Memoirs of a Bitch (12 page)

I nodded. No more time for talk. The horses had been disembarked. Callira smiled as she brought my reins. Now Troy.

We were swimming in nothingness. We could just hear, indistinctly, the cobbles under our horses' hooves. The houses lining the road were as evanescent as shadows at sunset. There was a black shadow at the gates of Ilium. Hector, but he was not waiting for us. When he saw us he turned his horse and went ahead up the road. The light drumming of galloping hooves in the fog was like ghost music. Paris, riding in front of me, turned in his saddle and shook his head: mad, what did I tell you? I smiled weakly, but he had already turned back. I relaxed. There was no point trying to smile in the dirty milk of this air. We dismounted in a courtyard with invisible walls, gates and soldiers. Paris offered me his hand to help me up a flight of steps. Then more steps and another courtyard. It was like Sparta, too much like Sparta.

Callira went off with the rest of the retinue, giving me a last smile before she disappeared, a glimmer of green eyes fading into that blinding lightlessness, leaving me to climb the steps and cross a corridor alone. I could feel Paris's hand in mine stiffen with anxiety. A son who knows he has done wrong coming home to his father. A child who must be punished. But there was no one about and the sentries guarding the throne room seemed carved from stone. Paris gave me an uncertain smile and we went in.

Facing us across the shining marble floor was Priam.

It was a bigger throne room than the one in Sparta, and higher than I thought it possible for anyone to build. Each window was like an immense wound in the walls, or the throat of a fish in an eternal bluish light. The court was assembled on one side, richly dressed in gold reduced to dull yellow by the absence of sunlight. Like a dune of sand and dust the king had forgotten, but his eyes never left me for a moment as I moved forward. The white splendor of the marble under my feet terrified me. But I did move forward, my smile fixed like a mask, a slave's shawl around my shoulders. My eyes were said to burn with a green flame in weak light.

On the steps to the throne stood Priam's huge family. Women to the left, men to the right, and the queen, her
beauty overpowered by heavy ornaments of bronze and violet amethyst, showed her character in her haughty, disdainful mouth, just like the daughters lined up at her side. On the steps to the right of the throne were men in armor with richly decorated leather cuirasses and daggers hanging from their belts. The only man not in armor was Hector, who towered over the hall from the top step, in his eyes the relentless hostility of one who either did not know, or knew and was not interested in hiding his knowledge. His tunic was of simple coarse dark linen, but his face was naturally powerful, a triumph of blood with no need of help from gold. I was twenty paces from the steps when Paris signed me to stop, and I became aware that a young man previously hidden from me by Hector's bulk was actually a woman. Extremely beautiful, with Hector's eyes ringed by violet shadows. Her tunic was dark red and her only ornament was the bright gold band around her loose, untamed hair. A virgin of Apollo: Cassandra.

“Father.” Paris spoke, seeming to have almost recovered his arrogance. “This is my wife Helen.”

The king wasn't old, not yet; and he ran his eyes over my body. Caressing my flanks and my breasts half-hidden among the folds of my dress, my thighs just visible below my skirt. I did not blush. After Theseus, I was used to male lust.

“Well, so this is the famous Helen …” Priam was staring shamelessly at me while the curve of Hecuba's lips became increasingly bitter. There was silence in the hall, and I realized the king was making up his mind. If my body passed the test, his impassive smile would grant me the right to live in Troy. Finally his royal mouth spread in a happy grin: “Welcome, daughter.”

Paris relaxed beside me with a sigh of relief, while the court made obedient noises, taking the king's approval for granted. Then a cry from Cassandra cut through the hall. I froze with amazement and turned to look at her: her open mouth was emitting a single note, like an animal whose suffering is beyond cure. The long note turned into speech, indistinct but savage.

“Burning … like a torch, like fire … ruin! Burning!”

“Cassandra, be quiet,” the king finally snapped in irritation.

But she was not listening. She slowly came down the stairs, her troubled eyes staring at me. “Come from the sea …” hardly more than a whisper. Then again that tormented scream. “Come to bring ruin to Troy!”

I drew back. Paris was in front of me. His features contracted, unrecognizable, his voice almost a snarl. “Go away, get out, how dare you …”

But Cassandra was beyond reason and the threats of men. She looked at him as if she did not know who he
was. “You've brought us the herald of death … you, too cowardly to fight and born to destroy your race … you milksop!”

“That's enough!” Paris raised his hand, but Cassandra stood her ground, nostrils quivering as if expecting a blow.

“Don't touch her.” Hector came quickly down the steps of the throne to stand beside his motionless sister, who had turned into a Fury in the middle of the hall.

“Cassandra, come on, let's go away …”

It was as if he had cut a thread. She collapsed in his arms like a broken doll. Her head on his chest, her body still lightly shuddering, her voice almost inaudible: “The herald of death …”

Paris turned away in disgust. Priam spoke: “My daughter Cassandra has been touched by the gods. Never mind her, Helen.” He smiled as though the woman collapsed into herself was not even there. “And I hope you will soon give Paris healthy sons. My first grandchildren.”

“No!” screamed Cassandra. Who knows what those eyes glaring at me could see. “No!” she screamed again.

Her brother took her by the wrists, speaking tenderly as he tried to calm her. In the midst of her screams, the calm voice of Hector was like a rock impervious to the waves. But Cassandra struggled against him, her words falling on me like torches of flame.

“This woman will bring fire. And you will die in the ruin her fire causes. Every one of you …!”

“Aeneas,” called Hector, and one of the young men to the right of the throne hurried forward. Together they led Cassandra to the door.

“Hector, wait.” Priam spoke with authority. “You must keep your sister under control. Or I really shall have to forbid her from appearing in public again.”

I could see a flash of desperate tenderness in Hector's eyes before he gripped Cassandra firmly to take her away. The hatred in the look she gave me as they left the hall was like the quick, accurate slash of a knife cutting my heart in two.

The door closing behind Hector and Aeneas smothered Cassandra's cries. The king tossed his head, ignoring the situation. None of the other princes and princesses, or the queen and the rest of the court, had moved. Their faces remained fixed and expressionless. Priam smiled and said with no trace of irony, “Welcome to Troy.”

Wind curling, wind turning, wind sweeping rocks and singing, singing songs of a time with no thinking or desiring, a time of celebrations and banquets, of music softly sounding from instruments; wind singing to warm nights disappearing sleepless at dawn, and sleepless days in bed in the soft, gentle love of Paris. Wind blowing, wind bringing to the coast of Troy waves of cold, freezing spume, winter passing consumed by the same wind. Wind wrapping itself around the hours and stealing them, wind running away with stolen days under its arm and a lost smile in its eyes. Wind, wind spreading music, obliterating Cassandra's cries and closing Hector's eyes. Perhaps deceiving Helen into believing this is a new life. But only for a short time. Only until spring returns hand in hand with the wind.

We were halfway through a banquet when they came to tell us the ship had come. It was an important day, the anniversary of the king's coronation and the first day of a quiet, tranquil spring. The wind was still blowing but perfumed now with soft pollen and the amber-scented sap of the forests of Ida. The sun was shining through the great windows and rested playfully on the gold weave of my veil.

I looked questioningly at Paris. It was the first ship since the Hellespont had opened again a few days before. The long winter was over and we had emerged into the sun like dazed lizards. Paris tossed his head carelessly as he sipped his wine. That's what the winter had been like, a succession of parties in halls warmed by braziers; and if I could see no softening in the curve on the queen's
mouth, at least now I could sit at her right hand without her saying anything at all. The Trojan court was a colorful oriental magma of secret rivalries, a tissue of minute intrigues of a kind we had never had in Sparta, of precious cloth and gold flowing from the ever-f coffers of the king. A long way from the Peloponnese with its serious soldiers and hard men. There was never any hunger in the countryside around Troy; whenever Paris and I passed in our carriage the peasants would hurry to the road, offering the last fruit they had preserved before the coming of winter and the first fruits of the new season. I myself was lost, dazed and happy with the thousand presents Paris gave me, letting him adorn me and deck me out in any way he liked; every day new clothes and a new hair-do to rumple and crush during those nights that began at dawn and lasted till long after midday. A life of satisfied desire and stunning happiness. Like a cup of spiced wine. Like the long-forgotten smoke of my laurel-burning braziers.

I did not see Cassandra again after that first dramatic meeting. Paris told me absentmindedly that Hector had persuaded her not to leave her religious buildings anymore except in his company. And Hector himself never crossed my path. The heir to the throne was hardly ever to be seen at receptions, and attended court ceremonies only when protocol demanded it. Even then he would
be simply dressed and say little, would do his duty and then leave. To exercise an army enfeebled by too many years of peaceful prosperity, or to ride with Aeneas beyond the mountains and over the plains of Asia Minor, to capture horses that he would then ride bareback. Or to spend whole nights in the forest, hunting. Sometimes Cassandra went with him, or so it was said.

The king would shake his head and say nothing. His view was that the matter should be taken care of by Antenor, his principal counselor, a severe man with harsh features and wolfish eyes, much like Menippus. These days Priam did little more than busy himself with court matters and absentmindedly approve decrees.

To anyone less blind than myself the fragility of Troy's power would have been obvious, resting as it did on the full stomachs of its people and their conviction that they were invincible. But I had brought with me the accumulated hunger of many, too many, years of deprivation, and my first winter in Troy was merely a reckless abandon to the prevailing wind. Until the day the ship came.

When the door was thrown open I turned anxiously, but Paris just smiled.

“Oh, it'll be the usual Phoenicians, my love, come to renew our trade contracts as they do every year, just that they're a little early this time.”

While the herald ran into the room and circumnavigated the long banqueting table, the diners went on eating and drinking without paying him the least attention.

Priam was lying on a throne of cushions, being entertained by a troupe of Bactrian dancing girls. He waved the messenger away with an abrupt gesture; he did not wish to be disturbed, annoyed to be interrupted while concentrating with a spark of lechery in his eye. But the herald stood his ground, fighting for breath with his trumpet in his hand, waiting patiently to be allowed to speak. The chance never came. Instead Hector charged into the hall, slamming the door against the wall so hard that it split.

“Father,” he shouted. That was enough. Hector never normally raised his voice, so the whole court stopped to listen: perhaps at last this moody and supercilious man had something interesting to say.

The heir to the throne passed close to me in a whirl of forest-scented wind and planted himself firmly in front of his father. The Bactrian girls had stopped dancing and were waiting in a corner, their silver ornaments hanging uselessly from them.

“It's a Greek ship. They've sent a delegation. They've come to take her back.”

Hector didn't look my way, but I knew he was referring
to me; I knew it from the slashing ferocity of his few words:
They've come to take her back
.

Priam calmly straightened his cushions. For a moment he played with his heavy gold bracelet. Then he looked up: “Bring them in.”

Ulysses of Ithaca was a cunning man. Not intelligent: cunning. A brilliant diplomat but the worst possible enemy. He knew what he wanted and how to get it. It was no surprise they had sent Ulysses. Behind him was a numb Menelaus. They came forward into the room that a little earlier had received me, though now sunlight had transformed the amorphous court crowd into a mass of gold. I knew the effect the royal family assembled around the throne would have, and I knew my husband's eyes would see me at once. Immediately to the left of the king.

Ulysses looked all around, assessing the hall, unastonished with cold nut-green eyes: the marble, the gold, even me. All just as the wolf of Ithaca had expected. But Menelaus, moving forward slowly in his wake, looked uncomfortable, and I could detect sleeplessness and
suffering in the dark patches under his eyes and in his thinning hair. With his graceless body disguised in pretentious bronze armor, he was the caricature of a king.

In a single winter Menelaus had aged ten years. Why had he come?

Ulysses spoke, greeting Priam in a voice as cold as his eyes. A man with no conscience. A quick bow and a smile like a polite growl. “Queen Helen is clearly in good health. Her stay in Troy has done her good. Now all that remains is for her to come home.”