Ilium (31 page)

My head was spinning. Every one of these Greeks and Trojans and gods had a story and had to tell it at a drop of a hat. But what did this have to do with . . .

“I know about lust, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” said Helen. “The great king Menelaus claimed me as his bride even though such men love virgins, love their bloodlines more than life, even though I was soiled goods in a man’s world that loves its virgins so. And then Paris—spurred on by Aphrodite—came to abduct me again, to take me to Troy to be his . . . prize.”

Helen stopped the recitation and seemed to be studying me. I could think of nothing to say. There was a bottomless depth of bitterness beneath her cool, ironic words. No, not bitterness I realized, looking into her eyes—sadness. A terrible, tired sadness.

“Hock-en-bear-eeee,” continued Helen. “Do you think I am the most beautiful woman in the world? Did you come here to abduct me?”

“No, I did not come here to abduct you. I have nowhere to take you. My own days are numbered by the wrath of the gods—I have betrayed my Muse and her boss, Aphrodite, and when Aphrodite heals from the wounds Diomedes inflicted on her yesterday, she will wipe me off the face of the earth as sure as we’re standing here.”

“Yes?” said Helen.

“Yes.”

“Come to bed . . . Hock-en-bear-eeee.”

I wake in the gray hour before dawn, having slept only a few hours after our last two bouts of lovemaking, but feeling perfectly rested. My back is to Helen, but somehow I know that she is also lying awake on this large bed with its elaborately carved posts.

“Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

“Yes?”

“How do you serve Aphrodite and the other gods?”

I think about this a minute and then roll over. The most beautiful woman in the world is lying there in the dim light, propping herself up on one elbow, her long, dark hair, mussed by our lovemaking, flowing around her naked shoulder and arm, with her eyes, pupils wide and dark, intent on mine.

“How do you mean?” I ask, although I know.

“Why did the gods bring you across time and space, as you say, to serve them? What do you know that they need?”

I close my eyes for a moment. How can I possibly explain to her? It will be madness if I answer honestly. But—as I admitted earlier—I’m terribly tired of lying. “I know something about the war going on,” I say. “I know some of the events that will happen . . .
might
happen.”

“You serve an oracle?”

“No.”

“You are a prophet, then? A priest to whom one of the gods has given such vision?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t understand,” says Helen.

I shift on my side and sit up, moving cushions to be more comfortable. It is still dark but a bird begins to sing in the courtyard. “In the place whence I came,” I whisper, “there is a song, a poem, about this war. It’s called the
Iliad
. So far, the events of the actual war resemble those sung about in this song.”

“You speak as if this siege and this war were already an old tale in the land you came from,” says Helen. “As if all this has already occurred.”

Don’t admit this to her. It would be folly.
“Yes,” I say. “That is the truth.”

“You are one of the Fates,” she says.

“No. I’m just a man.”

Helen smiles with wicked amusement. She touches the valley between her breasts where I had climaxed just a few hours earlier. “I
know
that, Hock-en-bear-eeee.”

I blush, rub my cheeks, and feel the stubble there. No shaving in the scholics barracks for me this morning.
Why bother? You only have hours to live.

“Will you answer my questions about the future?” she asks, her voice terribly soft.

It would be madness to do so.
“I don’t really know your future,” I say disingenuously. “Only the details of this song, and there have been many discrepancies between it and the actual events . . .”

“Will you answer my questions about the future?” She sets her hand on my chest.

“Yes,” I say.

“Is Ilium doomed?” Helen’s voice is steady, calm, soft.

“Yes.”

“Will it be taken by strength or stealth?”

For God’s sake, you can’t tell her that,
I think. “By stealth,” I say.

Helen actually smiles. “Odysseus,” she murmurs.

I say nothing. I tell myself that perhaps if I give no details, these revelations will not affect events.

“Will Paris be killed before Troy falls?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“By Achilles’ hand?”

No details!
clamors my conscience. “No,” I say.
Fuck it
.

“And the noble Hector?”

“Death,” I say, feeling like some vicious hanging judge.

“By Achilles’ hand?”

“Yes.”

“And Achilles? Will he go home from this war alive?”

“No.”
His fate is sealed as soon as he slays Hector, and he has known this all along . . . knew it from a prophecy he has carried with him like a cancer for years. Long life or glory? Homer said that it was . . . is . . . will be, the decision he must make. But, the prophecy goes, if he chooses long life, he will be known only as a man, not as the demigod he will become if he kills Hector in combat. But he has a choice. The future is not sealed!

“And King Priam?”

“Death,” I say, my whisper hoarse.
Slaughtered in his own palace, in his private temple to Zeus. Hacked to bloody bits like a heifer being sacrificed to the gods.

“And Hector’s little boy, Scamandrius, whom the people call Astyanax?”

“Death,” I say. I close my eyes against the image of Pyrrhos flinging the screaming infant down from the wall.

“And Andromache,” Helen whispers. “Hector’s wife?”

“A slave,” I say. If Helen keeps up this litany of questions, I’m pretty sure I’ll go crazy. It was all right from a distance—from a scholic’s disinterested observer’s stance. But now I’m talking about people I have known and met and . . . slept with. It strikes me that Helen has not asked about her own fate. Perhaps she never will.

“And will I die with Ilium?” she asks, her voice still calm.

I take a breath. “No.”

“But Menelaus will find me?”

“Yes.” I feel like one of those black Crazy-8 tell-your-fortune toys that were popular when I was a kid. Why hadn’t I answered her like that black ball would have? That would be more like the Oracle at Delphi—
The future is cloudy.
Or
Ask again.
Am I showing off for this woman?

It’s too late now.

“Menelaus finds me but does not kill me? I survive his anger?”

“Yes.”
I remember Odysseus’ telling of this in the
Odyssey—
Menelaus finding Helen hiding in Deiphobos’ quarters in the great royal palace, near the shrine of the Palladion, and of the cuckolded husband throwing himself upon her, sword drawn, fulling intending to kill this beautiful woman. Helen will uncover her breasts to her husband, as if inviting the blow, as if willing it—and then Menelaus will drop his sword and kiss her. It’s not clear whether Deiphobos, one of the sons of Priam, is killed by Menelaus before this or after he . . .

“But he takes me back to Sparta?” whispers Helen. “Paris dead, Hector dead, all the great warriors of Ilium dead or put to the sword, all the great women of Troy dead or dragged off to slavery, the city itself burned, its wall breached, its towers dragged down and broken up, the earth salted so that nothing will ever grow here again . . . but I live and am taken back to Sparta by Menelaus?”

“Something like that,” I say, hearing how lame it sounds.

Helen rolls out of bed, stands, and walks naked to the courtyard terrace. For a minute I forget my role as Cassandra and just gaze in something like awe at her dark hair tumbling down her back, at her perfect buttocks, and at her strong legs. She stands naked at the railing, not turning back my way as she says, “And what about you, Hock-en-bear-eeee? Have the Fates told you your own destiny through this song of theirs?”

“No,” I confess. “I’m not important enough to be included in the poem. But I’m pretty sure I will die today.”

She turns. I expect Helen to be weeping after all I’ve told her—if she believes me—but she’s smiling slightly. “Only ‘pretty sure’?”

“Yes.”

“You will die because of Aphrodite’s wrath?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve felt that wrath, Hock-en-bear-eeee. If she takes a whim to kill you, she will.”

Well, that’s encouraging.
I say nothing for a while. There is a drone from the open terrace doorways on the city side. “What’s that?” I ask.

“The Trojan women are still entreating Athena for mercy and divine protection, chanting and sacrificing at her temple, as Hector ordered,” says Helen. She turns away from me again and stares down into the interior courtyard as if trying to find that solitary singing bird.

Too late for Athena’s mercy,
I think. Then, without thinking about it, I say, “Aphrodite wants me to kill Athena. She’s given me the Hades Helmet and other tools so I can do just that.”

Helen’s head snaps around and even in the dim light I can see the expression of shock on her face, the pallor. It’s as if she has finally reacted to all my terrible oracle news. Naked, she comes back and sits on the edge of the bed where I am propped up on one elbow.

“Did you say
kill
Athena?” she whispers, voice lower than at any time since we began speaking.

I nod.

“Can the gods be killed then?” asks Helen, her voice so soft I can barely hear it from a foot away.

“I think they can,” I say. “Only yesterday, I heard Zeus tell Ares that gods could die.” Then I tell her about Aphrodite and Ares, their wounds, the strange place where they are healing. I explain how Aphrodite will emerge from that vat today sometime—how it’s possible she already has, since Olympos is on the same day-night schedule as Ilium and it’s already “tomorrow” there as well.

“You’re able to travel to Olympos?” she whispers. Helen appears to be lost in thought. Her expression has slowly melted from shock to . . . what? “Travel back and forth from Ilium to Olympos whenever
you
please?” she asks.

I hesitate here. I know I’ve told too much already.
What if this Helen is merely my Muse in morphed form?
I know she isn’t. Don’t ask me how I know. And to hell with it if she is.

“Yes,” I say, also whispering now, although the household is not coming awake yet. “I can go to Olympos when I want and stay there unseen by the gods.” Except for the single bird deluded to think it’s almost dawn, the city and the palace are eerily silent. There are guards at the front entrance, I know, but I cannot hear their shuffle of their sandals or the scrape of their spear butts on stone. The streets of Ilium, never totally silent, seem hushed now. Even the women’s chanting from the Temple of Athena has ceased.

“Did Aphrodite give you the means to kill Athena, Hockenberry? Some weapon of the gods?”

“No.” I don’t tell her about the Hades Helmet of Death or the QT medallion or my taser baton. None of these things could kill a goddess.

Suddenly that short dagger is in her hand again, inches from my skin.
Where does she keep that thing? How does she make it appear that way?
We both have our little secrets, I guess.

The dagger moves closer. “If I kill you now,” whispers Helen, “will it change the song of Ilium you know? Change the future . . .
this
future?”

This isn’t the time to be honest, Tommy boy,
warns the sane part of my brain. But I speak the truth anyway. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t see how it can. If it’s my . . . fate . . . to die today, I suppose it doesn’t matter whether it’s by your hand or Aphrodite’s. Anyway, I’m not an actor in this drama, only an observer.”

Helen nods but still appears distracted, as if her question about my death were of little consequence either way. She lifts the dagger until its point is almost touching the firm white flesh under her chin.

“If I take my own life right now, will it change the song?” she asks.

“I don’t see how it will save Ilium or change the outcome of the war,” I answer. This isn’t completely true. Helen is a central figure in Homer’s
Iliad
and I have no idea whether the Greeks would stay to finish the fight if she kills herself. What would they be fighting for with Helen dead?
Glory, honor, plunder
. But then again, with Helen removed as the prize for Agamemnon and Menelaus, and Achilles still sulking in his tent, would mere plunder be enough to keep the tens and tens of thousands of other Achaeans in the fight? They’ve been plundering islands and Trojan coastal cities for almost a decade now. Perhaps they’ve had enough and are looking for an excuse. Isn’t that why Menelaus accepted the one-on-one combat with Paris to decide it all, before Aphrodite whisked Paris away?
Back to this bed, Helen and Paris having sex in this bed mere hours ago.
Perhaps Helen’s suicide
would
end the war.

She lowers the dagger. “I’ve thought of this self-murder for ten years, Hock-en-bear-eeee. But I have too much lust to live and too little fondness for death, even though I deserve to die.”

“You don’t deserve to die,” I say.

She smiles. “Does Hector deserve to die? Does his baby? Does lordly Priam, the most generous of fathers to me? Do all those people you hear awakening out there in the city deserve to die? Do even the warriors—Achilles and all the rest who have already gone down to cold Hades—deserve to die because of one fickle woman who chose passion and vanity and abduction over fidelity? And what about all the thousands of Trojan women who have served their gods and husbands well, but who will be torn from their homes and children and be sold into slavery because of me? Do they deserve such a fate, Hock-en-bear-eeee, just because I choose to live?”

“You don’t deserve to die,” I say stubbornly. The scent of her is still on my skin, my fingers, and in my hair.

“All right,” says Helen and slides the dagger under the mattress. “Then will you help me live and stay free? Will you help stop this war? Or at least change its outcome?”

“What do you mean?” I’m suddenly wary. I have no interest in trying to help the Trojans win this battle. And I couldn’t do it if I tried. Too many forces are in play here, not to mention the gods. “Helen,” I say, “I was serious about not having any time left. Aphrodite will be free of her recovery vat today, and while I might hide for a while from the other gods, she has a way she can find me when she wants to. Even if she doesn’t kill me right away for disobeying her, I won’t be free to act in the short time I have left as a scholic.”