Helen of Troy (106 page)

“Here,” she said, showing me the large stone box that was embedded in the cliff. A wilted wreath lay on top of it.

Mother. Oh, Mother. I draped myself over the cold stone. I had brought nothing—but no, that was not true. I had brought myself.

“I am here—Helen . . .” I murmured endearments as I pressed my lips against the sharp corner of the tomb. “Your Helen.” I need not tell her what had passed since we had parted. I need not tell her of the time in Troy. I need not tell her of what had befallen me since. The dead are kind that way, they do not want a full recounting.

“And here, your brothers.” Hermione was showing me the other tombs.

I knelt before them, asking them for guidance. “You always guided me before,” I said. “You taught me so many things.” I did not tell them I was grieved that they were gone; they knew that. We must not speak to the dead of things they already know. That insults them.

“A tomb waits for Father.” She indicated it. “But after me—the line of Tyndareus will die. I am its last,” Hermione said. Her voice was like a sad falling note.

“You cannot know that.” She was still of childbearing age. “There will be another husband for you. Neoptolemus was not worthy. I saw the unspeakable things he did in Troy. You speak of my desecrating my own name, but he desecrated his father’s, Achilles’s. You are free, and now someone you love will come.”

“As the daughter of Helen—” she began.

“You will be expected to be beautiful, and passionate. Are you?” Now I must be bold. I looked at her closely. Her face was pleasant, and her hair thick and shining.

She drew back, blushing. “Passionate . . . I do not know.”

“You will not until the man you love holds you.” I leaned forward. “With women, it is the man, and not the moment. That is the truth of it. With men it is the reverse.”

I had seen my daughter, and we had made tentative steps toward reconciliation. The past would always be there; she would mistrust me for a long time, but she had, warily, admitted me into the forecourt of her life. It was more than I had dared to ask.

LXXVI

A
fraid of frightening her away, like a butterfly alighting on a flower, I did not approach her too boldly in the days that followed. I let her go about her ways, although my eyes never tired of looking at her—but only when I could look secretly. Time. Time would bring all things about. I had to believe that.

And time I had in abundance. There was nothing stretching out before me, nothing to reach for or retreat from. I looked over the palace and the grounds—so modest compared to Troy’s—and satisfied myself that they were well cared for. Little had changed—no new halls had been built, no new adornments had been added. Without Mother, Father had had no interest in such things. I wondered whether Father had ever thought of marrying again, but he told me, staring with his watery, filmy eyes, that no family would even consider marrying into the House of Tyndareus—as cursed, now, as that of Atreus.

“Then Menelaus and I make a suitable pair,” I told him. “What of the Aetolian slave girl Menelaus left behind? I remember she was with child.” I tried to make the question light and of no matter.

“She had twins. They are now grown men, still living in the palace. They were waiting all this time for both Menelaus and me to die before Hermione could have an heir. Well, they are now disappointed in their hopes of the throne. Let Menelaus award them something, send them away.”

All these unfinished things I had left behind, now sprung back into life again. “I wish to see Clytemnestra,” I said. “Have you seen her since—Does she ever come here?”

“No, daughter, and I could not go to her. I did not wish to leave Sparta in the hands of the twins with all those . . . upheavals. It did not seem wise.”

“We could go together now. Menelaus will prevent any mischief.”

He sighed. “I fear I am too fragile now. I could not endure the jolting of the chariot, nor the final climb up the mountain.”

I noticed that Father asked me very little about Troy. He did not seem curious about it. Does curiosity flee with age, along with agility? Or was he, like Mother, awash with shame?

“I will make ready to go within a few days.” I was longing to see Clytemnestra, share at last all that had passed in those long years.

Menelaus was not pleased; he tried to forbid me to go. My sister had murdered his brother and lived with another man. It came too close to home.

“I do not condone what she has done; I abhor it. But she is my only living sibling, and your brother committed a great crime against her. We need not carry it further. Only remember, as you loved your brother, despite his evils, so do I love my sister. If I do not go and see her again, it adds another wrong to the great weight of the war.”

“I suppose you’ll want to take Hermione? I won’t have her around that woman!”

I had thought of it; had she not lived with Clytemnestra at one point? But I knew her response would be no. “I understand,” I said. “I will go alone—except for the drivers and guards, of course.”

He took my arm. “Be careful,” he said.

“Do you think she would harm me?” How odd that he would hint that.

“You have not seen her in many years. You do not know what you will find.”

“As was the case with you and me,” I reminded him. He looked hangdog, as he often did. “I will be wary,” I promised.

* * *

Going to Mycenae! To be there without the oppressive presence of the brothers, to be with Clytemnestra again! I did not think about Aegisthus; I did not make room for him in my mind. The day was clear and clean, and I had two chariots to carry myself and my attendants, and a slower wagon laden with gifts. I had scoured the palace for something to present; this was difficult, as there would be much the same things at Mycenae. There would be the same alabaster ointment jars, the same brown-painted handled jugs, the same fragrant scented robes. We rumbled down the steep incline and out onto the plain, dotted with plane trees and small orchards and fields of barley. No destruction here as in Troy, but the absence of men to tend things had caused a subtler ruin. Neglect stalked the land. Many of the men had not returned from Troy and it would be another generation before the land could flourish again.

Why, why had they gone? What persuasive power did Menelaus have? He must have promised them a quick resolution, glory, and spoils. None of it had happened; no one got spoils but the leaders and the few lucky ones who returned. Instead of enriching Sparta, the war had impoverished her.

My charioteer pointed to a grove of poplars by a stream. “There,” he said. “Where Menelaus gathered the army.”

He had spoken of it. What a cursed place, dooming all those who had convened around it with high spirits. I saw a large plane tree, a bit apart. That must be the one Menelaus had planted to commemorate the war. Seeing it gave me a chill. I thought of the oak of Troy, that other emblem of the war. There was nothing left of it.

Leaving the plain, we started climbing the hills, the chariots pulling out ahead of the heavier cart. Hawks soared overhead, playing in the sky.

We had to stop for the night, and we chose a little dale that seemed safe and sheltered. The birds were replaced in the sky by bats flitting out from their resting places, quick dark darts against the fading light. Safe, tired, I slept soundly. Tonight I did not need the elixir of forgetfulness.

At first light we were on our way again. But sometime in the night Menelaus’s warning words had spread inside me like a stain, and now they colored everything I saw. I felt my apprehension growing as we drew nearer to Mycenae. Suddenly everything looked suspicious. The people who watched us from the fields looked sullen. The sky lost its hawks and became dimpled with clouds.

What would I find? Now it seemed naïve to think Clytemnestra and I would meet again as if nothing had changed. I should have sent messengers ahead to tell her I was coming. I should have given her an opportunity to prepare herself, or to refuse to see me. I gripped the handles of the chariot as we lurched along.

The men were laughing and joking. For them, the day was fair. I felt my heart thudding, as if I were being chased by a pack of dogs. Something hideously oppressive hovered over us, and they could not see it, could not feel it. But that vision of mine was revealing it, and it grew stronger the nearer we got to Mycenae.

Hurry, hurry!
I wanted to urge them. Perhaps we could get there before it happened. It was important that we do so. That was why I had set out on this journey on this particular day. Now I knew it.

“Faster!” I suddenly said, startling my driver. “We need to go faster.”

He smiled. “Oh, there’s plenty of time, my lady. As it is we shall arrive well before dark.”

“Too late, too late!” I said. “I tell you, hurry! Let the others follow, but let us go as quickly as the horses can pull us.”

He looked at me quizzically. “It is not good for them. They’ll overheat.”

Was my fate always tied up with horses? “Forget the horses!” I cried. “Something worse will happen—is happening—if we do not get there in time!”

He started to argue, but I was his queen. “As you say,” he grunted, and took his whip to them.

We tore up the hills, gravel flying out behind us. It was the closest I would ever come to flying, but my heart was not soaring. I was gripped by the blackest dread I had felt since the dream of Paris and the arrow.

Just over the next rise! I remembered the landscape well. Almost there, almost within sight of it. It was always invisible, tucked in its mountain gap, until you rounded that last bend, and then you could see it, stone fastness rising, blending into the mountainside.

Lathered, the horses tried to slow, but I begged the driver to keep their speed up. Everything looked in order, undisturbed. For an instant I felt both very foolish and very relieved.

Then, bursting from the gateway, a chariot rushed toward us. The horses were as wild-eyed as demons, and their driver was screaming and forcing them into a faster gallop. Behind him, on foot, people were pursuing; archers shot after him, but he was beyond bowshot range. Screams and yells carried across the hill.

“He’ll run us down,” my driver said. The narrow road would not permit two chariots. He attempted to get our chariot out of the way, but one of the wheels stuck in a rut, and we were only halfway clear when the fleeing chariot seemed to fly over a rise and make right for us. The charioteer tried to pull aside, but had to veer to one side and finally stop. He leapt from the chariot and took the reins, to guide his panting horse around us.

Blood covered his mantle and his forearms; his red hands had smeared the reins. “Stand aside!” he commanded us, pulling out a sword. “Do not look at me.”

But I could not help it. He was young, well built, and under the blood his face might have been handsome. “Who are you?” I cried. “What have you done?” Somehow it was as if my special vision gave me the right to question him. But he could not know of that, only that I had disobeyed him.

He turned slitted eyes at me, started to say
Who are you?
when the thing I had always hated saved me. “Helen. You must be Helen. The cause of it all, of whatever I’ve done.” But he did not plunge his sword into me.

“I have nothing to do with what you have done. I know not what it is.”

“I’ve avenged my father. It’s taken me many years, but I was only a child when he was murdered. A son must grow strong enough to take revenge, and that takes time.” He jerked his horse past us, as if he spoke of fishing or the seasons.

Murdered . . . father . . . revenge . . .

“Oh, who have you killed?” I cried.

“My mother,” he said.

It was Orestes, the baby son! “You have killed . . . your mother?” As horrible as the deed, almost equally horrible that he could speak of it calmly and proudly.

“It had to be done. Yes, and I killed her lover Aegisthus, too.” He looked dazed, and I could see now that he was not proud or careless, but so stunned he hardly knew what he did. He jumped back into the body of his chariot, now cleared of ours. “Go clean up the mess,” he said. “She’s
your
sister.
My
sister hates her, and might desecrate the body.” Yelling at his horses, he sped them into a gallop and disappeared in a cloud of dust.