Free Beauty's Daughter: The Story of Hermione and Helen of Troy by Carolyn Meyer

their pleasure. At night I heard their thumps and cries, but Marpessa threw her cloak over me, and they didn’t know I was there.
    From these men we learned what to expect. Our destination was close, they said, but we would lay by on Tenedos for a time and wait. Meanwhile, King Menelaus, accompanied by Odysseus, would enter through the gates of Troy, meet with King Priam, and make one last demand for the peaceful return of Queen Helen.
    “May it go well with them,” the women said, gossiping about it among themselves.
    “May it go well with them,” I murmured, always at the edge of their conversations.
    The women passed the days with singing and arranging one another’s hair and sleeping, for the nights were busy with their duties of pleasing the men.
    Toward sunset at the end of five anxious days we sighted my father’s royal boat returning from Troy. We strained to see if Queen Helen was aboard and guessed that she was not, for there were no sounds of celebration. That night our women heard from the men who’d accompanied Menelaus what had happened.
    “At first we were treated respectfully,” the men reported. “We were given food and lodging at the house of one of King Priam’s chief councilors. But the meeting with King Priam came to nothing. He refused to return our queen. Not just Paris but Priam and all of the Trojans have fallen in love with Helen, and they’re determined to keep her. They adore the beautiful Greek queen! A great crowd gathered outside the councilor’s house, threatening to murder us all. But our host is a good man, and he refused to turn us over to them. Most of the Trojans drew back, grumbling, but the angriest refused to leave and threatened us. We didn’t feel safe until we’d put a distance between ourselves and Troy.”
    I wondered what fate would come to Corythus, the son of Paris, who had guided us there. His ship had disappeared. Certainly he would not be able to show his face in Troy again.
    Our women were kept busy that night, for the men had taken too much wine, and they sang and shouted and boasted loudly of their valor. Marpessa feared that they would find me.
    “What will happen now?” I asked Marpessa from my hiding place among the clay jars.
    “War,” she said. “The men want war. Listen to them! They haven’t come all this distance to turn around and sail back to Greece without Queen Helen.”

9
On the Beach
    IN THE EARLY MORNING darkness our ships moved silently away from the island of Tenedos and were rowed the short distance to Troy. From the deck of the women’s ship I gazed up at the great citadel silhouetted against the brightening sky. The enormous fortress stood surrounded by stone and earthen walls and guarded by watchtowers and massive wooden gates. Below it sprawled the rest of the city, so much larger than Sparta, larger even than Mycenae. Somewhere up there, in a magnificent palace with walls hung with silk and tables laid with golden plates, slept my mother and my little brother.
    Soon they’ll be back with us,
I told myself.
Soon we’ll all go home to Sparta.
    The ships drew up within sight of the city walls. I planned to slip away and run along the beach until I found Father’s ship. I was grateful to Marpessa for protecting me from the drunken, lecherous men who visited the concubines on our ship, but now I wanted Menelaus to know that I was there.
    But things didn’t go as I planned. The war had begun.
    When the conch shells were blown, the first of our courageous warriors jumped from his ship onto the beach and rushed toward the city walls. Trojan guards in the watchtowers saw this. A rock struck the warrior squarely on the temple. Blood gushing, he fell, but even before his body hit the ground, a second figure made a tremendous leap—it could only have been brave Achilles—seized the rock, and flung it back with such deadly aim and force that the Trojan it struck was lifted from his feet and thrown against the wall. Hundreds of Trojans