Helen stopped the recitation and seemed to be studying me. I could think of nothing to say. There was a bottomless depth of bitterness beneath her cool, ironic words. No, not bitterness I realized, looking into her eyes—sadness. A terrible, tired sadness.
“Hock-en-bear-eeee,” continued Helen. “Do you think I am the most beautiful woman in the world? Did you come here to abduct me?”
“No, I did not come here to abduct you. I have nowhere to take you. My own days are numbered by the wrath of the gods—I have betrayed my Muse and her boss, Aphrodite, and when Aphrodite heals from the wounds Diomedes inflicted on her yesterday, she will wipe me off the face of the earth as sure as we’re standing here.”
“Yes?” said Helen.
“Yes.”
“Come to bed . . . Hock-en-bear-eeee.”
I wake in the gray hour before dawn, having slept only a few hours after our last two bouts of lovemaking, but feeling perfectly rested. My back is to Helen, but somehow I know that she is also lying awake on this large bed with its elaborately carved posts.
“Hock-en-bear-eeee?”
“Yes?”
“How do you serve Aphrodite and the other gods?”
I think about this a minute and then roll over. The most beautiful woman in the world is lying there in the dim light, propping herself up on one elbow, her long, dark hair, mussed by our lovemaking, flowing around her naked shoulder and arm, with her eyes, pupils wide and dark, intent on mine.
“How do you mean?” I ask, although I know.
“Why did the gods bring you across time and space, as you say, to serve them? What do you know that they need?”
I close my eyes for a moment. How can I possibly explain to her? It will be madness if I answer honestly. But—as I admitted earlier—I’m terribly tired of lying. “I know something about the war going on,” I say. “I know some of the events that will happen . . . might happen.”
“You serve an oracle?”
“No.”
“You are a prophet, then? A priest to whom one of the gods has given such vision?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t understand,” says Helen.
I shift on my side and sit up, moving cushions to be more comfortable. It is still dark but a bird begins to sing in the courtyard. “In the place whence I came,” I whisper, “there is a song, a poem, about this war. It’s called the Iliad. So far, the events of the actual war resemble those sung about in this song.”
“You speak as if this siege and this war were already an old tale in the land you came from,” says Helen. “As if all this has already occurred.”
Don’t admit this to her. It would be folly. “Yes,” I say. “That is the truth.”
“You are one of the Fates,” she says.
“No. I’m just a man.”
Helen smiles with wicked amusement. She touches the valley between her breasts where I had climaxed just a few hours earlier. “I know that, Hock-en-bear-eeee.”
I blush, rub my cheeks, and feel the stubble there. No shaving in the scholics barracks for me this morning. Why bother? You only have hours to live.
“Will you answer my questions about the future?” she asks, her voice terribly soft.
It would be madness to do so. “I don’t really know your future,” I say disingenuously. “Only the details of this song, and there have been many discrepancies between it and the actual events . . .”
“Will you answer my questions about the future?” She sets her hand on my chest.
“Yes,” I say.
“Is Ilium doomed?” Helen’s voice is steady, calm, soft.
“Yes.”
“Will it be taken by strength or stealth?”
For God’s sake, you can’t tell her that, I think. “By stealth,” I say.
Helen actually smiles. “Odysseus,” she murmurs.
I say nothing. I tell myself that perhaps if I give no details, these revelations will not affect events.
“Will Paris be killed before Troy falls?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“By Achilles’ hand?”
No details! clamors my conscience. “No,” I say. Fuck it.
“And the noble Hector?”
“Death,” I say, feeling like some vicious hanging judge.
“By Achilles’ hand?”
“Yes.”
“And Achilles? Will he go home from this war alive?”
“No.” His fate is sealed as soon as he slays Hector, and he has known this all along . . . knew it from a prophecy he has carried with him like a cancer for years. Long life or glory? Homer said that it was . . . is . . . will be, the decision he must make. But, the prophecy goes, if he chooses long life, he will be known only as a man, not as the demigod he will become if he kills Hector in combat. But he has a choice. The future is not sealed!
“And King Priam?”
“Death,” I say, my whisper hoarse. Slaughtered in his own palace, in his private temple to Zeus. Hacked to bloody bits like a heifer being sacrificed to the gods.
“And Hector’s little boy, Scamandrius, whom the people call Astyanax?”
“Death,” I say. I close my eyes against the image of Pyrrhos flinging the screaming infant down from the wall.
“And Andromache,” Helen whispers. “Hector’s wife?”
“A slave,” I say. If Helen keeps up this litany of questions, I’m pretty sure I’ll go crazy. It was all right from a distance—from a scholic’s disinterested observer’s stance. But now I’m talking about people I have known and met and . . . slept with. It strikes me that Helen has not asked about her own fate. Perhaps she never will.
“And will I die with Ilium?” she asks, her voice still calm.
I take a breath. “No.”
“But Menelaus will find me?”
“Yes.” I feel like one of those black Crazy-8 tell-your-fortune toys that were popular when I was a kid. Why hadn’t I answered her like that black ball would have? That would be more like the Oracle at Delphi—The future is cloudy. Or Ask again. Am I showing off for this woman?
It’s too late now.
“Menelaus finds me but does not kill me? I survive his anger?”
“Yes.” I remember Odysseus’ telling of this in the Odyssey—Menelaus finding Helen hiding in Deiphobos’ quarters in the great royal palace, near the shrine of the Palladion, and of the cuckolded husband throwing himself upon her, sword drawn, fulling intending to kill this beautiful woman. Helen will uncover her breasts to her husband, as if inviting the blow, as if willing it—and then Menelaus will drop his sword and kiss her. It’s not clear whether Deiphobos, one of the sons of Priam, is killed by Menelaus before this or after he . . .
“But he takes me back to Sparta?” whispers Helen. “Paris dead, Hector dead, all the great warriors of Ilium dead or put to the sword, all the great women of Troy dead or dragged off to slavery, the city itself burned, its wall breached, its towers dragged down and broken up, the earth salted so that nothing will ever grow here again . . . but I live and am taken back to Sparta by Menelaus?”
“Something like that,” I say, hearing how lame it sounds.
Helen rolls out of bed, stands, and walks naked to the courtyard terrace. For a minute I forget my role as Cassandra and just gaze in something like awe at her dark hair tumbling down her back, at her perfect buttocks, and at her strong legs. She stands naked at the railing, not turning back my way as she says, “And what about you, Hock-en-bear-eeee? Have the Fates told you your own destiny through this song of theirs?”
“No,” I confess. “I’m not important enough to be included in the poem. But I’m pretty sure I will die today.”
She turns. I expect Helen to be weeping after all I’ve told her—if she believes me—but she’s smiling slightly. “Only ‘pretty sure’?”