She climbed to the top step and saw him stiffen slightly, warned of her approach by the tiny particles of stone crunching beneath the leather soles of her sandals. Ignoring the sideward glances of the guards – boys or old men, mostly, since the heavy fighting, interspersed with experienced soldiers too badly wounded to fight in the battle lines again – she placed her hands on his upper back and pressed against the thick layers of muscle with her thumbs, gently kneading the tense knots that lay beneath his skin until she felt his resistance give and his shoulders relax. But moments later he reached back and, without turning to look at her, brushed her hands away.
‘What is it, Paris?’ she asked, moving beside him and looking up at his face, the familiar scar a bright pink in the clear morning light.
‘A horseman,’ he said, deliberately misunderstanding her question as he pointed his chin towards the plains. ‘Maybe two.’
Helen turned and looked. Her eyes swept over the rooftops of the lower city, skipping over the arc of the impenetrable walls and crossing the pastureland beyond to where the silver line of the Scamander wriggled down towards the bay. As her gaze touched upon the fords she saw a horse picking its way through the swirling waters and the slippery stones beneath, with what were almost certainly two riders on its back. She watched them closely, trying to discern whether they were Trojan or Greek as they reached the near bank of the river and struggled up into the swampy, flower-filled meadows.
‘Who are they?’ she asked, reaching out and placing her hand on his.
‘Apheidas and a girl,’ he answered, pulling away. ‘One of his household servants, I think.’
Helen felt a sting in her heart as his fingers slipped from hers, sensing that his need of her was slipping away with them. They had not made love since Hector had died, and even killing Achilles had not alleviated the responsibility and guilt he felt for his brother’s death or the sense of doom it had brought to Troy. He was punishing himself too much and would not allow her to console him with either her words or her body. But if she lost him, what hope would there be for her in a city full of enemies?
She turned away so that he would not see the tears rimming her eyes.
‘Apheidas? What’s he doing outside the city walls?’
‘Committing treason.’
Helen and Paris turned to see Cassandra at the top of the stairs, a glum expression marring her naturally beautiful features as she stared down at her bare feet. She wore a sable cloak over her pale grey chiton, and with her ashen complexion and her dark hair and eyes she reminded Helen more than ever of Clytaemnestra.
‘What do you mean, Sister?’ Helen asked, inadvertently adopting the voice she used for children or those who struck her as simple-minded. Paris had already switched his gaze back to the plain before the city walls, where the horse was now approaching the Scaean Gate.
Cassandra shrugged and moved to the battlements, continuing to peer down at her feet as she dropped back against the rough stone.
‘I saw it. You know, in here.’ She tapped her temple with her finger, sparing Helen a sheepish glance. ‘He met with his son in Apollo’s temple. Offered to open the city’s gates to the Greeks if Agamemnon would give him the throne of Troy. I’ve always said he can’t be trusted, but no one ever believes me anyway.’
Helen narrowed her eyes quizzically. ‘So he’s going to betray us all?’
‘No. He and his son argued, nearly killed each other. There’ll be no traitors’ deal, and right now all Apheidas is worried about is how to explain what he was doing outside the city walls.’
Paris sighed audibly and leaned his forearms on the parapet.
‘Apheidas is a commander in the Trojan army, Sister. He’ll have his reasons for going out – a spying mission or a patrol of some kind, most likely.’
‘With Astynome, his maid?’ Cassandra asked, giving him a tired but resentful look.
‘Then maybe he’s heard the rumour she’s sleeping with a Greek in their camp – his own son, by the account I heard – and went to catch her on her return,’ Paris replied tersely.
Cassandra returned to the top of the steps, brushing Helen as she passed.
‘I shouldn’t expect you to believe me, Paris – that’s the curse I have to live with – but you don’t have to be so wretched about it. At least Hector was polite in his disbelief! But one day the whole city will regret not listening to me, and by then it’ll be too late.’
She trudged down the stairs and was gone, but Helen was hardly aware of her passing. As Cassandra had moved by her, their bare arms touching for the briefest of moments, her mind’s eye had been filled with a terrible image. The whole of Troy was a mass of fire, from the lowest hovel to the highest palace, the flames towering over the blackened walls to lick at the night sky and fill it with billowing columns of spark-filled smoke. There were screams and the clash of weapons; women were being raped by warriors drunk with victory, while their children were being hurled from the battlements. But at the centre of the inferno, standing tall and black, was a giant horse, a beast so terrible that Helen could sense the evil that had consumed Troy was emanating from it. Then the image was gone as quickly as it had come, so that Helen’s mind was left scrambling to pick up the fragments and piece together some memory of what she had imagined. She failed and was left with nothing more than a consuming sense of doom and the image of the horse.
The news of Ajax’s suicide reached Odysseus shortly after the skulking Eurylochus had informed him that Eperitus was going to meet with his father in the temple of Thymbrean Apollo. The disbelief he had felt at his captain’s treachery quickly turned to remorse over the death of Ajax. Though he had only been a pawn in the vengeance of the gods, Odysseus had acted of his own free will and knew he was as guilty of the great warrior’s death as if he had plunged the sword in himself. He also guessed that his actions had been partly responsible for Eperitus’s decision to meet with Apheidas, and he was seized by the urgent need to go after him and explain his motives – something he was free to do now that he had carried out the deed. Above all, he had to stop Eperitus from joining his father, if, as Odysseus suspected, that was what he had been driven to.
Later, as they rode slowly back from the temple of Thymbrean Apollo, Eperitus asked the question that had been pricking at him since he had watched his father and Astynome escape.
‘What happens now, Odysseus? When I met with Apheidas I betrayed you and the rest of the army, and the punishment for treason is stoning.’
‘You said you were trying to end the war so I could go back to Ithaca,’ Odysseus said, stroking the oiled mane of his mount. ‘So there was no betrayal. You knew my heart’s desire was always to go home to my family, but you thought I’d forgotten it in some mad desire for the armour of Achilles. I couldn’t tell you the real reason why I had to keep the armour from Ajax – though you know now – so you were just trying to save me from its curse. And I forgive you.’
They rode on in silence for a while, then Eperitus turned and looked at the king.
‘In that case, am I still captain of the guard?’