Unused to facing effrontery, Helen’s face fell blank and she stepped away from the parapet in confusion. Eager to win her favour – a word or even a glance – the guard rushed forward in her defence.
‘Silence, you insolent … By all the gods, it’s you!’
‘I’m here, like you told me,’ came Odysseus’s jaunty reply. ‘And she’s just as beautiful as you said.’
The guard’s mouth fell open in confusion for a brief moment, then snapping shut he pointed at the three Mysians and ordered them to seize hold of the beggar.
‘Take him to the guard house. We’ll soon teach him to hold his tongue before a lady.’
He turned to Helen, hoping for some recognition or approval. She was too shocked to even notice him, and with her hand on her chest was trying to steady her breathing. Below them, the Mysians were struggling to contain the beggar’s surprising strength.
‘You can teach me whatever you like,’ Odysseus shouted out, this time risking Greek. ‘But the lady might want to hear my news, first. Of Aethiolas, Maraphius and Hermione.’
One of the Mysians drew his sword and raised the pommel above Odysseus’s head, but before he could strike a command rang out from the walls.
‘Leave him alone!’
The three men released the beggar at once and stepped back as if burned. Odysseus looked up to see Helen leaning stiffly on the parapet, her eyes staring fiercely at him. He met her gaze and held it, knowing the mention of her children – whom she had last seen twenty years ago in Sparta – could not have failed to gain her attention. Then he saw the faintest twinge of recognition cross her features and lowered his face to the ground. He turned away, as if eager to make his escape.
‘Stay where you are!’ she called.
The Mysians blocked his path and he looked back over his shoulder to see Helen giving instructions to the guard on the walls. The man frowned in consternation, then turned and ran to the nearest steps. Helen followed him, pausing briefly to throw one last glance at the mysterious beggar before disappearing from sight.
The score of onlookers now surrounded Odysseus, a few of them angry but most of them intrigued as they stared at the bedraggled creature who had somehow won Helen’s interest, where their own presences had never so much as received a look. Then they moved aside as orders were barked out and the guard from the walls appeared, accompanied by two others.
‘What was that you said to her?’ the guard snapped. ‘Greek, was it? A spy, are you?’
‘Just a traveller, nothing more.’
‘Whatever you are, and whatever you said, you’ve gained her attention. She wants to see you at once.’
He signalled to his companions, who reluctantly seized the stinking beggar by his elbows and pulled him along between them. They passed through the gate and the cool, echoing archway into Pergamos, where Helen was waiting at the foot of the ramp that led to the upper tiers of the citadel. Despite his foul stench as the guards brought Odysseus before her, she remained where she was and regarded him with suspicious eyes.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, in Greek so that the others would not understand their conversation.
Odysseus caught the smell of wine on her breath, though there were no other signs to tell him she had been drinking.
‘A sailor, my lady, fallen on hard times.’
‘A beggar, cursed by the gods it seems. How do you know the names of my children? Did Pleisthenes tell you?’
‘I’ve never met your youngest son, though I know you brought him with you when Paris abducted you.’
‘He did not abduct me. I came here willingly.’
‘Though not without sacrifice, leaving behind your daughter and other sons whom Menelaus had taken with him to Crete.’
Helen’s eyes narrowed again, subtly changing the emphasis of her beauty.
‘Not many would know that. Perhaps there’s more to you than rags and a terrible smell. Perhaps you’re a god in disguise – such things happen, or so my old nursemaid used to say. At the very least you’re a Greek.’
‘I’m no god, my lady, but I am a Greek – once an Athenian merchant from Piraeus. And for a meal and a sup of wine I can tell you about the children you left behind. They still long for their mother, or so I’ve heard.’
Odysseus saw the look of longing enter her expression and was glad that he would not need to lie to her. Menelaus sent ships back to Sparta every two years for replacements, and when they returned the first thing he would ask about was news of Aethiolas, Maraphius and Hermione, news which he would then share with the other kings to show his pride in his children – and assuage some of his guilt for not being present as they grew up. Something of that same guilt was in Helen’s eyes as she looked at Odysseus now.
‘Then they’re still alive,’ she said, as if to herself. Suddenly, Odysseus was aware of her eyes on his again, though this time there was a new intensity to them as they searched his face. ‘Thank you, friend. I agree to your offer – a meal and wine in exchange for everything you know about my children – especially Hermione. But not before the filth has been washed from your body and you’re clothed in a fresh tunic and cloak.
‘Guards,’ she said, talking to them in their own tongue as she turned to go, ‘take this man to the palace and tell my maids to bathe him.’
‘That’s not necessary, my lady,’ Odysseus protested, reluctant to give up his disguise. ‘Food and wine will do for me.’
‘Nonsense,’ she replied, looking back over her shoulder. ‘They bathe in Athens, don’t they? And Ithaca, too, by all accounts.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
TEMPTATIONS OF THE FLESH
Odysseus closed his eyes and laid his head back against the rim of the bath, enjoying the feel of the warm water covering his naked body. He had not had a proper bath in ten years, and never to this degree of luxury. His bath on Ithaca had been in a high-sided ceramic trough, just long enough to sit in with his legs outstretched; the one in Helen’s quarters was a large oval tub set in the floor at the centre of the room, decorated with murals of dolphins, shells and other marine creatures bordered by wavy lines that represented the sea. The strong smells of manure, urine and sweat had been replaced by the subtle perfumes that Helen’s maids had added to the steaming water, and as he filled his nostrils with their aroma he could almost forget that he was lying undisguised and unarmed in the heart of Priam’s citadel. Naturally, though, his busy mind would not allow him to forget his present danger, for not only had he been deprived of his beggar’s mask but the astute Helen had also guessed his true identity. The thought had plagued him all the way to the palace, and had he not been escorted by three armed guards he might have taken the opportunity to escape. And yet Helen had not given him away at the very time when he was most vulnerable, and the more he pondered this the more he believed she would not surrender him to his enemies – at least, not until she had had her chance to talk with him first.
And so he had allowed her reluctant maids to undress him and bathe him, pouring water over his head and shoulders until the heat drove the weariness from his limbs and he began to feel more at ease. In a short while, they would return with olive oil to rub into his skin and hair, and fresh clothes so that he would be in a fit state to be presented to their mistress. Then, of course, he would have to make an explanation of his presence in Troy and hope Helen would not give him up to the guards, who would certainly be close at hand. But he doubted the gods had placed him at Helen’s mercy just so he could be surrendered to Priam. Rather, he thought, they were giving him an opportunity.
The door opened behind him, announcing the return of the maids. Instead of the hurried scuff of three or four pairs of sandalled feet, though, he heard only a single pair of bare feet walking softly and slowly across the stone floor.