Helen of Troy (35 page)

I pictured Mother opening her eyes, yawning, and turning over; Father swinging himself out of bed; Hermione still dreaming. Hermione. I would not think of her now!

As we boarded the ship, I caught sight of the figurehead and laughed: it was Eros. “How came that to be carved?” I asked.

Aeneas glanced at it. “Paris commissioned it,” he said.

We cast off. The men raised the square sail and we ran before the southwest wind, blowing us toward Cythera. To speed us along, the rowers fell to as well. We were heading for the open sea.

“We’ll have to spend the night on the high seas,” said the captain. “We have no choice; there is no anchorage between here and Cythera. Pray to Poseidon that we don’t reach the tricky currents while we are still in the dark.”

“What do you mean?” asked Paris.

“Cythera is a dangerous passage,” he said. “Lots of shifting currents and hidden rocks. Those are the natural perils. Then there are pirates, but they tend to stick closer to shore. There’s a saying: round Malea and forget your home. We must pass to the west of the Malea promontory to reach Cythera.”

Paris hugged me. “My dearest, you wanted adventure,” he said. “And we shall have it.” He steered me toward the railing. “If only we could make love on the high seas. Now, that would be a challenge, with all the bucking and rolling. Like making love on horseback, I should imagine.”

“What? Have you?”

He laughed. “No, but it would be a very Trojan thing to do.”

“Why?”

Now he turned and looked carefully into my face. “You really don’t know, do you? Did they not let you learn anything? What about that palace wizard, that man who knew so many things? Didn’t he teach you things?”

His accusation, true as it was, hurt: hurt
because
it was true. “Gelanor taught me many things, but only the things that I had occasion to ask him. He was not my tutor.”

“I’m sorry. I did not mean to accuse or belittle. It’s just that—well, Troy is famous for its horses. My brother Hector is known as ‘Breaker of Horses.’ So of course, in Troy, there are many feats of horsemanship. Probably somewhere there is someone renowned for his ability to make love on a galloping horse.”

I laughed. “Then I suppose the ship will be good practice for us. We can dazzle everyone with our prowess when we reach Troy.” Aphrodite had made me ready to hide away with Paris again, and it had only been a short while since we had held one another. The goddess made me like a devouring fire. I was concerned that we have privacy on the ship; I whispered my request to Paris.

For an instant he looked embarrassed, as his eyes swept around the ship with its large crew. It was a man’s domain, a place where there would be little privacy and no niceties. “I was only joking about the practice for the horses. I—I think we must wait until we reach shore. There is no way that we can have more than a small place to rest, and no possibility of shielding ourselves from all these eyes.” He gestured toward the rowers at their oars. He pinched my shoulder. “Helen,” he murmured, “you will just have to control yourself. We must wait.”

“Wait. All I have done, all my whole life, is wait,” I said.

He laughed, to show he was teasing. “Let us hope this passage will be quick, then. Waiting is a most exquisite form of torture.”

The waters grew rougher as we left Cranae behind; the island, with its clumps of trees, grew fainter in our wake. The winds began to buffet us and the rowers had to strain as the ship listed. As we made our way out into the open water, all the land seemed equidistant, faint images on the horizon to the left, right, and ahead of us. Gulls followed us, wheeling and diving, crying loudly, their calls snatched away by the winds.

“Lower the sail,” the captain ordered at sunset. “We need to slow ourselves in darkness, and besides that, we do not want to pass anywhere near Malea at night. We must be fully alert and able to see when we make that run.”

Shivering, I sank down in a protected place near the rear of the ship. Paris brought me food; the ship was well provisioned, as such provisions go, but they were cold and meant to be eaten as quickly and unceremoniously as possible, washed down with wine. I took a long drink, laid my head back against the side of the ship, and started laughing. To think I had imagined this voyage as a place of private indulgence. How naïve I was! How sheltered I had been—not even to know what a voyage would be like. How much I had to learn!

Paris brought a blanket for me to wrap myself in and use as a pillow. He was treating me as I treated Hermione. But here he was the elder; he was right, in some ways he had lived longer than I, if experience constituted longevity.

“Close your eyes,” he said, kissing my eyelids. “I will keep watch. Of course, I don’t think there will be any pirates, not in the dark, but I won’t sleep.” Poor Paris—his voice betrayed how tired he was. Neither of us had had true sleep that night on Cranae.

I squeezed his hand and tried to relax on the swaying, rolling ship. I felt as though I were suspended in a hammock, being rocked by a giant hand. I tried not to think of the depths of cold water under me. It did not help that the captain had said, “Only three fingers’ width of wood separates us from the sea.”

Sheer exhaustion forced me into a kind of sleep, as though my head were being pushed down into the realms of dreams. I cannot recall any of them, and for that I am thankful. Had there been omens, I could not have borne it. I did not want any omens. I was mortally tired of them. They had ruled me from my birth—nay, before it. Now I left the omens behind, as I had left Sparta.

Let me live each day as just a day, I thought. Let me see neither more nor less than just what is contained in that day.

Paris still held my hand. This was sufficient for me, all I would need.

* * *

Dawn rose. I was stiff and cold; my hands felt numb. Lying beside me and under the blanket was Paris.

“I thought you were going to stay awake all night,” I whispered, touching his ear with my lips.

“I did,” he said. “I only lay down when it began to get light. The seas were clear.” He sat up, shaking his head. “Only one more day to go.”

Until we arrived at Cythera. And then . . . but now I was not to think in those terms. I was to think only of the day’s voyage to Cythera. And once on Cythera, to think only of that day there, and then . . .

“Here comes the dangerous part,” said the captain, striding toward us. “We’re in the worst part of the currents, the ones that sweep through the channel, and we’re approaching Malea. Look there. You can see Cape Malea away on our left, and Cythera straight ahead.”

I stood up, my legs quivering. The wind smacked me in the face, stinging cold. I could see the headland of Malea, and dead ahead the mountain of Cythera. It had resolved itself out of the mists of a dream.

“At last! At last I shall set foot on it!” I said.

“Not so hasty, lady,” said the captain. “There’s them to get by first.”

“What?” Paris asked.

“Them.” The captain pointed to a small ship, barely visible, near Malea.

Paris laughed. “That little thing? It will never catch us, and even if it did, what matter?”

The captain shook his head. “Did you not know, Prince, that pirate ships are small and light? They have to be, for speed and hiding. And this has all the look of a pirate ship to me. I don’t think it’s an innocent fishing boat, although it may be disguised as one.” He turned to the rowers. “Faster! As fast as you are able!” He motioned to the crew. “Sail up! Sail up! Let’s harness this wind!”

The men rushed to unfurl the sail and hoist it high, and it jerked as it filled with the impatient wind. The ship flew over the waves. The suspicious boat was left far behind.

The captain seemed to relax a bit, but he kept squinting astern, keeping the boat in his sights. He motioned to the men manning the steering oars to turn right, and they did. Then, a few moments later, he ordered them to turn left, quickly, and they obeyed. A dark look spread across his face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s pirates, all right. They are altering their course whenever we do.”

“Mightn’t it just be a smaller boat using us as a safe means of charting a course?” asked one of the younger men.

“Possibly,” the captain admitted. “And now that we have the wind, and a larger sail than they do, we are outdistancing them. If we are fortunate, then we will reach Cythera far ahead of them.”

“But we’ll have to camp far inland,” said the man. “Pirates raid coasts and carry people off!”

“Then we’ll have to go up the mountain and live there for a while,” said Paris, his lips close to my ear. He made it sound like a paradise there, a retreat where we could linger for a very long time.

“The pirates like to swoop down on festivals where women and unarmed men are celebrating,” the young man wailed. “My aunt was carried off that way; we never saw her again.”

Pirate raids furnished most of the slaves sold for household work; in peacetime, without any war captives, pirates supplied that need. I shuddered.

“Courage, lad,” said the captain, not unkindly. “It’s harder to take a whole ship of men. There’s only one woman aboard, and she’ll fetch such a ransom that she will be safe.” He winked at me. “Faster!” he ordered the rowers.

But Cythera was farther away than it seemed, or perhaps we had been carried away to one side by the current. As the sun neared the horizon, Cythera was still a distance away. And then the wind, abruptly, stopped, as if it were descending beneath the ocean with the sun. The sail fell slack, hanging limply, uselessly. Our speed dwindled, and we moved now only by the power of the rowers.

And the mysterious following ship now grew larger behind us. When the wind was blowing, our bigger sail had carried us over the water faster; but without the wind, their rowers could propel their lighter boat faster. They were catching up, and no matter how hard our rowers strained, the gap between us was closing. I clutched the railing of the ship. Was my freedom to end after only a day? Were one night and one day with Paris all I was to be granted? Was I to be captured, trussed up, and sent back to Sparta like a penned animal?

“No!” I cried. “No, no!”

They were close enough now that we could see how many were aboard—some thirty or so, all grim-faced. There did not seem to be a captain; it was all rowers. Perhaps all pirates were equal, or all could take turns in being the captain. I supposed it was necessary, since so many must get killed on raids.

“Arm yourselves!” Paris and Aeneas ordered their men. The Trojan soldiers fastened their corselets and breastplates and put on their helmets. Now, surely, at the sight of armored men, the pirates would turn away. But no, they kept coming, coming even faster, as if they were gleeful that a true fight was in the offing.

As the waters grew shallower near Cythera, the pirates came alongside us. Now, instead of slowly patrolling the waters looking for an opening through the rocks to beach the ship on shore, the captain had to order the rowers to continue pulling their oars to keep us away from jagged rocks while we took a stand against the pirates. They would, of course, try to force us onto the rocks. Our situation was a pirate’s dream.

Paris pulled me into the middle of the ship, between the two banks of oarsmen, and surrounded us with soldiers. “You must be in the middle of the middle, protected on all sides!” he said. I could hear a scrabbling sort of sound—the pirates were scaling the sides of the ship, climbing over. Then piercing yells—from the pirates, meant to terrorize us. Then the ship began rocking madly as the men fought, battling on every little scrap of space. Large as it was, I feared the ship would tip on its side into the sea, take on water, and sink. At one point I was thrown to my knees as it listed suddenly to the left, when the fighters piled up there. I clutched at the boards beneath my fingers and clung to Paris’s leg, and all the while I could see nothing, protected by the wall of men guarding me.

The noise rose—screams of pain now mingled with the war cries, metal hit metal, wooden oars were smashed, and someone brought the sail down, so it enveloped us all, making the men fight as if in a net. I lost my grip on Paris’s leg and then I lost Paris. He was gone, and the solid circle of soldiers around me broke up, and as I rose I saw the melee on the ship, the men caught in the sail, the others fighting desperately, the dead bodies lying where they fell, some draped across the oars. I saw Paris and Aeneas slashing at pirates together, saw Paris spit one with his dagger—Paris looked as surprised as the pirate at his success. The man sagged and grabbed at his belly with fluttering hands, and I saw then that he was no man but a boy. He died with surprise still on his face. Had this been his only foray into the world of plundering? Was this his first day as a pirate?

Paris saw me nearby and yelled, “Get away! Get away!”

But where could I go? The entire ship was a battle scene, from the figurehead to the stern, with the rowers trying gamely to keep rowing as soldiers fought all around them. Some had abandoned their posts to join the fight, others were disabled by the fallen sail. Somewhere in the midst of this was the chest with the Spartan treasures in it; I had not thought of it until this late. Had anyone gone near it? But no, it was safe under the sail. I looked around wildly to see where I might escape the fray, but all I could do was dodge and slither around the grappling men.

Again the ship listed, so sharply water sloshed onto the deck; several men were washed off and now the armored soldiers fared the worse, as the weight of their corselets dragged them down. Some hit the rocks with a dull metal clang; the pirates who hit sent up a spray of red. The sucking of the waves around the rocks mingled with the groans of the dying men to make a long mournful moan. On board the din of fighting rose to the pitch of a screaming wind.

Slowly the greater numbers of soldiers and their better arms began to best the invaders. More and more of our men crawled out from under the sail to join their brothers in the fight, and finally the last two pirates were cornered up near the bow of the ship. Aeneas and another soldier were pinning them down on the railing, and a crush of other men piled up behind, so much that the pirates were more likely to be suffocated than to be killed by the daggers of Aeneas and his companion.