To be honest, I didn't like her. She was very beautiful, and she had pretty manners, but I always felt that there was something off about her. Maybe it was because she was so continually perfect and unruffled; the other women who were parts of my life, and with whom I shared mine, were occasionally tired or sick or irritable. She never seemed to be. I never saw her with greasy hair or dirt under her fingernails; even at my husband's funeral, once we finally got his body back, she had cut just enough hair to fulfill her obligation, and tore her clothes just enough so that we wouldn't think she was indifferent. And even then, everyone said how ravishingly lovely she was. At a funeral, mind you.

It was one of the two worst days of my life. I was young, I was widowed, and I had a baby and no family close by. I was completely alone, and I was frightened. It was bad enough to lose my husband, and bad enough that his body was treated in such a horrible, impious way, but then, for me to be at his funeral and listen to that woman wail and cry and tell anyone who would listen how very, very close she and Hector had been and oh, she felt just like she had lost her big brother and best friend, and it was all her fault…You would have thought she was the widow.

Of course Hector was good to her. That was the kind of man he was. That was why I loved him so much. He could never have turned his back on his kin, no matter how distant or undeserving, and she was Paris' wife, so to him she was kin. I've been told that there was a rumor, in the slaves' quarters at least, that she was more. Hector would never have done such a thing—and if he were capable of it, I don't want to know about it. He is dead, and I hope she is too; if the story is true, let the truth die with them.

But I'll tell you this: when she started up, for one brief moment I envied Cassandra. I wished that I, too, had the god-madness. I would have given anything to take complete leave of all my senses and claw her eyes out, scratch her face—even a simpler punishment, say a huge and obvious spot of oil on her best gown, would have given me pleasure. Oh, I tell you I would have given anything—just to break the mask, tear up her perfection, see what was really beneath it all.

I sound so petty, but you shouldn't worry. I bottled it up and held it in, forced myself to be brave and to cry in private, and afterwards my brothers-in-law patted me on the shoulder and told me how well I was holding up. Perhaps, in those last days, we were all pretending; they were pretending that they could still win the war. I was pretending to be the model wife, the stalwart widow.

Dear, dear Helen. She never had to pretend to be something she wasn't. She was perfect, and we all knew it.