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

swarmed down from the walls, throwing rocks at the invaders. Achilles hurled rock after rock, and one Trojan after another fell dead.
    The fierce Myrmidons followed close behind Achilles. All day the battle raged. At sunset the fighting stopped, and men from both sides came out to carry their dead from the beach. That evening our men ate and drank, then came to visit our women for the comfort they needed.
    The next day was the same, and the day after. So this was war. I was thrilled by the bravery of our men, sickened by the suffering and death.
    Then I heard that a prediction had been made by Calchas, the seer. He prophesied that the war would continue for nine years. In the tenth year, he said, Troy would fall.
    Ten years!
    I was still only a child. If Calchas was right, I would be a grown woman when the fighting ended. What would this mean? Ten years spent here on this beach, my mother with Paris on the other side of the great stone wall, the men of Troy sworn to keep her there, the Greeks just as determined to get her back, both sides fighting and dying, day after day, year after year?
    It was Fate, Calchas said. One could not argue with Fate. Nothing would change it.
    When the rope ladder was lowered for the men to climb up that evening, I slipped away from Marpessa, crept down the ladder, and felt my way along the beach. Slaves had hauled up the pitch-blackened ships and wedged timbers along the sides to steady them. The ships loomed fierce in the pale moonlight. I paused near each one and listened for the sound of my father’s voice.
    But it was Achilles’ voice I heard. “Hector’s is the death I desire most,” Achilles was saying. “He’s a brave man, they say, and a good fighter. But I will have him, Pyrrhus. You watch!”
    “Hector is brave, but you’re braver, Father,” I heard a young boy reply. “He’s strong, but you’re stronger!”
    Quite a pair of braggarts, I thought, and decided this Pyrrhus must be the boy I’d seen with Achilles at Aulis.
    Farther on up the beach Odysseus could be heard telling someone about his wife, Penelope, and his little son, Telemachus. “I miss them so much!” he said. “But I worry. If one is to believe the prophecy of Calchas, by the time I reach home again, my boy will not even recognize me.”
    At another ship an officer was playing at dice with his friends. “I invented them, you know,” he boasted. “Entertainment for a game of chance, but also useful for predicting the future.” The men laughed, and I was so close I could hear the rattle of the bones as the men shook them and threw them on a flat stone.
    I was stumbling with weariness when at last I recognized the voice I most wanted to hear: my father’s. Menelaus and Agamemnon were discussing how they would mount their attack on the citadel, which was defended by so many fighters and fortified with such thick walls, while our own ships lay exposed on the beach.
    “We must build our own defenses at once,” Menelaus said.
    I huddled in the darkness, careful not to attract the attention of the watchman on deck, while I listened to the two kings outlining their plan. Our men would build a wall of timber, stones, and mud, with gates just wide enough to let our chariots pass through. Others would dig a wide, deep trench beyond the palisade and sink sharp stakes in it.
    “No Trojan can pass those defenses,” they agreed, and clapped each other on the shoulder.
    I waited until Agamemnon strode off toward his own ship. Father yawned and turned to climb up to the deck. “Father,” I said.
    He stopped, grasping the rope ladder, squinting into the darkness. “Who speaks?”
    I stepped out of the shadows. “It is I, Hermione.” I expected him to rush toward me, to fold me into his arms. But he didn’t. He merely stared at me.
    “What god has taken the form of my daughter?” he asked.
    “Neither god nor goddess, Father,” I said, laughing, and stepped close enough to touch. “See? It’s truly your