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us a reason to wait in Sparta until we receive their response, by which time Menelaus will have sailed for Crete. He won’t trust us, of course, but if you can make him swear an oath of friendship the customs of xenia will oblige him to let you stay here. And once he’s gone, we’ll steal his wife and head home.’
    ‘And what if Helen doesn’t want to leave – have you thought of that?’
    Apheidas gave another of his self-assured smiles and looked down at the garden. ‘She will. Her eyes may have been on you the other night, but I could see what was burning inside them. It’s obvious she doesn’t love Menelaus. She’s like a trapped animal, desperate to escape.’
    ‘There’s no escape with a face like hers,’ Paris replied. ‘Men will follow her to the ends of the world. But even if you’re right in everything you say, you’re forgetting her children. We’ll be hard pushed to take them with us, so your whole plan relies on her giving them up.’
    ‘That will depend on how much she wants her freedom,’ Apheidas said. ‘But if she won’t leave them behind, then we’ll just take her without them.’
    ‘No,’ Paris said, firmly. ‘I will gladly endanger my life trying to get her out of Sparta; I will even surrender my honour for her sake; but I will not force her to leave against her wishes, with or without her children. To do that would be to make Troy her new prison, and myself a new Menelaus!’
    Then you must find a way to speak with her, my lord,’ Apheidas insisted. ‘If you want her consent, then you must get it as soon as you can. In the meantime, I’ll find Eteoneus and demand an audience.’
    Apheidas rushed off and Paris returned to the window, only to find the garden below quiet and empty. His spirits plunged, but only for a moment as the thought of taking Helen with him to Troy quickly revived his mood. Apheidas’s foolhardy plan would require suicidal courage and recklessness, but the risk had to be taken. It was the will of the gods, and what was more, Paris had finally accepted he would never find peace again without Helen at his side.

    Helen sat by the pond and watched her children playing, aware that the Trojan prince was looking down at her from one of the upper windows. Her youngest son, Pleisthenes, ran to her and she wrapped her arms about him, enjoying the warmth of his small body against hers. She kissed his hair and sent him off to play again with his brothers and sister, telling him not to overexert himself because of his weak chest.
    As he joined their game with enthusiastic energy, heedless of his mother’s warning, she thought back to the feast three nights ago when she had first seen Paris. As soon as news reached Sparta that a delegation from Troy was approaching, she had left her quarters and joined her husband in the great hall, keen to see for herself these visitors from distant shores. Not that she had any interest in political embassies and the machinations of power, despite being a queen and the daughter of a king; rather she wanted to see their foreign garb and hear their rough, barbarian tongue being spoken; to look on their faces and imagine for herself their distant country and how different it would be to Sparta.
    But Menelaus had demanded she return to her room, angrily insisting that it was the king’s place to entertain such visitors and he did not want them distracted by her beauty, as so many before had been. He was only the king by marriage to her, she reminded him with equal venom, and she was still Sparta’s queen; after all, he could not keep her out of the sight of every man who visited Troy! Menelaus had opened his mouth to answer her back, but at that moment the Trojan delegation arrived, ushered into the great hall by Eteoneus. Menelaus quickly composed himself, but as Helen’s curiosity drew her into the circle of light thrown out by the circular hearth, she could not hide the frustrated rage still burning within her. Then her eyes met