A Thousand Ships(35)
‘So why do you single me out for blame?’ Helen asked. ‘Paris came to me, remember? He came to Sparta, and to the palace of Menelaus, for one purpose only: to seduce me.’
‘And your crime was to be seduced.’
‘Yes,’ Helen sighed. ‘That was my crime. To give your handsome son everything he asked for, like everyone else did, because he was pretty and sweet and he enjoyed it so much.’
Hecabe was silenced by the truth. She had indulged Paris as a young man, because he was so easily pleased, his delicate face so ready to break into a smile. Her other sons had worked harder and been more dutiful, but she had loved Paris like a pet. No one could resist him, and so he was always spoiled. Had Priam even questioned him, when he announced that he needed a ship to sail to Greece? Had anyone asked him where he was going or why? Blood suffused her creased cheeks: she knew that no one had. They had recoiled when he arrived back in Troy with Helen, and his hazy smile – she would never forget it – had morphed into a petulant confusion. Paris was perplexed that his family did not rush to welcome him and his new wife home. He was less perplexed when the Greek fleet arrived in the bay, but still seemed to believe that the Trojans were withholding their approval from some malicious cause rather than a genuine horror at his behaviour and its consequences. Even as he watched his brothers, friends and neighbours fight and die in a war he had begun, he never offered an apology, never claimed responsibility. For Paris, the problem was not his behaviour but Menelaus’ reaction which was, to him, entirely inexplicable. Everyone had always allowed him, encouraged him even, to take whatever he wanted. He had done that, and then suddenly there was a war.
‘Why did Menelaus even accept Paris into his home?’ Hecabe asked. ‘What sort of man leaves another man alone with his wife?’
Helen rolled her eyes. ‘A man like Menelaus,’ she replied, ‘who would never seduce another man’s wife, so can’t imagine that another person might behave differently. A man who would dutifully welcome a stranger into his home, but would soon tire of his perfumed hair, his effete clothes, his soft voice. A man who would not wish to offend the gods by asking the stranger to leave, but would be unable to face spending another day in his company. A man who would go on a hunting trip, begging his wife’s pardon for burdening her with the tedious guest, promising to return in a few days when the coast is clear. A man who would not see the way his wife and her guest are looking at one another and realize that the hunt is taking place at home while he is away with his hounds.’
‘But you could have refused Paris,’ Hecabe said. ‘To abandon your husband, your daughter . . .’
Helen shrugged. ‘Which of us can refuse Aphrodite?’ she asked. ‘A god’s power is far greater than mine. When she urged me to accompany him to Troy, I tried to resist. But she gave me no choice. She told me what I must do and then she withdrew, and in her absence, I heard a high-pitched noise, a distant scream. From the moment Paris entered our halls, it was constant. I thought I was going mad: no one else could hear it and it would not cease. I put wax in my ears but it did not block out the sound. Then when Paris kissed me and I took him to my bed, the shrieking grew fainter. When I stepped onto his boat, it disappeared altogether. That is what it means to refuse a god, it is to be driven mad.’
Hecabe gazed unblinking at Cassandra, who was scratching something into the sand with the end of a small stick, one sign on top of another, until the pattern was all churned up, illegible. ‘Whatever you say.’ She turned back to look at Helen. ‘But if you had refused to accompany him, the noise might have disappeared of its own accord. Besides, if Menelaus was as unthinking as you imply, why did he marshal all these Greeks for your return?’
‘Because my father Tyndareus had made them all swear,’ Helen said. ‘When the time came for me to marry, every man in Greece wanted to be my husband.’
‘Of course they did,’ Hecabe spat.
‘I am only telling you what happened,’ Helen said. ‘Because you asked. Kings and princes travelled across Greece to ask my father for my hand in marriage. He soon realized that war might ensue, given that he would have to disappoint all but one of them. That’s why he made them swear the oath that bound them all to defend whoever married me. If Aphrodite had given your son any other woman as his prize, the war would not have happened. Your grudge is with the goddess, it is not with me.’
Hecabe opened her mouth to respond, but Cassandra suddenly let out a curdling howl. ‘Be quiet,’ her mother hissed, raising her hand to slap her daughter across the face. Cassandra was blind to her, staring along the coast, where the light was already fading. Two Greek soldiers were walking back towards their camp, towards the women, carrying something heavy between them on a litter. Although Cassandra already knew that it was not something, but someone.
17
Aphrodite, Hera, Athene
The three goddesses would have said they had nothing in common, but each one had the same overwhelming dislike of any social occasion which did not revolve around her. And each had the same incapacity to conceal her disdain. So their collective ill-temper on the day of the wedding of Thetis and Peleus was assured before the sun embarked on his journey across the sky.
Of the three, it was perhaps Hera whose ill-temper was least appropriate. The goddess stood tall and stately, a small frown blighting her beautiful clear face, her huge brown eyes fixed somewhere above the hubbub which surrounded her. Thetis was a mere sea nymph, scarcely worthy of resentment from the queen of the Olympians. Not only that but Thetis had done that rarest of things, and rejected the overtures of Hera’s husband, Zeus. Hera’s usual reason for loathing someone – nymph, goddess or mortal – was Zeus’ spree of infidelities. There were days when she thought he must have threatened or cajoled every person he had ever seen into his bed. And after a while, this had become annoying: demi-gods popping up all over the place, each one claiming Zeus as a father. It was the discourtesy, the vulgarity of it all which she minded most. And while she punished her husband as best she could, there were limits to the revenge which could be taken against the king of the gods. Zeus simply was more powerful than his wife, and there was little she could do about that. So she punished the girls, the mortal ones especially, tricking and torturing them whenever the opportunity arose. Even when Zeus had sworn to protect them, he rarely gave them his full attention for long, not least because his eye was caught by the next beautiful young creature. Hera’s eye was not so easily distracted. But still, Thetis had done nothing to warrant her disapproval. When Zeus had shown his predictable enthusiasm for her, she had fled.