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She poured the acrid, poisoned wine into the cup, letting the smooth liquid descend down the throat of her grandchild, Hecuba, the once-prolific queen of Troy, fertile in horses did. In her dark mind, she recalled the blameless children she had borne to Priam, king of the Trojans, with grace and little effort. Divine Paris was the first, followed by Cassandra and Helenus, both seers; she remembered her valiant Hector, whom she shed a thousand tears after his death and burning. For there would be no better Trojan than he upon the face of the sun-lit world.
Hecuba, Priam's widow, ended in dry tears and with sharp words said:
You, blood of my blood defiled, you, ashes, left our lives. Paris, who on verdant Ida should have remained as a herdsman, and you, eyes of a bitch, curse of the Achaeans, turned our aid into ruin.
Ashes of Troy, Spartan bitch, I call upon the gods as my witnesses, may the passing of your days never be easy for you! May you grieve when you remember your lineage that you leave behind! May you bear a fraction of the yoke of my sorrow! You wretched and shameless one, cursed pearl set in stone, ghost of Persephone you are, daughter of Leda. May you know what a true mother's pain is.
Thus spoke Priam's widow, and darkness covered the eyes of the girl. Now in the house of the one who receives many she went.
But the gods did not allow Hecuba, enraged, to continue with the planned slaughter. It was Apollo the archer, who rules from Crisa, who planted in the mind of Helenus, her dear son, the idea of seeing what the former queen was plotting behind the studded silver doors.
—Mother, mother, mother, most divine of women, what is happening? Why can't I hear my niece? Has she fallen asleep, or what has happened to her? I don't sense her in my visions or in my being. Why do I smell the miasma of black death within these halls? Open, Mother, open!
The kylix fell to the ground, its shards scattered like grains on the black earth, while the dark drug spilled over the cold lips of Helen, the youngest daughter of Alexandros.
"Don't shout, Helenus! Don't shout, the child sleeps in her blankets. Wretch, you will wake her." Hecuba took her dead granddaughter in her arms as she carried her to the cradle, and with the folds of her garments she wiped away the evidence of her cruel deed, her revenge against Helen, daughter of Leda. But Apollo, of the silver bow, inspired dear Helenus to break the bronze lock of the door.
"Mother! It smells of death here! Miasma reigns in these halls. Where are you, Helene? Daughter of one my deceased brothers, the one of finest stature, Alexandros."
And he could not contain the cry, the pain, and the cold tears that spilled down his cheeks when he saw it. For he found his beloved mother in the act of wiping the poison from his niece's lips. "What have you done, Mother? The gods, your son, why should you pay for the Trojans' misfortunes behind your back? What dark god has troubled your heart and soul that you have committed such a sacrilegious act? Oh Mother, of all of you, you are the one I love most, but I cannot think of the innocent life you have just taken. She was your granddaughter! Look at her, and don't tell me you don't remember Father in her eyes, don't tell me you don't see your own children, born in the form of the child. But that's it, you have killed her, you, Mother, you have killed her."
Hecuba laid Helen in the cradle, where she then knelt, pleading, embracing the beautiful knees of blameless Helenus.
"Oh, my son, my son! Cease your wailing, do not draw the attention of those swine, those bandits who for ten years decimated our fields, our allies, and our beautiful city. Do not weep for the vermin that bore your innocent brother, Alexandros, the most shameless of my children. Hear these winged words if it was not I who gave birth to you, if it was not my milk that you drank, even though you were more than a small creature, light of my eyes. My Helenus, dear son of my heart, cease your wailing."
But Helenus, who still harbored in his heart rage and resentment against the predatory Achaeans who would soon carry them across the gray sea, teeming with fish, far from their ancestral homeland; for the immortal gods had decreed to scatter them like the white blossoms that gentle zephyrs carry away their children, who would never again see the land where they were born. Slowly, he loosened her supplicating embrace with his soft fingers, while Hecuba, the most glorious of queens, wept bitterly while cursing the most beloved of her surviving children.
--- Cursed and clouded, you are not my Helenus, you are not, you are yet another of the Achaeans, of the treacherous Argives!. Vile and treacherous, you oppose what your mother, I, who suffered horrors in your birth and that of your sister, demands of you. So be it! Let the dark bronze pierce my breast, mine! the one you now reject! Kill me fast, Argive, for there is no longer anything I hold dear under the Sun.
But the dagger never reached the heart of Hecuba, widow of Priam, but rather the hands of her graceful son who raised it as a sail billows in the warm south wind toward the Black Sea.
—Mother, the unknown god who troubles your thoughts is worse than I thought, not because of the vile crime committed, but because he made you think and do. No, it was He who made you think that I was going to be the one whom the gods decreed that would have killed you.
No, Mother, I will not be your executioner. Too much death has already permeated these once joyful halls. Rise, daughter of Dimas, for you have committed a vile crime, but I, because I am your son, will cover it up.
Thus Hecuba spoke to her son, her hands touching his chin as bitterness against the divine daughter of Zeus vanished and cold tears spilled down her cheeks—Helenus, light of my life, light of the Trojans and of your exalted Father, what have I done to deserve you? Flee, my son, flee, lest the Furies come for me and think that it was your bronze that killed my granddaughter; flee quickly in the equilateral ships, lest the cruel Danaans cut off the beautiful hair that you wear for me like an olive blossom; flee, Helenus, from this crime!
Helenus twisted his hand and seized his mother by the wrist. They hurriedly fled the scene of the dark crime, leaving the lifeless infant, the daughter of divine Helen, to be consumed by flames and rats. They turned toward the corner, descending the megaron while the sacking of beautiful, windswept Ilium continued under the cover of the starless, black night. For not even the daughters of Titan Astraeus wished to witness the ravaged vineyards, the reedbeds of Scamandra, while the ominous birds in flocks bid farewell to fertile Troy toward the heavens; the dwellings of the noble Trojans charred and plundered like the badger destroying the hive of proud bees in search of sweet honey. The daughters of Astraeus and the daughters of Atlas, called Hydriades, shed a thousand tears and began to cover the firmament with black clouds, by the command of thundering Zeus.