A Thousand Ships(40)

Even though he was watching her, could not help but stare at her, Paris did not see Aphrodite move. She was suddenly behind him, in front of him, all around him. Her hand stroked his arm, a glancing touch, and he felt like his legs might give way beneath him. He had never wanted something so much in his life as to simply fall to his knees before her and worship her. Her hair – like sun on sand – was wrapped around him, and he tasted salt on his lips.

‘You know the apple is mine,’ she said. ‘Give it to me and I will give you the most beautiful woman in the world.’

‘You?’ he asked, his voice cracking on the word.

‘Not me,’ she replied. ‘I would destroy you, Paris. You are mortal.’ Paris wondered if destruction would be such a terrible way to die. ‘I will give you the closest thing to me. Her name is Helen of Sparta.’ He had a sudden image of a woman of extravagant beauty – flaming yellow hair, white skin, a swan-like neck – and then it was gone. Aphrodite shimmered away, like spume on the surface of the sea.

Paris looked down at the solid golden apple nestled between his fingers and thumb. He looked back up at the three goddesses who stood before him, and he knew it had only one rightful owner.

*

As the goddesses returned to Mount Olympus, Athene swore she would never speak to either of them again. Especially not Aphrodite, who radiated smugness as she cradled the apple in her spiteful little hand.

‘You didn’t tell him Helen already has a husband,’ Hera murmured. She preferred to take her revenge at a leisurely pace, so refusing to speak to her tormentor would serve little purpose.

‘It didn’t seem important,’ Aphrodite replied. ‘Besides, how much can it matter? Paris already has a wife.’





18


Penelope


My dearest husband,

I was warned once that you were trouble. My mother used to say it was stitched into your very name, that you would never be separated from it. I hushed her, and told her that you were too clever for trouble to entangle you. You’d outsmart it, I said. And if that didn’t work, you’d outrun it. I suppose I should have known that the trouble would find you at sea, where cleverness and speed offer little advantage.

A year since Troy fell, and still you are not home. A year. Can Troy be so much further now than it was when you sailed there ten years ago? Where have you been, Odysseus? The stories I hear are not encouraging. If I tell you what the bards have been singing about you, you’ll laugh. At least, I hope you will.

They say you set sail from Troy and after a couple of piratical diversions, you found yourself marooned on an island of one-eyed sheep-tending giants. Cyclopes, they call them, these men each with one eye and many sheep. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? They say you found yourself trapped within the cave-dwelling of a vicious Cyclops; he had every intention of killing and eating you. I think he planned to kill you first, anyway.

As the bards sing it, the spirits of your men – who were trapped with you – swiftly turned to despair. But, as always, you came up with a plan. I wonder if they change the story when they sing in other men’s houses? Certainly, in the halls of Ithaca, you are always the quickest, the cleverest, the most inventive. They say you gave the Cyclops a full wineskin and bade him drink. If this is to be my last meal, you said, let me share my hospitality with you, just the same. You gave a skin full of undiluted wine to a giant who usually drinks sheep’s milk. No wonder he got so drunk so fast. What’s your name, traveller, he asked, his words slurring into one another. ‘I’d like to know who I’ll be eating.’

‘They call me No One,’ you replied, not wanting to let him have the glory of boasting about killing you. He was drunk, and perhaps also stupid, so it seemed to him to be a real name.

But anyone could have thought to give him strong drink. The brilliant brutality of your plan came after that. And the bards really enjoy this part, Odysseus: they sing this story over and over again. Because once the wine was flowing through the Cyclops like blood, your men wanted to kill him as he slept. They had not thought, as you had, that they would then be stuck in a cave with a dead giant. You needed the Cyclops awake and unhurt, so he could roll the boulder – which he used as a door – back from the opening of the cave. You and your men could not have done it, together or alone. They didn’t believe you so you proved it to them. Three warriors, heaving against a rock with all their might, and it did not move a finger’s width. No man could escape. Only then did they appreciate the complexity of the problem.

Did I say unhurt? Of course you did not want the Cyclops to be unhurt. But you needed him to be the right kind of hurt.

You saw he used a large stick to help him negotiate his way around the rocky terrain, as he was looking after his sheep. When he came into his cave at the end of each day, he rolled the boulder across the doorway so the sheep were penned inside, safe from wolves and other predators while he slept. But even a giant needed two hands to do that. So he would herd the sheep inside, then prop the stick next to the doorway, leaving his hands free to move the rock.

You took the stick and held it in the embers of the fire, turning it all the while. The men were moaning and complaining that their fate was so cruel, to survive ten years of war and then die on the way home, food for a giant. But you ignored them, turning the stick, which was as tall as you, while it blackened into a point. Even then, the men did not understand what you were planning, and you had to tell them twice to step back and hide among the giant’s woolly herd. I knew, even before the bard sang this for the first time, what you were about to do. Your ruthlessness is one of the first things I loved about you, Odysseus. It still is.