“In three or four days. One of my father’s ships is due to land up the coast. I’ll cross the straits on it and then travel by land.” She took my hand. “The Achaeans are too busy to pursue a single ship. Paris says I will be safe.”
“I will make certain of it. The day you sail, I will take the host out and threaten the Achaean camp. That will hold their attention.”
She squeezed my arm in thanks. “I will be gone a month at most. I shall miss you.”
I embraced her but said nothing. I had sworn an oath to myself not to speak falsely to her.
The days leading to Andromache’s departure were wearing. My mind was unsettled, and I was careless in battle. I received a deep cut in my arm and had to stay behind when our host marched out to decoy the Achaeans. Odysseus led the Achaeans in a feigned retreat, and Paris was deceived into launching the attack I had long warned against. The attack covered Andromache’s passage, but at the cost of many of our best warriors. Afterward, at the evening meal, Paris was angry and scornful. He drank himself into a stupor and was carried senseless to his chambers. That left only Helen and me at the table.
“How is your wound?” she asked, nervously wrapping and unwrapping a blond curl around one finger.
“It has hardly healed since I answered that question earlier. I will be fine in another week.”
She turned red. “I am sorry if I seem so witless. The war...”
The war. We used that to excuse everything. My rudeness? The war. Lust for my brother’s wife? The war. It had been almost a year and still the Achaeans had not departed. They hadn’t enough men to encircle the city in a tight siege, so a trickle of supplies and reinforcements slipped through the loose net of Achaean outposts.
“I told your wife I would look after you while she was gone. I try hard to be her friend, but she guards her thoughts. It is hard to know what she thinks.”
“I have the opposite problem. Years of marriage have made her transparent.”
“If there is anything I can do...”
I had had enough of idle talk. I had held my tongue for a year, and here I was alone with this woman and so distracted that I could hardly think straight. Talk was for Achaeans.
“I want to make love to you,” I said.
She blushed and cast down her eyes. “I hardly think that is what Andromache had in mind.”
“No.”
I pulled her out of her chair and embraced her. “Would you deny me? I sense the way your body moves against mine. I smell the way you respond.”
“Deny you? You are the king in all but name. I am only a guest under your roof. How could one powerless woman deny the hero of Troy?”
I kissed her.
“Remember that I did not begin this,” she said, holding me at arm’s length.
I had no patience for her pretended reluctance. “You began it by being born.” My throat was so tight with hunger for her that the words were little more than a snarl. I lifted her and set her on the edge of my father’s table.
Then I had no use for words at all.
The war dragged on for nine long years. Each fall the Achaeans would leave behind a token force to raid and harry us. Each spring the black ships would return, and the war would be renewed. The tenth year started with no hope of an end to the bloodshed. The city looked worn; trash and rubble seemed as much a part of the landscape as the crowded shelters that filled the streets. The lower city, safe behind its wide ditch and palisade, overflowed with refugees.
Sometimes I felt I was the only thing holding us together. When I brought my spear into the battle line, the shield wall stiffened and surged forward. I kept bad counsel from squandering the safety our arms had won us. I outthought the wily Achaeans and foiled every one of their traps and ambushes. I was Troy.
In the last few years Helen and I had managed only a handful of trysts. I was frustrated and angered by the obstacles that always seemed to appear. Finally I cornered her in the storeroom where we once had kept newly harvested figs in rows of fragrant baskets. It was a harvest we had not enjoyed in many years. The baskets were still there, awaiting return of better days.
“Why did you not come to my bed yesterday? I sent word that Andromache was gone for the day and there would be time for us.”
“I could not,” she replied, without looking me in the eye. “I had to wait on Paris and his friends, mixing the wine while they talked and drank.”
“He treats you like a servant.”
She shrugged.
“I must see more of you. There is always some excuse and I have to conduct an elaborate campaign to be with you. I cannot live like this. I am not a man who sneaks into a woman’s bed.”
“I am no happier than you.” She began to pace, picking her way through the stacks of empty baskets. “Paris is your brother and my husband. There are no secrets in a palace; people are whispering. Who knows what would happen if we were discovered. Perhaps it is time to abandon this madness.”
I could hear the earnestness in her voice. She was frightened and she was right. The palace was the problem. But I could fix that.
“I was afraid you were avoiding me, but now I understand your reluctance. I will take steps to ensure our privacy.”
Then I pulled Helen to the floor and made love to her in the faint perfume of long-vanished figs.
I moved into a small house by the Scaean Gates. I said it was to be closer to the danger, to share the hardships of the men. That was true. But it also allowed me to escape the palace. It was simple enough to send Paris on a series of visits to our nearest allies, seeking men and grain. Then I could call Helen to my bed whenever I had the need to be with her. My warriors protected us from prying eyes and wagging tongues.
In late spring, after a long and bloody battle, I sent for Helen and told her to bring wine. We drank, and the wine loosened her tongue. She lay by my side, naked and covered in sweat. I had made love to her once, and was regathering my strength.
“Do you think this is fair to me?” she complained. “I am no longer young.”
“None of us are,” I said, tracing the lines that radiated from the corners of her eyes. She had stretch marks too, from the two children she had borne at Troy. Who was to say they were not Paris’s? Despite the ways she had changed, the only place I could find relief from the cries of the dead was with her.
She sat up and looked at me, rubbing a hand across my chest. “You are covered with scars. You look just like this city. How much longer can you go on?”
“As long as I have to. If there was a way to end it, I would.” That set me to thinking. What would I be willing to sacrifice for peace?
She filled my cup with wine and handed it to me. “Tell me about Achilles,” she said. “Could you defeat him? No boasts, only the truth.”
The question angered me. People who had never been in battle were forever asking me such things. Even Andromache, who visited once a month to spy on me, had plied me with the same nonsense a week ago.
“He is fast and very skilled. I have watched him kill many men. Sometimes, when he is reacting to a sudden opening and makes an unbalanced thrust with his spear, he brings his shield up a little to protect his head and shoulders. It leaves his side open to a counter-thrust. That is the only weakness I see.”
“So you could defeat him.”
“Perhaps. We are closely matched.” I downed the wine she had handed me.
“What about Odysseus...”
I placed my hand over her mouth, silencing her. “Enough about Achaeans. You’re the only Achaean I want to fight.” I rolled over and pulled her on top of me.
“So you’ll ride me until I’m sore and can hardly walk.” She spoke in that petulant voice I had come to dislike. “Then I will have to return to the palace and lie about where I’ve been. You do remember that Paris returns tonight? He’ll tell me he loves me and then carry me to his bed. I thought I had escaped brothers when I fled Menelaus and Agamemnon. You and Paris are worse. At least in Achaea, three days’ journey lay between the beds I was expected to keep warm. I am not as good as Andromache when it comes to lying.”