if a thread of ice connected the girl on the tower to the gods.

The girl's voice cut like a curved blade across the throat of a lamb.
“Do not take Helen in!”

Paris gritted his teeth, snarling like the wooden horse on the gate.

“The noise of her name will shatter our gates!”
screamed the girl.
“That woman is loathed of God.”

The girl was not looking down. High as she was, sixty or possibly eighty feet, she stared directly out. I balanced myself on the slope and looked to where her eyes went, north beyond the bay, out into the sea, past distant bright islands. Her eyes were fastened on the mountain peak of Fengari, where the blue-haired god of the sea rests when he comes out of the waves.

“It's my sister Cassandra,” said Paris irritably. “Pay no attention to her, Helen, she has to be locked up for her own safety. She thinks she can see the future. She's just insane. Fifty brothers, twelve sisters, I suppose it is to be expected that one of them would go mad.”

As if she had been dropped into a glass jar, Cassandra remained visible and yet disappeared. She was just there, thin and wavering against the sky. The crowd went back to celebrating and shouting.

Dozens of young men trotted forward to greet Paris and to admire Helen at close range. Helen looked slowly at each man. Each quivered and flushed, dropped his eyes and caught his breath and stared again. Her beauty was impossible. Even for me, it was impossible. They could not talk to Helen. She was overpowering. They could only talk around her.

“You missed Menelaus and his embassy by only two days, Paris.”

“The king of Sparta was demanding Helen's return and the return of his treasure. We told him we didn't know a thing about it.”

“Paris, did you really scrape the palace of Menelaus dry?”

“Did you actually dare empty out the temple of Apollo?”

Paris embraced one man, calling him brother, and then
did so again, and again, and it dawned on me that
all
these young men were his brothers! Priam really had fifty sons.

“We laughed at Menelaus behind his back,” said another, “but we were cordial in public. Any embassy deserves honor.”

“
I
wasn't cordial,” said the next brother, embracing Paris. “I voted to kill Menelaus. The man will just come back a second time and be even more trouble.”

They vote? I thought. How curious. Is there an assembly of princes? How could that work?

“Deiphobus,” cried Paris, leaving Helen's side to move to this brother. They embraced and studied each other gladly. He had a very strange name. It had the word “fear” in it, but also the word “loot.”

“Menelaus brought criminal charges against you,” Deiphobus told him. “Our father beseeched him to go more slowly. Priam said he could not charge a man who was absent and unable to defend himself.”

“I'm here now,” said Paris, touching the hilt of his dress sword. “Let Menelaus come. I'll defend myself.”

Helen smiled and took Paris' arm and together they moved forward into the city of Troy.

On the tower above, the dark-haired girl leaned into the wind, as if hopeful of being taken to heaven.

Aeneas wanted to know more about this embassy of Menelaus and questioned Deiphobus closely. Aethra and I were stuck behind him and could not move on. The old queen was shaking with exhaustion. I did not know how much longer she could stay on her feet.

Deiphobus listed the men who had accompanied Menelaus on his embassy. I knew a few of the names from song, but the name I had expected was Agamemnon, and he had not come.

“And two young boys,” said Deiphobus. “The sons of the great hero Theseus. It turns out that when their father was murdered, Elpenor took the boys in. They hadn't known that their grandmother Queen Aethra was alive and servant to Helen, and Menelaus hadn't known the boys had been spared. The youngsters came hoping to ransom their grandmother.”

Aethra and Pleis and I stood for a long time while the crowd flowed around us. Aethra was as wooden as the horse on the gate.

If only we had gotten to Troy a few days earlier.

But Aethra was not grieving. Her face was set in anger. “Cassandra, sad sister of Paris, was gifted with prophecy by Apollo,” said Aethra. “On the same day, Apollo also cursed her. Cassandra always tells the truth, because she always knows the truth.
But no one ever believes her.
” Aethra twisted painfully so that she could look all the way up to the little tower, but the ledge was empty.

“You and I are different, Callisto. We believe. The noise of Helen's name will shatter these gates.”

And Aethra smiled grimly.

King Priam was very old. His beard was entirely white, soft as lamb's wool, while the hair of his head was sparse from great age. Hands which had clenched the shaft of many a spear had stiffened, and his knuckles and fingers were twisted like knots in a sailing rig. He could get up from his throne without help, but staggered a few steps until he had his balance back.

His sons loved him.

You would think every one of those fifty sons would be waiting for him to finish up and die. You would expect them
to have formed alliances and hatreds among themselves, fifty little cities reaching out for power. Yet every son regarded the tottering father with affection.

Priam looked past all those sons and all their wives. He looked past all his daughters and all their husbands. His eyes fixed on Helen.

The hall of Priam was perhaps a hundred strides north to south and only about twenty east to west. Its high balconies, jammed with spectators, nearly met in the middle. Narrow slot windows high above their heads let in a chilly breeze and little light.

I could no more keep my eyes off Helen than could the shivering strangers on the balcony. Could this be the same woman who had turned her cheek half an inch to receive the lukewarm kiss of Menelaus? She was a cloud of gold and a storm of beauty.

As a swan upon the water, she glided from Paris to the king of Troy. The court was entirely silent, drinking in the sight of her. She knelt before Priam and grasped his knees, as if she were an ordinary woman with an ordinary request.

“I beg of you, dear king,” she said in a new voice, an intoxicating compelling voice like a nightingale, “to accept me as your daughter. Permit me to love you and serve you. Forgive whatever trouble I may have caused. Bless my adoration for your fine son Paris. Give us a wedding, Father, and your blessing, and assure us the blessings of your people.”

Helen shone in the dark megaron as a sapphire on a ring.

A sigh of pleasure came from the throat of the whole crowd.

“Daughter,” said the king of Troy, “you are bride to us all. There can be no trouble. Beauty such as yours will bring
only joy. You are welcome indeed.” He motioned his son Paris forward, and as a groom kisses his virgin bride at the altar of the gods, so Paris kissed Helen in front of the whole court, the kiss long and slow, and every one of us in the room kissed with them, lips aching and hearts full of envy.

And Helen turned to those hundreds of strangers, and smiled upon them, and they were no longer strangers. They were hers.

For some time Helen and Paris conferred with the king, and when they left, there was still more business to transact. Aeneas revealed details of the army and navy of Menelaus. An officer described the precise geography of the kingdom of Sparta, listing towns and temples still to be looted. Still another had investigated half a dozen ports while Paris had distracted Menelaus and Kinados.

If Menelaus did not attack Troy, Troy would certainly attack Sparta. It had been so easy for Paris; so clear to the Trojans that Menelaus was weak. They hadn't murdered him only because they didn't fear him.

O my king. Did you realize that?

Which of my kings had had the worst of it? Nicander— buried in the sand? Or Menelaus—palace, family, temple, kingdom and dignity stripped by his wife?

Aethra had left the room in Helen's wake. Perhaps I would drift away with Pleis, meld into the city, find a hut, some little corner. A son of Menelaus in the city that had declared him an enemy…

But the next order of business
was
Pleis.

I set him down, praying that he would neither whine norcling,
and took him by the hand to the throne of Troy. I knelt to the king while Pleis, in his sober openmouthed way, stared around. “I am Callisto, O king. Daughter of Nicander and Petra of Siphnos. I beg your permission to serve this child.”

I did not repeat out loud the lineage of Pleis. I would have had to begin with Menelaus.

“My dear princess, slaves will nurse the boy. You will share a room with the princess Andromache, who is betrothed to my dear son Hector.” The king smiled proudly at Hector.

Hector was the largest man I had ever seen. I didn't like looking at him. He was too big, as if he were partly bear. His hands were too large, as if they broke oxen instead of bread. His black eyes were shadowed by a forehead too jutting and his beard was not trimmed, let alone braided, but left furry like wild goat hide.

Pleis hid behind my legs at the sight of Hector. How the court laughed at fear in the son of Menelaus. He's only two years old! I thought, picking him up and comforting him. “My king, the little prince loves me. I have been his nurse for many days in many desperate moments. I beg you—”

“No,” said Priam, still smiling. “Helen made these arrangements.” He leaned into the word “Helen,” caressing it. She had asked for this; she would have it. She would have anything Priam could give her. “Set the boy down,” said the king of Troy.

With Menelaus I would have argued. Perhaps even with Agamemnon.

But the power of this trembling old man was drawn in the smoky shadows to the fine point of a knife. I set Pleis down.

“I am so glad that you and I will live together!” cried Andromache.

Her name was complex. “Andro” means “man,” but “mache” means “battle.” An
drom
ah kee. I puzzled about it. A girl over whom men fought battles? But that was surely Helen.

“There will be four of us princesses in one chamber,” said Andromache. “Troy is very crowded. Well, what did King Priam think would happen when he had fifty sons? But someday I will finally be old enough to marry Hector and then we'll have our own house. Actually Hector already has a house; it's a fine palace, but I can't live with him yet. King Priam wants me to wait another three years. They say you're fifteen, Callisto. I am fifteen also. Waiting is boring, don't you think? I want to get married and I want to get married now.”

She was small and dark and soft, with no sharp lines. She was as cuddly as Pleis. I could not imagine her with Hector.

Her chamber appalled me. Anywhere else, it would have been called a wide place in the hall, not the boudoir of a princess. And this space was to hold four of us? Each girl had a trunk, but to save room, bedding and fleeces had been rolled up and stacked on top of them. It was just as well I possessed nothing.

“You have nothing, Callisto!” said Andromache. “This is dreadful. But that's what happens when you travel on the water. The storm blows your fine things into the waves and the rest rots from the salt. How you must have suffered! In my experience, sailing is merely another word for suffering. I came here by ship and I was sick the whole way. I hope never to stand on the deck of a ship again. You will find Troy
a very healthy place, though. We are high above the marshes and the wet poison of their air. The wind that comes steadily from the north? You can hear it now, banging every shutter? If you look out that window, you'll see every flowerbed protected by a fence. The only plant that wants to grow here is grass. But the same wind blows every illness out to sea. Now, do not worry for a moment about your wardrobe. Queen Hecuba loves me; you have not met the queen yet, she is quite old and rests a good deal, but Hecuba will do anything for me. I'll see that you have all the gowns you need and lots of jewelry. I love jewelry. And perfume. I love perfume.”

Andromache and every other Trojan woman I had seen wore exceptionally long gowns whose hems trailed on the stones. It was a sign of great wealth, for the cloth would quickly wear out, and few households could support that luxury.

“Now let me see your hair,” said Andromache. “I love how you have twisted that scarf into a turban, but it isn't fashionable, Callisto, and we must have my hairdresser come. Hector's hair is very black and he doesn't bother to braid it. He doesn't even comb it. He doesn't like Paris' hair; he says only girls spend that much time on their hair. Your hair is—” She broke off, alarmed by the sight of my scalp, just beginning to bristle with hair. “What a fever you must have had, Callisto,” she said very softly. “But do not refer to it. In this city, it would be trouble.”