Ben Bova - The Hittite

I felt my face reddening. “My lady … they’re only children.”

“Go, Lukka,” said Helen, her laughter tinkling like silver bells. “Do your fatherly duty.”

Shamefaced, I opened her door and stepped out into the hall just as Poletes opened the door to our room. The boys turned, saw me, and ran into my arms. And I was happy to hold them—even with Helen standing alone in her room, laughing. At me.

I hardly slept at all that night. Poletes snored beside me on the featherbed, Lukkawi and Uhri slept peacefully on the cots that the innkeeper’s sons had set up for them. I knew that Helen was on the other side of the wall that separated our rooms. Was she sleeping? Dreaming?

Strange thoughts filled my mind. I desired her, of course I did. What man wouldn’t? But did she truly desire me, or was she simply using her charms to keep me bound to her? She knew I could leave her here in Ephesus if I chose to. Leave her alone, defenseless, friendless and helpless in a strange land.

Do I love her? I asked myself. The idea struck me like a thunderbolt. Love her? A princess of Troy? The Queen of Sparta? Then an even wilder question rose before me: does Helen love me?

I lay there on the sagging feather mattress and wondered what love truly is. Women are for men’s plea sure. A wife takes care of a man’s home, bears him children, rears his family. But love? I never knew Aniti well enough to love her, nor could she have loved me. But Helen … Helen was different. What is love? I’ve put my life at risk, the lives of my men and my sons as well, for her. Is that love? Could she possibly love me? I knew it was impossible. Yet I lay there in the darkness, wondering.

Time and again I thought about tiptoeing out to her room. Time and again I could not work up the courage to do it. Yes, courage. I’d faced armed soldiery and never turned my back. I’d followed the emperor’s orders even when they sent me far from my home. But facing Helen was a different matter.

A thousand thoughts raced through my mind. I saw Aniti’s face, sad-eyed, watching me from the gray mists of Hades. I had failed her, and now Helen had offered herself to me. The most beautiful woman in the world. What would happen if I bedded her? We still had months of travel ahead of us, through strange and unknown territory. How could I maintain discipline if we were lovers? The men would want women of their own, surely, and our little troop would bog down into a caravan of women. And my sons. It was difficult enough traveling with them. If the men took women we’d soon enough have pregnancies to deal with. And then babies.

Then there was Poletes. He wanted to stay in Ephesus, but I couldn’t risk allowing him to tell the tale of Troy to these people. They would soon realize that the Hatti soldiers in their midst were harboring Helen, Queen of Sparta, princess of Troy.

Helen. Was she really offering herself to me? A common soldier? A man with two young sons clinging to him? If I told her that I loved her, would she be pleased? Or would she scorn me? Then I realized that she must be lonely. After the mortal peril she’d been through, after seeing the man she loved spitted on Achilles’ spear, after watching Troy and its entire royal family destroyed, she was alone in the world, without a love, without a friend, without even the servant she had known since childhood.

She didn’t love me, of that I was certain. She couldn’t. It was impossible. But she needed me, and she knew that the best way to keep me loyal to her was through her body. Poletes had been right: she’ll snare me in her web of allurements. Or try to.

I watched the nearly full moon sink behind the darkened temple roofs before I closed my eyes in troubled sleep. It seemed merely a moment later when I felt Poletes get out of the bed, coughing and groaning.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m old.” And he reached under the bed for the chamber pot.

Morning came bright and clear, the sky an almost cloudless blue. We were all up early and trooped down to the inn’s tavern for a breakfast of yogurt and honey, followed by hot barley cakes. Magro and the men came dragging in, bleary-eyed but grinning and joking to one another about their night’s adventures. They joined us for breakfast and ate heartily. Helen stayed in her room and had one of the innkeeper’s daughters bring breakfast to her.

I sent Magro and two of the men back into the city to trade our worn horses and donkeys for fresh mounts.

“These old swaybacks won’t fetch much,” Magro said, as the men walked the animals out of the stable. I couldn’t tell which looked the worse for wear, the animals or my men.

“Probably not,” I agreed, nodding, “but get what you can for them and buy new ones.” I handed him a small sack that held some of the baubles from Troy.

As Magro and the two others left, with the string of animals plodding slowly behind them, the innkeeper came bustling up to me.

“My lord,” he said grandly, “may I ask how do you intend to settle your account?”

He’d seen me hand the sack to Magro and now he wanted his own payoff.

I clasped him by the shoulder and walked him back toward the tavern. “I have little coin,” I explained, “but this should cover our debt to you, don’t you think?” And I pulled from the purse on my belt one of the jeweled rings I’d been carrying.

His eyes flashed wide momentarily, but he quickly covered his delight. Holding the ring up to the sunlight, where its emeralds flashed brightly, he couldn’t help but smile.

“This will do very nicely, my lord,” he said. “It will fetch a fine price at the agora.”

I thought for a moment about going down to the marketplace and converting a few more of our baubles into coin.

“And how long do you plan to stay with us, sir?” asked the landlord.

I made myself shrug. “A few days, perhaps less, perhaps longer.”

He bobbed his head up and down. “My inn is at your disposal, sir. Would you like to have one of my daughters tend to your children this day?”

“I think not. I want to see the city, and I know they’ll be curious about it also.”

“As you wish, my lord.”

I could see the thoughts running through his greedy mind. If I could pull a precious emerald ring out of my purse, what other treasures might I have in those boxes that we had carried up to my room? I realized that I couldn’t leave my room unguarded.

I detailed Hartu and Drako to stay at the inn and protect our goods. “Wear your swords,” I commanded them. “Let these busybodies see that you’re armed.”

They nodded blearily, their eyes bloodshot. I had to make an effort not to laugh at them. “You can stay in my room with the baggage and take turns napping. But wear your swords when you come out here.”

Then Helen came down, muffled in her royal-blue cloak. As if nothing had happened between us the previous day, she asked me, “Are we going to see the city?”

“We are,” I replied.

We made an odd pro cession as we walked through the streets of Ephesus: Helen, Poletes, my two children and I—plus Sukku, one of the Hatti soldiers we had picked up along our route from Troy.

Still muffled in her hooded cloak, Helen walked at my side. On my other side Poletes, strong enough now to walk, had tied a scarf of white silk across his useless eyes. He carried a walking stick, and was learning to tap out the ground ahead of him so that he could walk by himself. Still, he never strayed more than an arm’s length from me.

Lukkawi and Uhri ran ahead along the narrow, crooked streets, poking their heads into every doorway, chasing after every alley cat they saw, laughing and happy to be able to give free rein to their childish high spirits. Sukku plodded along behind them and never let them out of his sight.