The interior was cold. Despite the sun’s heat, those thick stone walls insulated the palace so well that I almost imagined I could see my breath frosting in the shaded air.
The hall beyond the entrance was beautifully decorated with painted landscapes on its plastered walls. Scenes of lovely ladies and handsome men in green fields rich with towering trees. No battles, no hunting scenes, no proclamations of imperial power or bloodthirstiness.
Statues lined this corridor, most of them life-size, some smaller, several so large that their heads or outstretched arms scraped the polished beams of the high ceiling.
“The city’s gods,” my courtier explained. “Most of these statues stood outside the city’s four main gates, before the war. Of course we brought them in here for safekeeping from the despoiling Achaians.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
The statues seemed to be marble. To my surprise, they were brightly painted. Hair and beards were deep black, with bluish highlights. Gowns and tunics were mostly gold, and real jewels adorned them. The flesh was delicately colored, and the eyes were painted so vividly that they almost seemed to be watching me.
I could not tell one from another. The gods all seemed broad-shouldered and bearded, the goddesses ethereally beautiful. Then I recognized Poseidon, a magnificently muscular figure with a deep curly beard who bore a trident in his right hand.
We stepped out of the chilly entrance hall and into the warming sunlight of a courtyard. A huge statue, much too large to fit indoors, stood just before us. I craned my neck to see its face against the crystal-blue morning sky.
And felt my knees give way.
It was the Golden One. Perfect in every detail, as if he had sat for a portrait. Every detail except one: The Trojan artist had painted his hair black, as all the other gods. But the face, the slight curl of the lip, the eyes — they stared down at me, slightly amused, slightly bored. I trembled. I fully expected the statue to move, to speak.
“Apollo,” said the courtier. “The protector of our city.” If he noticed how the statue affected me, he was too polite to mention it. Or perhaps it was reverence for the god.
I pulled my gaze away from the Golden One’s painted eyes. My insides fluttered with anger and the frustration that comes with hopelessness. How could I even think of working against his wishes, of defying him, of killing him? Yet I will do it, I told myself. With an effort of will that seemed to wrench at the soul within me, I promised myself afresh that I would bring the Golden One to dust.
We started across the sunny courtyard. It was decked with blossoms and flowering shrubs. Potted trees were arranged artfully around a square central pool. I saw fish swimming there lazily.
“We also have our statue of Athene,” the courtier said, pointing across the pool to a small wooden piece, scarcely three feet tall. “It is very ancient and very sacred.”
The statue was facing away from us as we crossed the courtyard and entered the other wing of the palace. Instantly, as we stepped into the shade of the wide entrance hall, the temperature dropped precipitously.
More soldiers stood guard in this hallway, although I got the feeling that their presence was a matter of pomp and formality, not security. The courtier led me to a small chamber comfortably furnished with chairs of stretched hide and gleaming polished tables inlaid with beautiful ivory and silver. There was one window, which looked out on another, smaller, courtyard, and a massive wooden door decorated with bronze strapping. Closed.
“The king will see you shortly,” he said, looking nervously toward the closed door.
I took a chair and willed my body to relax. I did not want to appear tense or apprehensive in front of the Trojan king. The courtier, whom I had assumed spent much of his life in this palace, seemed to be wound up tight. He paced the small chamber worriedly. I pictured him with a cigarette, puffing like an expectant father.
Finally he blurted, “Do you truly bring an offer of peace, or is this merely another Achaian bluff?”
So that was it. Beneath his confidence in the walls built by gods and the food and firewood gathered by their army and the eternal spring that Apollo himself protects — he was anxious to have the war ended and his city safe and at peace once more.
Before I could reply, though, that heavy door creaked open. Two men-at-arms pushed at it, and an old man in a green cloak similar to my courtier’s motioned me to come to him. He leaned heavily on a long wooden staff topped with a gold sunburst symbol. His beard was the color of ashes, his head almost totally bald. As I ducked through the doorway and approached him, he squinted at me nearsightedly.
“Your proper name, herald?”
“Orion.”
“Of?”
I blinked, wondering what he meant. Then I replied, “Of the House of Ithaca.”
He frowned at that, but turned and took a few steps into the audience chamber, then banged his staff on the floor three times. I saw that the stone floor was deeply worn at that spot.
He called out, in a voice that may have once been rich and deep but now sounded like a cat yowling, “Oh Great King — Son of Laomedon, Scion of Scamander, Servant of Apollo, Beloved of the Gods, Guardian of the Hellespont, Protector of the Troad, Western Bulwark of the Hatti, Defender of Ilios — an emissary from the Achaians, one Orion by name, of the House of Ithaca.”
The chamber was spacious, wide and high-ceilinged. Its middle was open to the sky, above a circular hearth that smoldered a dull red and sent up a faint spiral of gray smoke. Dozens of men and women stood among the painted columns on the far side of the hearth: the nobility of Troy, I supposed, or at least the noblemen who were too old to be with the army. And their ladies. Their robes were rich with vibrant colors and flashing jewels.
I stepped forward and beheld Priam, the King of Troy, sitting on a splendid throne of carved ebony inlaid with gold set upon a three-step-high dais. To my surprise, he was flanked on his right by Hector, who must have come up from the camp by the beach. On his left sat a younger man, and standing behind him -
She was truly beautiful enough to launch a thousand ships. Helen was blonde, golden curls falling past her shoulders. A small, almost delicate figure except for magnificent breasts covered only by the sheerest blouse. A girdle of gold cinched her waist, adding emphasis to the bosom. Even from across the wide audience chamber I could see that her face was incredible, sensuous yet wide-eyed with an appearance of innocence that no man could resist.
She leaned against the intricately carved back of Aleksandros’s chair, the young prince on Priam’s left had to be Aleksandros, I realized. Darker of hair and beard than Hector, almost prettily handsome. Helen rested one hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her and she smiled dazzlingly at him. Then they both turned their gaze toward me as I approached. Helen’s smile disappeared the instant Aleksandros looked away from her. She regarded me with cool, calculating eyes.
Priam was older than Nestor, and obviously failing. His white beard was thin and ragged, his long hair also, as if some wasting disease had hold of him. He seemed sunk into his robes of royal purple as he sat slumped on his gold-inlaid throne, too tired even this early in the morning to sit upright or lift his arms out of his lap.
The wall behind his throne was painted in a seascape of blues and aquamarines. Graceful boats glided among sporting dolphins. Fishermen spread their nets into waters teeming with every kind of fish.
“My lord king,” said Hector, dressed in a simple tunic, “this emissary from Agamemnon brings another offer of peace.”