A Song of War: a novel of Troy Read online

  I was in no mood for revelry, either. I took a jar of wine to the courtyard and sat drinking, listening to the sounds of drunken singing and raucous cheers, and I was almost on the point of sleep when I saw a shadow slipping from the women’s quarters.

  Queen Helen. Surely there was no other woman so tall. She glided noiselessly against the wall, dark-cloaked—it was only merest chance I’d spotted her in the darkness. There was a set of bathing quarters just off the courtyard, very close to the women’s rooms. I watched Sparta’s queen slip inside.

  A bath at this hour? I discarded my wine jar and rose, a little unsteady but curious. Stealing to the entrance, I heard noises. The rustle of cloth, the sound of panting, a stifled groan.

  I risked a glance inside.

  A single guttering lamp lit the scene: Helen of Sparta leaning against the painted frieze, her head thrown back, her pale gold hair loosed from its jeweled band and uncoiling wild as a Fury’s. Her purple robe pooled at her feet, and a man’s head was buried between her pale breasts. Her marble calm, her goddess-like reserve, had utterly gone. Her lips parted in a snarl that looked more like hatred than passion as her fingers snaked through her lover’s hair, yanking him up so their mouths nailed together. He dragged her long thigh around his hip as their lips clashed violently, and against the lamplight I saw Paris’ perfect profile.

  It could only have lasted an instant, the moment I stood there with my eye to the crack of the door watching my brother rut between the thighs of another man’s wife—but that instant lasted a year. In that endless moment, I hated him. He desired another man’s wife, and what did he do? He reached out and took her, as he reached out and took everything else he wanted, and his reward was to be the golden prince, everyone’s favorite, forever forgiven. I desired another man’s wife, and what was my reward for holding myself back honorably? Heartache and loneliness inside a family who found me worthless.

  Part of me wanted to haul Paris out of that chamber and beat him unconscious. But I didn’t trust myself, once I started hitting my brother, not to kill him. I backed away noiselessly, no longer wine-fuddled, and went to the chamber assigned for Hector. But I found only Andromache.

  “Hellenus,” she said sleepily, waving me inside. She had clearly retired to wait for Hector, still dressed in her layered kilts and lapis-colored bodice, but with her hair falling free and her feet bare. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, drowsy with more wine than she usually drank—but they sprang open wide as I told her in a few terse sentences what I had just seen.

  “That idiot,” she said in blank astonishment. “Paris and Queen Helen?”

  “Yes. And if King Menelaus gets wind of it, he’d be within his rights to run Paris through.”

  “Maybe we should let him.” Andromache sighed. “Paris. How could he?”

  “Because if he sees a ripe apple on a tree, he plucks it and sinks his teeth in without a thought for who the tree belongs to,” I said, and the envy was bitter in my mouth. “Tell Hector when he returns. We cannot keep this from him.” I couldn’t stomach waiting any longer; I wanted my bed and my envious dreams.

  “Hector will…” Andromache trailed off, her eyes growing miserable. “Hellenus, he will be so wretched. If Paris shatters something, it’s Hector who will have to pick up the pieces, even if the edges cut him to the bone.”

  “We can get out of this with no one the wiser. Tell Hector to find Paris and pack him off at dawn to Gythio, where our ships are moored. Give whatever excuse he likes; Paris leaves now as the rest of us make our formal farewells and follow in a few days. No one will know but the four of us.”

  “And Helen. What was she thinking?”

  “I don’t know.” I could have sworn that yesterday Sparta’s queen had no more desire for Paris than for a tarnished bracelet. And yet her face in the bathing room had been all savage, passionate intent. Perhaps she was a daughter of Zeus—beyond the power of mortal man to comprehend.

  Andromache sank down on the edge of the bed, twisting the fringe of her layered kilts again. “Hector won’t sleep tonight once he knows,” she said softly. “He’ll sit brooding, no matter how I try to help. And I will have to be brave and tell him all will be well, no matter what I truly think.”

  I sat beside her and put an arm about her, smelling the oil of iris in her hair and the wine she’d drunk that evening. She let her head fall against my shoulder, and I felt her breath hitch. My breath hitched, too. Sweet Zeus, how hard it was to have her so close. Wanting to tighten my arm around her—

  “I weary of trying so hard,” she whispered. “It is so lonely, Hellenus.”

  “I know,” I said, stroking her hair, and in a moment’s cool clarity I saw how it could happen. I could hold her in my brotherly arms till she was comforted; I could wait until she lifted her face and then kiss the tip of her nose to make her smile, and then while she was smiling, I could kiss her mouth—and her lips would yield. Her lips would yield and so would the rest of her, coming pliant and soft into my arms, which could then stop being brotherly and lay her back on the bed. And Andromache, I thought, would let me. Because she was lonely and tipsy and far from home, hurting from worry and aching for comfort, and she had always found me so comforting. Because I was her friend; because I was an easier man than my brooding, godlike brother. Because she trusted me. She trusted me, and I could have her if I wanted. Here on my brother’s bed, her hair coiled around my hand and her small freckled breasts against my chest.

  I was so bitterly tempted. For an instant, it did not matter that Andromache would hate herself afterward, that Hector could walk in at any moment and throttle me as his eyes widened with betrayal. I didn’t care. I wanted to be like Paris, to reach out and pluck the apple, take what I wanted so much, all the consequences in the world be damned.

  Andromache lifted her head, raised her face toward mine. I pulled in a breath thick with choked desire, and I kissed her—kissed her smooth forehead just at the line of her loose hair. I gave myself that. “Good night,” I said, rising fast and clumsily, turning away from her because she looked puzzled and a little guilty, as though she’d sensed something of my inner turmoil. “Tell Hector when he returns—” and I fled to my lonely bed.

  ANDROMACHE

  I had no idea what Hector said to Paris, but my foolish brother-in-law was gone by noon the following day. He left quickly in his chariot, unseen by me and certainly unseen by our hosts, while Hector made uncomfortable excuses. “We have received news our ships may have been attacked in Gythio where we left them moored. Forgive my brother for leaving so hastily to get word.”

  King Menelaus only shrugged his heavy shoulders, seeming to suspect nothing, and I breathed easier. Paris’ exit caused little comment when all the guests were preparing for departure: two days after the wedding, Odysseus left with his Penelope, whose cheeks I kissed as I wished her happiness in her new home, and then there was a flood of guests departing Sparta’s gates. Menelaus himself was planning to leave Sparta with his brother, Agamemnon, for lion hunting in Mycenae and seemed impatient to see the last of us all.

  “We’ll be home soon,” I told Hector, hoping to see a smile, but Paris’ foolishness had sunk him as deep in gloom as I’d feared. It was Hellenus who made the arrangements for our departure, and three days after the wedding, we were making our formal farewells to red-haired Menelaus and rattling away in our chariots, the pack donkeys trotting behind considerably less burdened than when they’d arrived.

  I dreaded seeing Helen at our departure, for I was no liar and didn’t think I’d be able to hide my contempt for what she’d done. A queen soiling her marriage bed—I could not conceive of such a thing. And to take such a risk for Paris? I thought Helen had better taste than that; certainly, I’d thought she had more wits. For someone who thought she’d hatched from Zeus’ egg, she’d behaved like a peahen, and had I laid eyes on her, I didn’t really think I’d be able to stop myself from telling her so. But the Spartan queen had taken to her bed after the wedding, cla
iming illness and commanding utter solitude, and I hadn’t seen her since. “Perhaps Paris tired her out,” I told Hector tartly, and for that he did smile, just a little.

  I rejoiced as we drove away from Sparta, leading our entourage through the wooded hills along the wheel-rutted road. The horses seemed to dance, tossing their manes in the summer wind, and I could see Hector’s black mood lightening almost by the hour, lifting under the simple pleasures of sunlight and sweet air and leather reins in his hands. He had a charioteer for battle but otherwise drove himself, balancing steady as a tower and needing only the lightest touch to turn the horses. He smiled down at me, and my heart contracted with love—and a touch of shame. Perhaps it had only been the wine, but the night Hellenus brought the news of Paris’ betrayal and I’d contemplated my husband’s certain gloom, I’d had the tiny, furtive wish that I could have married an ordinary man and not this grave and complicated one who needed so much from me.

  Perhaps Hellenus had read my mind, as he so often seemed to. He had been avoiding me ever since.

  Well, I would leave such shameful thoughts firmly behind in Sparta with the rest of the unpleasantness. “Home to Troy,” I said, squeezing Hector’s arm. “Before you know it, your little brother Polites will be clamoring to know what you brought him from Sparta, and your mother will be bringing out your favorite wine, and all your horses will have their heads over the fence looking for you.”

  “And I’ll talk to Father about building more ships this winter,” Hector decided. “With most of our fleet going to aid the Hittites, it would be foolish to have nothing more than the three we sailed here and a few fishing boats…” He talked keels and sails all the way to Gythio, happy and active again, and soon our three ships were visible, beached high and dry, guarded by sentries, the wide ocean lapping softly behind.

  Paris had made camp when he arrived a few days ago and had clearly unloaded a good many supplies from the ships to pamper himself. Woven tapestries had been thrown down to cushion the sand; two stools of gilded wood stood together with a bowl of fruit; a bed frame of stretched hide was piled with furs. Paris himself was lounging with a lyre and a cup of wine; he discarded both as we stepped down from our chariots. “Welcome,” he said cheekily as I stood shaking the dust from my skirts and Hector passed his reins to a guard. “We’ve been waiting an age!”

  “We?” I raised my eyebrows frostily, not inclined to forgive him yet. “Did you pick up some shepherd’s daughter on the way home?”

  “Not precisely,” Paris grinned and waved up to the stern of the beached ship, where a tall figure had just risen. I looked at her in a wave of horror, barely hearing the surge of whispers around me from the staring slaves and guards, and I realized that the trouble Paris had caused was not over yet. It had only just begun.

  “Hector,” Helen of Sparta said calmly, twining her arms about Paris’ neck as he lifted her down to the sand. “Andromache, Hellenus. How I look forward to seeing Troy.”

  HELLENUS

  Hector stood frozen with shock, but Andromache and I moved as one. As she came forward in a flare of skirts and delivered a ringing backhand slap across Helen’s cheek, I advanced on my younger brother and drove my fist into his handsome, grinning face.

  He went down, tumbling into the sand. I flung myself on him, rage roaring in my ears, hammering him like a sheet of copper on a smith’s anvil. I wanted to pound his pretty profile into ruined oblivion. More, I wanted to kill him, wrap my hands about his throat and crush it to pulp. I had killed men before in spear raids and skirmishes, and though I never enjoyed the taking of lives, I could have slaughtered my brother on that beach and washed my hands in his blood without a qualm.

  It was Hector who hauled me off Paris, lifting me up and flinging me back as though I weighed no more than a child. He had Andromache by the arm as well, pulling her back from Helen, and a moment later shoved her into my arms. “Both of you, back,” he snapped, planting himself between the two of us and the guilty pair. I could feel Andromache trembling in my arms, staring at Helen. Menelaus’ queen stood immobile, mouth curving in her mysterious smile, scarlet mark standing clear across her cheek. Paris rose, wiping blood from a split lip and a split eyebrow, one eye swelling shut—but he was still smiling.

  “What the fuck have you done?” I spat.

  “Got myself a wife,” he said, and again I wanted to kill him.

  I turned to Hector instead, still gazing numbly back and forth between Paris and Helen. “Strap that bitch into a chariot and send her back to Sparta. Menelaus has gone to Mycenae; we might be able to return her before he realizes she’s gone.”

  “The slaves will know by now.” Helen’s voice was amused. “I claimed I was too ill to eat more than the figs and wine already in my chamber and threatened beatings to any who opened my door, but by now someone will have tiptoed in to see. A message is doubtless on its way to Menelaus as we speak.”

  I ignored her, still speaking to Hector, my pulse hammering. “Give her back along with her weight in gold, then. He might not ask for Paris’ head on a spike.” Though frankly I would have considered giving it to him.

  “She’s not going anywhere except home to Troy as my wife,” Paris said. “And I assure you, our father will welcome her with open arms.”

  “You have dishonored him,” Andromache cried. “You have dishonored us all—stealing another man’s queen—”

  “No one stole me,” Helen said, still calm. “I came willingly.”

  Hector stared at her a long moment. “Stay here with my wife, Queen Helen,” he ordered at last in a whisper like a roll of soft thunder. “Paris, Hellenus. Come.”

  I released Andromache, who crossed her arms and glowered at Menelaus’ errant wife. Hector turned and made for the shadow of the next beached ship, which might afford us some privacy from our gaping entourage. Paris sauntered after, and I fell in behind him, my hands bruised and aching from hitting him. My ears roared dully. What have you done? The mindless thought circled. What have you done?

  “My, my.” Paris grinned as the three of us came to a halt beside the ship. “Am I to be scolded now?”

  Hector’s massive hand shot out and gripped him by the throat. “Will you joke your way out of our father’s displeasure, too? When he realizes you may have provoked war with Sparta?”

  “You’re an ox-brain, Brother. What do you think our father wants?” Paris shook Hector’s hand off, flippancy finally falling away. “You had your own instructions for our Spartan visit, and I had mine. You think our father cares about placating these pirate kings with gold and gifts? They’re little better than sea-rats, forever nibbling at our territories in raiding season and complaining our tariffs on the strait are too high. They need to be taught a lesson. Father sent you to keep the surface civil, but he trusted me to look for opportunities.”

  “Opportunities for what?” I spat.

  “Trouble, war. Who cares? Any chance to bloody their noses.”

  Hector shook his head stubbornly. “Father would have told me.”

  “You’re too much the honorable dealer for subterfuge. Father trusted me to keep my eyes open, any way I could see to spark trouble, and I did.”

  I thought of how his usual sunny humor had acquired an unaccustomed rude edge during our visit. His insults, his arrogance.

  “Helen was ripe to fall on her back, anyone could see that,” Paris continued. “It was the easiest thing in the world. All I had to do was fuck her till her eyes crossed, and she was ready to run away. The bitch is so wet for me she’ll do anything. She even brought a chunk of Menelaus’ treasury with her when I suggested it. I bring her and her Spartan gold home, and those Achaeans will follow—Menelaus got his throne through her, and even if he didn’t, he’d be a laughingstock if he let his prize cunt run away with half his treasury. He’ll come, and he’ll bring that sharp-eyed brother of his, Agamemnon, and we’ll bloody their noses on our own turf, outside our own gates. Not at sea, where they’re strongest; on land, where we�
��re strongest, where we can fall behind walls a god couldn’t breach, and they’ll have nowhere to fall but Hades. We’ll send them home like whipped puppies, and then they’ll be happy to pay doubled rates for using our strait.”

  Hector and I stared at him, dumbfounded.

  “Troy needs money, if you haven’t noticed. We had to send our fleet to help fight the Hittite rebellion; how soon are we going to get those ships back trading and turning a profit? And the Hittites won’t be near as quick with their tin shipments as they used to be, not with all the fighting roiling Hattusa. The Achaean sea-rats can keep our coffers full; they just need a lesson first.” Paris spread his arms. “And I taught it to them. Not noble Hector, me. Father will be proud.”

  He had a hard, feverish gleam in his eye. This was not about lust or money, I realized. I am not the only son of Priam to feel myself lacking a place in Troy. Paris had joined our family late after his indifferent fostering among goatherds, a prince discarded because of a prophecy of ill-luck and only taken back because my sister had recognized him for who he was. He’d only regained a toehold in the palace due to his charm and his eagerness to please. Paris, I thought, would have provoked war with the whole world if it meant keeping our father’s careless favor.

  What have you done? I thought again, but to my distant father instead. Pulling strings across the sea, making us all dance to his tune…

  “I suggest we set sail,” Paris said. “Father will be eager to greet his new daughter-in-law.”

  “You should never have—” Hector began, but I seized his arm, holding him as Paris stalked off.

  “Leave him be,” I said. “He’s not so much at fault here as our father. Priam gave the orders.”

  “I would not have followed such orders!”

  “You have never lacked our father’s approval. Paris has, and he’d kill to keep it.” For the first time, I felt lucky that Priam had never extended his affection to me. Never having felt the smallest ray of that paternal sunshine, the craving for its warmth could never drive me to desperate acts, as it had Paris.