The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

She listened to the silence, then steadied herself against the side of the window and stared down at the roof of the great hall a little below and to her right. A pool of red light marked the hole in its apex where a line of smoke from the fire below trailed out into the night sky. A murmur of voices escaped with it, competing against each other in anger or agitation. Helen looked at the red glow and closed her eyes despairingly, knowing that they were debating her fate at that very moment. Even before the ashes of Paris’s funeral pyre had grown cold, both Deiphobus and Helenus had asked for her hand in marriage. Deiphobus, she knew, had loved her from the very first, always showing her the highest respect and courtesy and never allowing a word to be said against her. Nevertheless, his request had outraged her and she had let him know this in the harshness of her rebuttal. Helenus had followed shortly after, brimming with arrogant self-confidence and no doubt buoyed by her refusal of his older brother. His determination to wed Helen and use her as a stepping stone for his ambitions was not lessened by the fact he had been a playmate of her son, Pleisthenes, or that his vision of Paris’s victory had led directly to his death. Consequently, Helen’s dismissal of him was even more severe than it had been of Deiphobus. But both men were princes and not used to having their requests denied, even by a woman who had once been the queen of Sparta. And so they had demanded of Priam that he choose one of them to marry Helen. The old king agreed, though not because of any sympathy for his sons. He informed his daughter-in-law that she should take a new husband. His subjects, he explained, were restless after the death of Paris and many wanted to send her back to the Greeks, something which Priam was determined would not happen.

Helen groaned.

‘Why did you leave me, Paris?’

And then, on the sighing of the wind, she thought she heard a voice answer her.

‘Come,’ it said. ‘Come to me.’

She sat on the stone sill and drew her knees up beneath her chin, looking down at the long drop. Her befuddled mind tried to calculate if it was enough – enough to kill her. She thought it was; all she had to do was relax and lean sideways. That was all, and then the torment of being apart from Paris would be over. The forgetfulness of Hades would envelop her. Helen of Troy would be no more.

But not the war. That would go on regardless of her fate. Thousands more would perish. Thousands more widows and orphans would have personal reason to hate her memory. Even though she would be gone and Agamemnon and Priam’s fight would become openly the struggle for power it had always been, they would still blame her as the spark that brought death to their husbands and fathers. And that was why she could not just take her own life. The only way to end the war was to find a way back to Menelaus. If she was with her first husband again, the oath taken by the other kings would no longer hold. She would not be a prisoner of Troy any more, and neither could Agamemnon use her death to call on the Greeks to avenge her. The war would have to stop.

She swung her legs off the sill and felt the smooth floor beneath her bare feet. Pulling herself up by the curtain she walked unsteadily to the chest at the foot of her bed, where she found her black travel cloak folded ready. She had always known, from the moment Paris had died in her arms, that this would be her fate – to return to Menelaus and end the war. And yet it had taken the realisation that Priam and his remaining sons were determined not to give her up to force her into action. The very thought of facing Menelaus again after so long filled her with fear and revulsion, but she could not put off her doom any longer. She pulled on her sandals, threw the cloak about her shoulders and crossed to the door.