A Thousand Ships(52)
Her thoughts were interrupted once again, just as she was about to take to the air. She fluttered back down to the ground, her eyes caught by the sight of it winking in the morning light. Bright and dull at the same time, warm and cool, hard and round. She grabbed at it. Was this for her, this golden ball? She turned it round in her claws. No, not a ball, an apple. Whoever had left it here obviously didn’t want it, or they would not have abandoned it. And, looking closer, it had an inscription on it. ‘The apple of Eris, most beautiful of the gods,’ she imagined it might say. Perhaps this was the apology for her cruel mistreatment. It did not make up for the unkindness, but it was, she supposed, a start. It might have been nicer if someone had thought to bring it down to her cave, but no one ever visited her.
She couldn’t quite read the words, which curled into one another, so she rubbed her feathers against the golden surface and angled it towards the light. No, it didn’t say it was hers. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have it. It was in her clawed hand now; she already had it. She looked again, tilting it, trying to read the squashed script. She traced the words with her finger: ‘Te kalliste.’
For the most beautiful?
Eris smiled. She would take the apple. But she would not keep it.
26
The Trojan Women
The women buried him under sand and rocks. At first, Hecabe wanted to refuse the burial spot Odysseus had pointed out to her because she resented the way he had known so confidently and immediately where Polydorus should lie. But she could not propose an alternative and in the end, the women lifted her lifeless son and carried him slowly up the shore. Cassandra took his head, since she seemed the least disturbed by his ruined face. The rest of them gathered round his limbs and trunk. So when Odysseus returned to their makeshift camp, as the sun was climbing to his highest point overhead, the task was completed.
‘Two things,’ he said to Hecabe. ‘When the Ithacans set sail from here tomorrow, you will accompany me.’
‘Why would I accompany you?’ Hecabe asked.
‘Because you lost the war.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t wish to keep reminding you, madam, but you make it difficult to avoid. You are slaves now.’ He threw his arms out wide, encompassing them all. ‘Our slaves. This group will be disbanded, divided among the Greeks before the end of today. And you, madam, you will come with me.’
Hecabe’s face contorted into a sneer. ‘You have drawn the shortest straw, then? An old woman is not what you must have wished for.’
Odysseus smiled. ‘I had the first pick of you.’ He paused. ‘Well, not quite the first, but Agamemnon – who has precedence, of course – was unconcerned when I told him I would prefer to take you. He may change his mind when the distribution takes place later on, but I like my chances.’
She stared. ‘You know Agamemnon will choose one of my daughters.’
‘Yes. He is a proud man, and only a princess could appeal to that pride. Having the queen of fabled Troy in his retinue would be,’ Odysseus scratched his bearded chin, ‘appropriate for his status, but not for his tastes. Unless she was a very young queen.’
‘You say proud, but you mean vain.’
Odysseus smiled again, and spoke quietly in the Trojan dialect. ‘Not all these soldiers are mine, madam.’
She nodded, unsurprised to discover Troy’s wiliest enemy had knowledge of its tongue. ‘I understand. But for you, then, is an ageing widow appropriate to your status?’
‘It is, madam. And I think it is appropriate to yours, too.’
‘I have no status. As you have been so quick to remind me, I am a slave now.’
‘Old habits,’ he said. He turned to the rock which Helen sat upon, her long hair flowing down along her straight back. ‘Menelaus asked me to bring you back to him, lady. Would you gather your belongings?’
Helen shrugged her magnificent shoulders. ‘Anything I own belongs to the Trojans, or it has remained in Sparta these past ten years,’ she said. ‘I have nothing but what I am wearing.’
‘Really?’ he asked. ‘You wove no tapestries while you waited for your husband to bring you home? I thought you would have created something quite ornate in all these years.’
‘My weaving was nothing compared to that of these women,’ she said, turning her gaze from the sea to look him full in the face. She saw him take a shallow breath. ‘I have other skills.’
‘So I see.’
‘You can’t begin to imagine,’ she said. She looked at the men who accompanied him. ‘Menelaus has hardly sent the cream of his men to escort me back to the camp,’ she murmured.
‘Errant wives don’t warrant a processional guard,’ Odysseus said.
‘And yet, when he sees me, he will fall prostrate before me.’ She gave no sign of having heard Odysseus speak. She nodded. ‘I’m ready, you may take me to my husband.’
‘Thank you, highness.’ Odysseus bowed low before her, but his smirk gave him away. She took slow, sinuous steps towards the Spartan guards who owed their lives and their allegiance to Menelaus, who had fought to the death for her, and who despised her even as they could not take their eyes from her. As she passed Odysseus she paused, reached over, and placed her fingertips on his beard: an act of supplication. But not in Helen’s hands. She did not fall to her knees or bow her head. She simply stared into his grey-green eyes as he flushed a deep, dark red. ‘You would give your life for me in a heartbeat,’ she said. ‘You cannot disguise it any more than other men can. So don’t mock me, Odysseus. Or I may decide that you will regret it.’