The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘Menelaus,’ Helen said, her voice soft but commanding.

Menelaus ceased struggling and looked up.

‘Husband,’ she continued. ‘Listen to Odysseus. Have you been through so much, just to kill me? Have you suffered for all these years just to rip open my flesh with your sword and bathe in my blood? Have thousands died just to slake your lust for vengeance? Such an empty victory! Or can something be retrieved from all this destruction?’

Odysseus slipped his arms from about Menelaus’s chest and eased the sword from his fingertips. Menelaus did not move.

‘I wanted you back,’ he replied. ‘That’s why I came after you. I’ve thought of little else since we first landed on these shores.’

‘And now you have me.’

‘Do I, Helen?’ Menelaus retorted. ‘Do I have my wife back, or – as it seems to me now we are face-to-face again – am I simply stealing another man’s woman, nothing more than a slave to tend to my needs and sleep with me, hiding her hatred beneath a bowed head? If that’s the case, then we’ll both be better off if I kill you now.’

Helen dropped the sword that had murdered Deiphobus and held her bloodstained hands imploringly towards Menelaus.

‘Don’t let it all be in vain. We were man and wife once; we can be again, and not without love, as you fear. Tell him, Odysseus. Tell him how I begged you to take me back with you to the Greek camp, so that I could be with my rightful husband again.’

Odysseus remembered how Helen had pleaded with him to take her from Troy, even offering him her body if he would return her to Menelaus and free her from the confines of the city walls and forced marriage to Deiphobus. He also recalled his debt to her, for not giving him away to the Trojan guards when he was at her mercy.

‘It’s true, Menelaus, and if she hadn’t insisted on bringing Pleisthenes it might have been possible. And look there. Is that the act of a woman in love, to murder her husband in cold blood?’

‘That poor soul?’ Menelaus said. ‘Even I can see she didn’t love him. But Deiphobus isn’t my concern – Paris is. The man who entered my house as a guest and left a thief, surrendering his honour for the sake of my wife.’ He turned his eyes on Helen. ‘Last year I might have believed you still loved me, that this whole war had a true purpose. Then I faced Paris on the battlefield and he told me the truth: that you fell in love with him in Sparta; that you came to Troy not as a captive but of your own free will. Is that true, Helen?’

Menelaus’s tone was threatening, and yet there was doubt in it, too. And hope.

Helen looked down at the bloodstained furs.

‘Why dwell on the events of a decade ago? The only thing that matters is here and now.’

‘No! Our lives are founded in the past. If you betrayed me then you can do it again, and I would rather kill you now than have that.’

Helen paused, then raised her eyes to his, fixing his gaze.

‘I never loved Paris,’ she lied. Her features were firm, but Odysseus saw the glint of a tear in the corner of her eye. ‘I never loved him, Menelaus. He took me from you against my will, brought me here and forced me to marry him. I would never have left my children, or you, for another.’

‘Yet you came to love him,’ Menelaus countered. ‘You shared his bed willingly, happily. You were lovers.’

Helen’s tears were flowing now and as her eyes flickered towards Odysseus he saw shame in them, knowing he knew she was lying.

‘I never loved him,’ she sobbed. ‘His touch repulsed me, and though he forced himself upon me I never gave myself willingly.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Menelaus insisted. ‘You enjoyed being mounted by him!’

There was no conviction in his words now. The last of his anger was submitting to his desire for her, a desire that revealed itself by his talk of Paris and Helen’s lovemaking. Helen must have realised this and seen that the contest was entering a realm where she had the dominant power. She took a few paces towards him and fell to her knees.

‘My body has always been yours, Menelaus,’ she said, seizing the front of her chiton and tearing it open, ‘and it will be yours again.’

A splintering crash came from somewhere within the depths of the palace, followed by a woman’s scream. Menelaus glanced over his shoulder, then back down at Helen. The sight of her perfect face and her bared breasts were almost enough for him. And yet he still refused to surrender to his need for her.

‘Swear it, Helen. Swear by the name of Aphrodite that you never loved Paris. Swear he took you from our home against your will.’ With a swift movement, he pulled a dagger from his belt and held the point to her throat. ‘Swear it, or by Ares’s sword I will slice your beautiful head from your shoulders and throw it into the flames of Troy!’