Menelaus quickly tired of his enemies’ probing jabs and with a bellow of rage leapt at them. One spear point caught fast in his shield, almost pushing him into the path of the second weapon, which glanced off his ribcage but failed to penetrate the armour. In his fury, the Spartan slashed at the face of his first foe and felled him, before turning on his heel and sweeping the other man’s head from his shoulders. Seeing this, Odysseus’s remaining opponent tossed his spear aside and fled through the open doorway.
The Greeks now turned back to face Deiphobus and Helen. The remaining soldier, still clutching his maimed limb, staggered across the beautifully adorned bedroom, splashing the animal pelts that lined the floor with large drops of blood. He lurched towards the window in his confusion and fell unconscious at Helen’s feet. Deiphobus released his wife – who knelt down beside the fallen soldier – and stepped forward, drawing his sword as he advanced.
‘Stay back, Odysseus,’ Menelaus warned. ‘This one dies by my hand and mine alone.’
‘You’ll not find me as easy as the others,’ Deiphobus responded in Greek.
Menelaus’s lips curled back in a snarl, tinged with joy at the prospect of killing Helen’s latest husband. Then, as Deiphobus prepared to fight, Helen stood up and closed behind him. The Trojan prince stiffened and thrust out his chest, his face suddenly strained. A line of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, then with a choke burst out over his chin.
Odysseus had seen Helen draw the sword from the fallen guard’s belt, but only guessed her intentions at the last moment, springing forward with his palm held out in an arresting motion. His warrior’s sensibilities, so brutalised after ten years of war, told him it was not right for one so beautiful, so outwardly pure as Helen to sink to the level of murder. But he was too late. As Deiphobus slipped to the floor and rolled onto his back – as if to snatch a final glance at her face – the bloody weapon in her hand and the red stains on her white dress were evidence of her deed. Why though? Odysseus wondered. Out of revenge for a forced marriage? Or as a token of repentance before her returning husband, in the hope of saving her own life?
Menelaus looked down at the lifeless form of Deiphobus, then at the woman who had killed him, the woman for whose sake so many men had died. Their eyes met and for a long moment there was no rage or bitterness in Menelaus’s gaze, only fascination as he reacquainted himself with the face he had once loved so well, and for which he had crossed the Aegean with the greatest fleet the world had ever seen. Helen looked back at the father of her children, a man who, as her husband, had only ever treated her with kindness and respect; a man she had never hated, and yet whom she had never loved. And to Odysseus’s shrewd mind the old familiarity between the two was still there, as if – for a brief space – the infidelity, war and years apart from each other had never happened. Then, as the Ithacan had expected, the recognition of those dividing forces stole into their gaze, reawakening their more immediate emotions and pulling them back to the present. For Helen, it was a flicker of guilt, followed by a more dominant fear – fear of the man she had betrayed, and who was no longer separated from her by the walls, armies and princes of Troy. For Menelaus, seeing her shame and her fear brought his righteous anger rushing back. Tears rolled in rapid, heavy drops down his cheeks: tears he had never shed for the thousands who had suffered for the sake of his love, but which came forth now as he remembered the pain she had inflicted on him. And it was a pain that demanded retribution.
He leapt towards her, his sword flashing red. Helen screamed, but Odysseus had anticipated Menelaus’s reaction and threw his arms about the Spartan’s chest, pulling him back.
‘Control your anger! We haven’t fought for ten years just so you can murder the woman we came to save.’
‘Let me go!’ Menelaus spat, desperately trying to throw off Odysseus’s bear-like grip.
‘Not until you’ve calmed down.’
‘Menelaus,’ Helen said, her voice soft but commanding.
Menelaus ceased struggling and looked up.
‘Husband,’ she continued. ‘Listen to Odysseus. Have you been through so much, just to kill me? Have you suffered for all these years just to rip open my flesh with your sword and bathe in my blood? Have thousands died just to slake your lust for vengeance? Such an empty victory! Or can something be retrieved from all this destruction?’
Odysseus slipped his arms from about Menelaus’s chest and eased the sword from his fingertips. Menelaus did not move.
‘I wanted you back,’ he replied. ‘That’s why I came after you. I’ve thought of little else since we first landed on these shores.’
‘And now you have me.’
‘Do I, Helen?’ Menelaus retorted. ‘Do I have my wife back, or – as it seems to me now we are face-to-face again – am I simply stealing another man’s woman, nothing more than a slave to tend to my needs and sleep with me, hiding her hatred beneath a bowed head? If that’s the case, then we’ll both be better off if I kill you now.’
Helen dropped the sword that had murdered Deiphobus and held her bloodstained hands imploringly towards Menelaus.
‘Don’t let it all be in vain. We were man and wife once; we can be again, and not without love, as you fear. Tell him, Odysseus. Tell him how I begged you to take me back with you to the Greek camp, so that I could be with my rightful husband again.’
Odysseus remembered how Helen had pleaded with him to take her from Troy, even offering him her body if he would return her to Menelaus and free her from the confines of the city walls and forced marriage to Deiphobus. He also recalled his debt to her, for not giving him away to the Trojan guards when he was at her mercy.
‘It’s true, Menelaus, and if she hadn’t insisted on bringing Pleisthenes it might have been possible. And look there. Is that the act of a woman in love, to murder her husband in cold blood?’
‘That poor soul?’ Menelaus said. ‘Even I can see she didn’t love him. But Deiphobus isn’t my concern – Paris is. The man who entered my house as a guest and left a thief, surrendering his honour for the sake of my wife.’ He turned his eyes on Helen. ‘Last year I might have believed you still loved me, that this whole war had a true purpose. Then I faced Paris on the battlefield and he told me the truth: that you fell in love with him in Sparta; that you came to Troy not as a captive but of your own free will. Is that true, Helen?’
Menelaus’s tone was threatening, and yet there was doubt in it, too. And hope.
Helen looked down at the bloodstained furs.
‘Why dwell on the events of a decade ago? The only thing that matters is here and now.’
‘No! Our lives are founded in the past. If you betrayed me then you can do it again, and I would rather kill you now than have that.’
Helen paused, then raised her eyes to his, fixing his gaze.
‘I never loved Paris,’ she lied. Her features were firm, but Odysseus saw the glint of a tear in the corner of her eye. ‘I never loved him, Menelaus. He took me from you against my will, brought me here and forced me to marry him. I would never have left my children, or you, for another.’