Here I hesitate, because I really don’t know. Did the gods make the baton and morphing bracelet fingerprint-dependent to keep the weapon out of Greek and Trojan hands if we fell on the battlefield? Quite possibly. None of us scholics ever asked. The morphing device and the QT medallion, at least, will require some training, and I tell the women that. The Hades Helmet will almost certainly work for anyone, since it is a stolen artifact. Helen keeps all of the tools, leaving me only the impact armor that is woven into my cape and leather breastplate. She puts the priceless gifts from the gods in a small embroidered bag, the other women nod, and we leave.
We leave Helen’s house—the five women and me—and walk through the mid-morning city streets to the Temple of Athena.
“What’s going to happen?” I ask as we hurry through the crowded lanes and alleys, five grim-faced women in black robes not dissimilar from Twentieth Century Muslim burkas and one confused man. I keep looking above the rooftops, expecting the Muse to appear in her chariot at any moment.
“Silence,” hisses Helen. “We’ll speak when Theano casts silence around us so even the gods cannot hear.”
Before we enter the temple, Theano produces a black robe and insists I pull it on. Now we all look like robed women entering the temple through a back door, moving down empty corridors, although one of the six women is wearing combat sandals.
I’ve never been in the temple, and my glimpse into the main hall through open doors is not disappointing. The space is huge, mostly dark, lighted by hanging braziers and votive candles. It smells and feels most like a Catholic church to me—the scent of incense in a cavernous space where even the echoes are hushed. But instead of a Catholic altar and statues of the Virgin Mary and Child, this space is dominated by a huge central statue to Athena—thirty feet tall, at least, carved of white stone but garishly painted with red lips, blushing cheeks, pink skin—the goddess’s gray eyes look to be made of mother of pearl stone—and she is brandishing an elaborate shield of real gold, a breastplate of burnished copper inlaid with gold, a sash of lapis lazuli, and a forty-foot spear of real bronze. It’s impressive and I pause at the open door, staring into the sanctuary. There, right there by Athena’s sacred sandaled feet, will Ajax the Great trap and rape Cassandra, Priam’s daughter.
Helen comes back, seizes my arm, and roughly pulls me along the corridor. I wonder if I’m the first man ever to see into the inner sanctuary of Athena’s Temple in Ilium. Isn’t the Palladion statue and the temple itself watched over by young virgins? I look up to see the priestess Theano glaring at me and I hurry to catch up. Theano’s no virgin—she’s fierce Antenor’s wife and a piece of tempered work to be reckoned with.
I follow the women down a shadowed staircase to a broad basement, lit only with a few candles. Here Theano looks around, moves a tapestry aside, removes an oddly shaped key from a pocket in her robe, slides it into a seemingly solid wall, and the slab of wall pivots, opening onto a steeper staircase lighted with torches. Theano hurries us all through.
There is a corridor leading to four rooms in this basement under the basement, and I’m herded into the final room, a small place by temple standards—little more than twenty feet by twenty feet, furnished only by a central wooden table, four fire tripods barely glowing—one in each corner—and a single statue of Athena, cruder and smaller than all of the sculptures above. This Athena is less than four feet tall.
“This is the real Palladion, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” whispers Helen, referring to the sacred sculpture carved from a stone which fell from heaven one day, thus showing Athena’s blessing over the city of Ilium. When the Palladion is stolen, so the century-old story goes, Troy will fall.
Theano and Hecuba stare Helen into silence. My former lover—well, my former one-night stand—dumps the contents of her bag on the table and we all sit on the wooden stools, staring at the Hades Helmet, morphing bracelet, taser baton, and QT medallion. Only the medallion looks like it might be worth anything. The rest of the stuff I’d probably pass over at a garage sale.
Hecuba speaks to Helen. “Tell this . . . man . . . that we must see if his story can be true. If these toys of his have any power.” Hector’s and Paris’s mother lifts the morphing bracelet.
I know she can’t activate it, but I still say, “That has only minutes of power in it. Don’t fool around with it.”
The old woman shoots me a scathing glance. Laodice picks up the taser baton and turns it in her pale hands. “This is the weapon you used to stun Patroclus?” she asks. It is the first time she’s spoken in my presence.
“Yes.”
“How does it work?”
I tell her the three spots I have to tap and twist to activate the wand. I’m certain that the thing is designed to work only when I’m holding it. Certainly the gods wouldn’t be so foolish as to leave the weapon usable for others if I lost it, even though the double tap and single twist are a safety mechanism of sorts. I start to explain to Laodice and the others that only I can use the gods’ tools.
Laodice aims the taser at my chest and taps the shaft of the wand again.
Once, when I was hiking with Susan in Brown County, Indiana, we were crossing a hilltop meadow when lightning struck just ten paces from me, knocking me off my feet, blinding me, and leaving me semiconscious for several minutes. We used to joke about that—about the odds against it—but the memory of the jolt used to make my mouth go dry.
This blast is worse.
It feels as if someone has hit me in the chest with a hot poker. I fly off my stool, land numbly on the stone floor, and remember spasming like an epileptic—my arms and legs kicking wildly—before I lose consciousness.
When I come to, hurting, my ears buzzing, my head aching, the four women are ignoring me, looking into the corner at nothing.
Four women? I thought there were five. I sit up and shake my head, trying to get my vision back in focus. Andromache’s missing. Perhaps she went for help, to find a healer. Maybe the women thought I was dead.
Suddenly Andromache flickers into visibility in the empty space where the others are looking. Hector’s wife pulls the Hades Helmet cowl from her shoulders and holds it out.
“The Helmet of Death works, just as the old tales say,” says Andromache. “Why would the gods give it to such as he?” She nods in my direction and drops the leather and metal cowl-helmet onto the table.
Theano holds up the QT medallion. “We can’t make this work,” she says. “Show us.” It takes me a fuzzy moment to realize that the priestess is speaking to me.
“Why should I?” I say, getting to my feet and leaning on the table. “Why should I help any of you?”
Helen comes around the table and puts her hand on my forearm. I pull my arm away.
“Hock-en-bear-eeee,” she purrs. “Don’t you know that the gods have sent you to us?”
“What are you talking about?” I look around the room.
“No, the gods can’t hear us in here,” says Helen. “The walls of this room are lined with lead. The gods can neither see nor hear through solid lead. This has been known for centuries.”
I squint around me. What the hell. Why not? Superman’s X-ray vision never worked through lead either. But why would there be a god-proof room in Athena’s temple?
Andromache steps closer. “Helen’s friend, Hock-en-bear-eeee, we—the women of Troy and Helen—have plotted for years to end this war. But the men—Achilles, the Argives, our own Trojan husbands and fathers—have power over us. They answer only to the gods. Now the gods have heard our most secret prayers and sent you as our instrument. With your help and our planning, we will change the course of events here, saving not only our city, our lives and our children’s lives, but also the destiny of mankind—freeing us from the rule of cruel and arbitrary deities.”