[What Might Have Been 03] Alternate Wars Read online

  Honor, glory, arete: I’m missing something, Helen realizes as she surveys the carnage. The 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, Helen’s 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 Achaians’ 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 pentekontor with half a hundred oars bristling from her sides like the quills of a hedgehog. No sooner has she crossed the gangplank when 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 beaus.

  As the workers set off to plant their spiky groves, Helen saunters up behind Menelaus and taps him on the 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 got anything to drink?”

  Dipping a hollow gourd into his private cistern, Menelaus offers her a pint of fresh water. “So what brings you here?” he asks.

  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 self-slaughter—“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 ask him to 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 Achaians, and talk the matter over. 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 cornhusk doll under her arm. “When you have your own children, you can tell the tale however you like. 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 a vast 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 banner of truce flaps above the heads of the two kings, Priam from the high city, Agamemnon from the long ships. Each side has sent its best and/or brightest. For the Trojans: brainy Panthoos, mighty Paris, invincible Hector, and Hiketaon the scion of Ares. For the Achaian cause: Ajax the berserker; Nestor the mentor, Menelaus the cuckold, and wily, smiling Odysseus. Of all those invited, only quarrelsome Achilles, sulking in his tent, has declined to appear.

  Panthoos rises, rubs his foam-white beard, and sets his scepter on the table. “Royal captains, gifted seers,” the old Trojan begins, “I believe you will concur when I say that, since this siege was laid, we have not faced a challenge of such magnitude. Make no mistake: Helen means to take our war away from us, and she means to do so immediately.”

  Gusts of dismay waft through the tent like a wind from the underworld.

  “We can’t quit now,” groans Hector, wincing fiercely.

  “We’re just getting up to speed,” wails Hiketaon, grimacing greatly.

  Agamemnon steps down from his throne, carrying his scepter like a spear. “I have a question for Prince Paris,” he says. “What does your mistress’s willingness to return to Argos say about the present state of your relationship?”

  Paris strokes his great jowls and says, “As you might surmise, great King, my feelings for Helen are predicated on requitement.”

  “So you won’t keep her in Pergamos by force?”

  “If she doesn’t want me, then I don’t want her.”

  At which point slug-witted Ajax raises his hand. “Er, excuse me. I’m a bit confused. If Helen is ours for the asking, then why must we continue the war?”

  A sirocco of astonishment arises among the heroes.

  “Why?” gasps Panthoos. “Why? Because this is Troy, that’s why. Because we’re kicking off Western Civilization here
, that’s why. The longer we can keep this affair going, the longer we can sustain such an ambiguous enterprise, the more valuable and significant it becomes.”

  Slow-synapsed Ajax says, “Huh?”

  Nestor has but to clear his throat and every eye is upon him. “What our adversary is saying—may I interpret, wise Panthoos?” He turns to his Trojan counterpart, bows deferentially, and, receiving a nod of assent, speaks to Ajax. “Panthoos means that, if this particular pretext for war—restoring a woman to her rightful owner—can be made to seem reasonable, then any pretext for war can be made to seem reasonable.” The mentor shifts his fevered stare from Ajax to the entire assembly. “By rising to this rare and precious occasion, we shall pave the way for wars of religion, wars of manifest destiny—any equivocal cause you care to name.” Once again his gaze alights on Ajax. “Understand, sir? This is the war to inaugurate war itself. This is the war to make the world safe for war!”

  Ajax frowns so vigorously his visor falls down. “All I know is, we came for Helen and we got her. Mission accomplished.” Turning to Agamemnon, the berserker lifts the visor from his eyes. “So if it’s all the same to you, Majesty, I’d like to go home before I get killed.”

  “O, Ajax, Ajax, Ajax,” moans Hector, pulling an arrow from his quiver and using it to scratch his back. “Where is your aesthetic sense? Have you no appreciation of war for war’s sake? The plains of Ilium are roiling with glory, sir. You could cut the arete with a knife. Never have there been such valiant eviscerations, such venerable dismemberments, such—”

  “I don’t get it,” says the berserker. “I just don’t get it.”

  Whereupon Menelaus slams his wine goblet on the table with a resounding thank. “We have not gathered in Priam’s tent so that Ajax might learn politics,” he says impatiently. “We have gathered so that we might best dispose of my wife.”

  “True, true,” says Hector.

  “So what are we going to do, gentlemen?” asks Menelaus. “Lock her up?”

  “Good idea,” says Hiketaon.

  “Well, yes,” says Agamemnon, slumping back onto his throne.“Except that, when the war finally ends, my troops will demand to see her. Might they not wonder why so much suffering and sacrifice was spent on a goddess gone to seed?” He turns to Paris and says, “Prince, you should not have let this happen.”

  “Let what happen?” asks Paris.

  “I heard she has wrinkles,” says Agamemnon.

  “I heard she got fat,” says Nestor.

  “What have you been feeding her?” asks Menelaus. “Bonbons?”

  “She’s a person,” protests Paris, “she’s not a marble statue. You can hardly blame me…”

  At which juncture King Priam raises his scepter and, as if to wound Gaea herself, rams it into the dirt.

  “Noble lords, I hate to say this, but the threat is more immediate than you might suppose. In the early years of the siege, the sight of fair Helen walking the ramparts did wonders for my army’s morale. Now that she’s no longer fit for public display, well…”

  “Yes?” says Agamemnon, steeling himself for the worst.

  “Well, I simply don’t know how much longer Troy can hold up its end of the war. If things don’t improve, we may have to capitulate by next winter.”

  Gasps of horror blow across the table, rattling the tent flaps and ruffling the aristocrats’ capes.

  But now, for the first time, clever, canny Odysseus addresses the council, and the winds of discontent grow still. “Our course is obvious,” he says. “Our destiny is clear,” he asserts. “We must put Helen—the old Helen, the pristine Helen—back on the walls.”

  “The old Helen?” says Hiketaon. “The pristine Helen? Are you not talking fantasy, resourceful Odysseus? Are you not singing a myth?”

  The lord of all Ithaca strolls the length of Priam’s tent, massaging his silky beard. “It will require some wisdom from Pallas Athena, some technology from Hephaestus, but I believe the project is possible.”

  “Excuse me,” says Paris. “What project is possible?”

  “Refurbishing your little harlot,” says Odysseus. “Making the dear, sweet strumpet shine like new.”

  Back and forth, to and fro, Helen moves through her boudoir, wearing a ragged path of angst into the carpet. An hour passes. Then two. Why are they taking so long?

  What most gnaws at her, the thought that feasts on her entrails, is the possibility that, should the council not accept her surrender, she will have to raise the stakes. And how might she accomplish the deed? By what means might she book passage on Charon’s one-way ferry? Something from her lover’s arsenal, most likely—a sword, spear, dagger, or death-dripping arrow. O, please, my lord Apollo, she prays to the city’s prime protector, don’t let it come to that.

  At sunset Paris enters the room, his pace leaden, his jowls dragging his mouth into a grimace. For the first time ever, Helen observes tears in her lover’s eyes.

  “It is finished,” he moans, doffing his plumed helmet. “Peace has come. At dawn you must go to the long ships. Menelaus will bear you back to Sparta, where you will once again live as mother to his children, friend to his concubines, and emissary to his bed.”

  Relief pours out of Helen in a deep, orgasmic rush, but the pleasure is short-lived. She loves this man, flaws and all, flab and the rest. “I shall miss you, dearest Paris,” she tells him. “Your bold abduction of me remains the peak experience of my life.”

  “I agreed to the treaty only because Menelaus believes you might otherwise kill yourself. You’re a surprising woman, Helen. Sometimes I think I hardly know you.”

  “Hush, my darling,” she says, gently laying her palm across his mouth. “No more words.”

  Slowly they unclothe each other, methodically unlocking the doors to bliss, the straps and sashes, the snaps and catches, and thus begins their final, epic night together.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so judgmental,” says Paris.

  “I accept your apology,” says Helen.

  “You are so beautiful,” he tells her. “So impossibly beautiful…”

  As dawn’s rosy fingers stretch across the Trojan sky, Hector’s faithful driver, Eniopeus the son of horse-loving Thebaios, steers his sturdy war chariot along the banks of the Menderes, bearing Helen to the Achaian stronghold. They reach the Arkadia just as the sun is cresting, so their arrival in the harbor becomes a flaming parade, a show of sparks and gold, as if they ride upon the burning wheels of Hyperion himself.

  Helen starts along the dock, moving past the platoons of squawking gulls adrift on the early morning breeze. Menelaus comes forward to greet her, accompanied by a man for whom Helen has always harbored a vague dislike—broad-chested, black-bearded Teukros, illegitimate son of Telemon.

  “The tide is ripe,” says her husband. “You and Teukros must board forthwith. You will find him a lively traveling companion. He knows a hundred fables and plays the harp.”

  “Can’t you take me home?”

  Menelaus squeezes his wife’s hand and, raising it to his lips, plants a gentle kiss. “I must see to the loading of my ships,” he explains, “the disposition of my battalions—a full week’s job, I’d guess.”

  “Surely you can leave that to Agamemnon.”

  “Give me seven days, Helen. In seven days I’ll be home, and we can begin picking up the pieces.”

  “We’re losing the tide,” says Teukros, anxiously intertwining his fingers.

  Do I trust my husband? wonders Helen as she strides up the Arkadia’s gangplank. Does he really mean to lift the siege?

  All during their slow voyage out of the harbor, Helen is haunted. Nebulous fears, nagging doubts, and odd presentiments swarm through her brain like Harpies. She beseeches her beloved Apollo to speak with her, calm her, assure her all is well, but the only sounds reaching her ears are the creaking of the oars and the windy, watery voice of the Hellespont.

  By the time the Arkadia finds the open sea, Helen has resolved to jump overboard a
nd swim back to Troy.

  “And then Teukros tried to kill you,” says Daphne.

  “He came at you with his sword,” adds Damon.

  This is the twins’ favorite part, the moment of grue and gore. Eyes flashing, voice climbing to a melodramatic pitch, I tell them how before I could put my escape plan into action, Teukros began chasing me around the Arkadia, slashing his Janus-faced blade. I tell them how I got the upper hand, tripping the bastard as he was about to run me through.

  “You stabbed him with his own sword, didn’t you, Mommy?” asks Damon.

  “I had no choice. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “And then his guts spilled, huh?” asks Daphne.

  “Agamemnon had ordered Teukros to kill me,” I explain. “I was ruining everything.”

  “They spilled out all over the deck, right?” asks Damon.

  “Yes, dear, they certainly did. I’m quite convinced Paris wasn’t part of the plot, or Menelaus either. Your mother falls for fools, not homicidal maniacs.”

  “What color were they?” asks Damon.

  “Color?”

  “His guts.”

  “Red, mostly with daubs of purple and black.”

  “Neat.”

  I tell the twins of my long, arduous swim through the strait.

  I tell them how I crossed Ilium’s war-torn fields, dodging arrows and eluding patrols.

  I tell how I waited by the Skaian Gate until a farmer arrived with a cartload of provender for the besieged city… how I sneaked inside the walls, secluded amid stalks of wheat … how I went to Pergamos, hid myself in the temple of Apollo, and breathlessly waited for dawn.