A Thousand Ships

The idea was laughable. Countless ships, as many as a thousand, sailing across the oceans to besiege one city for the sake of a woman? Even when Creusa saw her—saw Helen with her long golden hair arranged over her red dress, matched by the gold embroidery which decorated every hem and the ropes of gold she wore around her neck and her wrists—even then she did not believe an army would have sailed all this way to take her home.

[Hecabe] was not so foolish as to believe that she herself would have the chance to punish all the traitors and murderers and wrongdoers who had contributed to the downfall of her city. But she would have the gods remember who they were.

[…]

She would have been startled to discover that her daughter-in-law was doing precisely the opposite thing in her mind. Creusa, Theano, Crino: three Trojan women at least who were free, either in death or in life. Andromache marked each one with a silent joy. Everywhere she looked she could see only women in her own condition: fallen into slavery, the property of soldiers and thugs. But there were three who belonged to no one.

“All [Menelaus] has ever wanted is to have Helen as his wife. He had her, he lost her, and now he has her again. My presence is scarcely required at all, so long as it cannot be said that I am with someone else.”

“But you could have refused Paris,” Hecabe said. “To abandon your husband, your daughter…”

Helen shrugged. “Which of us can refuse Aphrodite?” she asked. “A god’s power is far greater than mine. When she urged me to accompany him to Troy, I tried to resist. But she gave me no choice. She told me what I must do and then she withdrew, and in her absence, I heard a high-pitched noise, a distant scream. […] That is what it means to refuse a god, it is to be driven mad.”

“You know the apple is mine,” she said. “Give it to me and I will give you the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“You?” he asked, his voice cracking on the word.

“Not me,” she replied. “I would destroy you, Paris. You are mortal.” Paris wondered if destruction would be such a terrible way to die. “I will give you the closest thing to me. Her name is Helen of Sparta.”

“More than ten years since you left me widowed,” she said. “You abandoned me and our son, the son I bore you. You cared nothing for us. Now you crawl back to life, and I am a widow no longer? Did it occur to you once—once—on your journey up here to ask yourself if I might have grown accustomed to my widowhood? If I might first have learned to live with it, and then grown to prefer it? Did you think for a moment of what I might want, how I might feel?”

“No,” he said, and a mortal woman would have struggled to hear the sound.

[Helen] took slow, sinuous steps toward the Spartan guards who owed their lives and their allegiance to Menelaus, who had fought to the death for her, and who despised her even as they could not take their eyes from her. […] She simply stared into [Odysseus’s] grey-green eyes as he flushed a deep, dark red. “You would give your life for me in a heartbeat,” she said. “You cannot disguise it any more than other men can. So don’t mock me, Odysseus. Or I may decide that you will regret it.”

The idea was laughable. Countless ships, as many as a thousand, sailing across the oceans to besiege one city for the sake of a woman? Even when Creusa saw her—saw Helen with her long golden hair arranged over her red dress, matched by the gold embroidery which decorated every hem and the ropes of gold she wore around her neck and her wrists—even then she did not believe an army would have sailed all this way to take her home.

[Hecabe] was not so foolish as to believe that she herself would have the chance to punish all the traitors and murderers and wrongdoers who had contributed to the downfall of her city. But she would have the gods remember who they were.

[…]

She would have been startled to discover that her daughter-in-law was doing precisely the opposite thing in her mind. Creusa, Theano, Crino: three Trojan women at least who were free, either in death or in life. Andromache marked each one with a silent joy. Everywhere she looked she could see only women in her own condition: fallen into slavery, the property of soldiers and thugs. But there were three who belonged to no one.

“All [Menelaus] has ever wanted is to have Helen as his wife. He had her, he lost her, and now he has her again. My presence is scarcely required at all, so long as it cannot be said that I am with someone else.”

“But you could have refused Paris,” Hecabe said. “To abandon your husband, your daughter…”

Helen shrugged. “Which of us can refuse Aphrodite?” she asked. “A god’s power is far greater than mine. When she urged me to accompany him to Troy, I tried to resist. But she gave me no choice. She told me what I must do and then she withdrew, and in her absence, I heard a high-pitched noise, a distant scream. […] That is what it means to refuse a god, it is to be driven mad.”

“You know the apple is mine,” she said. “Give it to me and I will give you the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“You?” he asked, his voice cracking on the word.

“Not me,” she replied. “I would destroy you, Paris. You are mortal.” Paris wondered if destruction would be such a terrible way to die. “I will give you the closest thing to me. Her name is Helen of Sparta.”

“More than ten years since you left me widowed,” she said. “You abandoned me and our son, the son I bore you. You cared nothing for us. Now you crawl back to life, and I am a widow no longer? Did it occur to you once—once—on your journey up here to ask yourself if I might have grown accustomed to my widowhood? If I might first have learned to live with it, and then grown to prefer it? Did you think for a moment of what I might want, how I might feel?”

“No,” he said, and a mortal woman would have struggled to hear the sound.

[Helen] took slow, sinuous steps toward the Spartan guards who owed their lives and their allegiance to Menelaus, who had fought to the death for her, and who despised her even as they could not take their eyes from her. […] She simply stared into [Odysseus’s] grey-green eyes as he flushed a deep, dark red. “You would give your life for me in a heartbeat,” she said. “You cannot disguise it any more than other men can. So don’t mock me, Odysseus. Or I may decide that you will regret it.”