Memoirs of a Bitch (11 page)

“The sea's not far off,” announced Callira, and in fact we soon saw it beyond the final hill, a long path of fire fading with the light; we only just managed to reach Amyclae before the night watch shut the town's double gates. I watched the closing gates cut off the land of Messenia from my sight.

“Keep together,” commanded Amphitryon, dismounting. My slaves and I dismounted too. He looked at us in surprise.

“The horses are tired,” I said, leading mine by the bridle. The Trojan nodded and looked away. I wouldn't have won his respect even if I'd run all the way from Sparta, but at that time I didn't think it mattered. The horse was breathing heavily, its muzzle, neck and sides white with foam, its eyes dilated with exhaustion. But it followed me as I took the road down to the port. At my side an unexpected light pierced the night, and I turned to see Callira with her lantern raised high. She smiled, and I smiled with her, resting my head on her shoulder.

There, at the bottom of the road, was the port and the ship with Paris on board, and we were about to sail off to a new world. I could only smile despite my tiredness and the inevitable smudging of the kohl under my
eyes. The noise in the taverns was a signal to us that Paris and his party were arriving. Amyclae was a small port; four jetties with the Trojan ship anchored a little way out in the shelter of the gulf. At the end of the last jetty a rowing boat was waiting for us, with water lapping against wood and stone. Limpets and mussels were clinging tenaciously to the rocks. The man in the boat had no hood, and my heart missed a beat as I recognized his golden hair in the moonlight.

“Paris!” I covered the distance to the jetty and boat in a surge of joy and threw my arms around his neck. My mouth was on his before I could say another word and we fell with a thud on to the wet bottom of the boat, the water making my cloak heavy but I did not care. Paris! Paris! He responded just as passionately, and when we came up for air we saw that the force of our fall had pushed the boat from the jetty, and an oar was floating uselessly not far off. My prince laughed his soft laugh and maneuvered us closer with the surviving oar. When I leaned over the side and reached out to recapture the lost one, silver fish touched my fingers in the pale light. It was food they wanted, but I felt their cold lips kissing me before they fled back terrified into the silky darkness of the depths. On the jetty stood the soldier and Callira, Etra and Amphitryon, waiting for us to come back. Behind them the exhausted horses, tied to a bollard, were waiting
for a barge to come take them to the ship. The soldier standing beside Callira on the jetty was quick to grasp her waist and lower her into the boat beside me. I met her eyes; she was my friend and accomplice and we giggled. Amphitryon looked after Etra and once he had come on board too we were ready to go. Paris insisted on rowing and while he rowed he watched me, his deep eyes glistening with confidence of my future at his side. Far off, the light of the rising full moon was soon swallowed up in the dark shadows of the ship's hull. Suddenly I was afraid, and sought comfort like a child in Paris's arms while a rope ladder was lowered to us from above.

“Everything's fine, we're safe now,” he murmured into my hair as I buried my face in the folds of his collar, breathing deeply his sweet rosemary scent, now mingled with the smell of the sea.

“Come, my queen, I'm behind you.” He lifted me and helped me to find a foothold on the ladder. My hands hurt; the rough rope crusted with salt chafed my skin, but I tensed my muscles and struggled rung by rung to the top. A kindly hand reached out to me; I grasped it and found myself on deck. The young man who had helped me looked very much like Paris, though his face was softer and rounder and younger, with adolescent muscles barely visible under his moonlit skin.

“Cebriones.” He introduced himself. “Paris's brother.”

“I don't remember seeing you at court,” I said in surprise.

He smiled. “I'm not interested in Sparta; I wanted to discover Greece. I had plenty of time for that.”

Paris was behind me. “I see you've met one of my brothers.” He slipped his arm around my waist. I relaxed against him, feeling I had come home. “Bed, my queen; it's anchors aweigh tomorrow at dawn.”

“Tomorrow? I thought …”

Paris laughed. “You can't navigate at night. Anyway, they won't have noticed you've gone yet. At first light, my queen, we sail for home.”

I nodded to Cebriones and let Paris lead me below decks by a little stairway. The slow rolling of the ship took me by surprise; I had never been at sea before. Paris took my hand and guided me through what to him was familiar darkness to our cabin in the stern; it was little more than a hole, but soft linen covers and cushions had been laid on the hard planks. He shut the door behind us and I let myself fall on the bed.

“Tonight, my queen, we need not hide.” He smiled in the darkness and sat down on the edge of the bed. “We'll sleep together till dawn.”

“Till dawn,” I murmured, and already Sparta was a thousand miles away. His hand grasped my ankle, then moved higher. I relaxed contentedly among the pillows. Moonlight dripped slowly on us through a grille in the ceiling.

As he had promised, dawn found Paris in my arms, with his head on my breast and his mouth open; through the grille I could now see a gray sky. It was the hybrid moment when light meets darkness, the gray hour of ghosts as my wet nurse used to call it. I carefully rearranged the bedclothes over Paris on the bunk, and he started slightly in his sleep. I slipped on a tunic and pulled a shawl from my bag on the floor. The deck in the corridor rocked slowly from side to side under my feet. I shuddered at the thought of storms still far away. It was not the thought of sinking that frightened me, but of being seasick in front of Paris's horrified eyes. Trying not to think about it, I got lost twice before I found the little stairway and climbed up to a bridge teeming with activity. The sailors, preparing to set sail, were shouting orders in a dialect
I couldn't understand, and they pushed me roughly out of the way. In the midst of this ordered chaos I saw Cebriones in the bows talking to a tall thin man who was frowning, perhaps the steersman. The Trojan prince smiled and raised his hand to me, as if I were legitimately betrothed to his brother. His boyish smile warmed my heart.

I felt familiar fingers link themselves with mine. “Callira! Where have you sprung from?”

“Prince Cebriones insisted on giving up his cabin to Etra and me. A mere hole, but anyway …”

“I doubt it was an entirely disinterested gesture.”

Callira turned to Cebriones, who was watching her as if transfixed. She gave him a smile such as no slave should ever give a prince, and the Trojan blushed.

“He's only fifteen years old, and I don't think he's ever had a woman.”

“You could be the first,” I teased her, but Callira shook her head.

“If he wants me, he'll arrange it.” A shadow passed over her eyes, turning their icy blue into a black sea. So I grasped her wrist on which a little bronze chain identified her as a slave. I squeezed the links and pulled: the bracelet fell to the deck with a tinkle.

“Starting today, you sleep with anyone you like,” I said severely, but my eyes were laughing.

Callira looked down, then a smile formed on her slender lips and she threw her arms around my neck. “I want to be with you always, Helen,” she murmured in my ear.

“Even if you go on fancying last night's handsome soldier?” I answered, laughing.

“You know me too well, my queen. But will you let me stay in your service?”

“As long as you like, dear friend. As long as you like.” I took her hand, and together we watched the dawn dispersing a slight haze.

The anchor came loose from the sea bottom with a screeching of its chain, making terrified fish flee from the hull, streaking diagonally through the green water while the sailors hoisted a square sail. A wind was blowing behind us from the land, on our mixture of red hair and fair hair, as friendly Aeolus filled his cheeks and edged us gently away from the Peloponnese. I turned to look back at the jetties of Amyclae and, at the top of the slope, the town gates which were at that moment being opened for the day. I could see the long road to Sparta bordering the course of the Eurotas, and far off, beyond the bare hills, the mountains of what had been my country. But not now, not anymore. A dolphin leaped in front of our bows, followed by another and the sailors shouted with joy. Cebriones came up behind us and, his eyes on Callira,
told us sailors called dolphins the nymphs of the sea, and saw it as a good omen when they appeared. Now these mermaids were leaping and spinning wide circles all around the ship, as we entered the metallic, wine-dark sea of Greece.

Asia Minor was hidden under a thick pall of fog, the woolen blanket of a sunless day. Paris wrapped me in his cloak and pressed his lips to my collarbone. “I wish this could have been a sunlit morning. Troy is so beautiful when its roofs are shining.”

At our last stop, at Tenedos, he had sung the praises of his city, telling me how beautiful I would find it when I finally had the chance to see it, with the blue-tiled roof of Priam's palace sparkling in honor of the gods. But just now none of this was visible; only the outline of the fortified citadel rose above the fog; I looked at its severe contour and the narrow walls marking the bare path up to the temple of Apollo and Athene at the very top. Below the citadel's double walls the whole lower town was drowned in the fog that had swallowed up the homes
of rich and poor alike. The open Scaean Gates gaped like a black mouth on the lightless afternoon.

“Make no mistake,” Paris said in my ear, “this is a gentle land.”

But I had my doubts. Behind Troy a dark mantle of pine forests surrounded Mount Ida, and on either side deep rivers cut like wounds through the sandy plain on their way to the sea. Scamander and Simoeis; the stormy black waters of the one dark and bottomless, while the clear, solid stream of the other moved sluggishly over a bed of red clay. This was my new country: a few wooden houses and a stone pier stretching out to sea. Ten men with lanterns showed us the road. A rowing boat had come to meet us, stopping under the ship's side. Messengers had left Tenedos two days before and reached Troy on horseback to say that Paris was not coming home from Sparta alone. I stayed on deck at the tiller with Cebriones. The sailors looked happy, their leathery old faces wreathed in smiles.

The voyage had taken us a month and a half; moving by furtive stages between caves and improbable landing places which could only be approached at evening, we had finally reached Egypt. From there we moved to Phoenicia, whose inhabitants were interested in nothing but their own business, then Asia Minor, where every landing was greeted triumphantly. Only now did Paris
lose the fear and sense of insecurity that had followed him ever since we lost sight of the Peloponnese. We had been only just in time. By now Menelaus knew, but Menippus had been too proud to send news to Mycenae; an old guard dog waiting for his master at the door of an empty palace. Distant Sparta, lost beyond the confines of the world in this sea of milk and vapor. My memory of it blotted out by the numbing weight of the fog. I stood wrapped in my shawl, my eyes closed as I let the day seep through my skin and into my memory. A new life. A new home. I tried to recapture my smile and the sense of security I had felt when I crossed the ford. That crystalline world lost in this land without contours.

Familiar arms encircled my waist and I smelt the forest scent of Callira.

“My queen, we're here; it's no longer a dream or a mirage. This is Troy!”

I sighed. “I'm no longer a queen, Callira. Hecuba is Queen of Troy and Paris isn't even heir to the throne.”

“Are you sorry you've lost your crown?”

I thought about it for a long moment. A white diadem. No. “No. Menelaus polluted the throne of Sparta, and that disgusted me.”

Callira nodded, looking toward Troy. “A beautiful city. But gloomy.”

“Do you think …?”

“Our happiness doesn't depend on where we are. Don't worry, Helen.”

She smiled and I smiled back at her as she moved toward the ship's stern. Off to find her Glaucus. Yes, this was a new life and only the fog was hiding it. I must not behave like a child. I touched the amulet of Egyptian turquoise around my throat, a present from Paris. A new start. We reached the pier. Lines were flung to us, and an unstable gangway was stretched to make a fragile bridge from ship to shore.

My head was spinning after so long at sea, and dry land made me giddy; I needed to get used to it again, learn a second time how to walk. Paris smiled and pressed my hand, then turned back to the ship to direct the unloading while I waited on the wharf for Callira to join me. It was cold in the fog, so I pulled the shawl over my head. I heard a light shuffle, barely more than a sigh on the Trojan wind. I turned. A horseman rode silently out of the fog and looked at me. Even on horseback you could see he was tall. A strong face. Great dark eyes that seemed to absorb the meager light. Long brown hair drawn together in a tail down his back. Strong arms and broad shoulders. He was riding bareback, and when he saw me looking at him he stared back at me for a long time but I could not interpret the expression in his eyes. Finally he tossed his head like a skittish horse, and silently
shook the reins to turn his black charger. Digging in his spurs, he vanished into the fog just as he had come.

“Hector.” said Paris contemptuously behind me.

“What?”

“Hector.” He grimaced as if he had a nasty taste in his mouth.

“He was watching me … But why has he gone away?”

“Take no notice, he's mad. Spends more time than he should with our sister Cassandra … You'll meet her, but I warn you, don't let her frighten you. She's …” He shook his head without finishing what he was saying.