A Song of War: a novel of Troy Read online

  The torches were guttering by the time the banquet was reduced to roasted bones and crumbs. Wine and fruit were brought in, and as I plucked an apple from the bowl, the women were brought in to shouts of welcome, escorted to a dais of their own. I examined the bride, a rosy little thing in layers of scarlet and gold, darting glances at her bridegroom. Then came Andromache, freckled and laughing in sea green; I’d scarce seen her in ten days since she’d kept mostly to the women’s quarters with the others. Finally, Helen of Sparta entered in a swirl of loom-maidens. Beautiful in her purple and gold finery, and I could see how men desired her, but I thought her cold. Paris was eyeing her appreciatively, making no effort at all to keep his eyes from roaming over another man’s wife even when Menelaus' hand hovered possessively near her shoulder. I busied myself tucking the apple away.

  The wedding gifts came in a stream, each lord rising to present his offering to the king of Ithaca and his bride. I saw Paris restraining a snicker at the offerings: jars of wine, lengths of fresh-dyed cloth, silver pins to fasten a tunic—all crudely made to Trojan eyes. Troy came last, and Paris acted as presenter, ushering each new addition to the pile with theatrical flourishes. There were rumbles of admiration at first: Agamemnon looked envious at the boar-tusked helmet, the carved horn, the ship’s sail dyed in vivid stripes of crimson and black. Helen looked impressed at the elaborately carved ivory hand mirror, the alabaster cups, the gold brooches and bracelets. A loom was brought out of finest wood inlaid with bronze, and I saw King Odysseus’ mouth flatten as he watched his bride run wondering hands over the shuttle. Clear as day, he was ashamed he could not offer his future wife anything so fine.

  That was when I saw the smiles among the wedding guests begin to grow tight. The gifts of Troy were an embarrassment. Andromache saw it; up on her dais, I could see her chewing her lip as she looked down into her lap. By the time Hector entered with the last offering—a stallion and mare from our famous Trojan breeding stock, clip-clopping into the megaron on oiled hooves—the feast was choked with taut, angry greed as the sea-wolves stared at the contemptuous pile of wealth. I felt myself flushing and wondered how my wily father had miscalculated so badly.

  Or if he had done it on purpose.

  Hector didn’t often miss such furious crosscurrents, but he missed them now. He’d slipped out before the gift-giving began so he could ready his beloved horses with his own hands; his eyes shone with the pleasure of sharing them as he began to point out their glossy coats and finely modeled heads, their strong legs. Paris stood grinning, but I rose with all the haste I could summon. “My brother can drone on about horses forever,” I said with a smile that I hoped would rouse laughs. “But unless you wish to hear sire and dam of each horse back to the nineteenth generation, I suggest our good King Menelaus cut him off and call for wine.”

  A grudging rumble across the crowd, not entirely amused, and the king of Sparta lumbered to his feet. “We thank Troy for such splendid gifts,” he said, and the bridegroom also managed a nod of thanks. “Give all compliments to my fellow king Priam.”

  It was the best he could manage, equating himself openly as Priam’s equal, and I saw Paris’ eyes sparkle with amusement, but Hector veered into the wind he now saw was blowing and made a graceful speech before leading out the horses. Pipes and lyres struck up again, a troop of dancing girls rushed in with fringed skirts lifting to show bare legs, and I exhaled as the shouts went up and the wine began to flow. An awkward moment had passed safely. I took an unusually fast gulp of wine and wondered again what my father was up to.

  Paris seemed to be aware of the gaffe; he was lounging between Menelaus and Agamemnon, making himself charming and telling some long joke that had them both in fits of laughter despite themselves. “You’re a silver-tongued liar, boy,” Agamemnon managed to say, and Paris shook his head.

  “On Aphrodite’s perfect tits, I tell the truth.”

  “Who here’s seen Aphrodite’s tits?” That was a brute of a fellow named Ajax, a prince of Locris whose humor didn’t rise above the tits-and-farts variety even when he was sober, and he was now falling-down drunk. I could see Queen Helen eyeing his vast slumping form with distaste.

  “I’ve seen Aphrodite’s tits, and I tell you, they’re perfection.” Paris grinned. “You want to hear the story?” A roar went up as the men sensed a tall tale. I couldn’t help grinning as I saw my cousin Aeneas stalk out of the megaron with a face of stone outrage. I suppose no son likes to hear about his mother’s tits.

  “There was a glittering golden apple destined to belong only to the most beautiful goddess of all”—Paris plucked a barely ripe apple from a horn bowl, tossing it high—“and of course, all the goddesses of Olympus wanted it for their own!” He went on, describing the squabbling goddesses and poor henpecked Zeus, who could hardly be blamed for looking to a mortal man to take the punishment of deciding such a thing. “Who wants to get between mortal women when they’re quarreling, eh?” My half brother had them all in the palm of his hand, and I reflected that perhaps my father had been shrewd to send him on this delegation, not just playing favorites. Paris had a subtlety and a wit neither Hector nor I could match when he chose to exert it.

  “I hesitated to make my choice!” Paris was winding the tale up now, still tossing his apple high above one hand. “Flashing-eyed Athena, regal Hera—I trembled at their beauty! But Aphrodite dropped her gown on the grass, and great lords, I fell to my feet at the sight of those tits. For those tits, she won the golden apple, and she gave me my prize in return: the only woman in the world as beautiful as she!”

  “Then she played you false,” Menelaus chortled, red-faced with so much laughing. “For Aphrodite’s only equal is my wife!”

  “Indeed,” said Paris.

  Not everyone stopped laughing. Most of the megaron’s occupants were drunk by then, too wine soaked for subtlety. Menelaus himself had missed the moment, too busy swallowing his wine and thumping the table for more. But I saw Agamemnon’s wolf face sharpen, and so did the clever-eyed bridegroom’s. For Paris had fixed his eyes boldly on the Spartan queen and ceased tossing his apple. With a smile, he offered it to her.

  Queen Helen might as well have been marble. I searched those gray eyes for dislike or offense, but I could read no expression at all. I scrambled for words to cover the uneasy joke, and Hector rose as though to do the same, but Andromache beat us both to it. She plucked the apple from Paris’ outstretched hand, laughing that merry laugh of hers like a bubbling stream. “You must save this for your daughter!” she exclaimed to Helen. “For if my brother-in-law is to have the loveliest woman in the world, then he must wait until Hermione is old enough to match her mother.”

  Clever Andromache. This was why I admired my brother’s wife. She was not the queen his mother wanted for him; she was not regal or beautiful or stately, but she was quick. “Paris,” I grinned, slapping his arm, “you sly one, angling for our host’s daughter! Does our father know you aim for a Spartan bride?”

  The moment passed. By the time I looked at Helen, she was shaking her head a little, taking the apple with contemptuous amusement at the outlandish compliments of drunken young guests.

  I drank the rest of my wine in a gulp.

  ANDROMACHE

  “Promise me you will scold him till his ears burn.”

  Hellenus looked at me over his shoulder, and I saw the gleam of his teeth in the shadows. He didn’t need to ask me who I meant, though it had been hours since Paris’ little joke, and we’d both presided over those hours watching Hector brood, Paris swan on unfazed, and the rest of the wedding guests drink themselves into a stupor. The banquet was at last done; the warriors had stumbled off to their own quarters or collapsed in the megaron to sleep off their wine, and Queen Helen had retired with the bride and the loom-maidens. I’d lingered behind in the courtyard beside the guards and smelled the familiar scent of cinnamon that meant my favorite brother-in-law was nearby—the scent with which he oiled his rough hair into its warrior p
laits. I wasn’t surprised he had lingered in the shadows tonight. Hellenus was often the watcher; there wasn’t much those thoughtful dark eyes missed.

  “Hector has dragged Paris off to the stables under the pretext of seeing the wedding-gift horses settled,” Hellenus said as I wandered to his side, voice soft and amused. “He is probably delivering a stern lecture by now.”

  “Good. We all adore Paris, but he’s such a child sometimes.”

  “Says the maiden of seventeen.”

  “You know what I mean.” At seventeen, I had an enormous place to fill; duties to learn, standards to live up to. Paris at nineteen could play on as a golden young prince forever—or until the gods brought some hard duty to his door.

  I leaned against the wall beside Hellenus, the layered kilts over my skirt brushing his knee, my gold rings and fringes and bracelets chiming in the dark. “You’re stacked in gold tonight,” he observed. “I thought it made you feel weighed down.”

  “I’m trying to be a touch more like Queen Helen,” I sighed. “Regal and queenly.”

  “You don’t need to be like her.”

  “Yes, I do. Though part of me thinks she might be mad as a maenad. There’s something not right about her.”

  “Was she offended by Paris’ little joke?”

  “I have no idea. She’s about as easy to read as a statue. I suppose you’re madly in love with her? Most of the men here are.”

  “I don’t fancy bedding statues.” Hellenus produced a small rosy apple with a flourish.

  I took it with a crow of delight. “My favorite!”

  “I managed to save it for you before that ape Ajax vomited into the fruit bowl.”

  We traded grins, and I sank my teeth into the apple with relish. I could relax my guard with Hellenus as I could with no one else, be the untidy cheerful girl I still felt I was rather than the young queen-to-be. Hector would not have chided me either for munching an apple like a child, he’d have been charmed—but I wanted my husband to be proud of me, not just charmed by me. He deserved a wife to be proud of.

  In the faint moonlight, I saw the dark shape of Hector’s shoulders coming across the courtyard from the direction of the stables and hastily set the half-eaten apple aside. “Is Paris suitably chastened?” Hellenus called.

  “He meant no harm. He only intended to flatter the queen, he said. I told him to think before he flattered. It’s his first diplomatic visit; he has much to learn.” Hector reached his big hand through the darkness, and I felt the heat of him burning me as our fingers linked.

  I had spent ten days and nights in the women’s quarters, keeping the queen of Sparta company, and my own blood flared in response. I think even Hellenus felt the heat through the dark because he rose with a wry, “Good night, Brother.”

  Hector was not demonstrative in his public affections; it would not have been dignified in a prince. He did not touch more than my hand as he led me to his chamber, even though the palace was dark and there was no one to watch. But as soon as the doors closed, his mouth closed on mine, and he crushed me back against the wall, big hands winding through my hair. “I have missed you,” he breathed as my jeweled diadem slid to the floor.

  “I’ve missed you,” I murmured back against his lips, and we never made it to the bed. He lifted me up in those strong arms, pinning me between the wall and his broad chest, pushing my heavy skirts out of the way as my limbs clung around him. We drank each other down, open-mouthed and lingering, moving together in the dark, until the end when he pulled sharply away before he could spend himself inside me.

  He had done that since our very first night together. In our bridal bed high in one of Troy’s vaulted towers, my wedding flowers crushed and fragrant on the floor, I had lain against him in the fading glow of my tentative new pleasure, suddenly terrified I had somehow displeased my husband of one day. Hector had raised himself on one elbow, curving his huge hand around my face and answering my unasked question simple and direct: “My mother has borne nineteen living sons, and I’ve seen it age her before her time. And you’re a tiny thing, Andromache. I won’t risk you in childbed too soon.”

  “But you need heirs,” I’d managed to say. To be a fit mate for a prince, I must be a mother to his sons. I’d known of no husband—none—who put his wife’s health above such a concern.

  But Hector only smiled, his hand moving over my hair as he’d stroke the mane of a nervous mare. “I have almost twenty brothers. Heirs can wait.”

  And even now I was relieved that he continued to spare me, even as the relief made me guilty. I was seventeen and still small, and part of me did not feel fit to be a mother of kings.

  Hector laughed now as he set me on my feet. “Making love against a wall and not in a bed! Ten days among the Achaeans and I’ve turned barbarian.”

  “Maybe they’ll think better of you for it?” I suggested, finally shedding my crumpled skirts.

  “Perhaps. They already think me womanish for doting so on my wife.”

  I laughed, too, and soon we lay curled together in bed. “There’s hardly room for the two of us,” Hector complained.

  “Soon we’ll be back in Troy. Our tower bed, open to the moon.” His hand slowed as it moved across my shoulder, and though I kept up my flow of chatter, he gradually fell silent. With dread, I saw him frowning toward the ceiling. Not again, I thought. Not again!

  I put my palm to his close-bearded cheek and turned his face toward me. “What ails you?”

  “I hate to be so far from home,” he said, simple and direct, as always. “Take me outside the Scaean Gate, and I grow chilled in spirit.”

  “We return to Troy soon,” I cajoled.

  A brief smile. “Yes.” But his eyes were dark and restless, moving over the ceiling as if looking for Troy’s towers, and I felt a familiar clutch of worry. It was not only homesickness that could move Hector to such moods—it could be the death of a new colt, the lightning displeasure of his father, the bad omen of an eagle passing over Troy’s walls, or sometimes no reason that I could see. All I knew was that there were nights I woke to find my husband sitting sleepless on the edge of our bed, hands clasped between his knees as he stared into some nameless anxiety. “Worry likes to sit on my shoulder at times,” he said now, making light of it, but sometimes it was days before these moods of formless sadness took themselves away.

  You should be brave, I thought. Go into the darkness with him and drag him out. But I had no idea how to do such a thing, so I fell back on old habits and became playful, pinching his arm. “Shall I make you smile?”

  His hand squeezed mine, but he made no answer, continuing to stare up at the ceiling.

  “I think all these Achaean kings we saw tonight aren’t sea-pirates, they’re wild beasts. Can’t you see old Nestor of Pylos as a molting eagle, thinking himself so high and wise? And Ajax as a great ox, lumbering about with his head hanging. Odysseus is clearly a fox, that wicked grin of his... ” I chattered on, imitating the wedding guests mercilessly, feeling my heart sink as Hector continued to stare at the ceiling. Sometimes my funny chatter worked, winning a reluctant smile as he began to shake away the storm clouds. But sometimes it did not, and tonight was a night when all my jokes won only a deep sigh as he rolled over and took me in his arms. “You dear, funny thing,” he murmured, wrapping me tight against his chest, and I could hear the love in his voice. An emotion as broad and uncomplicated as a calm sea, but I did not understand it.

  I am not fit to be the future queen of Troy, I thought as he slid into sleep. I am not fit to be the mother of your sons. I cannot even banish the clouds when you are sad. Why do you love me at all?

  HELLENUS

  Considering that a wedding is an occasion for joyful celebration, it is astounding how few of the festivities are friendly—at least where kings gather as guests. Perhaps if it were a gathering of goatherds, the competition of foot races and spear throwing would have been good-natured. Perhaps a cluster of smiths would have risen from the wrestling bou
ts laughing when they were bested. And had it been lowly spearmen trooping out for a lion hunt, perhaps there would not have been dark looks when the man who brought down the lion with a single spear thrust was the same man to win the foot races, the wrestling matches, and the spear throws. After another ten days of competitions, contests, and other displays of skill, I had some advice for my elder brother.

  “Sprain something today,” I told Hector bluntly, coming to his quarters, where he was rubbing down his great bow for the afternoon archery match. “Let someone else take the victory wreath for once.”

  One of Hector’s rare smiles—even rarer here in Sparta, where I’d frequently seen him brooding over the past few days. “These are games of skill,” he said mildly. “If I win, don’t I honor the gods? Isn’t that the purpose, to attract the gods’ favor to the wedding?”

  He was teasing, I knew. “Honor our father instead by coming home with your skin intact. Win the archery bout today on top of all your other victories, and one of these sea-wolves will likely plant a wheel-spike in your back.”

  Hector studied me. “I think you rather like these sea-wolves, Hellenus.”

  “Barbarians,” I scoffed.

  “Barbarians who do not stare at you quite as much as our citizens at home.”

  I glanced up. He held my eyes. I shrugged.

  He folded his great arms across his chest. “I know it is not easy for you in Troy.” Quietly. “It is not your face that sets you aside, truly. It is our father. I wish he valued you as highly as he does his sons from his queen.”

  I looked down, checking his bowstring for soundness.

  “Never doubt that I value you, Hellenus. Things... will change.”

  “How?” I asked. “You cannot make our people cease staring, and you cannot make me anything but the son of a concubine.”