‘Priam, I fear the High King of Mykenai, and so should you! Surely last year you heard the selfsame Menelaos prattle about how Agamemnon has welded the whole of Greece into an obedient vassal of Mykenai? What if he should decide on war? Even if we beat him, he will ruin us. Troy’s wealth has increased for time immemorial for one reason – Troy has avoided going to war. Wars bankrupt nations, Priam – I have heard you say so yourself! The oracle states that the woman out of Greece is our downfall. Yet you ask to see her! Take heed of our Gods! Listen to the wisdom of their oracles! What are oracles, except the God-given chance for mortal men to see into the future pattern on the loom of time? You have taken the work of your father, Laomedon, and worsened it – whereas he merely restricted the number of Greek merchants allowed into the Euxine, you have stopped them altogether. The Greeks starve for sufficient tin! Yes, they can get copper from the West – at immense cost! – but they cannot get tin. Which does not negate the fact that they are wealthy and powerful.’

Face streaming tears, Paris lifted his head to the King. ‘Father, I have told you! Helen is not a prize! She comes of her own free will! Therefore she cannot be the woman of the oracles – she cannot!’

This time I managed to get in ahead of Antenor, and came down from the dais to do so. ‘You say she comes of her own free will, Paris – but is that what they will say in Greece? Do you think Agamemnon will tell his subject Kings that his brother is that most ridiculous of all men, a cuckold? Not Agamemnon, with his pride! No, Agamemnon will give it out that she was abducted. Antenor is right, Father. We are poised on the brink of war. Nor can we view a war with Greece as something affecting us alone. We have allies, Father! We are a part of the Asia Minor federation of states. We have treaties of trade and friendship with every coastal nation between Dardania and Kilikia, as well as inland as far as Assyria, and north into Skythia. The coastal lands are rich and underpopulated – they haven’t the manpower to fend off Greek invaders. They aid us in our blockade and they have grown fat off selling tin and copper to the Greeks. In the event of war, do you think Agamemnon will confine himself to Troy? No! It will be war everywhere!’

Father regarded me steadily; I looked back without fear. Only a short while ago he had said, ‘Always you draw my attention to cold reality.’ But now, I thought in despair, he had abandoned reality. All Antenor and I had managed to do was set his back up.

‘I have heard all I care to,’ he said icily. ‘Herald, send in Queen Helen.’

We waited, the hall as still and silent as a tomb. I glared at my brother Paris, wondering how we had let him become such a fool. He had turned on the dais (though he kept one hand on our father’s knee, caressing it) and was staring fixedly at the doors, his mouth curved into a smug grin. Clearly he thought we were in for a surprise, and I remembered Menelaos’s saying that she was a beautiful woman. But I always had my reservations when men called queens or princesses beautiful. Too many of them inherited that epithet along with their titles.

The doors swung open, she stood on the threshold a moment before she commenced to walk towards the throne. Her skirt chimed with a delicate tinkling as she moved, turned her into a living melody. I found I was holding my breath, had to force myself to exhale. She truly was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Even Antenor was gaping.

Shoulders back and head imperiously level, she walked with dignity and grace, neither shamed nor shy. Tall for a woman, she had the most superb body Aphrodite had ever lavished on any female creature. Tiny waist, graciously swelling hips, long legs thrusting at her skirt. No, there was nothing about her did not please. Her breasts! Bare in the immodest Greek way, high and full, they owed nothing to artifice save that their nipples were painted gold. Time elapsed before any of us got as far as that swanlike neck, her face above it. Superlatives, too many superlatives! As I remember her on that day, she was just… beautiful. Masses of pale gold hair, dark brows and lashes, eyes the colour of springtime grass rimmed with kohl drawn outward in the manner of Cretans and Egyptians.

But how much of it was actual, how much of it a spell? That I will never know. Helen is the greatest work of art the Gods have ever put upon Mother Earth.

For my father she was Fate. Not so far gone in old age that he had forgotten the pleasures to be had in the arms of a woman, he looked at her and fell in love with her. Or in lust. But because he was too old to steal her from his son, he chose instead to take it as a compliment to himself that a son of his could lure her from her husband, her children, her own lands. Swelling with pride, he turned his wondering eyes upon Paris. They were certainly a striking pair: he as dark as Ganymede, she as fair as Artemis of the forest. Without doing more than take a little stroll, Helen won the silent room completely over. No man there could continue to blame Paris for his foolishness.

The moment the King dismissed the assembly I went to his side, deliberately mounting the dais at its far end and approaching the throne slowly, three steps higher up than the elopers and taller by far than my father’s gold and ivory chair. I did not usually parade my pre-eminence, but Helen set my teeth on edge; I wanted her to know exactly whereabouts Paris stood – and where I stood. As she watched me she raised her strange, fathomless green eyes to my face.

‘My dear child, this is Hektor, my Heir,’ said Father.

She inclined her head gravely and regally. ‘It is a great pleasure, Hektor.’ Her eyes grew coquettishly round. ‘My, what a big man you are!’

It was said to provoke, but not to provoke want in me; her taste obviously ran to pretty milksops like Paris, not to massive warriors like me. Just as well. I wasn’t sure I could resist her.

‘The biggest in Troy, lady,’ I said stiffly.

She laughed. ‘I do not doubt it.’

‘Sire,’ I said to my father, ‘will you excuse me?’

He cackled. ‘Aren’t my sons magnificent, Queen Helen? This one is the pride of my heart – a great man! One day he will be a great king.’

Eyeing me thoughtfully, she said nothing; but behind her lustrous gaze the mind clearly wondered whether it might not be possible to unseat me as Heir, put Paris in my place. I let her wonder. Time would teach her that Paris wanted no part of any responsibility.

I was already at the door when the King called after me, ‘Wait, wait! Hektor, send Kalchas to me.’

A puzzling command. Why did the King want that repulsive man, if he did not also want Lakoon and Theano? There were many Gods in our city, but our own special deity was Apollo. His cult was peculiarly Trojan, which made his special priests – Kalchas, Lakoon and Theano – the most powerful prelates in Troy.

I found Kalchas walking sedately in the shadow of the altar dedicated to Zeus of the Courtyard. Nor did I question why he was there; he was the kind of man no one presumed to question. For a few moments I watched him unobserved, trying to divine his true nature. He wore long, flowing black robes embroidered with strange symbols and signs in silver, and the sickly white skin of his completely bald head shone dully in the last light of day. Once I discovered a nest of pure white snakes far underground in the palace crypt, when I had been a boy and up to all kinds of mischief. But after encountering those blinded, attenuated creatures of Kore I never ventured into the crypt again. Kalchas aroused exactly the same feelings in me.

It was said that he had travelled the length and breadth of the world, from the Hyperboreans to the River of Ocean, to lands far east of Babylon and lands far south of Aithiopai. His mode of dress came from Ur and Sumer, and in Egypt he had witnessed the rituals which had been handed down the ranks of those illustrious priests since the beginning of Gods and men. Other things were whispered of him: that he could preserve a body so well it looked as fresh a hundred years later as it did the day it was interred; that he had participated in the awful rites of black Set; even that he had kissed the phallus of Osiris, and so gained supreme insight. I could never like him.