Penelope's Web Read online

  ‘And where is that web now?’

  ‘Nowhere. It’s ash, my girl. It’s dust. It’s the dust of fucking Troy.’

  Penelope’s eyes were glittering slits. ‘A pity. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll make my own web. I’ll tell it my way. I’ll unravel that slut-work.’

  ‘Why bother?’

  She looked hard at me, the smile cold on her mouth. ‘I think you know what it’s like, not being able to stop what you’ve been doing for years. Neither wanting to stop, nor even wanting to want to stop.’

  I knew just what she was talking about. No man better.

  ‘So now,’ she said, ‘tell me about Helen. Tell me about Troy.’

  TWO

  Troy and Helen. Was there ever a time when I could think of one without the other? If there was, it’s been wiped from my mind, it’s been so long. It seems there never was a Troy without a Helen. She was built into the walls. She was the heart of the citadel. Her abduction was eternal.

  It’s not true, of course. Troy invited attack long before Helen. Look and see. A glance at the map is all it takes. Agamemnon was telling the truth for a change when he addressed the army at Aulis, whipping up the hysteria, appealing to bellicosity, patriotism, piracy, selling us the war.

  ‘The bastards are begging for it,’ he said.

  In that respect at least he was right. Troy was of no global consequence, little more than a local power, but regionally it was a peach of the east, standing strategically between two great seas, two worlds, east and west. The Trojans could have controlled all shipping between the two, and suppressed access to the Propontis and the Black Sea, except that they didn’t even have a navy. Not a single fucking ship. Before Paris came to Sparta, he had to have one specially built. Amazingly, the Trojans weren’t seafarers, they were horse-traders. They were also allies of the Hittite shites and therefore enemies of us seafaring Greeks. And they were straddling the trade routes into Anatolia from the Med.

  A commanding position. One to die for. As many did. A plain sliced by two rivers, a citadel on a hill, and a lower city of six thousand, half of which were desirable females. Troy waves to traders, sailors, soldiers. It beckons to textiles, metals, merchandise, men wanting women, slaves. They might just as easily have hung out a flag on the walls. They might as well have bellowed out the message across the Aegean: come and assault us, we’re here to be taken, kick our arses. Agamemnon just couldn’t believe his luck when he was handed it on a golden plate, the golden excuse for responding to the call. So the truth is that Troy didn’t need Helen to draw us east. Troy was her own reason for war. Troy was always going to be fucked.

  That didn’t suit Penelope’s web. She wanted a scapegoat. And there was never a scapegoat like Helen. She was the bad girl, she fitted the part. She carried the war crimes of the world tucked tight between her legs. And it’s true that she collected most of the blame for the war. Everybody cursed her, especially soldiers’ wives. And the soldiers. The brave lads had to have their say about Helen.

  That slut has a cunt like the Hellespont – the whole world goes through it!

  Understandable. But a sweeping exaggeration, and a slur. She stuck to the man who abducted her. The trouble is, she deserted the man she was married to. The abduction was no myth. It happened. And you won’t have trouble telling fact from fiction in this report. I tell it as it was. Penelope tells it as it could have been, maybe even should have been, if life were art, or legend, or if life were fair, or moral, or beautiful, or all that stuff. So if myth is to your taste, listen to Penelope, follow the golden thread. It’s all there in the web. But for now, let’s stick with what’s real.

  Paris arrived in Sparta, long-haired, close-shaven, clean-jawed, his hairy medallioned chest matted with oil, his ears and fingers glittering with rings and trinkets. A right fucking mummy’s boy he was, and an easy charmer. Easy with his arrow, easy under a leopard skin, easy at a distance, easy on wheels, easy with the women. An Anatolian archer, a battlefield butterfly, a gutless funk. He boarded his trim ship, newly fitted out, and homed in on Helen, scenting Spartan fanny all across the Aegean.

  What really brought him to Sparta? If you want the truth he was a messenger boy. His father, Priam, sent him on an embassy to inquire after Paris’s aunt, Hesione, who had married Telamon of Salamis. And it was in Sparta, at the court of Menelaus, that he met Helen. He was entertained in Sparta for nine days, and for not one of those days could he take his eyes off her. Everybody saw it, except Menelaus. But then he never saw much that wasn’t up his own arse, which is where his head was most of the time. The rest of the time it was up Agamemnon’s. That pair were true brothers, united by rectal cranial inversion, mutual and interchangeable. On the tenth day a message arrived for Menelaus. His mother’s father, Catreus, had died in Crete and his presence was required at the funeral.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he told Helen, ‘as soon as the obsequies are over. While I’m gone make sure you look after our guest. Carry on with the entertainment.’

  But Menelaus had been set-up. When Paris swanned in, the Spartan leader had seen at a glance a pretty boy from a culture that made his palace look like some shack. That’s what he was made to see, meant to see. Priam had primed his son and he’d oiled his way in with gifts beyond belief: golden bowls, razors, goblets, golden beds inlaid with ivory, mirrors, earrings, necklaces, dresses, weapons, chariots. There was even a fucking monkey. All of which he stole back again when he left. Except for the monkey. He said he’d left that to save Menelaus looking in the mirror – which was just as well as he hadn’t left a single one.

  A sharper man than Menelaus might have suspected another agenda than a mere state visit. Priam was up to something. Whether Helen was really on the agenda is another matter. But the sweeteners did the trick. Trojans were not exactly allies but if they could pull down pearls from Olympia – and it looked as if they could – then they had to be sucked off. And Paris was a young man well worth sucking off. So Menelaus had had no qualms about leaving his clever queen in charge of state affairs while he buggered off to his funeral in Crete. She had been ordered to lay on the sparkling wine, the roast boar, the charm, the lot. Up to the hilt.

  Up to the hilt. So to speak. They later claimed that they hadn’t actually desecrated the bed of Menelaus – they’d waited for the nearest convenient island, Kranai, as it happened, to consummate their passion. An offshore lust, if you like. The maidservants told it differently. But they kept their mouths shut at the time. And the sentries were out for the count. Helen had spiked the wine that night. She was a dab hand at that device. So they got out of the palace unseen. And laden with loot.

  The Spartan spears would have whistled past their arses if they’d been spotted. She dropped a sandal on the mad dash. It was all her husband had left of her to chew at in his fury. But it hadn’t taken too much nerve, not on Paris’s side at least. He was a spoiled little tosser who just assumed things would always go his way. And that night they did – long before the big bronze bell began to clang and the shit-scared guards came to. They knew Menelaus would slit their throats, once he’d finished spitting.

  Which is exactly what happened.

  ‘Fucking hell! I go to bury my grandfather, and my wife walks out of here under your fucking noses – and with the Trojan fucking ambassador between her legs! Take them out!’

  He spread it about that it was an abduction, but privately he admitted the opposite to Agamemnon and his closest friends.

  ‘Every cunt from Tiryns to Troy knows she fucked off with him.’

  It didn’t matter. Abduction or elopement, it was still politically an abduction and an act of aggression.

  ‘We don’t have to declare war on the bastards,’ he said, ‘they’ve declared it already.’

  Agamemnon grinned at him. ‘What are you talking about, brother? Declaration? Of course you don’t have to make any fucking declaration, you just fucking turn up! And if the bastards are unprepared, so much the better!’

  We
ll, that was the Greek way. And there was nothing unusual about abductions either. We lived by acts of aggression. We took women away from their homes all the time. So did the other side, whoever the other side happened to be. The Phoenicians came to Argos and abducted Io, the king’s daughter, took her off to Egypt. We retaliated by abducting their princess Europa. We abducted the King of Colchis’ daughter, Medea. Paris abducted Helen from Sparta. Though you could say he broke the rules. The others were all unmarried virgins and fair game. And they were only princesses.

  ‘Helen is a queen, for fuck’s sake!’ roared Menelaus. ‘And my fucking wife!’

  Paris upset the status quo, but the truth is, nobody much cared about the status quo. The Myceneans certainly didn’t: they were keener on war than peace. And Agamemnon was a Mycenean, true bred. This was how things were. It was the scheme of things.

  THREE

  And in another scheme of things entirely, as Penelope has it in the web, Zeus lusted after the loveliest of the Nereids, the sea-goddess Thetis, and was all set to impregnate her until he found out from the Fates that the son of this sea-nymph would grow up to be more powerful than his father. Prometheus confirmed this under torture, chained to his rock. It took Zeus a thousand years to extract the information, but it was well worth the wait.

  As soon as he knew what destiny had decreed for Thetis, Zeus lost no time at all. He married her off to a mere mortal, Peleus. It wasn’t a random choice. Peleus was more than an admirer: he was a hero. He’d sailed with Jason and the Argonauts. He’d been on the famous quest for the golden fleece. So the even stronger son, sprung from such loins, was sure to prove a superhero, as destiny demanded. But at least he’d be no trouble to Zeus.

  Understandably, Thetis had no wish to be matched with a mortal man. She had her own lusts, principally for Poseidon, and Peleus had quite a struggle to net and keep her. But he succeeded. And to pacify the nymph, Zeus threw a huge wedding party. All Olympia was invited and they all brought spectacular gifts. The celebrity guest list contained only one omission. The entire panoply of gods and goddesses was welcomed, except Eris. Nobody wants strife at a wedding.

  ‘There’s enough to follow,’ said Zeus, ‘in married life. Let them have their first day without it.’

  And all Olympia shook with dutiful laughter at his joke. All except Eris, who came anyway, angry at her exclusion and ready to do what she was designed to do: sow discord. She brought along her own special gift, but not for the happy couple. It was a golden apple, inscribed ‘For the fairest’. Simple words calculated to trigger cosmic disruption. Even so, it’s hard to imagine those words causing so much suffering. But there were reputations at stake, the pride and vanity of three Olympian females: Hera, Pallas Athene and Aphrodite, three powerful players, and each one of them claiming the right to the apple. No sooner had Eris lobbed it into the nuptials, sending it rolling among the sandalled feet of the immortal guests, than all hell broke loose.

  There’s no hell like a cat-fight, and Zeus had three squalling cats with their claws out bitching blue on Olympia. They were all beautiful, naturally, but Hera pulled rank, Aphrodite argued that she was the official embodiment of beauty, and Athene claimed there could be no true beauty without wisdom, which she had in spades. Wisest of the gods, Zeus stayed out of it and ordered the contestants to be conducted to Mount Ida, where he would appoint the Trojan Paris to be judge of the greatest beauty contest of all time.

  Why him? Why Paris? An obscure mountain shepherd and strummer. A son of Priam certainly, but Priam had fifty sons. He was short on bravery and not well endowed with brains either. All he had were his good looks. And he was an athlete between the sheets.

  There was one other thing, though – he had a reputation for fairness and objectivity, attributes that had been put to the test when his favourite bull, a magnificent white specimen, had entered a contest with another. Paris himself had awarded victory to the outsider, which, unbeknown to him, happened to be none other than the god Ares, got up as a bull. So impartial Paris already had a good reputation among the gods. The fact that he was a flawed character didn’t matter much to the Olympians, who were not exactly acclaimed for their morality.

  That was the way Penelope liked to play it – to badmouth Helen and excuse Paris at every opportunity. The whole Paris history unfolded. His mother the queen had a nightmare just after he was born. In her dream, the child rushed through Troy like a Fury, setting it ablaze and pulling down its proud towers. When she woke up, she told her husband about her dream. Priam heard it with considerable alarm, called in his advisers, and immediately gave the baby to a servant, whose task was to expose the infant to die on Ida, near the den of a bear. If he didn’t starve or freeze or shrivel up he’d be mauled and eaten.

  Five days later the servant discovered the infant alive and well among the bear cubs. The boy was obviously destined not to die. So he brought him up as his own son, hunter and herd, and a handsome stripling too. The nymph Oenone fell in love with him and they married and had a son called Corythus. All three lived in a mountain cave, not far from the man Paris called father.

  It was during that time that Ares took part in the prize bull affair. Priam happened to hear of the big white bull on Ida, and one year he sent up the mountain for it when he was holding the annual funeral games in memory of the son he still believed to be dead. The beast was to be brought down as one of the prizes in the competition. Paris was heartbroken – the bull was his pride and joy. But the king wanted it, so he had no choice but to let the animal go with the old servant, who drove it down to Troy. The son still didn’t know the king was his father. Paris didn’t know he was Paris.

  Angry, sad, but also curious, he followed the bull down the mountain, and on impulse and in the hope of winning it back, took part in his own funeral games. He won the chariot race, the foot race and the boxing match, open to all-comers. The real Paris couldn’t punch his way out of a bathrobe, but this Paris, Penelope’s Paris, swept the board and won the laurel crown. He was the man of the match. Every time. Two of his brothers, Hector and Deiphobus, were so furious at being outrun, outdriven and outboxed by this unknown Arcadian upstart that they drew their swords on him and would have hacked him down. But at that point the old servant flung himself at the king’s feet and told all.

  There were tears of joy all round – except from Cassandra, who wept tears of doom instead and foretold Troy’s ruin. But she had been fated never to be believed and Paris was duly reinstated. Cassandra was right. He survived to fulfil both her prophecy and Hecuba’s dream. To his credit, however, he still enjoyed spending time on Ida with Oenone and their son and his adoptive father, and the gods liked that. Such a man could surely be counted on to do the right thing, unswayed by self-interest.

  ‘Furthermore,’ said Zeus, ‘he’s handsome. Some say he’s the most beautiful man alive. Who better qualified to assess the loveliest of the goddesses?’

  The logic may have been bent, but Zeus hoped it would straighten out the quarrel between the famous three. They were all sent off to Ida for the contest.

  In a beauty contest, each of the competitors is expected to say something, to prove that nature has bestowed on her more than mere looks, even if what she says is some subtle attempt to sway the judgement. There was nothing subtle said on Ida. None of the three had any qualms about the bribe she was offering.

  Hera, goddess of Olympia, went first. She didn’t say much. As the wife of Zeus she assumed she didn’t have to.

  ‘Choose me and you’ll enjoy unrivalled political power. I’ll make you lord of all Asia, Greece, give you power greater than any king.’

  Paris looked at her and saw the beauty of sway and dominion. It was enough to kindle the ambition of any man – if he had any to kindle.

  Athene read his eyes and weighed in.

  ‘I’ll give you wisdom. Kings will come to you for counsel, world leaders for your advice. That’s real power, believe me. With this wisdom you will enjoy invincibility in the field.
You will conquer and rule, and no one will question your right to do so. Complete military and intellectual supremacy is what I offer. Just think of it.’

  He thought of it.

  While he was thinking Aphrodite left the line of goddesses and stood in front of him, her breasts almost touching him.

  ‘Forget power, politics, wisdom, war. What do you really want? What does any man really want? Choose me and I’ll give you every man’s dream, the world’s desire. I’ll give you the most beautiful woman on earth, as beautiful as myself. Well, almost. I’ll make her want you. Look at me. She’ll be yours. I’ll be yours.’

  What a choice. Political mastery, military impregnability, mind control, ultimate power. Or the perfect woman.

  How long was the adjudication period? How long did it take him to reach a conclusion? He could have asked himself why a mountain shepherd would want to dabble in politics, why a contented countryman needed global influence, statesmanship, reputation, power. He could have asked himself why he’d want to leave behind his wife and child, his prize bull, leave a life of bucolic bliss, to go to war. What war? What war could he possibly want to wage, let alone win? War was something Paris never even dreamed of, until the day the Greeks kicked the door in . . .

  ‘Are you looking at me?’

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Which was hardly surprising. Her garments were spun by the Graces and dyed in the flowers of spring, in crocus and hyacinth, in the shy violet and the rose’s alluring bloom, narcissus and lily buds, redolent of heaven.