Beauty's Daughter: The Story of Hermione and Helen of Troy (13 page)

Calchas was silent, and we waited.

“Hector is dead.”

We sighed, relieved that it was over. But Calchas held up his hand.

“Wait! Achilles hasn’t finished taking his revenge. He strips Hector’s body of the armor. He is bent on shaming Hector. He slits the tendons in Hector’s heels, threads leather straps through the slits, and fastens the straps to his chariot. Now he whips his stallions into a frenzy, and they plunge headlong, dragging Hector’s lifeless body through clouds of dust.”

Hippodameia screamed and fainted. Astynome caught her. I grabbed Calchas’s sleeve. “And Hector’s people? Have they witnessed this?”

Calchas nodded. “They have. King Priam, mad with grief, vows to beg Achilles to return his son’s body. Hector’s mother tears her hair and cries pitifully. His people wail . . .”

And what about my mother?
I wondered.
Is she crying too? Does she blame herself?
I imagined Helen there in all her loveliness, and for once I did not envy her beauty.

“Hector’s wife?” I whispered. “Does Andromache know?”

“His lovely wife sits in her chamber and weaves at her loom. She has heard nothing and orders her women to prepare a bath for her husband for when he returns from battle.” Calchas paused, and a troubled look crossed his face. “Now she hears the wailing, and she knows.”

I imagined that I could hear Andromache’s anguished cry: “Oh, Hector, I am destroyed!”

HECTOR WAS DEAD, AND
now Achilles turned his attention to the rituals that would guarantee Patroclus’s safe delivery to the House of Death. All of us attended. As the body was placed on a pyre and consumed by fire, Achilles led the singing of chants that sent chills down my spine. The Myrmidons organized traditional funeral games, contests that would continue for days.

But still Achilles’ hunger for revenge was not satisfied. Not content to let the body of Hector lie in peace, Achilles continued to abuse it. Every day for nine days he ruthlessly dragged Hector’s body three times around the tomb in which Patroclus’s ashes were buried. We marveled that Hector’s body did not decay but remained perfect. Astynome knew why. “Apollo and Aphrodite are protecting it,” she said.

Astynome, whose time was near for the birth of her baby, wanted to return to Agamemnon’s camp, but Hippodameia begged us to stay with her for a little longer—“until Achilles loses his madness,” she said—and so we did.

That was how we happened to be present when King Priam arrived at Achilles’ camp. Somehow the old king had managed to avoid the guards—Astynome whispered that Zeus had sent Hermes, the messenger god, to protect him in his perilous mission. Achilles and those closest to him were gathered in his hut when the Trojan king entered unannounced, hobbled straight to Achilles, knelt painfully and clasped Achilles’ knees, and pleaded for the return of Hector’s body.

Everyone, including Achilles, was thunderstruck. Pyrrhus took one long step forward, his sword drawn, but then he seemed to hesitate and sheathed his weapon. I doubted that he had halted out of pity for Priam; more likely, one of the merciful gods had stopped him.

Achilles found his voice. “What have you to offer me, King Priam?”

“I bring a priceless ransom, a cart loaded with the gold and jewels in my treasury equal to the weight of my beloved son,” King Priam answered, his leathery old cheeks wet with tears. “Now I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son.”

Achilles’ stony heart was softened by this sorrowing old king. He called for his serving women to wash and anoint Hector’s body and wrap it in a brilliant purple cape while his men unloaded the treasure. Achilles himself lifted Hector’s body onto King Priam’s cart. He ordered a sheep slaughtered and bread and wine brought out for a meal. He had a bed made up for Priam and provided him with thick fleeces and warm blankets. He promised a truce until Prince Hector had been buried in Troy.

“Nine days to mourn him, a tenth to bury him, the eleventh to build the mound above him. On the twelfth we’ll fight again,” Achilles told Priam.

Astynome, Hippodameia, and I witnessed the whole scene. When it was finished, Achilles took Hippodameia by the wrist and led her off to his own sleeping quarters. She went with him without a backward glance, leaving Astynome and me to find a place to sleep in her tent. I lay awake, knowing that Pyrrhus was lurking somewhere nearby. I didn’t trust him.

During the night, Astynome’s labor began. I sent for Marpessa, who—old and crippled as she was—still served as midwife for women unlucky enough to give birth on the beach of Troy. Toward morning Agamemnon’s son was born. Astynome named him Chryses, in honor of her father.

15

THERE IS NO ACCOUNTING
for the whim of the gods. I could think of no other explanation for what happened next. Those all-powerful beings had decreed that Achilles’ good fortune would soon come to an end.

During the truce he’d granted to Priam for the mourning and burial of Hector, Achilles went to the place where the River Scamander joins the sea to bathe in the twin pools. Everyone seemed to have the same idea. The battles had exhausted us, and all our spirits needed refreshing. The pools were large, and Greek and Trojan women bathed in one pool while Greek and Trojan men were in the other. Admiring gazes passed in both directions. I saw Orestes, his beautiful naked body, and yearned to be with him again. He saw mine, and I knew he felt that same yearning.

Soon the lithe and lovely young women and the strong and handsome young men were leaving the pools and slipping off in pairs into the trees. Orestes and I also seized the opportunity.

Among the bathers was a Trojan princess named Polyxena, daughter of King Priam and sister of Hector and Paris. Polyxena, round hipped and slender armed, had the large, liquid eyes of a doe. Her white hands were as delicate as a bird’s wings. When Achilles locked eyes with Polyxena, he forgot all about faithful Hippodameia and led the Trojan princess to the privacy of the grove. I saw them there.

Before they emerged, Achilles had fallen madly in love with Polyxena and made up his mind to marry the sister of his dead rival. He sent word to King Priam that he would return the treasure he had accepted for the ransom of Hector’s body if Priam would consent to the marriage.

When Hippodameia found out, she was infuriated. She raged and she wept; I tried to console her, though there wasn’t much I could say.

Once again Achilles seemed to have lost all his sense and reason, but it wasn’t until later that the extent of his madness was discovered. At some point in his infatuation, he revealed to Polyxena a secret he had never confided to anyone. We knew the story that when he was an infant, his mother, Thetis, had dipped him in the waters of the River Styx to ensure his immortality. But what no one knew was that the water had not touched that one small place where she’d held him, the heel of his foot. And so, to prove his love, he foolishly told Polyxena about his vulnerable spot.

Polyxena betrayed him. She immediately passed the information to her brother, Prince Paris. Paris, not a warrior like Hector but nonetheless skillful with bow and arrow, waited for his chance. Treacherous Polyxena made sure that he got it.

She lured Achilles to the temple of Apollo, where their marriage was supposed to be celebrated. Odysseus, suspicious of the whole affair from the beginning, went with Achilles, hoping to salvage the situation. Neither saw Paris hidden in the temple, waiting. Paris aimed his arrow at that small, vulnerable spot: Achilles’ heel. Apollo ensured that the arrow found its mark. Some even said it was Apollo’s arrow that killed him. Achilles died in the arms of Odysseus, who carried our hero’s body back to the Greek camp and told us what happened.

We were stunned by the death of Achilles. The mourning began again. The wailing of the Myrmidons continued night after night, day after day. Agamemnon took charge of the funeral rites. Pyrrhus, convulsed with grief, vowed to slaughter every Trojan who came in his path. I held the distraught Hippodameia and wiped her tears.

Now, I wondered, when would the killing end? How could the Greeks now hope to win the war without Achilles?

Orestes and I discussed the situation when we found a chance to be together. “The oracles make different predictions to different people,” Orestes said. “One says that the war can’t be won without a special bow and arrows, and that these have to be gotten from an archer named Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos. Another says that a wooden statue of Pallas Athena must be stolen from its hiding place in the Trojan citadel. Yet a third claims that a certain bone must be found and brought to our camp. Or that Pyrrhus has to take a particular role in the fighting.”

“Pyrrhus!” I snorted. “I can’t imagine that dog face having a particular role in anything!”

“He’s the son of Achilles—that’s his role,” Orestes reminded me. “He has taken up his father’s armor and weapons, and Odysseus approves. But our soldiers are dispirited. More than ever they talk about going home. They haven’t seen their wives and children for almost a decade.”

“And your father? What does Agamemnon say?”

Orestes shrugged. “War is his life. He thrives on it.”

MY OLD FRIEND, ZETHUS,
brought me a gift. He had built me a loom, almost like the one that leaned against the wall in my mother’s bedroom at Sparta—two uprights joined by a beautifully carved beam from which the warp strings hung suspended. The warp strings on my mother’s loom had been weighted with gold discs. “I have no gold or silver, but these clay weights will hold the warp taut,” he said. The shuttle that carried the weft thread was smooth and balanced nicely in my hand.

I thanked Zethus and praised his elegant workmanship. He grinned, pleased that he had pleased me. “I’m no longer a slave,” he told me proudly. “I’ve been given new work. Odysseus has persuaded Agamemnon to build a very large wooden horse, big enough for our best Greek warriors to conceal themselves inside it. The plan is to leave it on the beach, and once the Trojans have hauled the wooden horse inside the walls of Troy, the Greeks will climb out and open the city gates, and our fighters will rush in.”

The plan sounded ridiculous. “The Trojans surely are not so stupid as to bring a huge wooden horse into their city,” I told him, laughing. “Even Odysseus can’t believe that!”

“There’s much more to the plan,” Zethus explained. “Odysseus has worked it all out. The Greeks will call it a gift, saying that they’re leaving it in honor of the goddess Athena. Then they’ll burn the encampment, board their ships, and pretend to sail away. But they’ll sail only far enough so that their ships are out of sight of the watchtowers. The Trojans will believe that the Greeks have given up and gone home. They’ll think they’ve won the war, and while they’re celebrating victory, a signal will be given to the hidden ships to return, and our men will overrun Troy and reclaim Helen and the king’s treasure.”

I still thought it was a mad idea, but Zethus wholeheartedly believed in it, and it seemed that Agamemnon and my father did too. Agamemnon dispatched warriors to the forests of Mount Ida to cut down fir trees to build the gigantic horse. Zethus, the most talented of the carpenters and woodworkers, was in charge of the actual construction. The work went on for days. The men sang as they labored. In the evenings they told stories around the fires. They accepted as true what the oracles had foretold: the war would end in its tenth year. As near as I could count, we were well past the middle of that year. The war would soon end and we’d return to our homeland. I wanted to believe it too.

Remembering how my mother’s nimble fingers drew the bright-dyed weft thread across the warp, I stood at my loom and wove. I was no longer the unhappy child left behind by her mother, and I no longer cared whether I would ever be reunited with Helen. Soon Orestes and I would marry, and we would have children. While the men built their wooden horse, I wove a wedding veil.

Orestes and I were together as much as the fighting allowed. We hadn’t yet spoken to our fathers of our wish to marry. They were too deeply involved in organizing their final assault on the Trojans to be interested in their children’s love affair.

“This is how we’ll arrange it,” Orestes had proposed the previous night in my tent. “After the Trojans have been defeated, I’ll return to Mycenae with Agamemnon as he expects, and tell him of our marriage plans, and you’ll sail back to Sparta with Menelaus and Helen. I’m sure our two families, kingly brothers married to queenly sisters, will want to celebrate our wedding with the ceremonies and feasting it deserves. In the meantime,” he said, “I’ve brought you a surprise.” From a leather pouch he produced an intricately designed golden goblet made of two halves, neither of which would stand alone. “It’s a wedding goblet. I’ll keep one half, and you’ll have the other. It was my idea, but Zethus made it for us.”

“I didn’t know Zethus could work in gold,” I said, running my finger along the delicate etching of a wedding party. I was struck by the beauty of the goblet and overjoyed to have this promise of our future marriage. I thought it even more beautiful than the design Hephaestus had etched on Achilles’ magnificent shield.

“Zethus can make anything,” Orestes replied. “Now we must have a little ceremony and make our betrothal official.”

He filled the two halves of the goblet with wine. We poured a few drops on the ground for the gods, pledged our love, and drank, each sipping a little from both halves, promising not to drink from it again until our wedding day. Orestes and I kissed and kissed again and again, until our passion was spent.

As I was weaving, Astynome came to my tent with her newborn baby, Chryses, and cooed to him while I worked. I told her what I was weaving, showed her my half of the wedding goblet, and confided the plans Orestes and I had made. But as I talked and wove, I made mistakes and often had to undo whatever I had just finished. Astynome laughed. “Maybe you should start with something simpler—like towels for a baby!”

“Astynome,” I said, laying aside the shuttle, “you’ve told me that you often have dreams of things that may happen in the future. You learned in a dream that Zeus and Hera were arguing. You knew that Thetis was having new armor made for Achilles, and you even knew that Achilles would die. And so I wonder,” I continued, “if you’ve ever dreamed of my mother. I haven’t seen her since I was a child, and I hardly remember her. What is Helen like now? Do you know?”