Beauty's Daughter: The Story of Hermione and Helen of Troy by Carolyn Meyer Page B

waiting for him. She’s been watching from the tower, a witness to his cowardice. Aphrodite is there with her. The goddess of love, known for her ethereal beauty, appears now as an aged crone, commanding Helen to go to Paris’s bed. Helen resists, and Aphrodite berates her, calling her a wretched, headstrong woman, and threatens to turn her over to the warriors to be stoned to death. Helen relents, and there she is, radiant, dressed in silvery white robes. Oh, Hermione, if only you could hear! She tells Paris that she wishes he had died in battle, brought down by Menelaus, ‘that great warrior, my husband of long ago,’ as she calls him.”
    “How does he answer her?”
    The seer hesitated. “It’s hard to believe what he tells her! Paris promises her that even though Menelaus won today, he’s sure that
he
will win tomorrow—he will prove to her that he is the better fighter. In the meantime, Paris wants to make love!”
    “But my mother turns him away—doesn’t she?”
    No answer from Calchas. I repeated, “Doesn’t she?”
    “No,” he replied. “No, she does not refuse him. They lie in the great carved bed, lost in love.” Calchas shook his head sadly. “Menelaus has fairly won the fight, but Helen will not come back, nor will Paris send her. It is Zeus’s doing.”
    Would the gods never listen to me? I put my head down on my knees and wept.
     
    THE GODS WERE ARGUING, Calchas said. “Zeus claims that your father won, but his wife, Hera, wants the fight to go on. To placate her, Zeus has sent Athena to provoke it.” The fighting resumed when one of the Trojan archers, urged on by Athena, wounded Menelaus. “It’s not serious,” Calchas assured me. “Athena just wanted to break the truce between the two sides.”
    But I had to see for myself. I rushed back to our tents, and I was there when the king was carried in. I pushed through the crowd of men surrounding him and knelt by his side. With blood spurting from his wound, Menelaus lay pale and still. “Father!” I whispered, taking his hand.
    He looked at me with feverish eyes. “Don’t worry, daughter,” he murmured. “Agamemnon has already sent for a healer.”
    Menelaus would recover, but the truce had been broken. The next day the Greeks donned their armor, and the Trojans readied for an assault. Agamemnon leaped into his chariot to take command of his armies. Orestes led a contingent of archers and their charioteers toward the battle. I watched him go without a chance to say goodbye. So much was still left unsaid between us.
    Before the shining sun had set, the bodies of hundreds of Trojans and hundreds of Greeks lay sprawled across the dusty plain, their swords and spears and shields scattered uselessly among them. Neither side claimed victory. But for that day at least, Orestes was unhurt.

13
The Way of Men
    THE KILLING WENT ON , day after day. At the end of each day’s battle the Trojans silently gathered their dead and carried them back inside the city walls. Our dead were piled on wooden pyres and set alight. The funeral fires blazed through the night, and the next day the ashes were placed in a common grave under a mound of earth that stretched as far as I could see.
    One evening, soon after sunset, an exhausted Orestes staggered into my tent, almost too weary to speak.
    I led him to my couch. He wiped his sweat-streaked face with a muddy arm. I sent a servant for a basin of warm, scented water and a sponge to wipe his brow. Despite his dirty face, I had never seen him look so handsome. I offered him watered wine, which he refused, and a plate of cheese and nuts that I’d planned to eat for my own meal. He waved that away too.
    “Not hungry,” he said. “Not after all I’ve seen today.” He sat slumped, his head down, his hands dangling between his knees.
    I sat close beside him. “What brings you here, Orestes?” I asked, puzzled. “What can I do for you?”
    He raised his head and gazed at me searchingly. “Love me,”