The Princess of Sparta: Heroes of the Trojan War (38 page)

“I’m scared.”

“I am, too.” Paris understood the danger of attachment now. Of having something too precious to lose. Helen’s love was a treasure so rare he’d spend the rest of his life defending it. The Gods would have to rip her from his cold dead hands. He cupped her beautiful face in his hands, knowing it might yet come to that.

“Finding you was a blessing, one I don’t want to squander or needlessly sacrifice.” He kissed her tenderly. “I will die for you if you ask it.” He took a deep breath, knowing now the real option that the Fates had left to them, a path with as many dangers as staying.

“But I would rather we live. Please, Helen. Come back with me to Troy.”

Chapter 23

The Ruin of our House

CLYTEMNESTRA STOOD on the dock, the wooden planks lurching forwards and back beneath her with the swell of the ocean. She pressed a hand to her forehead, the wave of nausea crawling up her stomach laced with the bitter taste of bile. She reached out, needing something—anything—to hold on to while the panic attack ran through her body.

But Helen was gone. Nestra watched her twin disappear into the crowds, leaving her alone on the shore.

“My Queen,” Nestra’s maid grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. “Are you ill?”

It was happening again. She was loosing Helen, the gulf of silence between them growing daily. A man had come and snatched her away, as had happened in their youth, and would happen over and over again.

Her breathing came in ragged gasps. The harbor went in and out of focus, the crashing of the waves morphing into a roar in her ears. She couldn’t lose Helen. Not again. Nestra was powerless when they were children, but not now. She was a queen. And she could protect her own.

“You should sit, Your Grace.” Her maid tried to urge her toward a pile of grain sacks sitting on the dock.

Clytemnestra shoved her back hard. “Don’t touch me!” The young girl cringed away from her. “Get back to the Palace. All of you.” she commanded, then spun on her heel and raced down the dock after her sister.

Helen was taking shortcuts, weaving through the city to avoid the slow pace of the procession. Her sister favored these cramped avenues and the crude people who populated them. It was a quirk unique to Helen from the royal family. She cared for the lowest flea-bitten mongrels, showering affection on the disaffected, never seeing the danger her tender heart placed her in. It was one of many reasons why Helen needed protection and a strong hand to guide her. She was too innocent to understand why it was necessary.

Clytemnestra rushed past the free workers, careful to keep a good distance from the grime-coated lowborn. They huddled away from her, too, shocked to see their monarch striding through their wayward district.

Helen bypassed the Lion Gates, heading around the acropolis for the sheltered, and less trafficked, Eastern gate. It was a steady climb, and Nestra made quick work of it, but Helen’s flowing chiton stayed frustratingly out of reach. It was as though Hermes maliciously lent her twin His speed, knowing how desperate Nestra was to speak with her.

Where is she going?

That was the pressing question that kept Nestra from calling out to her sister. There was something in the way Helen moved that screamed of secret purpose. Nestra used all the skill she inherited from Tyndareus to track her, careful to stay out of sight.

The eastern entrance was a short distance from the bedrock staircase that fed off the private quarters of the palace. Helen ran up them, taking the steps two at a time.

Nestra cursed. She couldn’t possibly keep up, the stitching from her difficult birthing at risk of tearing. Fortunately, Helen had her old maid with her and she had to slow for the woman to catch her breath.

Nestra crept into the cover of a thick patch of cypress trees as they rested. The needle-like leaves poking at her were saturated with a sticky sap. After the manic trek up the hill, and now coated with dust and debris, Clytemnestra knew she must appear wild. But that wildness was nothing compared to the storm raging within her.

Helen had to listen to reason. The Trojan couldn’t be trusted. No man could. What Nestra did was in order to save her twin future grief. She had to understand that.

Helen and the maid started up the trail again. In short order, they were up the remainder of the hill and into the private courtyard. Helen’s destination was no longer a mystery. Nestra watched as she darted into the servant’s walkway, the dim and narrow corridors used by the staff to access the royal apartments. The section she entered belonged to the Trojan prince.

Clytemnestra didn’t hesitate. She darted into the tunnel right after Helen, her alarm growing with every step. When she reached the small door that led into the prince’s room, she hesitated, her empty hand frozen inches from the latch.

Why is she here?

But Clytemnestra was no innocent. There was only one reason her sister would sneak into the bedchambers of a strange man. A low moan grew in the hollow of her throat and she sank to the stone floor.

She stayed there, crumbled on the ground, as the crushing grip of anxiety pressed down on her. She could scarcely breathe. And somewhere in the midst of her immobilization, the prince returned, his panicked voice breaking through Clytemnestra’s trance.

Their voices were muffled, the dense oak of the sally door too thick for anything less than raised voices to penetrate. But the wood was old and chipped around the planks. The holes were wide enough to see into the room if Nestra pressed her eye to the portal.

She hesitated, the sordid image of herself—a queen—kneeling in a darkened hall and spying into a bedchamber, overwhelming her. This behavior was beneath her. If anyone were to see...?

But Helen was on the other side of that wall. And her desire to protect her sister overpowered any lingering claim of propriety. Clytemnestra rose to her knees and pressed her face to the wood.

What she witnessed was enough to bring her back down to the ground. This was no minor tryst. They clung to each other, an intimacy in their touch that spoke of something beyond the physical. Helen ripped the tunic from his back, ferocious as a jungle cat, a side of her sister Nestra never thought existed. And their coupling... It was violent, demanding, and strangely erotic. Even Agamemnon, in his most robust moments, couldn’t match the efforts of Paris with Helen.

Clytemnestra watched it all, a sickly void forming in her heart. She should feel outrage, betrayal...
something
. But kneeling in the dark, an unwelcome participant of their lovemaking, she only felt numb. She was unaware when they left. The outside world had quieted down to a mute whisper as she sat there, head pressed to stiff wood. When she finally stood, her legs tingled painfully, the blood cut off from her lower extremities for too long.

Nestra walked for hours, roaming the halls of the palace, lost in a fog of shock. Helen would be killed for this. Agamemnon would find out. He’d make an example of the princess. And when Helen died, a piece of Clytemnestra would as well.

The sun lowered on the horizon, and still she roamed. Her maids tried to attend her. Administrators called her to council. Eventually the servants announced the evening meal. She ignored them one and all. They were insects buzzing around her head, annoying and insignificant. She had only room in her mind for Helen and the hopeless situation her sister had placed them all in.

Clytemnestra was nearing her own apartments when she finally ran into her. Helen was walking out of her chambers, looking fresh from the baths, a healthy glow on her cheeks. She smiled at Clytemnestra, a shadow of remorse on her lips.

A shadow?
It should be a mountain.

Something snapped within Nestra. She stormed down the remaining space between them, grabbing her sister by the elbow and shoving her back into her apartments.

“Nestra? What are you doing?!”

Now
Helen panicked? Now she showed the fear and concern she should have worn for her other dalliances? The hypocrisy fueled Nestra’s anger to new heights.

“Get out. All of you!” She screeched at the cadre of young maids filling Helen’s bedchamber. They scattered like rats before a torch.

She towed Helen to the bed and tossed her down on the mattress. “
How could you...? Selfish... Traitorous...
“ she sputtered, her mind swirling, unable to form a coherent sentence.

Helen cowered on the bed, shrouded in her doe-eyed innocence. Always the eternal victim. Rage boiled in Nestra.

Not this time!

She slapped her twin, knocking Helen over on her side. “Are you insane? Do you want to die? Do you care at all what that would do to me?”

Helen held her hand over her red-tinged cheek, tears streaming down her face. “Nestra, I... I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”

“I told you to end it. I warned you he was trouble. And what do you do? You open your legs to him like a common whore.”

Helen tried to back away from her, her panic-stricken face doubling in intensity. “I’d never—“

Nestra grabbed her arms, pulling Helen forward into another brutal slap, the ring on her hand cutting into her sister’s lip. “Don’t you lie to me. Don’t you
ever
lie to me.”

She hit her again, and again until Helen was a sobbing crumbled mess on the bed sheets. “I saw you together, fucking like two wild animals.” Nestra’s voice cracked, a wellspring of outrage pouring out of her by the betrayal. “Why, Helen?
Why?
”

Helen stopped trying to fight her. She pushed herself up, her round eyes—mirrors of Clytemnestra’s own—filled with tears. “Because I love him.”

The tears cascaded down Helen’s pink skin making her appearance lovelier despite her shame. It was unfair that even now, in the thick of her treachery, she could inspire tenderness in Nestra’s heart.

“I love him, Nestra.” Helen spoke with more confidence. “He is the other half of my soul. I... I am lost without him.”

A gaping emptiness of shock-induced fog returned to Clytemnestra. In that fog, her left hand, the flesh of her flesh, soul of her soul, took a dagger and plunged it into her beating heart. Inside the gaping wound, the meaty organ gushed fluid. Not blood, but pools of white-hot rage.

“NO!” She struck at Helen again, backhanding her hard across her head. “He is not your other half.
I am!
”

Helen cried out from the pain, again trying to flee her wrath. But Nestra scrambled onto the bed after her, clawing at her sister.

“Nestra, stop it. Please!” She put her hands helplessly out before her, backed up now to the wall.

Nestra grabbed her twin by the hair and shoved her back down on the mattress. “You stupid beautiful fool. These men desire you, fight to claim you, and you think it love?” She pressed her knee into Helen’s stomach, pinning her down. Helen tried to bat her hands away, but Nestra’s anger made her strong. She locked her sister’s arms above her head.

“I want to see it,” she growled, tearing at Helen’s chiton the same way she saw her twin doing with her lover. “I want to see what drives these men wild with lust. Kings and princes...,” she choked up, “
my own husband...
I want to see it!”

Helen’s clothes fell away in pieces. She squirmed under Nestra, naked and sobbing. “Please... stop.”

Her skin was flawless, her hips perfectly round, a match for the swelling of her perky breasts. But there was nothing unique, nothing special about her twin’s body. It was identical to Nestra’s own. She trailed her hand down Helen’s chest and down between her legs, cupping her private parts in a tight grip.

“They do not love you, Sister. This—“ she tightened her grip, “is not love. It is lust. And when they are done with you they will discard you.”

But Helen still fought the truth, her whimpering cries fueling Nestra’s anger. “You don’t believe me? Are you really that naive?”

“No... please.”

Helen tried to escape again, but Nestra was too quick. She backhanded her twin.Helen spun from the blow and her head collided with the post of the bed. She fell on the mattress in a daze.

“This prince doesn’t love you.” Nestra snarled. “None of them love you. Only I do.” She shoved Helen’s legs apart, her fingers sliding into her twin’s wet crevice. She would show Helen, kicking and screaming if she must. That man was not special. The feelings he stirred were not unique. Anyone could do it.

Clytemnestra pressed harder, stroking deeper, some madness taking control of her faculties. This was her body, flesh of her flesh, it belonged to her, not that greedy prince. She pressed her mouth to Helen’s cleft, the folds of her rosebud moist and hot. This was hers, too. She plunged her tongue against the little flab of flesh, sucking and pulling, a warmth burning through her own body.

Some part of her heard Helen begging her to stop, crying and pleading. But those cries only inflamed Nestra to greater violence, to stroke harder, faster.

You’re mine... my twin, my love, my only love
. The words became a mantra that she groaned as she laid claim to her twin.