The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘But don’t get too close,’ added the first. ‘If she catches a whiff of your perfume, old man, she’ll be back inside faster than a rabbit in its hole.’

The men laughed and walked up to the gate, rapping loudly on the panels and calling for entry. Before the doors could be opened, Odysseus was back on his feet and walking as quick as his feigned stoop would allow. He passed the tower with its row of idols and followed the curve of the walls beyond. The thought of Helen had filled his fertile mind with the germ of an idea, an idea that had saved the lives of the two Trojans. It powered him along until he saw the crenellated lip of the city wall rising to meet the battlements of Pergamos ahead of him. Already the light was fading on the streets, as the sun slid towards the ocean and was lost behind the two-storeyed houses and the high fortifications. Then the walls of the citadel bent sharply to the north-west and converged in a dark triangle with the defences of the lower city. Here Odysseus sat down with his back to a small house, looking up at the dark, saw-toothed outline of the ramparts where he hoped to see Helen.

As the clear sky slowly began to turn to a darker blue, Odysseus noticed others gathering around him. Three women in black were the first, their lined and ageing faces stern and silent as they stood together by the corner of the small house. They were followed by the angry stumping of a crutch on the cobbled street as another beggar – his left leg missing below the knee and his right eye an empty pit – entered the sombre triangle. A young mother was next, holding a small infant in the folds of her widow’s robes, and behind her were three Mysian warriors, their young eyes fixed hopefully on the parapet above. A few more arrived, until at last a score of people were waiting in the shade, all of them, in one way or another, victims of Helen’s beauty. Then, as one, the small crowd fell still and stared up at the walls. Odysseus followed their collective gaze and felt his own heart suddenly beating faster. Helen had come.

It was as if a final beam of the sun’s radiance had alighted on the grey stone of the battlements. She wore no black to symbolise the mourning in her heart, but was instead dressed in a white chiton and robe that blushed pink in the dying daylight. Her sad and lovely face, chin raised, stared out at the sunset beyond the city walls, pained by memories of things that had passed. Like a goddess among mortals, she seemed aloof to the dark, shuffling figures below. And that was how it should be, Odysseus thought: she was too beautiful, too perfect, to be soiled with the misery and torment of a sinful universe. Its filth could not stick to her nor weigh her down, and though the widows, the maimed and the awestruck looked up at her in demanding silence, even they must surely know she was not of their world.

And yet she had offered herself to Odysseus when he had been a young suitor in Sparta twenty years before, promising to marry him if he would help her escape the claustrophobic life of her father’s court. By then he had already fallen in love with Penelope, but the memory of Helen’s submission gave him the courage to stand and shuffle forward. Ignoring the shocked whispers of the onlookers, he raised his face to the battlements and called out in the Trojan tongue.

‘What is it you look for in the setting sun, my lady?’

Helen turned to face him and the whisperers on either side fell quiet. Her blue eyes fixed momentarily on the ragged, filthy creature that had dared call out to her, then with the slightest narrowing of disgust turned back to the horizon.

‘Perhaps a winged horse to carry you away from this prison? Or maybe your own death, so your spirit can follow Paris’s and share with him in the forgetfulness of Hades?’

‘How dare you!’ Helen replied, seizing the edge of the wall and staring down at him. ‘How dare you foul my husband’s name with your rank breath?’

‘He ain’t your husband no more,’ cackled one of the widows.

The others joined her laughter, suddenly released from the spell of Helen’s beauty and delighting in her discomfort. One of the Mysians ordered them to be silent, while on the battlements the sound of sandals on the stonework announced the hurried arrival of a guard. Odysseus immediately recognised one of the soldiers he had spoken to by the gate to Pergamos.

‘My breath may indeed be rank, mistress,’ he continued, ‘but it can barely make worse the name of a wife-stealer and family breaker. Such a man deserved to die!’

Unused to facing effrontery, Helen’s face fell blank and she stepped away from the parapet in confusion. Eager to win her favour – a word or even a glance – the guard rushed forward in her defence.

‘Silence, you insolent … By all the gods, it’s you!’

‘I’m here, like you told me,’ came Odysseus’s jaunty reply. ‘And she’s just as beautiful as you said.’