Chapter 13: The Fall of Troy

IT DIDN’T TAKE too long to see how the war would ultimately play out, though it took ten years for the final curtain to fall. Aphrodite had recruited Apollo, Artemis, and mighty Ares to help the Trojans. But arrayed against them were Athene and Hera (losers of the beauty contest), Aphrodite’s once-again estranged husband Hephaistos, Poseidon (who was still upset about losing Aphrodite at sea), and Hermes. Hermes is known today by the simple title of being a messenger god. But to me, he was a god most to be feared. He was the god of travelers and, oddly enough, the god of the satchel. He should have been my patron. If you’ve lost your luggage, appeal to Hermes. He’d had nothing to do with my own satchel and the infinity room, but I had no doubt he could unmake it if he knew about it. Worst of all, Hermes was a spy. You just never knew where he might show up. I just hoped Aphrodite would keep her mouth shut about the infinity room.

THERE WAS a lovely temple to Aphrodite in Ilium (the name of the city in the Kingdom of Troy). As in most of her temples, worshipers bearing gifts for the goddess could ask a question of a priestess and expect to get an answer during coitus. No, they were not prostitutes. That’s something the anal-retentive archeologists of the nineteenth and twentieth century arrived at because they considered any sex act with someone other than a spouse to be prostitution. Aphrodite was the goddess of sex, true, but not of prostitution.

If they had paid attention to what happened back on Cyprus with the Propoetides, they’d have figured that out. Those twelve priestesses of the goddess got it into their heads that they could make a pretty fortune by just selling sex and profiting from it. This was not long after Aphrodite and I arrived on Cyprus, so I was there when she put an end to the practice by turning them into stone. The last I saw of them was in the British museum.

But the priestesses of Troy were devoted to Aphrodite. They often blessed the warriors going out to meet the Greeks in battle. And lest you think that was an easy task, remember there were over 100,000 warriors on each side in this conflict! It was a bloody mess on the battlefield. But the priestesses rightly felt that no man should go to his death without having been laid. Recently. The soldiers retreated behind the city walls at night and many of them retreated into the embrace of the goddess, who felt the hot smell of sex was the best offering she could be given.

Nonetheless, Aphrodite came to me in a dream one night. I came, too. As we copulated, she wept on my shoulder because she knew the Greeks were going to win the war and her precious city would be sacked and ruined. Now, there is something else you need to realize. Just because she (and her priestesses) loved sex, didn’t mean that she wasn’t emotionally committed to the act and to the people involved. She had loved and lost many times. I saw the priestesses in the temple weep over the list of fallen published each day, touching the names of those they had blessed and, indeed, remembering their touch and love.

Aphrodite painted a picture of horror that would occur once the barbarian Greeks breached the city gates. Men would be slaughtered. Women would be raped ... and then slaughtered. I was beginning to shrink out of her hot embrace when she entreated me to save her priestesses when the city fell. With my cock steeping in her juices, what could I do but agree? She knew I had the means as I could easily stuff them all into my infinity room.

I asked one boon. I asked that they gather together all the scrolls of Ilium they could collect so that when I rescued them, I would save the knowledge of the city as well. Aphrodite agreed and our bargain was sealed with another crashing orgasm.

THERE WERE details that needed to be worked out. I talked to Nimia and Josie, and they went to work preparing a place for the one or two hundred priestesses who would be joining our little world. That would double our population. The men in the harem were called upon to build housing for them and I did what I could to make their work lighter. Even the women could lift the stone blocks to build the housing. The infinity room was growing into a small city.

Of course, I had to figure out how I was going to escape when the city fell. I’d adopted the visage of an old man in my latest transfiguration, so that I could avoid being sent out to fight. I was still opposed to the senseless bloodletting of this war and wanted no part in the killing. I’d been given a job in Priam’s harem as a joke. I was told I was the last line of defense for the women—and then all his household laughed.

“If it comes down to Bob protecting the harem, they might as well strip and open their legs. There will soon be a Greek between them,” laughed Hector. I was too old even for Helen to want a ride.

Let me just mention that I bore no grudge against Hector. What he said was exactly what I wanted him to believe. I had nothing at all to do with that asshole Achilles drilling Hector with a spear the next day. I just want that to be clear.

AFTER HECTOR’S death, when Paris went out to gain revenge for his brother and killed Achilles, Troy had renewed hope. Their warriors met the Greeks with renewed fervor and drove them back toward their boats. Day after day the battle raged. And then a day dawned clear and bright. The warriors marched out of the city and found no Greeks to meet them on the field. Of their thousand ships, perhaps half had not been burned, but those had loaded their soldiers and departed.

The Trojans went out to investigate and found only a huge wooden horse. You probably know the rest of the story from Virgil’s writing of the Aeneid, though he got most of the details wrong. Homer was dead set to make Odysseus out to be the hero of the Greeks, so he ignored the horse entirely. I think Athene was probably prompting him. I never understood why she liked him so much. The Greeks in their message wished Paris and all the other men of Troy enjoyment of Helen.

It was quite a celebration. Even the harem emptied to go party in the streets. Only Cassandra and a few children and nurses remained. Cassandra was cursed with being able to prophesy only the absolute truth, but to have no one believe her. Homer gave her short shrift in the Iliad. Virgil did slightly better in his telling of the story in the Aeneid.

First off, the girl—daughter of Priam and Hecuba and younger sister of Paris and Hector—was just plain cute. Helen might have been the most beautiful woman in the world, but if Cassandra had been allowed to grow up, she would have surpassed the legend by far. As a pubescent teen, she became the object of affection of Apollo who had been enlisted by Aphrodite to fight for Troy and had given enchanted arrows to the Trojan archers. Where they struck, if they did not kill instantly, they caused disease that eventually took the life of the wounded and spread to others in the Greek camp. But while he was in the city, Cassandra caught his eye and he fell in lust.

Cassandra was barely thirteen. Apollo was an old man to her and regardless of how glorious he looked in the temple, she had no interest in him at all. Apollo, thinking he would convince her with a rare power, gave her the gift of prophecy so that everything she said would come true. She was so horrified by what she saw in the future that she cursed Apollo and told him to bugger off. Not the way to win friends—especially gods. Apollo couldn’t revoke his gift, but to punish Cassandra—Punish! For not loving him!—he added to the gift a curse that no matter what she prophesied, no man or woman would believe her.

So, I found her in the harem, blubbering amidst the children, most of whom had been left behind. This is where Homer and Virgil both screwed up. Apollo’s curse was that no man or woman would believe her. But as she prophesied the destruction of Troy, the children of the harem were terrified. They believed her. And then Cassandra straightened and in the midst of her manic rantings pointed at me and told the children, “There lies your salvation. Go with Bob and you will be safe.”

I am neither man nor woman, either, lest you forget. I am a demon and Aphrodite had already told me Troy would fall. I opened a gateway to the infinity room and my women rushed to take the children and their nurses into my satchel. But nothing I could say would convince Cassandra to join them. She had been given a vision that she knew to be a true prophesy that she would be taken by Agamemnon after the fall and that she would see him die in Athens.

I found my way to the temple of Aphrodite to fulfill the rest of my commission. I asked the faithful priestesses of the goddess to gather up all their scrolls and come through the door I stood beside—a doorway into the infinity room. There was hesitance among some. They had a line of warriors outside the temple getting drunk and wanting to praise Aphrodite for their victory.