Nobody's Princess (5 page)

“They’re going to be heroes, not healers,” I snapped. “So what if they can’t tie a bandage? They’re going to be the pride of Sparta someday—you just wait!—and when that day comes, the only reason anyone will ever remember
your
name is because you were their teacher!”

“Not all of us care if our names are remembered, in life or after death,” Glaucus replied, his face stony.

“Better men than I have become food for battlefield crows defending your father’s lands. They could have broken away from the Spartan army and rushed into single combat against the enemy, all for their own glory. Instead, they died fighting in the ranks, for the good of all instead of the glory of one. They lost their chance to be remembered, but they won wars. Those are
my
heroes, princess.”

“Then I don’t want my brothers to be your kind of heroes,” I said. “Sheep go where they’re led. Are
they
your heroes too?”

I must have looked ridiculous, a small, filthy, scratched, and bleeding child facing up to a seasoned warrior who could have snapped my spine like a dry reed. For a time the two of us sat glaring at one another while Castor and Polydeuces looked on, too nervous to make a sound. Even if my belligerence cost me all future lessons from Glaucus, I wasn’t going to back down. He had no right to belittle my brothers. I remembered the second lesson he’d taught me:
Pick your battles.

Then Glaucus broke the silence with a roar of laughter. “Sheep again!” he crowed. “You drag them into your arguments time after time, yet I’ll wager that you’ve never been closer to them than the meat on your table or the wool on your spindle. You have no idea what they’re really like. You’ve just heard other palace folk say that sheep are stupid, spiritless beasts, so you echo their ignorance. If you’d been raised like me, on an upland farm, you’d soon learn the truth. Sheep
don’t
always go where they’re led, not half so easily as palace folk do, anyway.”

He slapped his knees and stood up. “You’re a blunt girl, but praise Athena, you’re not stupid. You’re just young. You’ll learn. The gods know, I’m old and I’m still learning. I only pray they’ll let me live to teach you the difference between sheep and heroes, blind obedience and discipline.”

“What?” I’d expected to be sent away for being so outspoken. I glanced at my brothers. They’d been with Glaucus for years and knew him better than I did. Was he truly willing to keep teaching me, or was it an ugly joke, punishment for my audacity? I hoped they’d give some sign to let me know whether it was safe to take him at his word.

They were smiling. They looked proud of me.

I looked back at Glaucus. “You—you’ll still teach me?”

“That will depend on if you’ll learn.” He cast a casual glance back toward where the royal palace of Sparta stood high on its fortified hill. “It also seems that right now it’s going to depend on luck. While you and I have been bickering, your father’s sentries have been watching, wondering why I’ve stopped instructing the princes just to waste so much time and attention on
this
grubby little creature.” He nodded at me. “I helped train those men, and unless I did a rotten job, they’ll follow their suspicions down here to find out what’s going on.”

“I—I think I see two of them now,” Castor said, shading his eyes with one hand. “You’re right, Glaucus, they’re coming this way. Helen, you can’t go back to the palace; they’re on the only path. They’ll recognize you and tell Father, and that’ll be the end of your training.”

“You should be happy, then,” I said. “You didn’t want me to train with you.”

“That was because I didn’t think you were serious about it,” Castor replied. “But after hearing what you said, seeing you keep trying to use that spear, not giving up, well…”

Polydeuces stooped to murmur in my ear. “What he’s trying to say is, anyone who’d stand up to Glaucus like you did deserves a chance. You stood up for us, little sister; the least we can do is stand up for you.”

I climbed to my feet with a hand up from both my brothers. I don’t think that I ever loved them so much as I did then. My foot throbbed, but Glaucus had done a good job of binding it up. It could bear my weight, which was a good thing because I was about to ask it to bear more than that. I dug my feet—both hurt and whole—into the dirt and took off at a run. Pain shot through my body with every other step, and I heard the shouts of Father’s sentries on my trail, ordering me to stop, but I ran on.

         
4
         

CLYTEMNESTRA’S SECRET

I outran the sentries in spite of my injured foot. I escaped them by dodging through the olive grove, then circling all around the royal citadel until I reached the path back to the great gate. The men on guard there didn’t think twice about letting me in. To their eyes I was just another one of the young slaves who worked in the palace kitchens or stables or any of a hundred other places inside our walls. Why should they care about a slave? They waved me inside impatiently, without a second glance. I scrambled past them and vanished into the cool shadows of the palace before their comrades could catch up to me.

I managed to avoid Ione or anyone else who might recognize me in my disguise. I tore off my clothing, hid the ragged tunic in the wooden box that held my dolls, and crawled into my bed, breathing hard. I stayed there the rest of the day, wrapped up in a blazing sheet of agony, until Ione found me at suppertime. She didn’t know what to think when she saw my wounded foot and heard me spin a story about treading on a piece of broken pottery in the palace.

“Why didn’t you find me when this happened?” she demanded, examining the wound tenderly. In spite of all that my brothers and Glaucus had done, it was a mess. I watched in dismay as Ione plucked a sticky olive leaf out of my foot and held it up between us.

“I—I was—” I began.

Ione raised one hand, silencing me. “Don’t bother lying to me. I can’t make you tell me the truth, but I don’t need to waste my time hearing lies.” She turned her head toward the little heap of bandages she’d unwound from my foot and picked up one of the longer strips. “I know who you’ve been with, at least. I know this cloth. I wove it myself to make a tunic for your brother Castor. My needle made this little pattern of sea creatures along the hem. I knew that my work would be wasted on him—he doesn’t care what his clothing looks like as long as it serves its purpose—but I wanted to do it for him anyway.” She let the tattered strip drop back onto the small, bloody heap.

“I’m sorry, Ione,” I said meekly. She was hurt, and it wasn’t because Castor had ruined her embroidery. It was because she’d always trusted me and now I’d tried to deceive her. She loved me, and I’d repaid her with lies. I didn’t know how to apologize for that, so instead I said, “I’m sorry Castor tore that. It was very pretty. All the work you—”

Again her hand went up, demanding my silence. “You don’t need to apologize to me. You’re growing up, all of you, shutting me out of your lives. The boys were taken away from me long ago, because they claim it’s bad for future warriors to be raised by women. Soon I’ll have no more authority over you and your sister either. I’ll be no more than a piece of furniture to you then, something you can ignore unless you need to use me. Keep your secrets. But next time you want to persuade someone that you were hurt inside the palace, get rid of this sort of thing”—she held up the telltale olive leaf—“and
wash
yourself. You look as if you’ve been wrestling with pigs. As for your hair…”

She went on like this for a while, fetching water and salve and fresh bandages for my foot as she chattered on. She sat beside me on my bed and cleaned my face roughly, like a mother cat with a wayward kitten. When she turned her attention to my hair, she yanked the tangles out so hard that I thought she meant to take my scalp off with them. When she was done with me, I looked like a presentable daughter of Sparta again.

“There,” she said, holding me at arm’s length and surveying her handiwork. “That will do. Look at you! It won’t be long before you’re a woman, and what a beautiful woman you’ll be.”

I felt the tips of my ears turn red. My nurse had never given me such a compliment before.

“Ione, I’m nowhere near being a woman,” I told her. “I’m only ten.”

“Not forever. One way or the other, you’ll fly away.” She shook her head and sighed. “That Glaucus is a wise man, even if he’s too tight-lipped. He told me to keep an eye on you, but he wouldn’t say why. I don’t know what you’re up to that should involve him, and I don’t want to know. All that matters to me is that he asked me to keep you close and I failed. Now look what’s happened to you.”

I thought I saw tears in her eyes. I tried to throw my arms around her neck, but she was on her feet and beyond my reach before I could do that.

“Go and eat, little bird,” she said from the doorway. Then she was gone.

I limped a little as I walked through the palace, following the smell of food. It wasn’t coming from the hall where my parents held feasts to honor Spartan nobles or foreign ambassadors. Instead, the aroma led me to the kitchen, where I found my brothers gobbling bread and sheep’s milk cheese, with the bony remains of a broiled fish between them.

“Where’s Clytemnestra?” I asked as a kitchen slave hurried to find me a stool. Another fetched my food and some triply-watered wine.

“Been and gone,” Castor said cheerfully, through a mouthful of bread crust. “Something’s up with her. Every bite she took, she was smiling. I know that sly look: She’s got a secret.”

Polydeuces agreed with his twin. “I’ll bet it’s about the guest, the one who came today while we were all on the training ground.”

“What guest?” I asked eagerly. It was always exciting when visitors came to our father’s court. Visitors meant gifts, thrilling tales of the perils they’d braved to reach Sparta, and news from other kingdoms.

“One of the maids said that her brother was the one summoned to bring bread and salt to the king’s hall.” All of Sparta’s important visitors were welcomed with the ritual that created the sacred bond between host and guest by the sharing of bread and salt. The gods punished any man who violated that holy trust.

“Any idea where he’s from?” I asked. My brothers shook their heads ruefully. “I’ll bet Clytemnestra knows. That’s got to be her secret.”

“Good luck making her tell us anything,” Castor said sarcastically.

“Why do we have to ask her what we can find out for ourselves?” I said.

My brothers smiled. The next instant my uneaten dinner was abandoned as the three of us fled the kitchen, off to haunt the great hall for news, to put our ears to a few doors, to talk to the servants, to do whatever it took to discover the identity of Sparta’s newest guest. I had a hard time keeping up with Castor and Polydeuces on account of my injured foot, until the two of them made a carry-chair of their linked hands, scooped me up, and carried me along before I could protest.

They might have helped me, but their good intentions hurt our mission. You can’t gather secrets when you’re making a spectacle of yourself in the palace passageways. They no sooner set me back on my feet beside a pillar in the great hall than we were discovered.

“Why are you three lurking here?” Mother’s girlhood skills as a huntress were as sharp as ever.

We whirled around, my brothers already babbling flimsy excuses. I didn’t bother.
Mother’s no fool,
I thought.
She knows why we’re here.

Of course she did. She folded her arms, regarded us severely, and said, “He’s from Mykenae.”

“Who is?” Castor was still trying to keep up the illusion of innocence.

Mother just rolled her eyes. “Do you want to play games, Castor, or do you want to know about our guest?”

“I do if he doesn’t,” Polydeuces spoke up. “Mykenae! Mother, is it true what I’ve heard about their royal house? Did Lord Atreus really make his brother eat his own—?”

“Silence,”
Mother commanded sharply. Her eyes flashed. “I forbid you to mention any of those awful stories while we’re entertaining Lord Thyestes’s ambassador. I thought you had more sense, Polydeuces.”

My brother lowered his head, ashamed. “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said.

“What awful stories?” I whispered to Castor, but he refused to tell me anything as long as Mother might overhear.

Which she did. “None you’ll hear while that man is our honored guest, Helen. Unless you want to ruin your sister’s marriage plans.”

“Marriage!”
I cried. The word bounced wildly off the painted pillars of the great hall. “Clytemnestra? But she’s only—”

“Lower your voice,” Mother told me. “I won’t let that Mykenaean go home and tell his king that Sparta’s future queen has no manners.”

“So that was Clytemnestra’s big secret,” Polydeuces mused. He patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Helen: Father is only making the marriage
agreement
with Mykenae now. Clytemnestra won’t leave us for a while yet.”

“Long enough for her to lord it over us because
she’s
going to be queen of Mykenae.” Castor did a deadly accurate imitation of how our sister always sailed through the palace, spine stiff with pride, nose in the air, lips pursed as if she smelled a rotten fish. Even Mother had to laugh. As much as she loved us all, she couldn’t deny that Clytemnestra did like to put on airs.

That night, I went to bed with my head spinning from the news. Married! My sister was going to be married. I wondered when she’d have to leave Sparta. I wondered what her husband would be like. I wanted to lean toward her bed and whisper a dozen questions to her, to find out if she was really pleased with the future that Father and the Mykenaean ambassador were giving her. It would have to wait for morning.

Alone in the shadows, I whispered a small prayer to my favorite goddess. “O Aphrodite, make my sister’s husband love her as much as Father loves Mother.” It was the first time I hadn’t called my mother “Mama.” My sister was going to be married. Neither one of us was a child anymore. “If he loves her, he’ll want her to be happy.”

The next morning I rose early, dressed, gobbled my breakfast in the kitchen, and went in search of Clytemnestra. She was carding wool on a courtyard bench when I found her. It was a tedious job, pulling the matted clumps of fleece through the carding combs. I wished her a good day, then sat beside her on the bench and began to pick out some of the knots in the fleece with my fingers. We worked together in silence. It was as if nothing had changed, as if there were no Mykenaean visitor under our roof.

At last I put my clump of wool back into the basket of washed fleece. “Mother told us,” I said. “I hope you and Lord Thyestes will be happy together.”

Clytemnestra rolled her eyes and gave me a condescending look. “Oh, Helen, Lord Thyestes is
ancient.
I’m marrying his son Prince Tantalus.”

“Oh. So you won’t be queen of Mykenae?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She gave the carding combs a hard tug. “Sorry to disappoint you, but my husband will be king of Mykenae after his father dies, so you won’t be the only queen in this family. And Mykenae is richer than Sparta too!”

“That’s not what I—” I began.

She didn’t let me finish. “I can’t
wait
to get away from this place. I’m tired of having to listen to Ione and Mother and Father and—and to everyone say how
pretty
you are all the time, as if that’s an excuse for why you never do any
real
work.”

“But I don’t think they—”

It was no use trying to get a word in. My sister had made up her mind: “You never pick up a spindle unless someone makes you do it, and I’ve never seen you having a lesson at the big loom. As for learning how to make medicines from Mother—” She made a scornful sound. “I feel sorry for Sparta when you’re queen. What are you going to do? Tell your husband and the rest of the court that they can wrap your
beauty
around them to keep warm and well all winter?

“
I
made Father a long tunic,” she went on. “I made it
myself,
start to finish, from carding the wool to weaving the cloth to embroidering a pattern of waves on the sleeves. When I gave it to him, I told him I chose waves because Aphrodite was born from the sea and I knew how much he loved her. Do you know what he said to me then?” Clytemnestra’s eyes narrowed. “He said, ‘What a lucky man I am to have one daughter who’s as clever as Athena and another who’s as beautiful as Aphrodite!’ Even when you did
nothing,
even when you weren’t there, he praised
you
!”