Goddess of Yesterday (27 page)

Evil man, I thought. Paris wants you to die the day of your father's arrival, my Pleis. Perhaps he wants to deliver your little body to your father, Menelaus.

I wanted to burn the halls of Paris to the ground. Stab him with his own spear. Hold his corpse in the air for the vultures to pick over. I was as angry as any god. I was not neutral.

I slid the quicksilver onto the slab of bread and flung it out the window. When Kora returned, she would think Pleis had eaten it.

I did not want Pleis to be hungry anytime soon, so we went out into the city and joined the festive crowd. I fed him sweet cheese and thick dark bread with honey. I fed him plump raisins and made him drink cups of goat's milk. We got back to his little cell just as the servants began returning to the household. He was full and sleepy. “Night, night, Calli,” he murmured.

I didn't ask Pleis to keep my visit secret. I doubted if anybody wasted time talking to him, and tonight of all nights, Helen would be thinking of other things.

I left by the window. Vaulting up to the sill made me think of the great high horse, and the rich scent of its sweat; of Euneus, and the warm clasp of his arm.

I slept in the alley. I was not alone. Hundreds of infantry slept in the streets also.

When the sun rose, I found an inch of space on ramparts jammed with spectators, that I too might watch the mighty conflict.

Paris had had his hair done. All the warriors had, of course, for none dared ask the blessing of the gods and then not be at his best.

No kingdom resembled another in the modeling of hair. Some warriors wore braids, some achieved curls with hot irons. Some brushed their long flowing locks or divided their
hair into topknots. Paris was partial to an arrangement of gold wires, knotted with great skill so his head was tasseled like a robe.

I was jealous of every one of them.

I hoped anger would sustain me all the days of my life, because certainly beauty would not.

Two squires helped Paris arm. How fine were the buckles and straps that held his gleaming breastplate, how tall the plumes of his helmet. He carried two spears, his reflex bow on his back and his battle sword at his hip.

From the camps of the allies came ten thousand. Cavalry and infantry, bowmen and spearmen, darters and slingers. Hundreds of generals. Hundreds of horses.

From their ships came the Greeks. Even though we had counted ships, and knew how many rowers per ship, we trembled. They were ants pouring from a hole in the ground, and like ants were without number. Like ants, could they be stepped upon?

I did not think so.

Nor did the Trojans. Every man stroked his weapon, testing the sharpness tested only minutes before. Whereas in the night I had heard ten thousand murmuring voices, now I could almost hear ten thousand pounding hearts.

From the ramparts high above his fifty well-armed sons, King Priam prayed.

His voice was old and shaky, so his heralds, standing at the corners of the vast walls, repeated after him, shouting the prayer phrase by phrase over city and fields.

“Send me a bird of omen!” cried the king to the gods. “Let me see the eyes of your eagle! Prove that your power flies over Troy.”

But no eagle came.

No hawk.

No falcon.

Not even a sparrow.

The wind blew. The grass leaned down. And the sky was empty.

Without warning, clouds covered the blue sky and the sky swelled yellow like pus in a blister. As a turtle pulls in its head, so did two armies hunch down, uncertain of the plans of Zeus.

But Hector ignored the terrible omens. “Open the gates!” he roared, and the gate with the snarling horse was pulled to the side and an equal roar came from the throat of every ally.

Paris was pale. “Hector, we have to postpone the battle. The signs are against it.”

“Bird signs,” Hector said in contempt. “The only omen is whether you fight for your country.” In a huge voice, he shouted, “My soldiers! Beat these invaders into the sea!” Hector charged like a boar.

Paris, hundreds of armed and eager men at his back, left the gate more rapidly than he had planned. If he had planned to leave at all.

The horse's head gazed after him.

As flood seizes the river in spring, overflowing its banks, tearing away the soil and turning the clear water to mud, so came the armies.

They met in a whirl of blood. Far down the battlements from where I stood, Andromache screamed and covered her eyes, while Helen slammed her fists down on the battlements and, like a soldier too long in the trenches, swore with joy.

Shield hit shield with a crash as of cymbals. Stones hit faces, darts punctured lungs, spears found bellies. Men screamed in rage and pain. Horses shrieked like men. When a soldier fell, the hordes leaped upon him to rip off his armor.

The Trojan habit is for brothers to handle a chariot. But the enemy knew how to meet a charge of chariots. The brother who drove would get an arrow through the eye and with the terrified horses out of control, the brother who held the spear was spilled to the earth and swiftly killed. Trojans died two brothers at a time.

Hector fought like ten men. He forced himself through a wall of shields, bringing so many Greeks to the ground that around his feet was a quivering mass of plumes.

But the Trojans pushed nobody into the sea.

The Greeks were stronger. Relentlessly, they pushed the Trojans toward the walls on which we stood.

Helen was as god-pierced as Cassandra, swaying to the rhythm of war. Above the clangor and death, above the terror and pain, her voice rose. “I am Helen of Troy! This is my battle! Fight for me, you men. Suffer and bleed for me.
Die for me.
”

They were afraid of Helen on the ramparts and edged away from her, shivering as one does at the beginning of
fever. But they were slow to be afraid of the battle. Slow to grasp that Troy was losing.

The peasants who had not abandoned their outlying huts had no time to correct their error. Whole families met the springing tip of the spear, their fallen bodies crushed by plunging horses as if they'd been grains of wheat on the threshing floor.

Trojan hearts sank. Trojan hopes were dashed.

“Menelaus is murdering our children!” shouted Paris, from a rather safe spot near the gates. I had not been aware that Paris cared about the safety of children. “Menelaus tramples our children in his path!” he shouted, arousing the men to greater fighting. “Menelaus stabs to death the helpless infant!”

Who were the Trojans to claim they protected the weak? If Paris or Priam, if Hector or Aeneas had cared about mothers and babes, they would have ordered every peasant into the city and closed the gates behind them.

But as a rallying cry, it had no equal.

It had never really mattered what had happened between Menelaus and Helen. Never really mattered whether Paris had robbed a temple. But children mattered.

“Swear to the deathless gods,” roared the heralds from the towers, “that Menelaus will die!”

Troy surged back, heart renewed and resolve quickened.

The Greeks lost ground. The men of Sparta closed ranks to keep Menelaus safe. He would receive the protection of thousands.

But the son of Menelaus had no shield.

T
HE BATTLE DID NOT
go to the strongest.

The battle went to sunset.

No one can fight in the dark. It is not possible to tell friend from foe. The sky turned purple, the Greeks crossed back over the Scamander River, and a truce was arranged for the next morning so the bodies might be gathered.

The wounded were carried into the city and laid out in rows, filling the main avenue. No one considered using the great space of the Palladium. A man would rather die than lie there.

The city of Troy was in shock. They had believed Paris, that war would be a dance, a party; that the only dead would be the enemy. All night the people wailed in grief and the wounded moaned in pain.

A boy in a dirty wool cap and a barbarian's divided tunic is good for carrying. All night I brought buckets of water from the city well for washing the blood off the wounded.

When dawn came at last, each side buried its own. Warriors put down their weapons. Work parties lifted corpses and closed the eyes of the dead. Horses pulled body carts instead of chariots. Trojan mourners streamed toward Mount Ida, for the holiest burials would be on her slopes.

Hector and the princes and their generals gathered just
outside the Scaean Gate to plan the strategy for the next battle. Only Hector had understood that there would be a next battle. It was late in the morning before Helen was back on the battlements. No doubt it had taken her that long to fix her hair.

I left my bucket by the well and went to the house of Paris, but Kora stood in the door.

I went in by the window instead.

Pleis was alone in his tiny room. I held my finger to my lips so he would stay silent, but he was overjoyed to have company. “Calli!” he shouted happily. “Sto!”

I lifted him onto the sill, boosted myself up and dropped us both down. A few quick turns in back alleys and we found a stream of mourners to join.

I was just another slave boy in a short tunic and closefitting cap. Boys, however, care for sheep, not babies. I told myself that the eyes of mourners were too filled with tears to wonder about Pleis and me.

The son of Menelaus sat comfortably on my hip and chatted in the way of tiny children proud of new words. “Bunny bunny bunny,” he told me. “Long ears. Long, long, long.”

He was right about that. I wanted no long ears in Troy to hear us. “Shhh,” I whispered. “Be silent as a bunny. Wiggle your nose, not your tongue.”

Pleis loved having his nose tickled. His high silly giggle blended into the keening wails of the mourners. They left by the Dardan Gate, which led to Mount Ida. We walked among them for a quarter mile and then I slid into a thicket and clambered down the steep grassy hill.

I found the path Andromache and I had taken to the horses. The horses had been herded to safer more distant pasture, but the fences remained, thick with thorns and flowers.