The Tale of Troy by Roger Green

Author:Roger Green
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780141925363
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-12-05T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

THE THEFT OF THE LUCK OF TROY

*

Strong Tydeus' son should with Odysseus scale

The great wall… and should bear away

Pallas the Gracious, with her free consent,

Whose image was the sure defence of Troy:

Yea, for not even a god, how wrath so e'er

Had power to lay the city of Priam waste

While that immortal shape stood warder there.

QUINTUS SMYRNAEUS

Fall of Troy (Translated by A. S. Way)

9

Paris was immensely proud of himself for shooting Achilles; and now that Hector was dead he would, of course, be the next King of Troy when Priam died.

Helen smiled wearily and sadly as she sat in her room, longing for her home in far-away Sparta; and the blood dripped from the Star-stone, dripped and vanished, dripped and vanished and left no mark.

One day a handsome youth, little more than a boy, came to see her. Through the quiet palace he was led, and reached the shaded room where Helen sat weaving at her loom.

‘Lady,’ he said, ‘my name is Corythus, and I have a message for you alone, and for your lord, Prince Paris.’

Then Helen sent her maidens from the room, and with a smile took the scroll of bark which Corythus handed to her. Breaking the golden thread with which it was fastened, she opened and read – and her eyes went wide and the colour forsook her face.

‘Your mother is called Oenone,’ she said in a strangled voice, ‘and she is the wife of Paris - and you are their son?’

Corythus nodded: ‘My mother sent me,’ he answered simply. ‘It was time, she said, that I came to Troy and claimed my rightful place as eldest and only son of the heir apparent.’

Then in a flood all that she had lost came to Helen: Menelaus, her home, Hermione, the name of true and faithful wife. And all for what? For Paris, doubly a cheat and traitor, who had deceived both her and Oenone.

She uttered a little choking cry and slipped to the floor in a faint, while Corythus bent over her anxiously, pitying her grief, marvelling at her beauty.

At this moment Paris strode into the room. He gave one glance, and his mad jealousy flared up. Without a moment's pause he snatched the sword from his side and struck Corythus dead with a single blow.

Then, so fierce was his rage and jealousy, he would have slain Helen also, but he saw the scroll and, reading what Oenone had written, he realized what he had done. Then he flung himself upon the ground and wept.

Corythus was burnt on a great pyre as became his rank, and Paris mourned sincerely for him. Helen wept too; but she spoke no more to Paris, and sat alone day after day gazing out towards the Grecian tents, or weaving on her loom all the tales of sorrow that had befallen on account of her, since Paris had come and carried her away from her happy home in Sparta.

Paris suffered too, and grew more reckless, though he had seldom been much of a fighter since he brought Helen to Troy.

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