If she didn’t shut up soon and quit hunting for synonyms for “pathetic,” I thought I might wrestle the dagger away from her and cut my own throat with it.

“Did the gods send you here to me?” she asked.

I considered lying again. Certainly not even this strong-willed woman would gut someone on an errand from the gods. But again I chose not to lie. Helen of Troy seemed almost telepathic in her ability to read me. And telling the truth for a change felt good.

“No,” I said. “No one sent me.”

“You came here just because you wanted to bed me?”

Well, at least she hadn’t used the f-word again. “Yes,” I said. “I mean, no.”

She looked at me. Somewhere in the city, a man laughed loudly, then a woman did the same. Ilium never slept.

“I mean—I was lonely,” I said. “I’ve been here for the whole war by myself, with no one to talk to, no one to touch . . .”

“You touched me enough,” said Helen.

I couldn’t tell from her tone if it was sarcasm or an accusation. “Yes,” I said.

“Are you married, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

“Yes. No.” I shook my head again. I must sound like a total idiot to Helen. “I believe I was married,” I said, “but if I was, my wife is dead.”

“You believe you were married?”

“The gods brought me to Mount Olympos across time and space,” I said, knowing she would not understand but not caring. “I believe I died in my other life, and they somehow brought me back. But they did not return all my memory to me. Images come and go from my real life, my former life . . . like dreams.”

“I understand,” said Helen. I realized from her tone that somehow, amazingly, she did understand.

“Is there a particular god or goddess you serve, Hock-en-bear-eee?”

“I report to one of the muses,” I said, “but I learned just yesterday that Aphrodite controls my fate.”

Helen looked up in surprise. “And so has she controlled mine,” she said softly. “Just yesterday, when the goddess saved Paris from Menelaus’ fury and brought him back here to our bed, Aphrodite ordered me to go to him. When I protested, she flew into a rage and threatened to make me the butt of hard, withering hate—her words—of both Trojans and Achaeans.”

“The goddess of love,” I said softly.

“The goddess of lust,” said Helen. “And I know much about lust, Hock-en-bear-eeee.”

Again I didn’t know what to say.

“My mother was named Leda, called the daughter of Night,” she said in conversational tones, “and Zeus camed to her and fucked her while he was in the shape of a swan—a huge, horny swan. There was a mural in my home showing my two older brothers and an altar to Zeus and me as an egg, waiting to be hatched.”

I couldn’t help it—I barked a laugh. Then my stomach muscles clenched, waiting for the dagger’s blade to rip through it.

Instead, Helen smiled broadly. “Yes,” she said. “I know about abductions and being a pawn of the gods, Hock-en-bear-eeee.”

“Yes,” I said. “When Paris came to Sparta . . .”

“No,” interrupted Helen. “When I was eleven, Hock-en-bear-eeee, I was carried off—abducted from the temple of Artemis Orthia—by Theseus, uniter of the Attica communities into the city of Athens. Theseus made me pregnant—I bore him a girl child, Iphigenia, whom I could not look upon with love and handed over to Clytaemnestra, to raise with her husband, Agamemnon, as their own. I was rescued from this marriage by my brothers and returned to Sparta. Theseus then went off with Hercules in his war against the Amazons, where he took time to invade hell, marry an Amazon warrior, and explore the Labyrinth of the minotaur in Crete.”

My head was spinning. Every one of these Greeks and Trojans and gods had a story and had to tell it at a drop of a hat. But what did this have to do with . . .

“I know about lust, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” said Helen. “The great king Menelaus claimed me as his bride even though such men love virgins, love their bloodlines more than life, even though I was soiled goods in a man’s world that loves its virgins so. And then Paris—spurred on by Aphrodite—came to abduct me again, to take me to Troy to be his . . . prize.”

Helen stopped the recitation and seemed to be studying me. I could think of nothing to say. There was a bottomless depth of bitterness beneath her cool, ironic words. No, not bitterness I realized, looking into her eyes—sadness. A terrible, tired sadness.

“Hock-en-bear-eeee,” continued Helen. “Do you think I am the most beautiful woman in the world? Did you come here to abduct me?”

“No, I did not come here to abduct you. I have nowhere to take you. My own days are numbered by the wrath of the gods—I have betrayed my Muse and her boss, Aphrodite, and when Aphrodite heals from the wounds Diomedes inflicted on her yesterday, she will wipe me off the face of the earth as sure as we’re standing here.”

“Yes?” said Helen.

“Yes.”

“Come to bed . . . Hock-en-bear-eeee.”

I wake in the gray hour before dawn, having slept only a few hours after our last two bouts of lovemaking, but feeling perfectly rested. My back is to Helen, but somehow I know that she is also lying awake on this large bed with its elaborately carved posts.

“Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

“Yes?”

“How do you serve Aphrodite and the other gods?”

I think about this a minute and then roll over. The most beautiful woman in the world is lying there in the dim light, propping herself up on one elbow, her long, dark hair, mussed by our lovemaking, flowing around her naked shoulder and arm, with her eyes, pupils wide and dark, intent on mine.

“How do you mean?” I ask, although I know.

“Why did the gods bring you across time and space, as you say, to serve them? What do you know that they need?”

I close my eyes for a moment. How can I possibly explain to her? It will be madness if I answer honestly. But—as I admitted earlier—I’m terribly tired of lying. “I know something about the war going on,” I say. “I know some of the events that will happen . . . might happen.”

“You serve an oracle?”

“No.”

“You are a prophet, then? A priest to whom one of the gods has given such vision?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t understand,” says Helen.

I shift on my side and sit up, moving cushions to be more comfortable. It is still dark but a bird begins to sing in the courtyard. “In the place whence I came,” I whisper, “there is a song, a poem, about this war. It’s called the Iliad. So far, the events of the actual war resemble those sung about in this song.”

“You speak as if this siege and this war were already an old tale in the land you came from,” says Helen. “As if all this has already occurred.”

Don’t admit this to her. It would be folly. “Yes,” I say. “That is the truth.”

“You are one of the Fates,” she says.

“No. I’m just a man.”

Helen smiles with wicked amusement. She touches the valley between her breasts where I had climaxed just a few hours earlier. “I know that, Hock-en-bear-eeee.”

I blush, rub my cheeks, and feel the stubble there. No shaving in the scholics barracks for me this morning. Why bother? You only have hours to live.

“Will you answer my questions about the future?” she asks, her voice terribly soft.

It would be madness to do so. “I don’t really know your future,” I say disingenuously. “Only the details of this song, and there have been many discrepancies between it and the actual events . . .”

“Will you answer my questions about the future?” She sets her hand on my chest.

“Yes,” I say.

“Is Ilium doomed?” Helen’s voice is steady, calm, soft.

“Yes.”

“Will it be taken by strength or stealth?”

For God’s sake, you can’t tell her that, I think. “By stealth,” I say.

Helen actually smiles. “Odysseus,” she murmurs.

I say nothing. I tell myself that perhaps if I give no details, these revelations will not affect events.