Helen of Troy (95 page)

It was all lies. I knew it was all lies; my special knowledge told me. Yet the Trojans were so willing to believe him.

There are those who hold that Trojans were far nobler than Greeks. They cite the fact that no sons of Troy claimed kinship with the gods, but fought as mortal men, their fates in their own hands, with no hope of Olympian reprieve. They speak of the high-mindedness of Priam in honoring the choice and marriage of his son Paris, refusing to surrender me, even though a more worldly king would have trussed me up and delivered me to the Greek camp, averting trouble.

But a noble nature can blind a man to the motives of those who are not as he is, rendering himself helpless before them. Priam and his advisers did not practice deep duplicity, and credited their enemies with the nature they themselves possessed.

Priam eagerly questioned Sinon and satisfied himself with his answers. His bruises, his cuts, argued for his veracity. Yet a clever enemy is willing to disguise himself in any way he deems efficacious. That never seemed to occur to Priam, in spite of the example of Hyllus. Hector would not do such a thing, therefore no one else would stoop to it.

What if . . . what if . . . the Greeks had selected him to be their persuader, their spokesman, and he had undergone a few beatings and buffetings to make himself credible? I asked Priam to let me question him, as someone knowledgeable about Greeks and the Grecian language. He refused.

Instead, he embraced the story Sinon told him. Here it is: The Greeks, eaten up by plague and realizing the walls of Troy were impregnable, had taken their leave of our shores after fruitless years of fighting. They had placated Athena—she who had urged their voyage here for her revenge on Paris and must be mollified before a return trip—with a horse of wood. Horses were special to Athena, and she must therefore look with favor upon it. Some seer of theirs had said that if the horse were carried into Troy itself, then Troy would stand forever, so they had purposely made it so large it would be difficult to drag through the gate and up to the temple of Athena. That way they could satisfy the goddess without endangering their own reputation, for if Troy stood untouched forever, then they had failed.

“It is not like the Greeks to do this,” said Antimachus, circling the horse. I had dressed myself and come down, passing out the gates to inspect the large structure.

There was something wrong. We both sensed it. A big wooden thing . . .

He swung around and looked at me, knitting his brows. Tapping smartly on the horse with a rod, he muttered, “I like it not.”

If three Antimachuses had stood on one another’s shoulders, the top one would have been able to reach out and touch the horse’s head. If five Antimachuses had stretched themselves in a line on the ground, they would have extended from one tip of the platform to another. The horse rested on a flat bed with logs underneath to make for easy rolling. It was made of green wood, hastily fashioned together. Its legs were tree trunks and the round part of its body bulged as if it were a pregnant mare. For eyes, it had two seashells. They looked down, unseeing.

Cautious at first, a few curious people ventured out and inspected it. But soon hordes of Trojans streamed out and swarmed around the object, jabbering with glee. Pent up inside the walls for so long, their only excitement the daily ingress of the mangled and dead, this toy delighted them, as the sphinx had long ago. They stroked its legs and boys tried to clamber up to sit astride it. Women wove garlands of flowers to drape its neck, and tossed them up to their sons to festoon it. Pipers played flutes and people began dancing around it, crying with relief. It was over. The war was over.

Priam and Hecuba emerged from the city and stood before it. Priam had arrayed himself in his most kingly robes, and Hecuba, still in black, wrapped herself in her cloak. Priam walked around it studiously, his dark eyes sweeping over it, taking in every detail—the fashioning of the planks, the size, the ugly white staring eyes. Then he turned back to regard the Scaean Gate.

“It will just pass under it,” he said, measuring them both with his eyes.

Again, that chill: it rippled over me, like wind stirring a barley field.
It was
constructed to do just that! It cannot fit just by chance.

“We shall take it into our city, to protect us and fulfill the prophecy. Troy cannot fall if the horse passes through our walls.” His voice rose, almost to its former strength.

No, this was wrong! “Dear father.” I stepped forward. “How do we know that is the prophecy? Sinon told us. But he is a Greek. Other than his words, we have no knowledge of what the horse betokens. And how comes it that they have fashioned it the exact size to pass through the gate? Surely they would have made it bigger if their true intent was to assure it remained outside Troy? As it is, they have invited you to bring it in. Think upon this.”

Instead of answering, Priam stood dumbly staring up at the horse.

Hecuba answered for him. “Do you, who brought all this upon us, now presume to warn us?”

“I have lost the dearest thing in the world to me, but my loyalty is still to Troy,” I replied. “It always has been.”

She flung back her hood. “You lost one person. We have lost many, including the one you loved. Our very city was threatened. You know the fate of vanquished cities—to be wiped from the face of the earth, left a smoldering mound of ashes. This was what the Greeks intended for us—because of you and Paris. Thousands of deaths for one kiss. If they had won, you would have switched your loyalty back to them quickly enough.”

“Do you not yet know me?” I cried. It was as if she had struck me.

“Into the city, into the city!” the people were chanting, swaying in the morning sunlight. “Drag it in!” And their cries drowned out Hecuba’s reply as she turned away.

Suddenly Cassandra plucked at her mother’s arm. I had not seen her earlier, even though her red hair gleamed like a jewel amongst all the dull colors. “Helen speaks true,” she said. “There is evil here. Do not let it contaminate our city. Leave it here, out on the plain.”

“Daughter of Priam, we all know of your frailty,” a man in the crowd yelled. “Go, stop speaking madness.”

Laocoön, an outsized priest, came puffing toward us, two of his sons trotting to keep up with him. “Stop! Stop!” he cried. “Test it first!” He brandished a thrusting spear and flung it at the horse’s flanks, where it stuck and swayed. “Find something to penetrate it!” he cried. He looked around wildly. “Deiphobus? You have a bigger throwing spear. Let me have it. Let me pierce this horse’s hide and make the Greeks inside yell.”

Deiphobus shook his head. “I have no magic spear, old man. Mine has a head like yours. But you may use it.”

The priest grabbed it and threw it at the horse’s rounded belly. It made a hollow sound as it struck.

I had not seen Deiphobus in days. As I said, he kept well away from my chamber, lest he suffer further embarrassments. He looked at me for an instant, then turned away. At this charged moment, I wanted to go to him, whisper in his ear,
Some wishes are better left unpursued. The granting of them
only leads to more misery.
But I did not. I stood rooted where I was.

“Let us build a fire under it if we cannot pierce it!” Laocoön cried. “This platform is handy. It will hold a pile of wood. Torch it, and send the Greeks hidden inside scrambling out to save their lives!” He walked backward, entreating the crowd. The people stared back at him, silent. “Oh, you fools!” He looked around. “At least test the thing before you bring it in!” But the crowd kept clapping and calling out, “A horse for Troy! A horse for Troy!”

Then, before our horrified eyes, a huge serpent shot out of the plain, reared up, and coiled itself around Laocoön and his sons, strangling them and then dragging them off toward the sea. No one moved to help them. Their wavering cries resounded across the fields.

“Athena!” cried the credulous people. “Athena has punished him for his blasphemy! This proves that she wants us to take the horse into Troy.”

“It proves nothing other than that Athena has a vested interest in seeing you take the horse into Troy,” cried Cassandra. She was brave. I admired her as she stepped forward, daring Athena to strike again. “Oh, foolish Trojans! Whose goddess is Athena? Does she not watch over Odysseus? Over Achilles? Is she not the protective goddess of Athens, city of Greeks? Why would she wish good upon Troy?”

“We have a temple to her here!” one man yelled back. “Her special statue is here!”

“Every city has a temple to Athena and a statue,” she answered. “It proves nothing. Athena, like all the gods, adopts certain humans, humors and pampers them beyond reason. She is insulted if you do not have a temple, but having one means nothing to her.”

“Priam, your daughter is mad!” someone called out. “Stifle her!”

Cassandra twisted around and screamed at him, “You cannot mute the truth!”

“Cassandra, dear.” Priam came to her and encircled her with his arm.

“Troy deserves her doom, then!” said Cassandra. “I leave it to you. I shall perish with you! But I see my end, whereas you are blind.” She pushed off his arm and tore toward the city, her gown streaming.

LXIX

I
t was midmorning. The stubborn townsfolk threw ropes around the horse’s neck and affixed a loop to the platform to enable them to drag the horse toward the south gate. Even so, it was very slow. The horse was heavy—too heavy, perhaps, for it to be empty?—and the rollers slid out from under the platform. Several times the horse lurched and almost slid off its carrier. Each time it was saved, righted, and sent on its ponderous way. When it approached the south gate, Priam insisted on a little ceremony to bless its entrance into the city. The doors were pulled back as far as they would go, like stretching a grin, and all the people together had to shove as well as pull to get it through. The top of the horse’s head cleared the lintel by only a hand span.

Oh, how thorough the Greeks were. How well they had figured.

Priam blessed it as it jerked through the gate, calling upon it to begin the era of plenty for Troy.

Heaving it up to the citadel proved more difficult. The street angled upward and soon the pulling stopped; it required shoving. The entire apparatus was very heavy, and only the determination of the Trojans was able to budge it on the steepest stretches. The sun went down with it stuck halfway up, the temple within sight but still far away.

They could not leave the horse where it was; it would roll back, crashing back through the gate. So they strained themselves shoving it, grunting and groaning. No horse or ox could pull the structure, as it was impossible to hitch any animals to it; only the muscles of determined men could do so. Thus Troy strained to accomplish her own doom.

It was late before the horse arrived at the temple of Athena, coming to rest on a paved expanse of ground alongside it. My and Hector’s palaces overlooked it.

From my chamber I could see the people of Troy throwing flowers upon the platform of the horse, could hear the music of the flute players and singers extolling the horse. Below me wine-bearers had brought out Troy’s last remaining amphoras of wine, and they were sloshing it about with abandon. Drunken men and women reeled away, dancing—and falling—around the horse. Giggling, they got up, weaving their unsteady way about it.

As I gazed down upon it from the height of my window, the horse looked like a child’s toy, even to the ropes dangling from the platform. I had seen clay and wooden wagons, laden with sweets or dolls, being pulled along by children on just such strings. The top of the horse did not show any dent or outline of a door. But it had to be hollow inside.

A late-rising moon was struggling to surmount the walls, and when it finally burst over them it flooded the city with unearthly, cold light, making the torches look bright yellow. The sudden glare of extra light fired the revelers, as if the heavens themselves had joined the celebrations. Sleepers stirred and tumbled out of their houses, gleefully parading in their nightclothes. Vendors—long vanished from the streets of Troy—suddenly set up stalls, and jugglers and acrobats thronged the summit of the citadel, weaving in and out amongst the crowd, performing for free.