The Hittite - Ben Bova [48]
And go where? I wondered. Where?
Then I realized that Apet was bending over me, a steaming wooden bowl in her hands. I put it to my lips: the stew was burning hot but delicious.
“Take a bowl for yourself,” I told her. “Sit here beside me.”
She went to the cook fire and returned in moments. She sighed as she lowered herself to the sand; it was almost a groan. I realized she must be very old.
“I thank you, Hittite,” she said, her voice grating like a rusty hinge.
“I don’t like to eat alone,” I replied.
“I thank you for protecting me against that barbarian lout when he was angry enough to murder me.”
I looked into her face for the first time. The moonlight showed clearly that her skin was parched and wrinkled with age.
“I promised your mistress that I would protect you.”
“And you kept your promise.”
We ate in silence for a few moments. Then I heard myself ask her, “You have known Helen for many years?”
“Since she was a nurseling, Hittite, long before all these evils befell her.”
“She brought them on herself, didn’t she?”
Apet did not reply for several heartbeats. At last she said slowly, “If you only knew, strong warrior. If you only knew how the gods have wronged her.”
“Tell me, then.”
And there, in the moonlit night, with the cook fire slowly dying and the wind sighing in from the sea, while two armies waited for tomorrow’s battle, Apet told me of Helen and how she had come to Troy.
II
HELEN’S STORY
1
Men have said— Apet told me— that Helen is the most beautiful woman in the world. If that is true it is not her own doing, but the work of the gods, and must be accepted. Yet it has caused her nothing but grief.
Helen is the daughter of Tyndareos, King of Calydon, and Leda, his queen. Some say that mighty Zeus himself begat her, in human guise. Her mother never told her of it, but only smiled knowingly when Helen asked her what the other children meant by that.
Even as a baby— Apet went on— Helen was sweet and happy. Her laughter could make your heart soar. So beautiful. So delightful.
Years before, I had been captured by her father, Tyndareos, in a raid on my village in the Nile delta and taken to Calydon as a slave. I served the barbarians faithfully, and when Helen was born her mother made me her nursemaid.
Before she was twelve years old, word of Helen’s beauty spread so widely that princes from every kingdom in Achaia sought her hand in marriage. She was introduced to each of them as they visited her father’s palace to court her. Most of them were older men, twice Helen’s age, although not as old as her father or his brothers. Still, she held her breath and said not a word to these huge bearded men while they looked her over like butchers inspecting a heifer.
I stayed at her side always, and after a brief few moments with each visiting prince I was bade to take Helen back to the women’s quarters, where she could remove the stiff gold-worked corselet and gown that her father insisted she wear— and breathe again.
Helen tried to tell her mother of her fears, but her mother told her to be grateful that she was sought after by the richest and most powerful families in the land. It was only to me that she could confide her fears.
“Apet, they’re so old! And the way they look at me . . . it frightens me.”
“Come, come, my nursling,” I would say, soothing her. “The gods have graced you with great beauty, and men are dazzled by such.”
“Their eyes . . . they stare at me so.”
“Don’t be afraid of the princes, my sweetest. Learn to use your beauty to get them to bring you gifts and do your bidding.”
Gradually, while the royal visits continued, I explained how she must think like a woman and use a woman’s strengths to make the best of her life. She began to understand; she had seen the barnyard animals in rut and once, while her parents were away, had even gone out to the stables and watched a stallion mount a mare before I caught her and whisked her back inside the palace.
Among those barbarians women have no say in their own destinies; daughters are exhibited to prospective suitors, then