A Song of War: a novel of Troy Read online

  There was a ripple then, and the doors of the anteroom parted. Our hosts appeared, the king and queen of Sparta, and I thrust aside my musings to examine them. Menelaus proved to be a short and stolidly built man with a crown of red hair that clashed against his purple robe, and a wide, perspiring face. His spear-slim queen towered over him by a head, towered over every man in that courtyard save Paris and Hector. I tilted my head to meet her eyes, Argive Helen, swan-born Helen.

  And the gods began to scheme.

  ANDROMACHE

  The mere sight of Helen of Sparta would make most women hiss and spit. I chuckled inwardly when I first laid eyes on her, having an immediate flash of what would happen if she stepped among my husband’s sisters. Most of them would have narrowed their eyes like cats, claws coming out even as they cooed a welcome. As for my mother-in-law...

  Well, that was when my chuckle faded. Hector’s mother would have looked at Helen and thought, “That is what my son should have.”

  I didn’t envy Sparta’s queen her ivory skin, her long throat, or her pale gold hair falling in rose-oiled spirals nearly to her knees. I envied her the poise with which she gazed at our delegation, her perfect stillness as she watched her husband and Hector trade courtesies. She might have been a swan gliding on still water, allowing us to stare at her, knowing it was her right. In short, she was every inch a queen... as I was not. I was little and ordinary and rumpled, and moreover I’d always been happy that way; a wren with no desire to be a swan. But then Hector had chosen me a year ago, a freckled minor princess who laughed too much and squirmed restlessly if she was stared at for too long. He had chosen the wren when he really should have picked a swan.

  I attracted my own share of looks as Hector brought me forward. ”My wife, Andromache,” he said in the Achaean language, which we all spoke well enough for the purpose of trade and diplomatic visits, different though it was from our Trojan tongue. King Menelaus’ red face turned even redder at the sight of me, and an old man standing at his shoulder harrumphed. I flicked my glance to Hector, wondering if I had a spider in my hair or a seed in my teeth. He continued in the grave flow of courtesies, filling his princely role to his usual perfection, but on his other side, Hellenus’ mouth upturned in a smile, reassuring me. By far my favorite of Hector’s brothers. Paris was the charming one, but Hellenus was friendlier, a voice of warm, matter-of-fact welcome when I’d first arrived in Troy trussed up in impossible finery and desperate for someone who would talk to me like a mortal woman and not a goddess on a plinth. Hellenus had. I’d been glad to learn he would accompany us on this journey, though I knew Priam had only included him because Hector requested it. Priam did not seem to care much for his second son, though he should have; Hellenus had Hector’s capable quietness, though it was the easy calm of an ordinary man, not the ocean-deep calm of a god walking the earth.

  God walking the earth—ha! Perhaps I seemed a dazzled little bride to think such things about my husband, but he had that effect on absolutely everyone. I could see King Menelaus in his purple robe, eyeing Hector’s lapis-inlaid armor and feeling a touch inadequate.

  “My dear,” he rumbled to Helen, who had not moved a whit in the entire exchange. “Perhaps you will escort Troy’s future queen to the women’s quarters.”

  Troy’s future queen. After a year of hearing it, I managed not to laugh incredulously, though it was absurd. I had never been intended for such honor. I might have been born a princess, but my father was one of those kings Paris mocked, who ruled over a few villages and fields of goats. I was born and bred for humble things, for simpler palaces like this one rather than great walled citadels. So how in the name of all the gods had I become the future queen of Troy?

  I still didn’t know.

  Hector gave a mute squeeze to my fingertips as I released his arm, and I followed Sparta's queen through the courtyard to another columned porch guarded by a pair of spearmen. Helen glided rather than walked; I barely reached her shoulder and felt like a scuttling urchin. We passed the guards, and both men gave me the same half-embarrassed, half-hungry looks I’d received in the courtyard.

  “You’re wondering why they stare.” The words came suddenly, and I heard Helen’s voice for the first time. Low and cool, perfectly detached, as though she were a goddess commenting without much interest on the affairs of mortals below—and she spoke in our Trojan tongue, very well indeed. “They are all wondering if the prince of Troy’s wife is a priestess or a whore.”

  “What?” I stopped.

  So did she. Her eyes traveled very slowly down me. Gray eyes, like old ice. “In Sparta, it is more often the priestesses and the whores who bare their breasts and risk tempting men.”

  I looked down at myself. Skirts layered with fringed kilts, gold bracelets winding about my bare arms, and yes, a snug scarlet bodice displaying my small freckled breasts. “Many respectable women of Troy dress so. But I’ll don a shawl before we rejoin the men.”

  “We will not be rejoining the men.” Helen resumed her smooth glide, leading me through an un-columned megaron with painted walls and a smoking hearth open to the sky. “My husband prefers me, and my loom-maidens, to keep to our own company in the women’s quarters. For the most part anyway. I suppose I will be out and about a trifle more freely during the wedding festivities.”

  The king of Sparta sounded like a possessive husband. Though, of course, there were many such men in Troy, too; men who would not allow their wives to mingle in common crowds or public places where eyes might be covetous or tempting. I was fortunate my husband wasn’t jealously inclined. The rooms opening up before us were pleasant, if not luxurious like my quarters in Troy, where every palace chamber was stuffed with luxuries from the east—here there were couches piled with fine woolen cushions, looms strung with half-finished weaving, slave women laying out platters of figs and olives—but I couldn’t imagine spending all my hours here, as Helen apparently did. What on earth did the queen of Sparta do all day?

  I asked her that as she gestured to a slave to bring me a basin of rose water. “I do a great deal of weaving,” she replied, moving to the largest of the couches, heaped with purple cushions. “I supervise the slaves, and my loom-maidens tell stories and tend their children.” A tilt of her head on that long, long neck. “Do the women of Troy do more?”

  “I can’t speak for all the women of Troy, but I am allowed to come and go in the citadel as I please.” I smiled, splashing my hands with rose water as the slave washed and toweled my feet. “I receive Hector’s messengers and deputations—I have a seal of my own for such occasions.” It hung at my belt, heavy gold carved with Hector’s sigil on one side, my own on the other.

  Helen regarded it. “Menelaus would not allow me to have a seal.”

  “My mother-in-law has one, too. Most of the royal women in Troy do.”

  “Do you indeed?” Thoughtfully, she began to toy with a lock of rose-oiled hair. “How very grand.”

  “It’s not all grandeur. I also help my husband feed and water his horses.” My favorite hour of the day: both of us with hay in our hair, moving down the line of horses with wooden pails. Hector cupping his huge hands for the beasts to nuzzle, me telling a string of jokes for the pleasure of seeing that princely face dissolve into a common grin. When we were simply Hector and Andromache, not the future king and queen.

  Helen laid a white arm along the couch, scrutinizing me. Hers was not an easy face to read; I had no idea what she was thinking. “I rarely travel,” she said at last. “I have never seen my sister since she went to be queen of Mycenae; it would never occur to my husband to bring me on his journeys. But I see your husband saw fit to bring you here to this wedding. Do Trojan women often travel?”

  “Some do.” I moved to a couch of my own, taking the cup of wine the slave offered. “It’s my first delegation. Hector said he would not be without me for even a month.”

  “An Achaean husband who said that would be called womanish.” Another long stare. Helen neve
r seemed to blink or clear her throat or shift her weight; she simply moved from one statue pose to the next. It wasn’t natural, that stillness. I had no idea what to make of her, to know if I disliked her or not, but she made me want to fidget madly.

  A little girl ran up to Helen’s couch then, regarding me through strands of bright red hair. “My daughter,” Helen said, stroking the hair, which was just like Menelaus’. “Someday she will be queen of Sparta, too. Forty suitors came to this palace to court me; I wonder if Hermione here will have as many.”

  “Forty? That’s something to turn a girl’s head.”

  “Not at all. They came to be king of Sparta, not lover to Helen. They came, they made some pretense that the choice was mine, my father maneuvered the resulting lottery, Menelaus moved into the palace that same night, and it was done. There is very little softness in these Achaean kings. They transact weddings as they transact war.”

  “Weddings go on for days and days in Troy.” I smiled, remembering my own. “I was sent from my home in a huge procession of family and friends, and Hector must have dragged half of Troy to meet us. I was so in awe of him I could scarcely speak.” Sometimes I still was.

  She tilted her head. “You have not given him his heir yet, I am told.”

  I put down my wine cup. “No.”

  “Does he beat you for that?” A gleam in those gray eyes that might have been sympathy. “So many husbands beat their wives purple for failing to provide heirs. How that is supposed to warm our wombs is beyond me, but they still do it.”

  “Hector would never raise a fist against me. He’s the gentlest of men.” What a conversation this was—Helen was probing me, but I didn’t know what for. “He doesn’t wish me to breed yet. He worries I am too small to birth easily.” I feared it myself but never admitted as much. My mother-in-law already thought me sadly unsatisfactory; how was I supposed to tell her what happened in my marriage bed and why my belly hadn’t swelled yet?

  “A considerate husband? Curious. In my experience, the only one husbands consider are themselves.”

  There was bitterness here, even if I couldn’t hear it in that low, cool voice. “Not all men are so selfish.”

  Helen surprised me by laughing. “Don’t you Trojans call our Achaean men little better than pirates? Sea wolves? No, don’t blush and stammer; it’s true. My sister married a ruthless man. My mother did, too. The forty suitors who vied for my hand were ruthless men, every one; the only way to stop them killing whoever won my hand was to vow them all to a pact to protect the winner should he call upon them. That was a thin rope holding them back; I still wondered if I’d see a bloodbath in the megaron when Menelaus won me.”

  “Is he a ruthless man?” I asked, thinking of that broad chest, ruddy face, and red hair.

  “Yes.” Helen’s lips curved thinly. “That is all a woman can hope for: a ruthless man with a tiller.”

  “You are cynical.” I kept my voice light. “Women can always hope for more.”

  A graceful shrug; she clearly did not believe me. She kissed the red head of her little daughter and sent her off again toward the nursemaid. “I am lucky to have my Hermione strong and healthy. I’ve never managed to carry another child to term, though Menelaus quickens me often enough. Your husband is right about the birthing bed; it’s a hard, bloody place.”

  I tried to imagine marble Helen struggling and screaming to give birth and failed utterly.

  “I always hoped I’d lay an egg like my mother, but I wasn’t so lucky.” Another smile, this one scornful. “Then again, Menelaus is no Zeus.”

  “An egg?” I said blankly.

  “You haven’t heard the tale? People whisper things of me. My mother was beautiful, so beautiful Zeus visited her in swan form. She laid an egg and bore me: Zeus’ mortal-born daughter.”

  “A swan?” I laughed. She did look like a swan, but still, what a tale. “These stories do spring up, don’t they? My husband’s cousin Aeneas believes himself a son of Aphrodite—he’s sure to tell you the tale himself when he arrives here from Dardania. He tells everybody; by now, we all sprint when we see him coming. Do people really believe some story that you’re a daughter of Zeus?”

  Helen didn’t smile. “Who said it was a story?”

  The moment hung in the air, uncomfortable. My smile faded. Helen’s face was a mask.

  The silence fractured as a group of girls blew into the room, giggling over armloads of flowers. Helen rose. “You have yet to meet my cousin, our bride who is to wed the king of Ithaca. Penelope, this is Andromache of Troy... ”

  Even as I came forward to greet the rosy-cheeked bride, I was still wondering about Helen. I still did not know if I liked her or not; if she was a woman who even could be liked or disliked. She seemed less a mortal woman than a statue of a goddess, so beautiful men spun tales that she was a daughter of Zeus.

  I wondered if she truly thought she was one.

  HELLENUS

  “Will we get another look at Queen Helen, do you think?” Paris said to me as we sauntered into the megaron. “I haven’t clapped eyes on that long blond filly since the day we arrived, and those are flanks I would mind inspecting a second time.”

  “It’s a wedding banquet, not a horse market,” I retorted, but I couldn’t help smiling. Paris had been fearsomely bored over the past ten days as we all waited for the rest of the wedding guests to trickle in. The last guest-king had arrived this morning—Agamemnon of Mycenae, Menelaus’ elder brother, coming late to make the point of his importance—and Menelaus had announced that the official welcoming banquet would be hosted this evening. The painted plaster walls were hung with garlands of ivy, slaves carried platters of spiced olives and delicate octopus and roast venison, and more slaves twanged at lutes. I saw no sign yet of Helen, Andromache, or the bride. Apparently the women would not join us until after the feasting.

  “We know how to celebrate in Sparta!” Menelaus waved us in with a broad sweep of his arm. “Even in Troy, you’ll see nothing more stupendous!”

  “Stupendous indeed.” Paris grinned at the megaron, made garish by torchlight instead of clean-burning oil lamps, enough of the smoke lingering to sting the eyes despite the hole in the ceiling above the hearth. “Our Trojan goatherds feast every bit as well as this!”

  I distracted Menelaus with a hasty gesture to the long dais, “The white-bearded fellow, he’s a new arrival from Pylos?” as Hector clamped a brotherly hand around Paris’ elbow and rumbled in a nearly soundless whisper, “Behave yourself.”

  “I only meant to joke. It’s what I do.” But Paris made a repentant face, perhaps aware that Hector was for once not amused, and moved out into the clusters of sea-lords and island kings to turn his charm on them. No one could resist him in such a mood, not even me, and I shook my head in reluctant admiration as I watched my younger brother win them over. He flitted like a butterfly, gold glittering at his fingers and at the hem of his short tunic, as Hector took his place beside Menelaus and I lingered alone with a cup of sweetened wine. Was there a king among these sea-wolves who would offer sanctuary to a prince of Troy seeking a new home? I toyed with the idea, half in jest and half in earnest. White-haired Nestor of Pylos, holding long dissertation over a pair of young warriors stifling yawns... Stolid Prince Philoctetes of Meliboea, gray streaks in his hair, said to be a great archer... Odysseus of Ithaca, the bridegroom, with his watchful eyes and wicked grin, chatting up our dour cousin Aeneas, who had arrived yesterday from Dardania. I’d known Aeneas all my life, but I wasn’t going to apply to him for sanctuary; he was the greatest prig in creation and would undoubtedly say that nothing excused a son’s filial duty. Then he would probably tell me all over again how his own father wooed Aphrodite herself, and how many times had I heard that old yarn?

  “You’re another son of Priam, aren’t you, boy?” A voice boomed behind me. I bristled as I turned, for I was twenty-six and no one’s boy, but it was Agamemnon behind me, king of Mycenae and leader among these sea-wolves, if they
could be said to have a leader, so I inclined my head in a bow.

  “I am, my king.”

  He waved me up: perhaps thirty-five, not fleshy as kings so often become through indulgence. This one was whipcord lean, a full two hands taller than I, wearing power light and easy as a cloak. He had gold on every finger, and those fingers were callused, still accustomed to spear and tiller. This one was a sea-wolf indeed, a cold, merry-eyed pirate.

  He probed a little about my father’s eastern alliances—the king of Mycenae was very keen to learn just how many ships Troy had recently sent to the Hittites to aid in their internal wars—but I parried those questions, and he changed course. “Is it true your father has fifty sons?”

  “Nineteen from his queen. Myself from a concubine. Who knows how many in the slave quarters.” There were no concubines after my mother—Queen Hecuba made certain of that—but Priam had sired children on uncounted slave girls.

  “I’ve a daughter reaching the age to marry.” Agamemnon swirled the wine in his cup. “Iphigenia would like that pretty princeling over there, if I brought him home for her.”

  He nodded toward Paris as though picking out a puppy to bring his daughter on a ribbon, the insult deliberate, but I saw something behind it. “You’re fond of your daughter?”

  “Guilty!” His grin turned genuine. “A king is supposed to favor his sons, but it’s Iphigenia who can turn me round her finger. I want a golden prince like your Paris for her. You take it to your king, dark one. Tell him I’d make it worth his while.”

  He moved off without farewell, and I passed the rest of the banquet in quiet, fending off the occasional probing question about Troy’s tin trade or the levies we would ask next year for passage through our straits to the east. That was the true reason we were here; not to give congratulations at a wedding, but to sow information and gather it in return. Hector did it strongly and straightforwardly, and Paris did it with charm and dazzle. I did it by watching and listening. No one notices the man in the shadows when he blends so well into the dark.