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She wept, after tending Paris. It was her duty. She was his wife, and he her husband, but she wept.
“Are you not pleased, Helen? Paris, your husband, lives.”
Helen paused, and then turned. She kept herself steady, poised and gracious.
To any passing by, it would look like she was talking to one of her women, one of the Lacedemonians who had come in her train, as part of her treasure.
But no, it was Aphrodite in guise, Aphrodite pulling threads this way and that, like a child's string game, making a picture she wanted to see.
And what Aprhodite wanted to see was Helen as Paris’ lovely and loving wife.
Helen’s wants were irrelevant to the goddess. Perhaps they always had been.
“The duel could have ended this war,” Helen said. She did not meet Aphrodite’s eyes. “Even now, the truce holds and perhaps the kings will come to some agreement. I would accept anything, even being set upon the waves, to give Menelaus satisfaction and end this war.
“Why would I want this war to end?” the goddess laughed, too confident for her humble spinner’s clothes. Not one of Helen’s women would laugh like that, loud and defiant, in front of their mistress.
But she was Aphrodite Ariea, who Helen had sacrificed to as a girl in Sparta, running with her brothers, with Castor and Pollux as they hunted the deer for Aphrodite the Warlike’s altar.
Helen was the one who had to be quiet and collected, poised and watchful for the goddess’ desires.
The next day the truce broke, by an archer and an arrow that failed to kill Menelaus. Helen watched from the walls. The slaughter was terrible, but failed to kill either son of Atreus, much to her rue. For such a cursed lineage, Zeus seemed to be protecting their kingships.
Helen had no lead foil, and would have hesitated even then to scribe curses on such, for fear that the Lord of Riches would ruin Menelaus and his brother by taking their children. Hermione did not deserve that from her mother, and Clytemnestra had already lost children to Agamemnon and his ambitions. Her sister needed no illwishing from her.
Aphrodite saved her son, when Diomedes raged and shattered his bones.
Helen watched, and saw how the goddess veiled her warrior son in mist, bearing him away from the field even as Diomedes attacked her. It was obvious how much the goddess loved her Aeneas.
Helen was also the daughter of a godly parent. But the sky-father had never protected her, nor her brother Pollux, the way that the Lady of Love and Beauty protected her son. Not even the way she had protected Paris, snapping his helmet strap when Menelaus would have dragged him to his death during the duel.
Helen was loved in the third place, if that much at all. If she pleased, if she smiled, if she made Paris happy, she was loved. If she chose different, Aphrodite would make her hated, even beyond the resentment she already endured. Priam loved her, Hecuba was fond, Hector and Andromache kind, but outside the court, the Trojans knew she was the cause of the war.
And Paris loved her, the way one might fine armor – something to display and use, something to fight over, and take from a defeated foe. Helen was sure now that Paris did not love her in herself, and perhaps never had.
But he was Aphrodite’s blessed one, second only to her son, and doted on for choosing the goddess in the contest for the golden apple.
Had the goddess turned Helen’s head towards Paris when he came as an envoy for his father? She couldn’t remember anymore. It had been heady and glorious days, with Paris dazzling and charming. He’d seemed so much more alive than Menelaus, who had married her for the kingship she would grant him, and who had few airs and graces in comparison.
It had seemed of no consequence to take herself, treasure and train and all, to Paris and his fast ships. She had left her homeland and her daughter, because Menelaus wanted Helen for them more than for her own self, and she had thought no more of it in the first days of love.
And Aphrodite herself had smiled at Helen, and approved with warm kisses and embraces of approval. When they came to Troy, Priam had welcomed her, and counted it a triumph that Paris had stolen her away from the hated Argives, the men who venerated Hercules, who had sacked the city when Priam was a youth.
Helen was tired of the twisting snares the past laid for her – for what Hercules had wrought, and Atreus and his forefather Tantalus, and even her own mother’s husband Tyndareus. It was enough that she wished she could drink unwatered wine and unravel her hair and go into the wilderness. If she carried a thyrsus singing and adored herself with ivy, maybe they’d all let her go.
And if she found the god in the wilderness, maybe that would not be so bad. The Liberator would hardly command her to love a man who would be satisfied with a painted image, as long as it allowed him to claim he had Helen of Sparta.
Hector was dead, and Achilles had returned to the field.
Hector, the breaker of horses, was dead, and all the hopes of Troy with him.
Helen went to the walls and wept.
Helen climbed to the top of the walls, and wept.
The walls were so very tall, and it would hardly take more than a step…
“Are you so eager to join my kingdom?” a woman’s voice asked.
Helen startled back from the wall’s edge, and looked up.
There was a woman, dressed as a bride, on the battlement.
A woman, dressed as a bride, in luxurious black, shot all through with purple and thread of gold, fine and unworn. Her stephane was gold and pearls, a circlet of crafted cypress, and her earrings were cut open fruits, each tiny pomegranate seed a garnet.
Helen froze. The colors were rich, bright as if newly dyed. No Trojan had been able to gather the shell for that glorious purple, not in years. And the jewels…
“Lady,” she said, and made an obeisance.
“Are you?” the woman repeated.
Helen had to think. She could not lie, not to this goddess.
“I think… I am not, Great Lady,” Helen admitted. “But I do not see a way out.”
“No, there are not many ways out. Most will come to my kingdom soon. A few will manage to escape the rage of the Argives, by cleverness or luck or the favor of some god. Some will be stolen away to unhappy fates.
“But you, Helen, may go home. Your husband would take you back, even now.”
Helen glanced out across the plains of Troas, and then back into the city.
“Menelaus would still sack the city.”
“Yes. He will. Even if you go to him now. He will sack the city.”
“YOU!”
Helen startled, and knocked against the dread goddess.
“Aphrodite,” Helen whimpered.
“Oh, I know, daughter of Sparta.”
“What are you doing here, Kore?”
Kore, Helen would think of her as Kore, for politeness, for her own safety, snorted. “Who are you to tell me where I can come and go?”
Aphrodite bristled, “Troy is mine, a favored place.”
“Troy is doomed. Hecuba dreamed she gave birth to a flaming torch, and was too tender-hearted to extinguish him. And now you dote on him, even though he will scorch your son before he is burned out.”
“You do not know that!”
“Hector is dead, and what remains to Priam is Paris. You have some skill in war, Aphrodite. Even with you propping him up, do you think Paris can prevail?” Kore asked, her tone cool and amused.
“You are interfering!”
“No, I am merely observing.”
“You!”
“Though I do think you should let Helen go.”
Aphrodite gasped in affront, and Helen wished she could turn into a dove and fly off. She did not want to be a witness to these two.
“I will not! She is mine!”
Kore simply looked at Aphrodite, and then at Helen.
“She is! The most beautiful woman in the world!”
“And one of the most unhappy.”
Helen wet her lips, and ventured, “I would like to make my own fate, if it please.”
Aphrodite scoffed, her lovely face twisted, “Mortals can’t do that–”
“I am not mortal,” Helen said, and flinched at the look on the goddess’ face. “Or so I have been told. I hatched from an egg, and my father was Zeus, it is said. My brothers died, and immortal Pollux shared his life with mortal Castor, and they sit among the stars.
“I would like to try, please. You are Aphrodite Ariea, and I gave you fat-wrapped thighbones as a girl, when I hunted with my brothers. Please.”
Aphrodite frowned, and then Helen felt a shiver all over.
“Oh,” she said. It was like she had been doused with a burst of rain, cold and awake and clear-eyed. “Oh. I see. I do not love Paris, nor Menelaus,” she looked Aphrodite in the eyes, “nor you any longer, great lady.
“I think I am the better for it.”
Aphrodite scoffed. “You will find it a cold life, without love. And neither Athena nor Hera will help you, for they have taken offense to you because of Paris. And no gods will cross them for you.”
Helen sighed. “I will find other gods – if the Queen of Olympus and the Far-Darter will not have me, and I will not have you, then I will pray to other gods. To Lady Kore,” and Helen smiled to see the Iron Queen nod her head, “and maybe to the Liberator, for I am now freed.”
Aphrodite wrinkled her nose and tsked and disappeared like smoke blown by the breeze.
“Thank you,” Helen said quietly.
Kore smiled, and then glanced down into the city.
“She is fickle, and flighty, but she does love Troy, as she loves Sparta and Kythera.”
“She will have to choose. She cannot have them all, not when they are against each other,” Helen pointed out.
Kore hummed.
Helen turned to look out on the plains of Troas, at the great army of Argives arranged before Troy.
Menelaus was there, somewhere. Terrible, cursed Menelaus, who loved her for the kingship she had brought him. Who loved Sparta for his kingship over it.
Helen did not love him, but she was the Queen of Sparta. She was free from wanting love from him, or from Paris. It would be enough, to be Queen of Sparta again, instead of a prize of Troy.