"One day, Menelaus is staggering around the dock, more grape than man, as a Greek ship is putting out to sea. Some kid, eleven or twelve, on the deck spots Menelaus and makes this well-known gesture of contempt."

"That one."

"Menelaus goes mad. He's been snooked by the Trojan nobility every day for six years, but he has accepted this as a ruse in his masterplan of revenge. This Greek kid is too much. He dives in and almost drowns trying to reach the ship, he wants to throttle the kid so badly.

"He summons his retinue.  There are five of us left. Helen, of all people, helps us; her conjunctions with Paris aren't as regular as they had been. And Menelaus has an advantage in his plotting. He's a well-established buffoon no one in Troy takes seriously. He announces he's going home, but he wants to leave a present."

"This wouldn't be the Trojan Horse?"

"How did you guess? Yes, Menelaus wants to leave an offering. Helen did the real work, she was very clever. It wasn't easy doing things unnoticed there, but as I said they'd stopped worrying about Menelaus. They had other, slimmer, more vigorous enemies who were sniffing around, in the distance with their chariots, prodding. We built the giant horse, as the stories relate."

"But no warriors?"

"No one remotely heroic. Menelaus still had two bodyguards, but one had a bad back and the other was blind."

"No Achilles then?"

"Ever meet anyone who knew Achilles?"

"Yes."

"Then you can take pleasure in knowing they were shameless liars.  Achilles was... my private joke. A skinny child who liked wearing dresses. I scattered some truth in the stories. Any ten-year-old girl with spirit could have bested him. They only took him on the expedition because with so many men on a lengthy military campaign, they might need a jug.

 "He reached Troy with us where he made clothes for the women. He was the only one of us exiles to be successful there."

"And God-like Odysseus?"

"Odysseus was god-like. Powerful, good-looking, cunning, daring. The man all men would want to be. Of course, he never got to Troy."

"What happened to him?"