Helen of Troy (17 page)

Menelaus tried to keep his face expressionless—out of respect for me, I suppose. But what would he say when he and his brother were alone, as would happen sooner or later? Clytemnestra, too, was eager to speak to me in confidence. I dreaded it; I wished they would go away. I did not care to speak of it; I felt it would be a dreadful betrayal of Menelaus. Or was it a betrayal of myself?

“And after you drove away in the chariot, and everyone’s hands were stained from the flowers and fruit they had tossed after you, we went back into the palace and . . .” It had been quiet after we left, with the strange hush that descends after great bustle.

“And now,” said Clytemnestra, holding her arms wide, “you have all the years of your lives to be together!”

“I wonder how long that will be?” asked Menelaus.

“Do you mean, how long will you live?” Agamemnon demanded.

“Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean. People in our families do not live a long time.”

“How morbid! Why would you speculate about that today, of all days, Menelaus?”

“I was just . . . wondering how many years of happiness I’d be granted.”

“How old is the oldest person you have known—or known about?” I asked Menelaus, trying to steer the subject onto more cheerful ground.

Agamemnon answered. “I suppose Nestor, and he isn’t all that old. There was a man in Argos who claimed to be eighty—a wizened little cricket of a human who lived in a tiny house. I saw him once, with Father. But of course no one could prove how old he really was.”

“Do you think anyone could ever live to be a hundred?”

“No,” said Menelaus. “That would be impossible.” He smiled and took my hands. “But fifty years of happiness will equal a hundred dull years.”

We stayed in Mycenae for ten days, and Menelaus showed me all his haunts and the secrets of the landscape. The citadel itself was built halfway up a hill between two mountains, and from its ramparts you could see the sea—something we never could do in Sparta. The first time I saw it, a flat shining expanse, I cried out in excitement. I had never seen the sea.

“My love, how can that be?” he asked.

“I was kept locked up,” I said. “It was . . . it was for my own protection.”

“Now I will protect you,” he said. “And if you wish to see the sea, you may look your fill.”

“Can we go closer? Even sail on it?”

“Let us go closer first,” he said. “Sailing can come later.”

There were caves in the high hills where he and Agamemnon had played as boys, and where he still knew hidden entrances, overgrown with vines. I liked imagining him as a boy, wondered what he had looked like then.

He showed me the great storeroom of the citadel where the treasures of his house were kept—huge stores of olive oil, of finely woven cloth, of gold and silver, and of bronze tripods and armor. The armor had been captured from various foes in raids and battles, most forgotten now, remembered only for the spoils they had yielded. They gleamed on in the dark of the storeroom while their owners had long ceased to gleam.

“Take what you like!” he said, gesturing around the room. But I had no desire for any of it. When I did not reply, he opened a cypresswood box and took out a gold goblet.

“My wedding gift,” he said, presenting it to me.

It was as large as a bucket, and very heavy. “This is not for mortals,” I said. “Unless it be Ajax of Salamis.” My arm ached with holding it. It had a pattern of little circles stamped all over its body and its handles were pleasingly curved. I handed it back to Menelaus.

“I said it is yours.” He pushed it back at me.

“You have already given me wedding gifts,” I said. “Truly, I am content.”

“I want you to have something from my father’s house,” he said. “Atreus won this in battle, and he always prized it. My mother kept it by her place at feasts, and now you must, too.”

The gold was warming under my hands, and I saw I must not refuse. But still I was loath to take it.

Menelaus took a strand of my hair and wound it around the cup. “The same color,” he said. I could see the pride and possessiveness in him as he entwined his cup with my hair. “Oh, Helen!” he said. “You never saw the sea, you could not look upon it. Now I will take you there. You can have your fill of it now.” He leaned forward and kissed me.

Our last night in Mycenae: cold, as I suspected all nights were there, even in high summer. We ate together at a long wooden table, and I dutifully kept the large goblet by my place, although I never could have drained it. Menelaus kept refilling it, as if to secure it to me. Afterward we lay back on pillows in the megaron and enjoyed the warmth of the fire and the sweet music of the bard, who sang of battles and brave deeds of men who lived before our times.

“Always before our times,” said Menelaus. “The age of heroes is over, now that Heracles is dead.”

“How do you know?” said Agamemnon. He never missed an opportunity to question or contradict. “Did the heroes themselves know they were living in the age of heroes? Did it have a big sign saying, ‘All ye underneath, know that you live in the age of heroes’?”

“Agamemnon, you sound so stupid sometimes!” Only Clytemnestra would dare say that to him, although I had thought it. She laughed.

“It’s not a stupid question! I think heroes make their own age,” he said.

“And only later, someone calls it the age of heroes.” He looked around, his eyes again seeking mine. I wished he would stop it. I dropped mine. “It is not over yet. Not if we decide it goes on.”

“You need to fight mighty foes,” said Clytemnestra, “and I don’t see any about. Heracles killed them all off.” She leaned forward and tickled his ear. “No, my lion, you will have to content yourself with cattle raids and minor skirmishes. That is the problem with times of peace. But who would wish otherwise?”

Agamemnon grunted and brushed her hand away as if it were an annoying fly. But Clytemnestra, feeling playful, kept on.

“Cheer up, my love,” she said. “Perhaps a dragon will come along and menace a city. Or another sphinx.”

“Stop it,” Agamemnon warned her. “I won’t be teased.”

His raised voice caused the bard to stop singing, tuck his lyre under his arm, and steal away.

Back in our cold chamber, we would huddle under the wolfskin covers that overlay the wool blankets. Menelaus would encircle me with his strong arms and begin to murmur endearments, moving against me ever more insistently.

I had not overcome my revulsion for the sexual act and continued to fight the impulse to push him away, to put both my palms on his wide chest and shove.

In the past ten days, something alarming had become clear: I hated to be touched. I had never realized that before, as anyone touching me had done so only in a passing manner. Even my mother, when she embraced me, did not linger, nor did she invade my person. My attendants, when I bathed, averted their eyes and used sponges to apply the perfumed oil and the olive oil to rub on my back afterward. My brothers draped their arms carelessly over my shoulders, but only lightly, and only for a moment.

This was different. And my aversion to it was growing; I was not becoming accustomed to it. I dared not show it and found for the first time in my life how difficult it was to pretend—something I had never had to do. I knew without anyone telling me that I must, at all costs, keep it from Menelaus. But how could I, forever? For a little while, yes, but . . .

Where was Aphrodite? Why did she spurn my abject apology? Without her I would never cross to that other land, that fabled place where women not only welcomed such behavior but sought it out and . . . sometimes . . . instigated it themselves. Every morning I begged her to come to me in the evening; every night it was clear she had turned deaf ears to my plea. As Menelaus moved closer to me, his breath warm against my ear, I was as cold inside as the waters of the Styx.

In the sunlight it seemed of much less import, of course. The next morning, as we jounced in our chariot toward Sparta, it was easy to forget the secrets of the dark. I looked at Menelaus’s strong forearms as he stretched them out to hold the reins; now—perverse goddess!—I found them appealing, now that they were not reaching for me.

“Our new quarters will be waiting,” he said, flicking the reins. “What shall we find, do you think?”

While we were away, Father and Mother were readying our apartments, the place where I would live as a married woman. My old chambers, the chambers of girlhood, would be left behind—until I had a child of my own to fill them.

“They are on the east side of the palace,” I said. They had stood empty for many years; I had heard stories about a great-aunt who had lived in them with a pet monkey and poisonous plants. The monkey had eaten some of the leaves and died—but she, with her knowledge of herbs, had given him an antidote and he had recovered. Or so the tale went. We children were forbidden to explore the rooms.

“Morning sun,” he said. “Good to wake up to.” He laughed and flicked the reins again, and the horses leapt forward, making the chariot lurch; the woven leather-strap floor bounced. I clutched his arm to keep my balance, and he looked fondly at me.

We were keeping to the green lowlands of the river watering the valley of Mycenae, leading to the coast. We passed through Argos and by Tiryns with its high walls. We would keep the sea on our left for a good long time before turning inland toward Sparta. I could hear the roar of the waves against the shore and smell the salt air; two small boats were bobbing farther out. I had a great wish to set sail and feel the water all around me.

“You have sailed, have you not?” I asked Menelaus.

“Oh, yes. To Rhodes—Troy—Crete. My grandfather is in Crete, and we used to visit him often.”

“Someday I wish to meet him,” I said. But what I really wished was to see Crete. I would have gone to meet him there even if his grandfather had been a parrot.

We jounced along in silence. Then I said, “And you’ve been to Troy? Is it as splendid as everyone says? Is it true that jewels encrust the walls of the palace?”

“Nothing like that,” he said, amused. “The walls look like any other walls, except for the paintings on them. The colors are very bright, brighter than ours. Perhaps that started the rumor about jewels.”

I wanted to ask him about the handsome men there but thought it would sound peculiar. “Do the people there look like everyone else?” I finally asked.

He laughed. “Yes—how else should they look? Hair made of leaves or five ears?” The chariot lurched as we swerved to avoid a rock. “They seem well fed and strong,” he said. “They have that look—that look of a people who are proud, though. A people who know they command not only themselves but also the land around them. Even the king, old Priam, is an impressive figure, almost unnaturally strapping and youthful. He has fifty sons! I suppose making them keeps him young.”

“Are they all by the queen?” Surely not! Unless she had had a series of twins.

“No, but ten of them are.” He laughed. “Come to think of it, the queen is surprisingly sturdy to have survived all those births. Perhaps there
is
something about Troy . . .”

Eventually we left the coast road and turned east, climbing into the hills. The horses strained and the chariot creaked; the wheels ground into the gravel and the hard-packed earth. Occasionally we rumbled over little bridges built of boulders—rough but better than becoming stuck in a streambed.

Even in late spring, the peaks of the mountains were snow-covered and blue; Sparta lay nestled between two big ranges, the Parnon and the Taygetus. I had not realized how green and fertile my land was until I saw the drier and rougher places en route; truly Lacedaemon, the region where Sparta lay, was a blessed place.

“Your new home,” I said to Menelaus. “Is it not a fair exchange for Mycenae?”

“Even were it not as magnificent as it is, it is better to be first in a small place than second in a large one.” Behind his light words lurked the years of being shaded by Agamemnon’s bulk and the prospect of remaining there forever. I had freed Menelaus, even as he had freed me—freed me to remove my face veil and move about in the world. Now—why, now I could even go into Sparta myself, walk the streets!

“My dearest,” I said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. At that moment, I felt overcome with warm love for him.

As we passed through the palace gates, everyone was out to welcome us—the runners had seen us approaching as we rolled alongside the riverbank.

Father, Mother, Castor, Polydeuces, my dear old attendants, even the palace dogs, cried out in greeting. We were swept out of the chariot and into embracing arms. Home. We were home, a home that would now be different.

“Helen, you left us a maiden and now you return a married woman. It is only right that we present you with the tokens and emblems of your new station.” Father spoke the words that began the traditional ceremony in which a Spartan woman is recognized as an adult about to enter her own household.

We were standing at the threshold of the apartments Menelaus and I would share.

As my father called them out, my mother presented me with the items befitting my station one by one. First, the cloth that would replace my maidenly robes: an intricately woven fabric with glittering silver-blue threads worked into it. Next, a large silver brooch to fasten the two edges of cloth at my shoulder. And finally, the earrings.

Mother handed me a cedarwood box that held two huge circular gold earrings with open weaving and little spikes decorating the rims. They were so heavy they could not be worn through the earlobes but must be suspended by wires behind the ears: symbol of my womanhood.

“I thank you,” I said, lifting them from the box and cradling them in my palms.

Father took them and fastened them properly on my ears, pushing back my hair to do so.

“Wife,” said Father, “last of all, present our daughter with the signs of her womanly toil.”

Mother brought forward a little silver basket on wheels to hold yarn ready for weaving. Inside it were four balls of the finest wool yarn in natural white, dark brown, and two dyed colors: delicate pink and lightest blue. There was another basket of unworked wool, needing to be spun.