A Thousand Ships(43)

They lived in perfect happiness until the goddesses came demanding Paris’ judgement. Oenone never revised this belief, although she knew others would find it hard to credit. Paris did not leave her, he was taken from her. That first time, at least, he was taken. He told her guilelessly what had happened that day: he had been grazing his flock in the foothills before finding himself shrouded in mist. And then he was in the middle of a high mountain glade, standing before three goddesses, each insisting that he choose her and award her some bauble over which they were squabbling. Oenone did not need to hear their names to guess who it had been.

She was not entirely clear on the criteria he had employed to make his decision, nor could she be sure how the argument was resolved. She knew only one thing: he returned home late, long after it was dark, because he had to clamber down the mountainside and retrieve his goats. He was uncharacteristically distracted and short-tempered that night. The next morning, he bade her farewell and said he must go to Troy and confront his parents. He had never mentioned meeting them before, never suggested he might harbour a desire for life within the city walls. Oenone knew there was no point in trying to stop him, and anyway, she thought he would return in a day or two, his questions answered.

Only once he had left did her thoughts become unmuddled. Paris would not return tomorrow, or the next day, she saw. He was heading to Troy to be acknowledged as its prince. And then – she rubbed at her temples thinking she must have this wrong – he would sail away to Greece. To Greece! What on earth for? For what reason could a happy man leave his wife and son to sail across open seas? He had no quest to fulfil, no god had set him a task to perform, she was quite sure of it. For all her gifts of prophecy, she could not see what Paris was up to. Her visions of the future were usually so detailed, but where Paris was concerned, there was now a clouding of her sight. She even asked her father, Cebren the river god, what might be happening, but he knew no more than she did.

So when Paris returned to Troy, she still expected him to return to the mountain. To return to her. It was from another nymph, all cruel smiles, that she learned the truth. Paris, her husband, was living in the city with a new wife, a Greek. Oenone watched her boy, their boy, teeter across the baked earth and wondered how a man could care so little for his son. And how a man she knew so intimately could prove so false? Everything she had believed she knew had been lost in a small chaos.

Oenone knew that war would follow the woman. Even from the peaks of Mount Ida, she could sense the clash of metal and the stench of blood to come. So when the tall ships sailed into the bay, she was not surprised. She kept her boy safe in their mountain hideaway: what had seemed so romantic for her and Paris had become expedient, with Greek soldiers roaming the lower reaches of the mountains to pick off cattle and goats for their feasting. They never discovered her sanctuary, put off by the fast-flowing River Cebren nearby. Oenone had been abandoned by her husband, but her father still watched out for her.

*

After ten long years, Oenone had almost forgotten Paris, his sweet smile and low-lidded eyes. He seemed more like a dream than a man, and only her son – now a slender youth with hazel eyes and nut-brown skin – was proof that Paris had existed at all.

The war had raged across the Troad peninsula, first one way and then the next. Sometimes she and her boy would sit on tufts of grass and watch the chariots pour out of the Greek camp towards the Trojan defenders. They were too high up to see the faces of individual warriors, so she never knew for sure that Paris was still alive.

Except of course he was, because otherwise the Greek, Helen (it had been years before Oenone used her name, even inside her own mind) would have been returned to her husband and the war would be over. Only the obstinacy of Paris could draw out a conflict for so long.

But eventually, even a mountain nymph could see the war was lost, and won. The Trojan warriors had been so reduced in number. So too had the Greeks, but they had begun the war with many more men. When Hector fell, Oenone felt her heart wrench, as though he were her husband, her son. She had never met Paris’ brother, never seen his face, but she still watched his final, lethal combat with the Greek champion, knowing it was him. Everyone spoke of Hector, bulwark of the Trojans. The Greeks respected him, the Trojans depended upon him. He was, in every way, the opposite of his younger brother. No one felt anything but disdain for a man who had endangered his city for his bed. It was one of the few things on which allies and enemies were united.

She watched a vainglorious figure preening on the battlefield – was it Achilles? She thought she had seen him die at Hector’s hands a few days earlier, but now realized she must have been watching another man wearing Achilles’ armour. This warrior was so fast, so slick, so cruel, it must be Achilles. She saw him cut Hector down, and then tie the corpse to the back of his chariot before parading it around the city walls, and knew she would never see such viciousness again. She tried to hide her tears from her son – to whom the whole war, battled on the plains so far beneath them, had the quality of a game – because she could not have explained to him that she was weeping for a man she did not know, because she somehow still knew he didn’t deserve to die.

*

Her gifts of prophecy again proved defective when it came to her husband, and the first she knew of Paris’ injury was when he staggered through the copse outside her hut and collapsed to the ground with a cry.

‘Oenone,’ he called. ‘I beg you.’