So it had all really happened.

Just as the legend had told her, the Trojans had wheeled the great wooden horse into the city, believing that their Argive enemies had gone home in defeat. The defenders had later celebrated far into the night…and at dawn, the Argive soldiers had crept out of the horse’s belly and opened the city gates. Then their comrades had swept into the streets, burning, looting and raping on their way.

The Trojan warriors had regrouped long enough to mount a last, frantic, doomed defense. They died where they stood, surrounded by their enemies. Only Prince Aeneas and his tiny band managed to hack their way to freedom, through the gates and on towards the sea.

For the others, the last sounds they heard had been the shrieks of their women, held down before the enemies who stood in line to ravish them.

The royal princesses had been slightly more fortunate. Captured in the royal palace, they had been taken away as prizes for the Argive rulers. This was scant comfort for Andromache, who had already seen her gallant husband Hector slain, and now watched as the Argive King Odysseus threw her infant son from the city walls.

Her shrieks had almost drowned the whimperings of her sister-in-law Helen, who lay huddled in the corner. But when her vengeful husband burst through the palace door, she had rallied one last burst of courage, to stand before him and rip her bodice away.

At the sight, Menelaus had dropped his sword and swept her into his arms.

No one would have blamed him if he had cut out her heart instead. She had started this ten year’s war, by fleeing from the King of Sparta with Prince Paris of Troy. Now, at last, she had seen that her once-despised husband was her own true love.

Just like Rhett and Scarlett, Felicity Arnold thought. But then, their creator, Margaret Mitchell, had certainly known of this legend, too. Perhaps it had even inspired her to create her own more modern version.

Felicity’s own knowledge of ancient history had been broad enough to win her a place in Apollo’s Temple, caring for the wounded. She had always been pleased when she could save one defender’s life, even knowing that he was probably doomed to die a few weeks later, when the Wooden Horse came through the gates.

Even using the few words she had learned of their own long-dead language, she would had been able to warn them about the Trojan Horse in plenty of time. But it would have been too late. Thousands of brave men would already have been slain. Besides, what chance would she have, when even the prophetess Cassandra had not been believed?

Now that Trojan princess would become a concubine for Agamemnon, the King of the Kings of Argos. Soon after that, his jealous wife would kill them both. Their story would long be remembered, with the rest of the Epic of Troy, but that would be small comfort to the tragic heroine herself.

In the normal course of events…or as normal as they could be now…Felicity would have been facing an even more sordid fate. Already, the Argives had seen her fleeing from the palace, trying to reach the temple in the hopes of finding sanctuary there. That had not spared Cassandra when they found her clinging to a statue of Athena herself, but ravishing a mere servant girl might not be worth angering the gods.

Obviously, though, she was tempting enough for the lust-maddened men. The dirty, sweaty, armored warriors loomed up before her at the temple gates, clutching their swords as they sneered. She could see them all too clearly, in the flames that engulfed the burning wooden shops around her, sending their thatched roofs crashing to the ground.

“Are you going somewhere, pretty lady?” their leader demanded. “We will go with, to protect you. You should not be alone on a night like this…there are dangerous men about.”

His friends laughed cruelly at this clumsy jest, but a moment later their smiles faded away…

Because she did, too. At one moment, she was reaching into the pouch at her waist, no doubt for a cloth to wipe her tears…and in the next, she was gone.

Only one man was bold enough to voice the thought that had come to them all. “She must have been a goddess,” he whispered. “And it’s a good thing we did not touch her.”

“We did not even see her,” their captain commanded. “If we say we did, they’ll all think we’ve gone mad.”

* * *

It was ten years earlier, as the natives measured time, when Felicity Arnold reappeared in the Spartan palace.

This time, she used a skill that she had learned before even leaving for Troy. She had practiced the kind of sensual, seductive dances that she had seen in the movie versions of the classic story, so that she could join the girls who were hired to entertain the king’s royal guest.

So she had danced for Prince Paris of Troy, to the wild music of the pipes and tambourines…circling her pelvis and swinging her breasts beneath her sheer red silk gown, practically in his silly, soft face. He hardly seemed to have seen her, since he had eyes only for his hostess.

And Helen of Troy…who was still Helen of Sparta now…had responded to his lovesick gaze with a sly, sideways smile from her Cupid’s bow lips. At the same time, she tossed back her golden curls, making her dangling coin earrings flash in the firelight.

Of course, her husband had noticed but was trying to pretend he had not. He glowered at them from over his curly red beard and hunched his broad shoulders. But he still showed the Trojan prince the courtesy than any host owed a guest.

“So, you will give your royal father a good report of us?” he asked.

“I will be sure to do just that,” the Trojan prince assured him. “I will tell him of your fine artists, who have decorated these walls so beautifully, with yellow lions running across the green fields beneath white clouds in a bright blue sky…just as though they were alive. And these dancers are equally gifted…” at last, he bowed his black curls briefly in their direction, to show that he had noticed them, after all.

“But none of them are as fair as your queen,” he said then…trying to make it sound like a mere courtly flattery, but unable to hide his deeper, forbidden feelings. The king glared more angrily than ever this time, so that even Helen could not ignore it. Then she reached over to touch his arm.

“Prince Paris is very kind,” she told her husband, leaning towards him at last, her soft, full bosom brushing against his hard, powerful shoulder. “I hope that we may visit his country some day.”

“We cannot be more gracious to you than he was to us,” the young man replied.

“My husband is always the very soul of kindness to everyone,” she said.

And that, thought Felicity, is a big part of the problem.

* * *

“My Lord Menelaus?”

This time, he showed his courtesy by stopping to look down when a mere dancing girl tugged at his sleeve, even though he was on his way to relieve himself.

“I am going to the necessary room,” he said, with a faint smile, “and I have been drinking wine, so I must ask you to be brief.”

“May I see you after, in your bedchamber?”

Her brazen invitation seemed to startle him for a moment, even coming from such a simple foreign girl, who could barely speak his language and had obviously learned her few words with difficulty. Then he laughed bitterly.

“My queen seems to have other things to do,” he said, “so I must accept your kind invitation.”

“It may be even kinder than you think,” she answered, as she turned towards the stairway.

She had barely had time to admire the room, with its golden stars painted on the dark blue dome, before he joined her.

“I suppose this will be an extra fee,” he said, as he approached her. “But I will be glad to pay it. I would do as much just for the sight of your long curls the color of copper with the eyes that almost match them, and that straight little nose and round pink lips of yours.” He took one of her tresses between his thick fingers, sending a thrill all through her.

As he took her into his arms, she reveled for a moment in the feeling of his muscular arms around her and his scented curly bronze beard brushing her face. His embrace was strong but gentle and his full lips were firm but soft against her own.

She would gladly have stayed the night with him…but she feared that it would have changed her mind. Why should the ungrateful Helen have him, she bitterly asked herself. From the way he looks at me, I believe that I could win him. But he must stay in love with her…just as she must fall in love with him…or thousands will die and a city will vanish.

“There will be no charge at all,” she told him, as she pulled away. “Just a timely warning.”

“And what is that?” he asked her bitterly. “I fear I already know.”

Looking up into his sad brown eyes, she found it hard to confirm his fears, but it was the only way to save them all.

“I have seen how your queen looks at the Trojan prince,” she told him, forcing out the hurtful words as quickly as she could.

“And who has not?” he demanded, drawing further away. “But it is a harmless flirtation.”

“No, it is not,” she answered desperately, grasping his arm. “She will flee with him to Troy tonight and you will follow, with an Argive army. For ten years you will fight for her, thousands of men will die and the city will be destroyed.”

“This is no new prophecy,” he answered, with an angry laugh. “The mad Princess Cassandra of Troy has been saying the same thing for years, but no one will listen to her.”

“They should,” Felicity told him shortly. “It is all true. But you can stop it on this very night. And even if you do not,” she added, with a faint smile, “It should make the two of you much happier when you finally do bring her home.”

“Well, that itself is worth doing,” he answered ruefully. “But I would much rather stop her from wanting to go. What must I do?”

So Felicity told him.

* * *

Menelaus was waiting when his wife came into their room. Helen jumped when she saw him.

“Why are you still up here, my lord?” she asked. “Our guests will wonder where you have gone.”

“Our guests can wait,” he answered shortly. “They must be wondering about you as well. I am wondering, too. Why have you come up here tonight, while the dinner is still going on?”

As she cast about for some excuse, he went on, “Could it be that you have come up here to pack your jewels and finest gowns, before you run away with Prince Paris?”

Her pink little mouth fell open and she gasped in surprise, but she was too shocked to deny it.

“Some spy…” she finally managed to gasp. Then hastily changed it to, “Some liar has told you that story.”

“No spy and no liar,” he answered. “I was not sure that she was telling the truth, but I am now. I can see your guilt in your eyes.”

“It is not true, I swear it!” she wailed.

“You are right about that,” he answered grimly, glowering at her from over his crossed arms. Her gaze widened as she glanced at them, as though she were realizing for the first time how powerful they were.

“You are not running away with Prince Paris or anyone else,” he informed her. “And I will make you wish you had never agreed to do it.”

“What will you do to me?” she whispered. When he remained stubbornly silent, she went on, “Please tell me how bad it will be?” Tears formed in her blue eyes and ran down her soft pink cheeks, reminding him, once more, why so many had called her the world’s most beautiful woman.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, as he grasped her shoulder and pulled her towards the bed. She relaxed in his grip, obviously thinking that he was going to ravish her and not too displeased at the prospect.

Instead, he sat heavily on the fur bed cover and pulled her across his knee. Then he lifted her sheer white skirt from her feet to her knees and finally to her waist. His left hand clamped down across her shoulders, as his he clasped her legs between his thighs, pinning her down so firmly that she could barely squirm.

“You are going to beat me!” she wailed.

“Not quite,” he told her. “I am going to spank you until you howl for mercy, and then I will spank you some more. I will spank you until you forget Prince Paris and everything else in the world, except trying to make me stop.”

“You will spank me?” she demanded. “What kind of barbarian word can that be? What does it mean?”

“This,” he answered, as his broad, square, sword-hardened hand came down with a crash on her plump pink backside. With a shriek, she tried to wriggle free, but found herself held helpless. That first blow was soon followed by the second, then the third. By the fifth, she was wailing, “Please stop, please! I won’t do anything bad again! Please, please, please stop! OUCH, OUCH, OUCH!”

Coming from the great hall below, the faint strains of the sensuous music made a strange counterpoint to her screams. He did not seem to hear either one, as his pitiless blows went on and on. With each hard smack, he saw her globes turning a brighter red and felt them growing warmer. That feeling was almost as satisfying as her helpless screams and pleas.

“Please, please, please stop!” she was going on. “My poor bottom is on fire! Please, make it stop!”

“And will you ever even flirt with another man again?”

“No, no, I swear it by all the gods! I swear by my own goddess Aphrodite. Please, please stop!”

“Then say the words after me. ‘I will never flirt with another man.’ And say it with every smack I give you.”

“But how can I talk when you…OUCH! All right. ‘I will never flirt with another man.” NOW will you please stop? OUCH, OUCH, OUCH!””

By the tenth time she had said it, she could barely force the words out through her gritted teeth. By the fifteenth, the words were mingled with helpless sobs. She was forced to speak those same lines twenty times, with each one marked by another sharp slap, until she was sure she could never forget them.

Fervently, she thanked her goddess Aphrodite when he finally stopped and removed his imprisoning limbs, so that she could pull herself to her feet.

Then she stood sniffling and rubbing her backside through the skirt that had fallen back into place. He could glimpse the new red swelling through the sheer white fabric, and it filled him with a strange excitement.

“Now I will take you to bed, wife,” he ordered.

“But I can’t lie down on my back,” she wailed.

For an answer, he sat on the bed and held out his arms. She sat on his lap facing him and wound her arms around his neck, thus raising her poor bruised bottom into the air, where she was glad to feel the evening air caress it.

In that position, she could feel that his spear had grown hard and long beneath his own short leather skirt. She impaled herself on it, and soon he could hear her gasping and panting more eagerly than she ever had before.

As his hand rose to caress her nipples, he could feel that they were almost as hard as he was. Best of all, he could feel her sheath growing warm and wet as it closed and opened, more and more quickly, around his spear, pulling him into her depths.

When they were finished, they stayed with their arms around each other’s necks, covering each other’s faces with kisses. Between them, though, he managed to say, “Now, you will stay locked in here all night while I bid farewell to Prince Paris…alone.”

“Yes, my lord,” she answered meekly, with lowered eyes. Then she raised them long enough to add, “But please come back quickly.”

* * *

Listening to them through the door, Felicity had barely noticed that the other servants had been doing the same thing. They, too, had been smiling, as the heard the sharp smacks that their king was delivering to his queen’s royal rear end and heard her howls and pleas. Now she heard them celebrating right along with her.

“If ever any woman earned a beating, she did,” an old seamstress muttered. “I have been with them since they were married, and I was waiting for him to do this all that time.”

It is not really a beating but a spanking, Felicity thought, and I wish I could tell you so. But I must be gone before you start wondering too much about me, and why I appeared at just the right moment to make sure that he gave it to her at just the right time.

Prince Paris was gone already. He had fled when he heard Helen’s screams and pleas…not knowing what was causing them, but afraid that he would be the next to suffer the same fate. Judging by her wailing, he must have felt sure that it would be a harsh penalty indeed.

I don’t think it would matter if he had stayed, Felicity told herself. Helen has a new man, now…her own husband…and he has shown her that he can be a man indeed. No doubt she will enjoy his power even more than he does. It really IS the ultimate Aphrodisiac, as Henry Kissinger will say about 3,000 years from now.

And speaking of Aphrodite, thought Felicity, Helen does serve that goddess of love…who moves in mysterious ways. She may have promised Helen to Paris…but I think that Helen and Menelaus have changed her sacred mind, with their very devoted service tonight.

The next morning, Helen continued serving her goddess, in her most shameless manner. When the servants crept cautiously into her room, they found her lying with her arms crossed under her smiling face and her bruised backside exposed to the air. She ordered them to soothe it with ointments and writhed happily as they did.

Obviously, I have done well here, Felicity thought, as she felt the royal backside wriggling beneath her own fingers.

* * *

But had she done well enough to change the course of history?

Some historians insisted that it was very hard to do…because history would find a way to get itself back on track, no matter how hard anyone tried to derail it. Others, like Felicity herself, believed in the butterfly effect…that it would be fairly easy to change the past and the future along with it…or, as they put it, “The flapping of a butterfly’s wings can cause a tornado in Texas,” if the wings flap at just the right time.

Only, in this case, she would have to call it the spanking effect…if it worked.

If she could prove it, she would soon advance from teaching history at a Midwestern suburban high school to a seat at some famous university…perhaps even Yale, where her father had taught.

And she would be sure to commend both parents for the three great gifts they had given her…a love of history, a desire to set wrongs right and an unshakeable belief that nothing would change behavior faster than a good spanking.

But even if no one else ever knew how she had succeeded in changing the course of history, she would know herself, and that would make it all worthwhile.

* * *

But had she succeeded? She had to find out for sure.

So she went back to Troy once again…twenty years after the night when it would have fallen. Sure enough, she saw that the city still stood. When she asked about Prince Paris, the citizens shrugged and said that they did not know that much about him, since he was only the king’s younger son…but Hector and Andromache, with their little prince, were as happy a family as anyone could imagine, and a fine example for everyone else…just like Menelaus and Helen with their daughter Hermione, over the sea in Sparta.

“May the gods bless them all,” her new friends often added.

“Amen to that!” Felicity had answered, “Even more richly than they already have.” And, she told herself, you good people will never know how richly that is. And I have done even more to help those gods than even I could ever have imagined.

* * *

“She’s done even more than I could have imagined!”

One year after Felicity’s triumphant return trip to Troy, Captain Nicolas D’Angelo of the Time Police sighed and shook his head as he surveyed the sleepy little village that would have been the mighty Rome.

The shielded records had told him how drastic the change was…the ones that showed history’s original course, contrasted with those that reflected every time traveler’s footsteps. He had refused to believe that such a clumsy effort, by such a rank amateur, had had such a drastic effect. Now, looking around, he saw that it was all too true.

That fool of a woman had altered history so drastically, society would never have advanced to the position of forming the Time Police at all, if their own headquarters had not been shielded from the flapping of those famous butterfly wings.

The result should have been obvious even to her, he told himself. She had the best of good intentions, of course…but we know where they lead.

In this case, they had led to a world where Rome had never been created…because its founder, Aeneas, had never fled from Troy…because he had had no need to do so, because the Trojan War had never happened and the city had never fallen. And this, in turn, had happened because that foolish, thoughtless girl had gone back and stopped the war with a well-timed spanking, on Helen of Sparta’s admittedly very deserving behind.

Like every other educated man, he had thought that the Trojan War, and hence the flight of Aeneas, might all be a myth. He had to admire the girl’s thoroughness in going back to find out for herself that…like so many legends…it had been based on the literal truth.

But as for that very real spanking that the authentic Menelaus had given to the bona fide Helen of Troy…who would always be Helen of Sparta now…well, it was nothing to the thrashing he would give to that meddling girl, when he finally caught up with her. His hands practically tingled with anticipation at the prospect.

That pleasant sensation soon stopped, though, as he thought things through even further.

Well, so what if Rome had never appeared? Even some of his own colleagues were sure to ask that question. The Roman Empire had meant oppression and slavery throughout the Western World.

But without it, the world was still a group of isolated kingdoms, barely aware of each other’s existence, let alone their advances in knowledge…including the entropy theory. Roman roads had connected Europe, and centuries later the Italian Renaissance had used them to spread the spirit of discover and invention.

Also, he had to admit it…for someone named D’Angelo, the thought of losing Rome was not a pleasant one. For one thing, he had the proverbial map of Italy all over his rather swarthy face, with its black curly hair, bold dark eyes and prominent nose. He didn’t think that talking about the map of Carthage or the map of Latium would have quite the same ring.

In the true Italian Renaissance spirit, the invention of the entropy reversal machine had come from a very simple discovery… as things grew older, their molecules moved in a less orderly pattern. If you could reverse entropy, by returning an object’s molecules to an earlier, more orderly stage, you could return anything to an earlier time…even if the object were, say, an entire city, where the entropy ray was focused.

This had always been known as a theory. But, unfortunately for the rest of the world, a high-school teacher named Felicity Arnold had had a few dates with a certain crackpot inventor.

This Joe Himmel confided to her that he had built a machine that did, indeed, reverse entropy…and he had proven it by taking her to Jimmy Carter’s presidential inauguration ball. What’s more, he had made his device the size of a Kleenex package, so that he was able to carry her home again without attracting undue attention.

Even when he was confessing his role to the Time Police…after realizing how much damage he had done…the young inventor had not been able to hide his pride.

Less confidently, he had admitted that she had easily convinced him to let her go back and prove that his invention had been successful. Of course, he had wanted to go himself…but she had convinced him that her historical knowledge would allow her to pass for one of the natives…while his engineering genius could only get him burned as a wizard, in some of the destinations she had in mind.

It would certainly do so, the captain realized, in the next place she was going…the court of King Henry VIII.

And what would this incredibly foolish and reckless…but unquestionably well-meaning young woman…choose to do there? He found it easy to guess.

But first, he himself…Nicholas D’Angelo…would have to travel back to Troy in the department’s own entropy reversal chamber and make sure that the city fell on schedule. Otherwise, Henry’s court would never have existed…and the stupid girl’s entire world would be her own Saxon village.

So he would have to be the man who doomed Troy and watched it burn…all due to that dreadful female. By the time he was done spanking her, he promised himself, she would not be able to sit down again for the next century.

No, he’d make that the next millennium, he promised himself, as he sailed backwards across the centuries to urge Paris to flee with Helen one night before he had planned, so that Menelaus would not be in time to stop them.

That would at least spare Helen a terrible spanking, he assured himself grimly. And he promised himself, once again, that that meddling little fool would more than make up for it. If Felicity Arnold was so fond of passing out physical punishments, he’d see how much she enjoyed getting one herself.