The Hittite - Ben Bova [56]
“No one will bother us. Your maidservant has seen to that.”
“If anyone in the palace—”
“I don’t care.”
“This is madness!”
“Yes, of course it is,” he replied, with a soft laugh. “I am mad about you.”
“No,” she said, so softly I barely heard it.
“How could any man set eyes upon you and not want to love you?” he whispered, bending over her so close she could feel his warm breath against her throat.
“I am married to Menalaos. He will kill us both.”
“Then we will die,” sighed Paris as he lay down on the bed beside her and slowly began to undo her nightgown.
Helen did nothing to resist him. His hands caressed her naked flesh, his lips covered hers.
For the first time in her life Helen felt truly aroused. Paris knew how to stroke her, how to pleasure her with touch and tongue and soft, whispered words. She was drowning in delight, all thoughts, all fears, all cares washed away in throbbing tides of ecstasy. At the last, she jammed her fist into her mouth to keep from screaming aloud with sheer rapture.
There was nothing in Helen’s world except Paris. She had no husband, no daughter, no father or mother or night or day. She surrendered herself to Aphrodite completely and knew at last the meaning of her mother’s smile when she asked if all-powerful Zeus had fathered her.
The moon sank behind the dark hills and the first rose-tinged fingers of dawn began to light the sky.
“Go quickly,” she said to Paris. “Go and forget me and this night. Go and pray that Menalaos never finds out what we have done.”
He leaned close to her, so close that their lips almost touched. “I can’t,” he said.
“You must go!” she insisted. “And quickly, before anyone else arises.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“Menalaos will kill us both!”
He smiled down at me. “Not if you come with me to Troy.”
“To Troy?” The thought seemed to stun her.
“Come with me and be my wife. You will be a princess of the mightiest city of the Aegean.”
A princess of Troy. Wife of Paris in the many-towered city by the Dardanelles. A city of gentility and beauty, fabled throughout the world. It was impossible. It could never be. Yet to be a princess in civilized Troy would be far better than being a queen in Menalaos’ Sparta.
Paris jumped to his feet and reached for his clothes. “Quickly,” he said. “My men are waiting at the palace’s main gate. Get dressed!”
In a daze, hardly believing what was happening to her, Helen did as he commanded. It was as if her true self was far away, watching this bewildered young woman obeying the bidding of the handsome prince of Troy. I came in and helped her to dress, then Paris wrapped her in his own brilliant blue cloak and pulled its hood over her head.
Like children playing a game the two of them stole through the stillsleeping palace and out to the mounted men waiting impatiently for their prince, while I roused a pair of slumbering slaves to quickly stuff as much of Helen’s clothes as they could into a pair of large wooden chests while I packed all her jewelry into a large woolen sack. It was almost too heavy for me to carry, but I would not let the slaves touch it.
They loaded the chests onto a mule cart as Paris lifted Helen up onto his horse and seated her behind him. She clutched his strong body and rested her head against his back. I climbed by myself onto the cart that one of Paris’ men drove. Then we were away, leaving Sparta, leaving her husband and her life, riding into a new dawn. How we got past the gates I do not know; Paris’ Trojan companions either bribed the guards or slew them, I never asked even later, when I wondered about it.
I felt weak with relief. Paris would take care of Helen. He would sweep her across the sea to a new life and make certain that everything was right. Menalaos was already fading into a distant, hateful dream.
With the sky brightening into a new day we galloped down the rutted road to the distant harbor. The cart I rode in jounced and groaned so badly I thought it would fall apart long before we reached the water’s edge. But soon enough we saw the square sail of Paris’ boat,