Helen of Troy (90 page)

One of her personal attendants appeared, clearly displeased. Her mistress had retreated to her chamber; she made ready for sleep.

“I must speak to her!” I threw back my hood so she could see it was Helen. An order from me, presumed future queen of Troy, could not be ignored. The woman glided away, her torch disappearing with her.

Every beat of my heart reminded me that time was passing, slipping away. It must not have been long, but it seemed a day before Andromache appeared, clutching a robe around her.

“What is it, Helen?” The tone was one she would use with an annoying child.

“We have to go to Mount Ida!” I cried. “I need you to come with me! Please, Andromache, I cannot go alone. As I once went with you, please help me now!”

“Now?” She jerked her head around, looking out into the darkness. “That is impossible. We must wait until we can see. Even if we weren’t surrounded by Greeks, it would be dangerous. Do you not remember we got lost coming down from it in the darkness?”

Her face was hard to read in the poor light, but there was little welcome for me on it. The death of Hector had sundered us forever, it seemed. But she had to come, she had to! She knew the way we had gone. I lunged forward and clutched at her robe, tugging her almost off her feet.

“Andromache! I must get to a place on Mount Ida, find someone there, even in the dark. It can’t wait. Paris has been poisoned—an arrow, I think—and the only hope of curing it lies in finding this woman—this woman who knows such secrets—else he will be die before daylight . . .” I felt as if I was losing strength even as I begged, for she stood unmoving and all this time I was not beside Paris, I was pouring my heart out to this stone.

“What woman?”

“Someone named Oenone, someone Paris knows, who has magic means of healing wounds. I must find her and bring her to him. Without her, he will die! Oh, I am sure of it!”

“Does no one else know how to find her? Do
you
know where she lives?”

“I’ve seen her—I’ve been near where she lives, in a grove of trees on . . .” It was coming back to me now. The place where Paris had taken me; if I were just put on the beginning of the correct path, I would be able to retrace my way step by step.

“If we are captured—”

“I have no choice!” I cried. “If I am captured, I will have less regret than if I stay safely here and just watch the poison take him.” Take hold of yourself, I thought. That is true for you, but not for Andromache. If she is hurt or captured, you will have injured an innocent person—whom you promised Hector to protect—in your pursuit to save Paris. “I understand why you cannot come,” I finally said. I would have to go alone. “Forgive my selfishness in asking.”

Now I had no hope of succeeding, yet I must make the attempt. The attempt was all I could offer Paris, but I gladly gave it.

“You are wrong,” she said. “I will come.” She gestured for her traveling cloak and heavy shoes. “Perhaps in grappling directly with death, I will be delivered from this house of half death hunched in shadows where I have lived alone without Hector. In any case, I am ready to die. I did not know until this moment how ready.” She took my arm. “Let us go, and may the Greeks look the other way as we pass.”

Our chariot rolled through the lower city, or what was left of it. As the Greek attacks had grown longer and fiercer, the frightened people had abandoned the lower slopes, fearing its protection of rock-cut ditch and wooden fence was not enough. They now, along with all the refugees, huddled in the inner city, making the streets a continual boil of bodies. As we exited from the southern gate, I saw that they were right to have fled—the Greeks had begun filling in the trench and tearing down the palisade, exposing the lower flanks of Troy.

But we saw no telltale torches in the gentle sloping fields on the southern side of the city, no smell of horses. This night the Greeks were not there. I clutched the side of the chariot as we bounced along, and held fast to Andromache with my other hand. I could feel her bracing and swaying beside me. But it was a long while until she slid her arm around me and I felt it as an embrace rather than only a means to steady herself.

Oh, I had missed Andromache sorely, the one woman I had considered a true friend in Troy. But now the balm of her gentle presence was lost in the pounding of my heart and the panic spreading throughout me. With every pace of the horses we were leaving Paris farther behind, and my soul cried out to be by his side in this hour, not trundling toward Mount Ida in a vain search for a woman who hated him.

Our guards and driver warned that the road would become rough as we reached the foothills of the mountain. I begged Andromache to try to remember the place where Paris and Hector had driven us. Paris and Hector. Oh, let me not think on that, on those lost days! If only we could dismount there, we had the best chance of threading our way to the right place. We tried to direct the drivers, but the task became even harder in the dark when we could see only the largest landmarks; the wavering torches were of little help in thrusting away the night.

“I think that is the hot spring,” said Andromache, peering out into the blackness. I could see nothing, but I did hear a gurgling and rushing. “It had a stone seat beside it, remember?”

“Yes, vaguely,” I said. “I think so . . .” I laughed—how could I laugh now? It was insane. “My main memory is of the priestess, or the Wolf-Mother, or whoever she was.”

Now Andromache laughed, too. “I am grateful to her,” she said. “Whatever she did, it was potent. Now I have Astyanax. My little boy . . .”

A fearful jolt almost threw us from the chariot as one of the wheels struck a rock and the other lurched into a hole. “We can go no farther, my ladies,” our charioteer said. “We must dismount now.”

Dark surrounded us, as if we had stepped off into an abyss. Andromache and I stumbled and clung to one another blindly. Somewhere up there she was waiting.

Slowly, testing our steps as our feet slid along, we began the climb, holding small torches. We could feel the path by its bare trodden ground, and were careful to keep upon it. Far to our right we heard the swish of a stream, tumbling over its rocks, blending with the whisper of trees as wind passed over their crowns. How agonizingly slow it was to shuffle along like this.

The pebbles beneath my feet . . . the murmur of a thousand night creatures surrounding us . . . the dizzying feel of the ascent . . . I found myself studying these things as if they truly mattered, keeping at bay the terrifying thought of Paris and his wound.

Light leaked from the eastern corner of the sky after a great long time. Like a fog clearing, or a cloak slowly withdrawn, the darkness receded and left the mountain exposed.

We were standing near a place where the path opened onto a wide, grassy meadow—a halting spot for those seeking the highest height, the seat of Zeus. It looked vaguely familiar. But would not any green meadow look the same?

I grasped Andromache’s arm. “This looks like the place where we saw her. But she does not live here. She only happened upon us here. She roams the mountain, coming and going at will. Paris called her a nymph—but what sort? Wood, water, sea? Not the sea, so wood or water—” I put my hand over my own mouth. “Helen, you are babbling.” Babbling . . . babbling . . . I think that Paris said she was of the water. Was that why he said to seek her near the waterfall, a particular waterfall?
The long waterfall . . .

“Past here . . .” On our left was the tree-guarded pool where Paris had judged the immortals, where Oenone had suddenly appeared. It looked innocent enough now, its surface reflecting the coming sunrise in iridescent colors. We passed it, and went toward the left, where I hoped the long waterfall was.

Rocks and boulders began to dot the meadow, until the grass gave way to hard stony ground. We skirted it and then I heard the faint splashing sound of water ahead of us. I reached out and took Andromache’s hand. Behind us the guards were snorting, their forbearance for my quest almost gone.

Behind that curtain of tall trees the water lay. I approached it fearfully, not daring to name which water it might be and whether we had found our landmark. We slipped between the trunks of the screening trees and beheld a wide dark pool, and above it, a waterfall, thin as a skewer, plunging straight down a cliff so steep we could not see its top.

“We have found it,” I breathed to Andromache. “Now we are near her.”

As if she had not heard me, Andromache walked toward the water, then knelt and dipped her hand in it. “It is bitter cold,” she said, letting it stream out from between her fingers. “It is cold enough to numb all pain.”

Was that what she sought, a substance strong enough to dull her pain? But nothing I then knew of was that powerful. I joined her by the edge of the water.

“Has your pain not lessened even a bit?” I asked.

“No. If anything it has grown. When first I lost Hector, it was a stunning blow, so enormous the sky and its light were blotted out. But now the sky has cleared again, and I can see all the little hollows and empty places in life he left behind. One big thing or a thousand small ones—which is more painful?” Her face was stark.

I did not know. I did not wish to find out. Oenone! We must find her.

I threw a rock out into the deep pool and saw it swallowed up; some ripples spread out, but they were feeble. Then, suddenly, the water wavered and something hovered just under the surface, white and floating.

We drew back. Before we could retreat farther, a column shot out of the water, and the face and form of Oenone took shape. In shock, we both jumped back, and we both fell.

As we watched, she grew to her full height, but she seemed to be borne up by the water, her feet supported just below the surface. Then she moved, striding across the water like a dragonfly, and stepped out onto the shore in her bare feet. Water dripped from off her garments, which floated about her as if they were dry. Her hair, too, was not wet but tumbled in full curls about her shoulders.

“Oenone?” I whispered.

Instead of answering me, she said in a cold, distant voice, “Are you surprised to see from whence I come? You knew my father was a river god and that I am a water nymph.”

I picked myself up from the ground, rubbing my scuffed knees. “I knew little about you,” I said.

“Ah, so Paris did not speak of me.” Her voice was growing stronger now.

“He did.” Oh, let her not be angered! “And I am always awed when I see an epiphany, a manifestation of the gods. You did what no human could do—rise out of a watery realm.”

She laughed, but it was not a pleasant laugh. “Why, do you mean you cannot ride up to your father Zeus in a chariot drawn by swans? Perhaps it is not true, then. Perhaps you are merely a mortal with unusual beauty. I suppose we shall find out when it comes your time to die.”

“Let us not speak of me, but—”

“Of Paris, yes. Indeed, let us speak of him.” She walked slowly from the edge of the water and stood beside me. Andromache moved away, looking on with frightened eyes.

I stood still and faced her. “Paris has been wounded. It may be by an earthly poisoned arrow—they can be lethal enough, smeared with snake venom—or it may have been one of Heracles’s arrows, dipped in the poison of the Hydra. He was only grazed by it, but now it has taken possession of his body. His blood boils, he says. The wound is ugly, changing before our eyes as we beheld it. First it was red, then purple, then swelled, and his body was consumed by it.”

“Most likely it is an arrow with the poison of the Hydra,” she said, as if it were no matter to her. “A very bad piece of luck.”

I grabbed her arm—it felt solid enough, not insubstantial as it had appeared beneath the water. “Help him! Reverse it! You must have an antidote.

You have special knowledge of these matters!”

She seemed unconcerned. “He spoke of me, you say?” She sounded dreamy. “What did he say?”

Flatter her, I thought. Think of something. Anything.

“He spoke of your time together.” I must say more than that! “He spoke of what a happy time it was, one of the happiest he had known.”

She rounded on me. “What a liar you are! Had it been so happy, he never would have deserted me.”

“Men do odd things.” I shrugged. “They do not always have their own best interests at heart.”

“You are right there, Helen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus. It was not in his best interest to bring you here, even if there were no Oenone. But I told you when I saw you both that time by the pool, there would come a day when you would need me, beg me to help, and I would turn my back on you. Now that day has come.”

I stretched out my arms to her. I did not care if I abased myself. I would lie on the ground, kiss her feet if need be. “Have mercy on Paris! Do not condemn him to death!” I begged.

She stepped away, lifted her chin. “If he dies, he dies,” she said. Her voice was so cold, colder even than the water from whence she had arisen, I knew it was not indifference but revenge. She wanted him to die.

“If he dies, it is because you let him,” I said.

“If he dies, it is because he turned his back on me and said he had no need of me. Now he does. He miscalculated in his choice, so it seems.”

“Be merciful!” I said. “Lay aside your own hurt and pride and stretch out your hand to Paris now.”

“Never!” she said. “He cared little enough for me when he left me to go to Troy!”

So he had left her long before he had met me. Her cruelty, entwined with bruised self-love, was staggering. “Once death has come, there is no undoing it,” I said. “Oh, be merciful now, and lay your grievances before Paris when he recovers.”

She stepped over to me and grabbed my hair, jerking my face up to hers. I saw two yellow-flecked eyes looking directly into mine. “No mercy,” she said. “Let the man die!” She twirled two strands of my hair in her fingers, twisting them painfully. “My only regret is that I will not be there to see it.”

“Come with us, then, and behold it for yourself. No one will prevent you. Come, we return now to Troy.” I smacked her hands, and she dropped my hair. What matter now if I offended her? I wanted to kill her. But nymphs do not die. “What, are you afraid?” I taunted her, the vicious woman. “Afraid to look upon your own decision?”