Helen of Troy

by Margaret George

  “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.

  “Spinning and weaving belong to the realm of women’s secrets,” said Father. “It is proper that your married life begin by invoking the three Fates; Clotho, the spinning fate; Lachesis, who assigns to you your fate; and Atropos, who represents what you cannot avoid. The three goddesses who control the span of a mortal life, from birth to death.”

  I took the baskets and clasped them to me.

  “And now,” said Father, “all rites being done properly as should be, pass into your new quarters and take possession of them.”

  I took Menelaus’s hand and we stepped over the threshold into what would be our new home.

  Inside, the sheer linen serving to shade the windows blurred the light and gave everything a blue tint, like earliest dawn. Swimming in the haze, we could make out the tall chairs, stools, and three-legged tables scattered about the painted floor.

  “Look!” I cried, pointing down. “Patterns! We’ve never had them before.” They must have been painted while we were away. They made the room seem very rich. And now my eyes saw the paintings on the wall—water lilies, reeds, and birds. “Oh, how lovely.” I would never grow weary of looking at them.

  I saw that the high-seated chairs were inlaid with spirals in blue-enameled ivory; their footstools had a matching pattern.

  In the adjoining room Menelaus’s bedstead was heaped with the lightest fleeces over a fine linen sheet. A brazier filled with cedar and sandalwood made sweet warmth.

  Menelaus held out his arms and I went into them. He clasped me tightly to him, so tightly that I could feel the warmth of his chest through his tunic and mantle. He bent his head down toward me. He was turning toward the fair-spread bed.

  Now! Surely now I would feel my heart leap, at least feel a spreading warmth that would make me desire him.

  But instead I heard noises coming from just outside the windows, reminding me that others were nearby. The moment’s possibility was gone. I slid away from his grasp and pretended to go on examining the new chamber. I did not dare look at his face; I could not bear to see the anger or the disappointment there. I thought I heard faraway laughter: Aphrodite’s?

  XV

  Only one last custom to be enacted before my new life would truly begin. Down by the Eurotas, Father and Mother transformed the broad meadow into a field of celebration and welcomed all of Sparta, so that Menelaus could encounter the people he would come to rule someday.

  The open fires in the field were crackling; above them oxen were turning, roasting. Anyone who thrust a cup out would have it filled with Father’s finest wine. Townspeople thronged the meadow, the artisans to spread out their pots and jewelry, the weapons-forgers their knives and swords. Housewives offered their barley-meal cakes and fig paste; would-be bards plucked their lyres and sang. I saw shepherds, swineherds, and goatherds milling about. Far on one side of the field athletic contests were in progress—boxing, wrestling, and running. Anyone from Sparta or the surrounding area could compete. I was thinking nostalgically of my last race as a maiden. Today only boys and men were on the field. Beside them horse breeders offered their animals, hoping for a sale. Ours was not the area for the finest horses, but one took what was available.

  Menelaus and I wandered in and out of the crowd. I felt the eyes upon me, but with his arm around my shoulder I knew freedom for the first time. I need hide no longer. I grasped his hand and squeezed it. He could never understand how grateful I was.

  “Fortunes! Fortunes!” We passed an elderly woman who plucked at our clothes with her clawlike hands. “Fortunes! Fortunes!” she rasped.

  “Let go! Can’t you see—” Menelaus began. Then he realized she was blind, her eyes sealed like an old leather purse. He recoiled.

  “Potions!” a woman beside her said. This one could see, all too well: her sharp black eyes looked like a bird of prey’s. “Pay her no mind. Whatever the fortune, a potion can undo it!” She thrust a vial into my hand.

  “Don’t. It’s poison,” said another voice, calmly. “You’d need an antidote before you walked fifty steps.” The speaker was a man. “Halia, really, are you still trying to peddle that deadly potion? And to our future queen? What’s wrong? Don’t you like her?”

  The woman drew herself up. “It was for the use of the queen,” she said. “You did not give me a chance to explain further.”

  “So the queen can poison her enemies? Why don’t you give a demonstration of its powers? Otherwise we might think you are passing off plain old sheep’s fat.”

  Menelaus was staring at the man who had appeared so suddenly, wearing a dusty red cloak.

  The potions-seller shrugged. Without any hesitation, she grabbed her companion’
s dog, which had been dozing beside them on the ground, and smeared its muzzle with the cloudy paste. The dog growled and licked its lips.

  The enigmatic man raised one eyebrow and looked down at it. “These things can take a while,” he said. There was a restrained humor, or judgment, hanging on his words. In some way he was baiting the woman; or perhaps he was teasing, or perhaps he did not care in the least. His tone of voice could be interpreted any of those ways.

  The dog lurched up, unsteady on its feet. It made aimless little circles before sinking down again and starting to whine and tremble.

  “Better have the antidote nearby,” the man said.

  The dog’s owner began shaking it, crying out.

  The potions-seller was calmly rummaging through a basket, finally producing a little bottle of liquid. “Ummm . . . here it is.” She pried the dog’s salivating mouth open a crack and poured the liquid into it.

  “Very impressive, Halia,” said the man. “I see you know your plants. What was that . . . nerion?”

  She glared at him. “I’ll not tell you all I know.”

  “And what did you use to reverse it? Juice of the belladonna?”

  “I said, I’ll not tell you!”

  Menelaus and I began backing away, and the woman protested. “After all that, you won’t buy?”

  The mysterious man had disappeared. Menelaus and I looked at each other.

  “Did we really see him?” I asked.

  “One can’t be sure,” said Menelaus. “Somehow he was more disturbing than the poisons. I can explain poisons, but he seemed to have an extraordinary knowledge of such things.”

  “We don’t know that, not really,” I said. “All we know he knew was the woman’s name and how two poisons worked.”

  “I had the feeling he knew much more.”

  “Aha! Here you are, hiding yourselves in this humble section!” a commanding voice boomed out behind us. We whirled around to find ourselves face to face with Odysseus. He was grinning—his marriage to Penelope had been approved and the wedding day set. He had what he wanted. “You’re in disreputable company.” He indicated the fortune-teller and the potions-seller.

  “Did you see that man who was with us a moment ago?” asked Menelaus.

  “No, why?” Odysseus was hitching up one shoulder of his tunic and adjusting his hat. “Was he a pickpocket?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Then what’s the concern?” He laughed. “So. You look content.” Now he reached up to put his arm around Menelaus’s shoulders. “I must congratulate myself on supporting your suit. Have you had any rumbles of discontent from any of the leftover suitors? The vow we took in that bloody field should put a stop to any mischief.”

  “When is the wedding?” asked Menelaus. “I heard about the footrace. Of course you won.”

  “Of course. I made sure of that.” He winked. “Suddenly I outstripped all Penelope’s suitors. We will wed before the moon is full again. Then I return to Ithaca, with my bride. Her father, of course, is not eager to let her go. But I don’t wish to linger here. I want my island again. I like its rocks and loneliness.”

  Two men passed us, both preposterously handsome, one older and the second in that first flush of maturity when a boy is just turning into a man. The man was golden-haired and the boy very dark, with thick eyebrows. They were not villagers but soldiers, I could tell by the way they walked.

  “Well, well,” said Odysseus. “Where might they be from? Mount Olympus, perhaps?”

  Returning to Father’s side, I saw that newcomers had joined him. A company of soldiers surrounded him, decked out in linen breastplates and carrying short swords. A swaggering fellow with a shiny face and gloating expression had his ear.

  “Whoever they are, we’ll smash them,” he was saying. His fellow soldiers nodded, murmuring.

  What was he talking about? Who needed smashing? We were at peace.

  “Your place will be ready by tomorrow,” Father said.

  “You Spartans are too trusting,” the blustering soldier said. “It’s high time you had some protection. Why, it’s said you don’t even have spies.”

  “If a king is just and his soldiers strong, it doesn’t matter what evil the enemy is planning,” Father said. “Therefore we don’t need spies. Whatever they are planning will come to nothing.”

  There was a short low laugh behind me. I turned to see who it was but saw only more of the soldiers. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a dusty red cloak. That man again! Why was he here?

  I grabbed Menelaus’s arm. “Get hold of him!” I whispered. “The man—he’s a—he must be . . . a spy. For whom?”

  Menelaus turned and looked, but the man seemed to have disappeared once again.

  “Now, Lynceus, will you as general be content to share the barracks with your men?” Father was asking the bombastic man.

  Lynceus nodded condescendingly.

  “If you value your throne, Tyndareus, I would keep him in full view in the palace, not out of sight in a private barracks,” came a quiet voice from the throng around Father.

  “Who’s speaking?” Father craned his neck.

  The man in the red cloak stepped forward. “I seek only to offer some commonsense advice,” he said. “Something I am sure you would have seen for yourself before long.” But by then it might have been too late, his tone hinted.

  “I said, who’s speaking?” Father insisted.

  “I am Gelanor of Gytheum.”

  “A seaman? A harbormaster?” Gytheum was the nearest seaport to Sparta, although to reach it by nightfall you would have to set out shortly after dawn.

  “Neither of those, although my father goes to sea.”

  “Why haven’t you followed him?”

  “More interesting things happen on land.”

  “Name one!” the truculent general bellowed at him.

  “Man,” said Gelanor. “Man happens on land, and he is infinitely more interesting than fish.”

  “You haven’t answered me,” Father said. “What is your livelihood? You don’t have the look of a soldier.”

  “Nor a swineherd,” whispered Menelaus, and we both stifled laughs. The man did not stink, after all.

  “I make things . . .”

  “What things?” demanded Father.

  “I make things happen.”

  “What sort of an answer is that? Are you a magician?”

  Gelanor laughed. “No. All I meant is that if someone wants something, I can help him bring it about. Only”—he held up his hands—“by my wit and experience. I have no magic arts. Nor do I traffic with the gods. I have found, august king, that the mind is the only magic art one needs.”

  Father shrugged. “Here’s another mad fellow.” He waved him away. Then the general whispered in his ear, and he turned back to Gelanor. “Perhaps I can use you . . .”

  * * *

  We wandered away from the soldiers with their unappetizing leader.

  “What is all this about?” I asked Menelaus. “Why has Father taken up with these men?”

  “Their leader is a man looking for a war,” said Menelaus. “Perhaps it is useful to have such a person about.”

  We politely refused the slave weaving about the crowd refilling cups. The sticky-sweet wine was overpowering and needed watering down.

  “But there is no war,” I said. “So what shall Father do with him?”

  “Perhaps feel safer,” Menelaus said. “That fellow does not look as if much would get past him.”

  “Which fellow? Gelanor or Lynceus?” The general or the man in the red cloak?

  “Both of them. Gelanor’s mind is sharper and Lynceus’s arm is stronger—an interesting contest, if ever it came to that.”

  “But as long as they both serve Father, they will work together.” I meant it as a statement, but it was more of a question. Menelaus did not answer it.

  We were approaching the tent where the bards were performing; the sweet sou
nds of the lyre strings carried through the air.

  Sparta was known for its music-making and its poets, and I was eager to hear them. This was all part of my new freedom. I was eager to taste it all, to gorge on every new dish.

  “Don’t listen to him.” A dark little man standing near the tent entrance made a disparaging gesture. “He loses all the contests.”

  His music sounded well enough to me.

  “And I suppose you win them?” asked Menelaus.

  “Indeed,” he said with a shrug, as if to say, Winning against such people is hardly a victory.

  “Let us judge this man for ourselves,” I said, edging toward the entrance.

  The bard inside was just finishing up; he was singing of the mighty deeds of Heracles, especially his victory over the Nemean lion.

  “. . . the claws! Oh, so sharp that they alone could cut the hide! Oh, the strength of Heracles, beyond the ken of mortal man! Oh, Heracles!”

  “I think the fellow outside was right,” whispered Menelaus, echoing my own thoughts.

  Soon he was ushered off, and the stranger we met outside took his place. He looked at us as if to say, Now it will be worth your while.

  “I shall sing of something that has happened in our time,” he said, bowing, taking his lyre in hand.

  “Heracles was but a little while ago!” someone objected.

  “True, but this is nearer.” He plucked at his mantle where the brooch was pinned, adjusting it like an athlete preparing for a contest.

  “I, Oeonus of Therapne, will sing of the marriage feast of King Peleus of Phthia and the sea goddess Thetis.”

  “That may not be wise,” someone muttered from the back. The voice was low, but the man heard it.

  “Bards must sing of what is true, and that is not always wise.” He took up his lyre and began. He did have a pleasing voice and his skill on the instrument was impressive—it seemed to be part of his own speech. He lost himself in the words and it seemed as if he were feeling them from within himself.