Helen of Sparta

by Amalia Carosella

  I froze.

  A figure loomed behind me, too tall to be my maid. My hand closed around the diamond.

  “Clymene will find them in the morning, I’m sure.” Menelaus’s fingers slid down my neck and along my spine, prickling my skin. “I sent her to the feast. Agamemnon should keep her occupied until dawn.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.” I slipped out from under his hands but did not turn to face him. My heart pounded in my ears.

  Clymene was with Agamemnon. Leda would not check on me; she barely even looked at me. And Nestra no longer shared my room. Clymene had been my only protection, but she would obey Agamemnon and Menelaus as she would my father or brothers. All the servants did.

  “I could not stand to think you would go to your bed still angry. If you had only come to me earlier, I would not have been forced to climb in through your window like a common thief, but I had to speak with you.” He touched my hair again, and I willed myself not to flinch. “I don’t know what I said to upset you this morning, but whatever it is, I apologize a hundred times. A thousand. Surely you understand it is only that I love you too much—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, interrupting him. I could not stand to hear more of his love. Not when he showed no regard for my own feelings. “No matter what you say, or how many times you apologize, tomorrow you will still look at me as though you own me. You still consider me to be your prize.”

  “When all this madness is over, we’ll be married. Tyndareus only waits for his guests to leave to announce it.” His hand fell to my shoulder, his thumb sliding over the sleeve of my gown and slipping it down my arm. “Clytemnestra will be given to Agamemnon and be made queen of Mycenae. Even she can’t complain about such an arrangement. And you and I, we will be free to love each other openly.”

  “No.” I fought back the tears pressing behind my eyes. Tyndareus could not have done this to me. Not without my agreement. Not without at least consulting Pollux and Castor. Surely my brothers would not have kept this from me. “Menelaus, it is not so simple. You know it isn’t.”

  “I told you Agamemnon would keep his word,” he said, kissing my shoulder. “Tyndareus has always hoped we would marry. Did you never wonder why I sought you out, even when you were still so young? Once I knew you, it hardly mattered how it had begun. You were so sweet to me as a child, so delighted with my attentions. How could I resist?”

  “But you can’t. He wouldn’t.” I turned to face him.

  The line of his mouth in the moonlight showed no kindness, and his eyes glinted with a hardness I had never seen before. It reminded me too much of Agamemnon and the way he stared at serving girls. The way he had stared at me during the banquet.

  “You can’t want this,” I said. “The future it will bring. The war. You can’t want to have me this way. To put me in the path of harm, and your brother—”

  “You should be grateful,” he said before I could speak further, as if he had plugged his ears against my words. “If I had not bargained with my brother, leveraged my support in his desire for Mycenae, Agamemnon would have taken you for himself, instead. Can you imagine? You say I only look upon you as another prize to be won, but at least I can give you my affections, my love. My brother never understood. He never realized how much more you are than just your beauty and your kingdom. But I do. I know you, Helen.”

  I shook my head, sidling away. The things he was saying—no wonder Agamemnon was so sour, and if Nestra had known . . .

  But it did not matter. No matter what argument he made, it did not change what would come to pass. Better if I had been promised to Agamemnon than Menelaus. Perhaps there would not have been any affection shared between us, but that would be nothing if it meant all that death, all that horror avoided.

  “Think, Menelaus,” I said softly, urging him to see reason. “Think what you’re saying. Think what you would be allowing to happen!”

  “I would be allowing you to become my wife. You cannot truly be so surprised by it all when I have made my feelings so clear.” He stepped closer, crowding me against the table. Jewels fell to the floor, ringing against the tile. There was not enough wine on his breath for the excuse of drunkenness. “Have I not always cared for you? Always protected you? Who better than I?”

  Theseus, I thought, the diamond biting into my palm. I stepped back, tripping over the low stool. Menelaus frowned, reaching for me, but I batted his hand away.

  Theseus, who does not look at me as though I am a chest of gold, or speak to me as though I do not know my own mind.

  I lurched around him toward the bed, hoping to put space between us, but I banged into the chest that held my gowns, bruising my shin. Menelaus followed, his eyes dark.

  Theseus, who listens to more than just his lust. Like you used to. A king who cares for his people.

  Menelaus caught me by the wrist and pulled me back against his body. “If you had only come to speak with me this afternoon, or even during the feast, I would have told you all of this. Explained everything.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “You don’t understand what will happen if we marry and the stranger comes.”

  “It’s you who doesn’t understand, Helen.” His fingers tightened around my wrist, his other hand a fist in my hair. He didn’t pull, but nor could I move away. “Do you think you’re the only one who dreams? The only one who suffers? Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? I can’t sleep at night without seeing you, without growing so hard, I feel as though I will burst from the pain of not having you beneath me.”

  “Not like this.”

  His hand held me bound. If I screamed, would anyone come? The slaves were used to hearing me cry in the night. They would only think it a nightmare. And anyone outside would mistake it for noise from the feasting, just another kitchen girl shrieking when she’s caught by the man she teased all night.

  “Please, not like this,” I begged. “If we’re going to be married, can you not just wait a few months longer?”

  He laughed again, rough and low. “A few months of agony. And days of watching you expose yourself to these dogs. Days of suffering your refusals. It would be crueler of me to leave you in doubt of our future, to let you work your wiles on other men.” He kissed me beneath my ear, his fingers leaving my wrist to trace my collarbone. “You will not tell me I cannot have you, after tonight, and I would not see those men you tease suffer as I have. It is unkind of you, Helen. Unkind to them, and even unkinder to me. Or is that the truth of it? The reason for your nightmares? All this time you say you are unwilling, that you are taken by force, but watching you with that hero—”

  His hand wrapped around my throat, and his eyes, narrowed and dark, glittered in the moonlight. I went still, my lungs seizing. The beat of my heart filled my ears louder than ever while his fingers pressed into my skin, closing, squeezing until my breath caught. I grasped his wrist, but the way he stared at me, the way his lip had curled and his grip tightened, I did not dare to struggle.

  “No,” he murmured, the pressure upon my throat easing at last. I took a gasping breath, my chest aching, though whether it was my broken heart or the air I had been denied, I could not tell. “No, I cannot believe you are so cruel as that. But you are mine, Helen, and I will have you remember it when you sit beside that Athenian tomorrow.”

  Theseus.

  I closed my eyes and clutched the diamond in my palm. If I fought Menelaus, there would be no forgiveness. Even if I scratched and clawed, he would not free me. He would only look on me with the same hate I saw in my dreams.

  He kissed my neck, and I shivered. Menelaus, whom I had loved as a brother. As a child, I had dreamed of our marriage. I had dreamed of how he would take me in his arms, gentle and fierce. Dreamed of his kiss on my lips and how kind a husband he would be. The best I could have hoped for.

  A sob caught in my throat, and I turned my face away. />
  “I am owed this, Helen,” he murmured against my ear. “I am owed you.”

  There was nothing gentle about him, then, when his lips claimed mine, and I knew I would give him this. Not because it was owed. Not because he had earned it. Not because I was his. I would give him my body, because he could not have my heart. Because I would not marry him, no matter what Tyndareus had promised. Because once, long ago, he had been my friend, and regardless of what happened between us, I could not bear for him to hate me yet.

  I unclasped the pins that held my dress and let the fabric fall to the floor.

  Because before the week was ended, I would be free.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Menelaus half growled, his hungry gaze sweeping over my nakedness. For a moment, a brief moment, he only stared, but then he was pushing me back against the bed. One hand was at my waist, biting into the soft flesh as I fell into the bedding. He crawled atop me, pulling me toward him by my hips when I flinched away.

  “I’ve dreamed of this for so long,” he murmured. “So long.”

  I shut my eyes and lay limp, my fingers closing all the tighter around the diamond still in my palm. But I did not want to think of Theseus. I did not want to think at all.

  His lips traced the line of my jaw, the column of my neck, the slope of my collarbone, and the shape of my breast. “Beautiful,” he said between hard kisses as he worked his way to the peak. “So beautiful.”

  But I did not feel beautiful, then. I did not feel anything but sick. Before the nightmares had come, I had imagined these moments between us, imagined his kiss, his caress. I had imagined a considerate lover, a friend as concerned for me and my pleasure as his own. Before the nightmares, each brush of his hand against mine had lit a fire inside me, but now I lay bare before him, and felt only the twist of snakes in my belly and the chill of gooseflesh.

  He moved away only long enough to pull his tunic over his head, and I turned my face away before I saw his nakedness. I did not want to remember him this way, to remember any of this at all. This man, whoever he had become, was not the man I had admired, even loved. He was no friend, nor any kind of protector. I did not know him, or understand the desperate, panting hunger of his breaths.

  Pirithous had been right to warn me, and in that moment, I only wished he had spoken sooner. That I might have kept Clymene by my side at all times, or stayed in the hall until I could be certain Menelaus had found his own bed.

  But I had thought—what had I thought? That Menelaus would never betray me. That Menelaus above all would protect me from harm. Had he not been my closest friend since childhood? Had he not always loved me, cared for me, stood as my champion in all things?

  Menelaus pressed me into the bedding, heavy and rough, until all I felt was the ropes beneath the furs, and bruises across my back. His hand wrapped in my hair, forcing my head back and baring my throat to his mouth.

  I cried out when he drove inside me the first time, tears pricking my eyes. He groaned my name, and I hushed him. The servants might not come if they heard me, but they would certainly be startled by a male voice.

  “Let them come,” he growled. Before I could prepare myself, he moved again. His red head bent over my body, his teeth closing over the tender skin of my breasts.

  He did not seem to notice when I began to cry, hot tears burning as they slipped down my cheeks and pooled in my ears. I wrapped my legs around his waist to try to slow him, fisted hands pushing at his chest and shoulders to give myself space, to give myself time to breathe, but he only drove himself deeper inside me.

  “Mine, Helen,” he murmured. “You will always be mine.”

  I closed my eyes and focused on the feel of the diamond in my palm, the sharp cut of its edges against my skin. I tried to shift my body beneath his to avoid the worst discomfort, sickened by my own whimpering, by the roar of laughter rising from the courtyard outside. Gods above, but it burned, as if I were torn apart with every thrust. And the ropes beneath me—I could feel each knot, each overlay, digging into my spine. He groaned again, like a rutting boar, and stiffened.

  My breath caught, and I prayed that he was through. That I would never again know his weight upon me, or the staleness of his hard pants, or the sourness of his sweat, mixed with a too-sweet musk.

  A moment later, he rolled away, his fingers slipped from my hair, freeing me at last. I curled up on my side and covered myself with the blanket.

  He laughed and drew me against his chest, fondling my breasts. “Just knowing you’re still beside me makes me harden again.”

  I swallowed the sob in my throat and pretended I did not feel him pressed against my backside; I pretended not to hear him at all.

  “Helen?” he murmured, kissing the back of my neck.

  I did not answer, and with a sigh, he rolled to his back. I lay still and silent, listening for his breathing to slow, waiting for it to steady. The snakes in my stomach writhed, cold sweat breaking from my skin.

  I could not lie beside him any longer, with his seed spilling from between my legs, surrounded by the scent of his body, all musk and leather, until I gagged. But I forced myself to wait, counted my racing heartbeats until I had no more numbers, and Menelaus snored softly at my back.

  Only then, biting my tongue against even the slightest hiss of discomfort, did I dare to move, slipping from beneath the blanket and contorting myself in order to escape. I half fell from the bedding and froze, searching his face for any sign that he had heard.

  Menelaus didn’t stir, his expression relaxed in sleep, all the lines I had grown so used to seeing smoothed away. For a moment, I stared at the boy I had known, the one who took me fishing when Castor and Pollux had refused me, and who swore to Leda it was his fault I had come back muddied from toes to chest, another gown ruined.

  And then I saw the rest of him, scarred and hard muscled. The body he had used to claim mine, careless of my feelings, of my distress and discomfort. The boy I had known once was gone.

  I caught up my sleeping shift, laid out still upon my chest at the foot of the bed, and left the room.

  The water in the small bath had long turned cold in the moonlight, but I did not stir. Even the idea of moving from the tub made me wince. I should have used the pool instead, but I had not been certain I could keep my head above the water, and after everything that had happened, I refused to let myself drown. He had not been gentle, but he had been thorough. More than one area would blossom purple, black, and blue before morning, and so be it. This was all he would ever have of me. I would no longer feel any guilt for leaving him behind.

  I opened my hand and stared at the diamond. The rough edges of the stone had cut into my palm, but I had not been able to release it. The sharp bite of the facets had been a welcome distraction from the pain of our joining.

  When I had eased my sore body into the warm water, I did not think I would ever rise again. But now, I sat in cold water and my teeth chattered, gooseflesh rising on my skin. I could not stay here until morning. If the servants learned what had happened, my father would be shamed in front of all his guests and I would be as good as married. Any hope I had of escape and freedom would be destroyed with the gossip and the announcement of betrothal that would follow.

  I washed the blood from the diamond in my hand, and forced myself to rise from the water, wishing for Clymene. Bending over to reach the towels on the benches along the wall made me gasp, and I moved with less grace than an old grandmother as I dressed.

  I crept back down the corridor, trying to ignore the way the peacocks’ eyes followed my progress in the dark. Menelaus snored still, the sound traveling through my door.

  Theseus. I needed to speak to Theseus. Menelaus would not be able to wander the halls of the women’s quarters in search of me if he woke. As long as I did not return to my bed, I would be safe from him until tomorrow.

  The sounds of the feast
outside had faded though the moon had not yet set. If Theseus was not in his rooms, surely his physician could find him for me. A much softer snore greeted me from the other side of the curtain at the main entrance, and I had never been more thankful for a sleeping guard. I slipped past him, my bare feet making little noise on the painted tiles.

  The halls were mostly deserted, splashed with moonlight and shadow. The owls watched me tiptoe past the open door to the megaron and through the storerooms beyond it. Ariston’s room was on the opposite side of the palace, inside the servants’ wing, since he had only common blood. When I heard footsteps, I hid behind pillars and waited for the rare servant to pass. I did not forget Pirithous’s warning, and prayed I did not meet any of my father’s guests, drunk from too much wine.

  I knocked on the door. Please, let him be awake.

  I knocked louder.

  “Princess,” a voice hissed.

  My heart pounded in my ears. I had no place to hide but the door frame, and it was not deep enough to keep me out of sight.

  The man came forward, still half in shadow. I could just make out the glint of his eyes, tracing the shape of my body through the thin shift I wore. A flush rose from my chest to my cheeks as the silence between us roared.

  He stepped into the moonlight, and I recognized his face.

  “King Pirithous.” I slumped against the stone, my hand pressed over my heart.

  “I had hoped that when I saw you to your room, you would stay there.” He reached around me to open the door and pushed me through it into darkness. He glanced back out into the hall and then pulled it shut behind him.

  I groped for the wall, and Pirithous grabbed me by the wrist when my hand brushed his tunic, guiding me deeper into the room.

  “Ariston!”

  The physician appeared, carrying an oil lamp. The flicker of the small flame cast shadows over his rumpled hair and accentuated the blanket-lines impressed on his face, turning them into gruesome scars.