Diomedes and Menelaus voiced their agreement with the Cretan king, while Odysseus and Nestor both looked at Agamemnon in a way that left him in no doubt of their feelings on the matter.
Calchas turned on them in disgust. ‘What good are your strategies and tactics if the fleet is stuck at Aulis? I’m the only one who knows how to lift the storm, and unless you listen to me your ships will remain here until their timbers rot and their crews die of old age.’
‘Come now, my lad,’ said Nestor, leaning down and patting the distressed priest’s shoulder. ‘If you know how to appease the god we’ve offended, then tell us so that we can do whatever we must.’
‘Whatever, King Nestor?’ Calchas replied with a mocking smile. ‘Whatever? Even a brave man like you would pale at what needs to be done. And that’s why I can only tell the King of Men. He must decide whether to pay the terrible price that is demanded of him, or abandon his dreams of conquest and go back home.’
‘You’d like that wouldn’t you, you Trojan dog?’
‘Enough, Menelaus,’ said Agamemnon, though his eyes did not leave Calchas. ‘If this vision is for me alone, and if it’ll show me how to send these winds back to where they came from, then I must ask you to return to your tents. We can carry on our discussion at noon tomorrow.’
The kings paused and looked at Agamemnon for a moment, then Odysseus went to the table by the entrance and picked up his purple cloak, throwing it about his shoulders and fastening it together with the golden brooch Penelope had given him. The others followed, gathering up their cloaks and helmets before leaving without a word. Odysseus was the last to go, but before he lowered the embroidered flap of the tent behind him, he looked back to see Calchas with his arms around Agamemnon’s knees, crying like a child.
While storms raged over the Euboean straits, the skies above the island of Tenedos were peaceful and clear. Countless stars winked and shivered as if blown by a celestial wind, and a new moon hung low over the black silhouette of the hills. Helen lay on her back in the deep grass with her hand held above her face, the tip of her forefinger tracing the shapes of the heroes and monsters of old in the myriad lights before her. Her nurse, Myrine, had taught them to her from the window of her bedroom when she was a small child, telling her their names and the stories that had earned them their place in the heavenly firmament.
There’s Cepheus, the king of Ethiopia,’ she told Paris, who lay beside her. ‘And that’s Cassiopeia, his wife. Poseidon set their images in the stars after Perseus had turned them to stone with the head of Medusa. Their daughter, Andromeda, is below them. And there’s Perseus, reaching for her hand.’
‘Hmm,’ Paris replied uncertainly. He pressed his naked flank against hers, enjoying the warmth of her body as they lay beneath his double cloak. ‘That’s not what we Trojans call them.’
‘Then how about that bright star a little further to the west? That’s Capella, the she goat who suckled Zeus when he was an infant. Can you see the four bright stars about her? Athena put them there to commemorate Erichthonius, whose lower body was that of a snake. He invented the chariot, so they say, and that’s why we call that constellation the Holder of the Reins.’
‘The Holder of the Reins,’ Paris repeated with mocking slowness. ‘Well, I’ve never heard it called that before. When I was a shepherd on Mount Ida we used to name that the Crooked Stick, though I never knew why. And those two you call Perseus and Andromeda, they’re Marduk and Istar in our reckoning.’
‘Then Trojans must be stupid,’ Helen replied.
Paris rolled on top of her and pinned her wrists to the ground. Helen struggled against him, smiling through the concentration as she wrapped her legs about his waist and tried to throw his heavy bulk to one side. But her efforts were in vain and she quickly lay still beneath him, looking up at his scarred face and into his dark eyes.
‘You won’t say that when you see my father’s city tomorrow. Troy makes Sparta look like a pig farm.’
‘I’m looking forward to seeing your home at last,’ she replied. ‘Though it scares me at the same time.’
‘There won’t be a person there who won’t take you to their heart,’ Paris promised her. ‘The whole of Troy will love you. And if anyone doesn’t, then my father will command them to.’
‘You can’t command someone to love a person.’
‘The king can. In Greece, kings are merely respected and their word obeyed grudgingly; in Ilium, the king is worshipped like a god. When the king speaks, his wishes are carried out with love and fear. Your life depends on it.’
‘Can no one question his authority?’
‘Absolutely no one. He has his council of advisers, and a few of his sons can try to sway his decisions, but when Priam has given a command only a reckless man would dare speak against him. I know of only one who has.’
‘Who?’
‘Apheidas, of course,’ Paris said. ‘He’s Trojan by birth, but he spent too many years in Greece and his foreign breeding has given him a rebellious nature. Fortunately for him, we’ve learned to tolerate his wilfulness because of his skill as a fighter. You’re very similar to him, you know; you have a strong spirit, and perhaps that’s why I love you.’
Helen placed a hand on his bearded cheek and smiled up at him.
‘And one day your father’s power might be yours,’ she said, not sure whether the thought excited or terrified her.
‘When the king dies Hector will inherit the throne,’ Paris corrected, a hint of embarrassment in his voice at having to admit the fact to Helen. ‘And then, when he eventually takes time away from war and politics to find himself a wife, he’ll have children who will precede me in the royal line. Eventually I will become of no importance and fade away.’
The sound of reed pipes and a lyre floated up to them from the palace at the foot of the hill. Further out, in the bay where their ship was anchored, they could hear the sea washing over the shoreline, back and forth, back and forth, like a nurse shushing her infant charge to sleep. They had been guests of King Tenes for several days, and as a client king of the Trojan empire he was obliged to offer Trojan royalty the best he could provide. Somewhere in the modest collection of buildings below, where the yellow lights flickered from the windows, Apheidas, Aeneas and the rest of the crew would be enjoying the pleasures of food, wine and music, happy that their prince was in the arms of the woman he loved. Little Pleisthenes had been left in the care of a young nurse from the town, much as he had been left in the care of others ever since the flight from Sparta.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Paris continued. ‘Power is of no interest to me. All I care about now is you. When we get home we’ll be married, and then one of my younger brothers can have my shield and spears. I’ll be giving up fighting for good.’
‘You promise?’ Helen asked, surprised by the unexpected admission.
‘Of course! What interest will war hold for me if it keeps me away from you? The northern borders will just have to find a way to exist without me.’
He looked at Helen, whose skin had a ghostly pallor from the faint light of the moon, then lowered his face to hers and kissed her. She responded, folding her slender arms about his neck and pulling him closer.
‘Never leave me,’ she whispered, planting a kiss on his earlobe.
He kissed her again and ran his hand over her ribs, cupping her breast. She crossed her calves over his buttocks, kicking the cloak away so that their bodies were cooled by the night air, then pulled him into her.
The relentless, soul-destroying rain had stopped, though the ceiling of turbulent cloud remained. It pressed down on the camp, keeping out the morning light so that the world seemed to be made of ash; the tents were but colourless shadows, their occupants spiritless wraiths. The only thing in this upper-Hades that told Menelaus it was day was the lonely trilling of a blackbird from the branches of a nearby oak, and the sense that, somewhere far above, the sun was creeping through an invisible blue sky.