“All the world wonders: Did Aleksandros actually abduct you, or did you leave Sparta with him willingly?”
Her smile remained. It even grew wider, until she threw her head back and laughed a hearty, genuinely amused laugh.
“Orion,” she said at last, “you certainly don’t understand the ways of women.”
I may have blushed. “That’s true enough,” I admitted.
“Let me tell you this much,” Helen said. “No matter how or why I accompanied Aleksandros to this great city, I will not willingly return to Sparta.” Before I could reply she quickly added, “Not that I harbor ill feelings for Menalaos, my first husband. He was kind to me.”
“But Aleksandros is kinder?”
She spread her arms. “Look about you, Orion! You have eyes, use them. What woman would willingly live as the wife of an Achaian lord when she could be a princess of Troy?”
“But Menalaos is a king…”
“And an Achaian queen is still regarded less than her husband’s dogs and horses. A woman in Sparta is a slave, be she wife or concubine, there is no real difference. Do you think there would be women present in the great hall at Sparta when an emissary arrives with a message for the king? Or at Agamemnon’s Mycenae or Nestor’s Pylos or even in Odysseus’s Ithaca? No, Orion. Here in Troy women are regarded as human beings. Here there is civilization.”
“Then your preference for Aleksandros is really a preference for Troy,” I said.
She put a finger to her lips, as if thinking over the words she wished to use. Then, “When I was wed to Menalaos I had no say in the choice. The young lords of Achaia all wanted me — and my dowry. My father made the decision. If, the gods forbid, the Achaians should win this war and force me to return to Sparta with Menalaos, I will again be chattel.”
“Would you agree to return to Menalaos if it meant that Troy would be saved from destruction?”
“Don’t ask such a question! Do you think Agamemnon fights for his brother’s honor? The Achaians are intent on destroying this city. I am merely their excuse for attacking.”
“So I have heard from others, in the Achaian camp.”
“Priam is near death,” Helen said. “Hector will die in battle; that is foretold. But Troy itself need not fall, even if Hector does.”
And, I thought, if Hector dies Aleksandros will become king. Making Helen the queen of Troy.
She fixed me with her eyes and said, “Orion, you may say this to Menalaos: If he wants me to return to him, he will have to win me by feats of battle. I will not go willingly to a man as the consolation prize for losing this war.”
I took in a deep breath. She was far wiser than I had assumed. She unquestionably wants Troy to win this war, wants to remain in this city so that one day she can be its queen. Yet she wants to tell her former husband that she will come back to him — if he wins! She’s telling him, through me, that she will return to Sparta and be the docile Achaian wife — if and when Troy is burned to the ground.
Clever woman! No matter who wins, she will protect her own lovely skin.
We chatted for a few moments more, but it was clear that Helen had imparted the message she wanted me to bear back to the Achaians. Finally she rose, signaling that our meeting was ended. I got to my feet and went to the door by which I had entered the chamber. Sure enough, the guard was outside waiting to escort me back to the king’s audience hall.
No one was there except the courtier who had been with me earlier in the morning. The columned hall was empty, echoing.
“The king and royal princes are still deliberating on your message,” he whispered. “You are to wait.”
I waited. We strolled through several of the palace’s halls and chambers and finally out into the big courtyard we had come through that morning. The hot sun felt good on my bare arms.
Out of curiosity I walked across the garden to the small statue of Athene. It was barely the length of my arm, and obviously very old, weathered by many years of rain and wind. Unlike the other, grander statues, it was unpainted. Or, rather, the original paint had long since worn away and had never been replaced.
Athene. The warrior goddess was dressed in a long robe, yet carried a shield and spear. A plumed helmet rested on the back of her head, pushed up and away from her face.
I looked at that face and the breath gushed out of me. It was her face, the face of the woman I had loved. The face of the goddess that the Golden One had killed.
Chapter 11
SO it was true. The gods are not immortal. Just as the Golden One had told me. And I knew that he had not lied about the rest: The gods are neither merciful nor beneficent. They play their games and make up their own rules while we, their creatures, try to make sense of what they do to us.
The rage burned in me. They are not immortal. The gods can be killed. I can kill the Golden One. And I will, I promised myself anew. How, I did not know. When, I had no idea. But by the flames that burned inside me I swore that I would destroy him, no matter how long it took and no matter what the cost.
I swung my gaze around the graceful flowered courtyard of Priam’s palace. Yes, this is where I would start. He wants to save Troy, to make it the center of an empire that spans Europe and Asia. Then I will destroy it, crush it, slaughter its people, and burn its buildings to the ground.
“Orion.”
I blinked, as though waking from a dream. Hector stood before me. I had not seen him approaching.
“Prince Hector,” I said.
“Come with me. We have an answer for Agamemnon.
I followed him into another part of the palace. As before, Hector wore only a simple tunic, almost bare of adornment. No weapons. No jewelry. No proclamation of his rank. He carried his nobility in his person, and anyone who saw him knew instinctively that here was a man of merit and honor.
Yet, as I matched him stride for stride through the halls of the palace, I saw again that the war had taken its toll of him. His bearded face was deeply etched by lines around the mouth and eyes. His brow was creased and a permanent notch of worry had worn itself into the space between his eyebrows.
We walked to the far side of the palace and up steep narrow steps in murky darkness lit only by occasional slits of windows. Higher and higher we climbed the steep, circling stone steps, breathing hard, around and around the stairwell’s narrow confines until at last we squeezed through a low square doorway onto the platform at the top of Troy’s tallest tower.
“Aleksandros will join us shortly,” said Hector, walking over to the giant’s teeth of the battlements. It was almost noon, and hot in the glaring sun despite the stiff breeze from the sea that huffed at us and set Hector’s brown hair flowing.
From this high vantage I could see the Achaian camp, dozens of long black boats drawn up on the beach behind the sandy rampart and trench I had helped to dig barely forty-eight hours earlier. The Trojan army was camped on the plain, tents and chariots dotted across the worn-bare soil, cook fires sending thin tendrils of smoke into the crystalline sky. A fair-sized river flowed across the plain to the south and emptied into the bay. A smaller stream passed to the north. The Achaian camp’s flanks were anchored on the two riverbanks.
Beyond the gentle waves rolling up onto the beach I saw an island near the horizon, a brown hump of a worn mountain, and beyond that another hovering ghostlike in the blue hazy distance.
“Well, brother, have you told him?”
I turned and saw Aleksandros striding briskly toward us. Unlike Hector, his tunic looked as soft as silk and he wore a handsome royal-blue cloak over it. A jeweled sword was at his hip, and more jewels flashed on his fingers and at his throat. His hair and beard were carefully trimmed and gleamed with sweet-smelling oil. His face was unlined, though he was not that many years younger than his brother.