own bowels — all because of her. She weeps openly, profusely, the large gemlike tears running down her wrinkled cheeks and striking her breastplate. The agonies of Prometheus are a picnic compared to the weight of her guilt, the Pillars of Herakles are feathers when balanced against the crushing tonnage of her conscience.
Honor, glory, arete: I’m missing something, Helen realizes as she surveys the carnage. The war’s essence eludes me.
She reaches the thick and stinking Lisgar Marsh and reins up before a foot soldier sitting in the mud, a young Myrmidon with what she assumes are a particularly honorable spear-hole in his breastplate and a singularly glorious lack of a right hand.
“Can you tell me where I might find your king?” she asks.
“By Hera’s eyes, you’re easy to look at,” gasps the soldier as, arete in full bloom, he binds his bleeding stump with linen.
“I need to find Menelaus.”
“Try the harbor,” he says, gesturing with his wound. The bandaged stump drips like a leaky faucet. “His ship is the Arkadia.”
Helen thanks the soldier and aims her horses toward the wine-dark sea.
“Are you Helen’s mother, by any chance?” he calls as she races off. “What a face you’ve got!”
Twenty minutes later, reeling with thirst and smelling of horse sweat, Helen pulls within view of the crashing waves. In the harbor beyond, a thousand strong-hulled ships lie at anchor, their masts jutting into the sky like a forest of denuded trees. All along the beach, her countrymen are raising a stout wooden wall, evidently fearful that, if the line is ever pushed back this far, the Trojans will not hesitate to burn the fleet. The briny air rings with the Achaeans’ axes — with the thud and crunch of acacias being felled, palisades being whittled, stockade posts sharpened, breastworks shaped, a cacophony muffling the flutter of the sails and the growl of the surf.
Helen starts along the wharf, soon spotting the Arkadia, a stout penteconter with half a hundred oars bristling from her sides like quills on a hedgehog. No sooner has she crossed the gangplank than she comes upon her husband, older now, striated by wrinkles, but still unquestionably he. Plumed like a peacock, Menelaus stands atop the forecastle, speaking with a burly construction brigade, tutoring them in the proper placement of the impalement stakes. A handsome man, she decides, much like the warrior on the condom boxes. She can see why she picked him over Sthenelos, Euryalos, and her other beaux.
As the workers set off to plant their spiky groves, Helen saunters up behind Menelaus and taps his shoulder.
“Hi,” she says.
He was always a wan fellow, but now his face loses whatever small quantity of blood it once possessed.
“Helen?” he says, gasping and blinking like a man who’s just been doused with a bucket of slop. “Is that you?”
“Right.”
“You’ve, er … aged.”
“You too, sweetheart.”
He pulls off his plumed helmet, stomps his foot on the forecastle, and says, angrily, “You ran out on me.”
“Yes. Quite so.”
“Trollop.”
“Perhaps.” Helen adjusts her greaves. “I could claim I was bewitched by laughter-loving Aphrodite, but that would be a lie. The fact is, Paris knocked me silly. I’m crazy about him. Sorry.” She runs her desiccated tongue along her parched lips. “Have you anything to drink?”
Dipping a hollow gourd into his private cistern, Menelaus offers her a pint of fresh water. “So what brings you here?”
Helen receives the ladle. Setting her boots wide apart, she steadies herself against the roll of the incoming tide and takes a greedy gulp. At last she says, “I wish to give myself up.”
“What?”
“I want to go home with you.”
“You mean — you think our marriage deserves another chance?”
“No, I think all those infantrymen out there deserve to live. If this war is really being fought to retrieve me, then consider the job done.” Tossing the ladle aside, Helen holds out her hands, palms turned upward as if she’s testing for raindrops. “I’m yours, hubby. Manacle my wrists, chain my feet together, throw me in the brig.”
Against all odds, defying all logos, Menelaus’s face loses more blood. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” he says.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“This siege, Helen — there’s more to it than you suppose.”
“Don’t jerk me around, lord of all Lakedaimon, asshole. It’s time to call it quits.”
The Spartan king stares straight at her chest, a habit she’s always found annoying. “Put on a bit of weight, eh, darling?”
“Don’t change the subject.” She lunges toward Menelaus’s scabbard as if to goose him, but instead draws out his sword. “I’m deadly serious: if Helen of Troy is not permitted to live with herself” — she pantomimes the act of suicide — “then she will die with herself.”
“Tell you what,” says her husband, taking his weapon back. “Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’ll go to my brother and suggest he arrange a truce with your father-in-law.”
“He’s not my father-in-law. There was never a wedding.”
“Whatever. The point is, your offer has merit, but it must be discussed. We shall all meet face to face, Trojans and Achaeans, and talk it out. As for now, you’d best return to your lover.”
“I’m warning you — I shall abide no more blood on my hands, none but my own.”
“Of course, dear. Now please go back to the citadel.”
At least he listened, Helen muses as she crosses the weatherworn deck of the Arkadia. At least he didn’t tell me not to worry my pretty little head about it.
“Here comes the dull part,” says whiny-tongued Damon.
“The scene with all the talking,” adds smart-mouthed Daphne.
“Can you cut it a bit?” my son asks.
“Hush,” I say, smoothing out Damon’s coverlet. “No interruptions,” I insist. I slip Daphne’s papyrus doll under her arm. “When you have your own children, you can edit the tale however you wish. As for now, listen carefully. You might learn something.”
By the burbling, tumbling waters of the River Simois, beneath the glowing orange avatar of the moon goddess Artemis, ten aristocrats are gathered around an oaken table in the purple tent of Ilium’s high command, all of them bursting with opinions on how best to deal with this Helen situation, this peace problem, this Trojan hostage crisis. White as a crane, a truce banner flaps above the heads of the two kings, Priam from the high city, Agamemnon from the long ships. Each side has sent its best
