She comes toward me, but not with the dagger. I’d forgotten how beautiful Helen of Troy is—her svelte, soft figure in the transparent gown making Scamandrius’ busty nurse look just lumpy and squat by comparison. “Hock-en-bear-eeee?” she says softly, with that sweet pronunciation of my name, so difficult to say in Ancient Greek. I almost weep as I realize that she’s the only human being on Earth, except for Nightenhelser—who may be dead by now—who knows my name. “Are you hurt, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”
“Hurt?” I manage. “No. I’m not hurt.”
Helen leads me into the bathing room adjoining her bedchamber. This is where I first saw her that night. Candles are lighted here as well, there is water in a basin, and I see my reflection—red-eyed, stubble-cheeked, exhausted. I realize that I haven’t really slept for . . . how long? I can’t remember. “Sit,” says Helen, and I collapse onto the ledge of a marble bathtub. “Why have you come, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”
Stumbling with words, I say, “I tried to find the fulcrum,” and go on to explain my useless charade with Achilles, the kidnap of Patroclus, my plan to turn the heroes of the war against the gods to save . . . everyone, everything.
“But you did not kill Patroclus?” says Helen, her dark eyes intense.
“No. I just took him . . . elsewhere.”
“Using the gods’ method of travel,” says Helen.
“Yes.”
“But you could not spirit away Astyanax, Hector’s son, this way?”
I shake my head dumbly.
I see Helen thinking, her beautiful dark eyes lost in reverie. How can she believe my explanations? Who in the hell does she think I am? Why had she befriended me before—“befriended” being somewhat of a euphemism for that long night of passion—and what will she do with me now?
As if to answer that last question, Helen rises with a grim look in her eye and goes out of the bathing room. I hear her calling names in the hallway and know that the guards will be back with her in less than a minute, so I raise my hand to the heavy QT medallion.
I can’t think of anywhere to go.
I have charge left in my taser baton, but I don’t reach for it as Helen returns with several others. But not guards—serving girls. Slaves.
A minute later they are undressing me, stacking my filthy garments by the wall as other young women bring in tall pitchers of steaming hot water for the bath. I let them take the morphing bracelet off me, but I cling to the QT medallion. I shouldn’t get it wet, but I don’t want it out of my reach.
“You are going to bathe, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” says Helen of Troy. She lifts a short, gleaming razor blade. “And then I am going to shave you myself. Here, drink this. It will restore your energy and spirits.” She hands me a goblet with a thick liquid inside.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nestor’s favorite drink,” laughs Helen. “Or it was when the old fool used to visit my husband, Menelaus. It restores.”
I sniff it, knowing that I’m being boorish. “What’s in it?”
“Wine, grated cheese, and barley,” says Helen, lifting the goblet closer to my lips by moving my cupped hands upward. Her fingers look very white against my sun-darkened and dirty skin. “But I also add honey to sweeten it.”
“So does Circe,” I say, laughing stupidly.
“Who, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”
I shake my head. “Never mind. It’s in the Odyssey. Doesn’t matter. Irreli . . . irrele . . . irrelevant and immaterial.” I drink. The liquid has the punch of a Missouri mule. I wonder idly if there any mules in Missouri circa 1200 b.c.
The young servant girls have stripped me naked, having me stand to pull off my tunic and underthings. I don’t even think to be embarrassed. I’m too tired and the drink has given my brain a distinct buzz.
“Bathe, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” says Helen and offers me her arm to hold as I step into the deep and steaming bath. “I will shave you in the bath.”
The water’s so hot that I cringe like a child, lowering myself carefully, hesitating to let the steaming water touch my scrotum. But I do—I’m too tired to fight gravity—and when I lean back against the slanted marble back of the tub, Helen’s servants lathering my whisker-stubbled cheeks and neck, I don’t even worry about Helen handling the razor’s blade so close to my eyes and jugular. I trust her.
Feeling Nestor’s drink giving me energy again, deciding that if Helen offers me her bed I’ll definitely ask her to share it with me in this last hour or so before dawn, I close my eyes for just a moment. Just a few seconds.
When I awake it’s mid-morning, at least, with heavy light coming through small windows high on the wall. I’m shaved and clean, even perfumed. I’m also lying on a cold, stone floor in an empty room, not in Helen’s high bed. And I’m naked—completely naked, not even the QT medallion in sight. As real awareness flows into my brain like reluctant water into a leaky basin, I notice that I’m tied with multiple leather straps to iron rings in the wall and floor. Leather restraints run from my wrists—knotted together over my head—to the wall. Straps from my bound ankles, legs spread apart, run a few inches to two other iron rings in the floor.
This posture and situation would be embarrassing and alarming even if I were alone, but I’m not. Five women are standing over me, staring down at me. None of them look amused. I tug at the leather reins as I instinctively try to cover my genitals, but the straps are short and my hands don’t even lower to the level of my shoulders. Nor do the straps on my ankles allow me to close my legs. I see now that all of the women are carrying daggers, although some of the blades seem long enough to be called swords.
I know the women. Besides Helen in the center, there is Hecuba, King Priam’s queen, Hector’s and Paris’s gray-haired but attractive mother. Next to Hecuba is Laodice, the queen’s daughter and the warrior Helicaon’s wife. To the left of Helen is Theano, Cisseus’ daughter, the Trojan horseman Antenor’s wife, but—and possibly more relevant to my current situation—Ilium’s primary priestess serving the goddess Athena. I can’t imagine that Theano will be happy to hear that this mere mortal man has taken the form and used the voice of the goddess she’s served her entire life. I look at Theano’s grim expression and guess that she’s already heard the news.
Finally there is Andromache, Hector’s wife, the woman whose child I was going to kidnap and carry away to exile in Indiana. Her expression is the sternest of all the women’s. She is tapping a long, razor-sharp dagger against her palm and she looks impatient.
Helen sits on a low couch near me. “Hock-en-bear-eeee, you need to tell us all the story you have told me. Who you are. Why you have been watching the war. What the gods are like and what you tried to do during the night.”
“Will you release me first?” My tongue feels thick. She drugged me.
“No. Speak now. Tell only the truth. Theano has been given the gift from Athena of telling truth from lies, even from someone whose accent is as barbaric as yours. Speak now. Leave nothing out.”
I hesitate. Perhaps my best bet here might be to keep my mouth shut.
Leano goes to one knee next to me. She’s a lovely young woman with pale gray eyes, like her goddess. Her dagger blade is short, broad, double-edged, and very cold. I know the cold part because she’s just laid the blade under my testicles, lifting them like an offering on a silver serving knife. The dagger’s point draws blood in my sensitive perineum and my whole body tries to contract and rise away, even as I just succeed in not crying out.
“Tell everything, lie about nothing,” whispers Athena’s high priestess. “At your first lie, I will feed you your left stone. Your second lie, you eat the right one. Your third lie and I will be feeding my hounds whatever is left.”
So, all right, I tell everything. Who I am. How the gods have revived me for scholic duty. My impressions of Olympos. My revolt against my Muse, my attack on Aphrodite and Ares, my plot to turn Achilles and Hector against the gods . . . everything. The point of her dagger never moves and the metal under me never warms.