by Amanda Elyot
The following day, I accompanied Menelaus and three of his most trusted sailors to the bay. There, they slew four seals and hid themselves underneath the freshly flayed skins. “If this is what you must do to sail home, you must bathe before you board your ship or I will never join you!” I told him, only half in jest.
And when Proteus emerged from the waters and lay among the sea beasts, my husband and his accomplices wrestled the young man, who fought them furiously, not understanding why he had been assaulted. Menelaus later insisted that the struggle was so fierce because Proteus fought them off with all the strength of a lion, then coiled his limbs about them, trying to strangle them like a serpent, that he clawed their skin with the ferocity of a leopard, and on and on, seeming to impersonate the strongest beasts and elements of nature; but still the Achaeans clung to him.
Finally, Menelaus demanded, “Which god was it who set a trap for me that marooned me here on Pharos?”
“It was none other than the great Zeus,” replied Proteus, “for you neglected to make the proper hecatomb before you sailed from Ilios. Now you must remount the Nile in flood to do so.”
To my ears, this sounded like a terrifying proposition. Menelaus by now had lived fifty-six summers. There was barely a trace of russet in his beard. His leg pained him more often. Over the past nine years, we had come to rely on each other in ways I had never imagined, and I did not know how I would be able to withstand any more suffering in my life.
Menelaus assured me that all would be well on the river. From King Thon he purchased a hundred bulls and brought them to the mouth of the Nile. At first light the following morning, he slaughtered the beasts and made the hecatomb. Then he returned to the bay of Pharos where I waited onboard his ship.
As soon as Menelaus gave the command to raise the sail, a strong stern wind filled its white belly. Our collective sighs of relief could have blown us all the way back to Sparta.
“I believe I know the real reason Zeus detained us in Egypt for so long,” I said to Menelaus as we looked northward, my head resting on his shoulder. His arm encircled my waist.
“And why is that, fair Helen?”
“He wanted you to collect all this,” I said, indicating the treasure stored below. “It is my father’s dowry for our new beginning!”
THIRTY-ONE
How many of the Spartan people would remember Helen? I wondered anxiously as we neared Gythium. Almost a decade had passed since the fall of Ilios. I had lived through forty-seven summers and had been away from Achaea for nearly twenty-two of them.
When the oarsmen beached the ship, I refused assistance in disembarking. I even removed my sandals, wanting to feel with my bare flesh that first step where sea meets earth. Then I fell to my knees and brought my lips to the damp ground. I had finally come home.
Still, I was uneasy; how would I be welcomed? The road from Gythium was mostly deserted, but as we neared Sparta and the citizens lined the avenue, having learned that their true king—and queen—were finally home, terror closed its icy hand around my heart. I had not anticipated that young girls would strew our path with flowers, but truly, after so much time had passed, I did not expect to be the target of such vociferous derision. Some women even pelted me with olives, though they did not assault the warrior king who rode beside me. Murder is easier to forgive than beauty. By the time we reached the palace, I was distraught and drenched with tears.
“I never promised that our homecoming would be a simple thing,” said Menelaus. We entered the palace with six of his men, in search of Pieris and Megapenthes, but no one was able to locate the usurpers. We were told by a serving woman that the two of them had gone to Argos for the summer festival. The few guards who had remained to watch the palace in their absence were quickly imprisoned.
“It will make it easier for us,” Menelaus told me. “Megapenthes and Pieris will return only to find themselves displaced. I will send them to Messenia with enough to build a home and recommence their lives there. They will have no choice but to live under your cousin’s rule.”
A rider reared his horse outside our gates and called loudly for the king of Sparta. Expecting that this represented some sort of formal homecoming greeting, perhaps from the citizens or from the temple priests, Menelaus and I ran outside, calling for a slave to feed and water the horse and to offer the rider a cool drink.
“I bear a message from Argos,” the rider said breathlessly.
Menelaus and I exchanged a glance. Perhaps this news pertained somehow to Pieris and Megapenthes.
“The queen of Mycenae and her consort Aegisthus have been slain,” he added, without further preamble.
“Cly . . . Clytemnestra . . . ?” I stammered. I clutched my husband’s arm to stop myself from collapsing on the paving stones. One thing I had most looked forward to was the chance to greet my elder sister. Each of us had endured much, and I hoped that after a lifetime of sisterly rivalry, now that I had returned to Achaea, we would finally be able to come to terms with each other—perhaps even reconcile. I clutched my breast and screamed hysterically at the messenger, “What demon did this deed?”
“Her son, Orestes,” he replied.
Menelaus, shocked and deeply distressed by this news, invited the rider to dismount and step inside the palace. We inquired of a slave if my stepfather Tyndareus still lived and were told that, though ancient and half deaf, Sparta’s former king still enjoyed his orchards. We then dispatched the servant to fetch him immediately.
Food and drink were brought forth, in accordance with the proper rules of hospitality, and after partaking of them with us, the messenger from Mycenae told his tale.
“During the war years, when Orestes was just a boy, Clytemnestra’s lover Aegisthus had the child exiled so that he would not present an impediment to his rule of great Mycenae. For years Orestes bided his time, waiting to avenge his father Agamemnon’s murder, which occurred eight years ago, on the very day that the High King and his concubine, the Troyan royal priestess Cassandra, returned triumphantly from Ilios.
“Yesterday at dawn, Orestes and his childhood friend Pylades, disguised as travelers, returned to Mycenae. Ensnaring Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in a ruse whereby they believed Orestes dead, and with Electra’s aid, the two young men slaughtered Aegisthus even as he offered sacrifices upon the altar. Clytemnestra pleaded for her life, reminding her son that it was she who had brought him into this world and who had given him suck, but Orestes remained unmoved. In his father’s name, he took his revenge and beheaded his own mother.”
I screamed as though the sharpness of the blade had pierced my own fair skin. And then I fainted. Menelaus himself revived me with a cool wet cloth. “By all the gods,” I sobbed into his chest, “when does it end? My sister slain by her own son . . .”
“Orestes declared that he and his sister Electra were honor-bound to punish the adulterers who had killed their beloved father,” said the messenger.
“Now, hear this!” I railed. “And may the whole world come to understand more than only half the truth. I wonder if my nephew Orestes realizes how much his own life mirrors that of the man he murdered—his father’s cousin. Aegisthus, too, was banished as a youth and crept home while his rival was away. But he exacted his revenge upon the House of Atreus by seducing his enemy’s wife. Yes, Aegisthus was an adulterer, as was my sister, but Orestes and Electra have an entirely false picture of their father. Agamemnon was no demigod. He was a rapacious monster who enjoyed myriad extramarital liaisons, to put it delicately. My sister was far more wronged than wrongdoing. Does anyone dare suggest that Orestes achieved justice with these murders?” I continued, venting the full measure of my wrath on the hapless Mycenaean rider.
“Orestes has much support,” he admitted.
“Orestes, and my niece Electra, punished Aegisthus for the same crime their own sanctified father had committed time and time again. They refused to acknowledge Agamemnon’s brutality against their mother.” I was both disgusted and furious. A
nd with regard to Clytemnestra . . . how well I knew that the world castigated women for what it was quick to excuse in men, thinking them even mightier and grander for the women whom they bedded and the children who they sired out of wedlock.
My sister’s murder offered me perspective. Far greater ills greeted my homecoming than a few indelicate taunts and a handful or two of rotten olives.
Tyndareus wished to make for Mycenae immediately. If he did so with his final breaths, he vowed to see his grandson Orestes brought to justice. My stepfather didn’t speak of it, but I was certain that he was overwhelmed with guilt at having allowed his greed to get the better of his judgment so many years ago. He had permitted Agamemnon to wed Clytemnestra, knowing what manner of man he was, deaf to his beloved daughter’s tearful protestations.
Menelaus and I counseled Tyndareus to remain in Sparta due to his advanced age and numerous infirmities, but he wished to make Clytemnestra’s killer pay dearly for his crime. So, Menelaus summoned a chariot to bring my stepfather to Mycenae. The messenger would stay beside him all the way.
After the messenger had departed, I sat in silence for several minutes. “Clytemnestra worshipped power,” I mused aloud. “More like a man than like a woman. And, like a man, she lived—and died—for revenge. I never realized until now how much I learned from her.” My tears returned. By her violent deeds and in her own equally horrific death, Clytemnestra had finally achieved the immortality for which she had so envied me. In my mind’s eye, I saw her in her bloodred gown. On her wedding day to Tantalus. On mine to Menelaus. On the cliffs at Aulis. On the day she died. She would have seen more than fifty summers. Had her black hair become gray as ash or white as swansdown? “She was fierce, and fearsome, at times, but she was brave. I wish I had my sister’s courage.”
“You do,” said Menelaus softly.
In an effort to settle my raging thoughts, I wandered alone through the cool chambers of the palace. In our absence they had not been well maintained. The paint had faded; the roofs leaked. I returned to our Great Hall and regarded what was left of the fresco that depicted the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the one I had commissioned for Kronia nearly a lifetime ago. Someone had tried to paint over it, with unsatisfactory and amateurish results, someone perhaps who understood the deeply personal significance of the mural and the story it illustrated.
Hermione! Where was she? I left the Great Hall and ran back through every room, searching for my daughter. Suddenly, I was thunderstruck by the realization that I was not looking for a little freckled girl of nine summers, but a woman of nearly thirty.
The gynaeceum was desolate but for a slave woman washing the floors. Then I thought I heard a snoring sound, and I parted the curtains to the room that had once been mine and my mother’s before me. My furniture was gone. The room was empty except for a chair that faced the window . . . and a dusty birthing stool. Someone was dozing in the chair, deep in the arms of Hypnos.
I tiptoed toward the slumbering figure, and with a cry of joy and recognition, I knelt beside her. “Aethra!” I exclaimed.
The old woman awoke with a start. “She’s coming home, mark my words,” she mumbled, as though she were talking in her sleep to some detractor.
“I feared you might be dead,” I murmured, embracing her. My tears flowed hotly over her simple woven robe.
“The Moirai have decided otherwise,” she said, tart as ever, referring to the Fates. “Atropos has not yet seen fit to snip my thread. Perhaps she was waiting for your return.”
“Don’t speak that way,” I chided. She was wizened as an apple core, but her eyes were still bright with wisdom and intelligence. “Speak of good things instead. Are you well?” I pressed her hands against my cheek and turned to kiss her gnarled white fingers veined with tributaries of blue.
“I have the infirmities of age,” Aethra said succinctly. “No more, no less. Pieris leaves me alone. They all leave me alone. When Ilios fell, I drew my chair here so that through the window I could see you returning home. At first they were amused by my vigilance, the way an old blind dog awaits his master’s scent. But then they grew accustomed to my sitting here day after day, and paid me no further heed. I prefer it that way.”
I clung to her bony form. “You’ll outlive them all,” I said, grateful that at least someone I had loved so long ago was still alive. “Come, nurse, tell me where I may find my daughter!”
Aethra shook her head. “Gone.”
“When? Where?” I begged to learn.
“Perhaps two moons ago. She left with Orestes.”
“Orestes!” I felt my blood turn to ice.
“He used to visit her here. They fell in love, or so Hermione said. She said that he was the only one, except her father, who ever loved her. She was nearly as angry with Menelaus for abandoning her to fight for your honor as she was with you for sullying it and deserting her for the fatuous charms of Paris Alexandros.”
“He was anything but fatuous,” I said defensively. “But then again, Hermione only saw him through the eyes of a child who thought him a thief, not so much because he stole away with her mother, but because he robbed her beloved father of his finest treasure.” My thoughts returned to my daughter’s choice of men. “Orestes!” I spat.
Menelaus entered the chamber. “I decided to come looking for you.” Time had metamorphosed the possessive aspect of his temperament from bitter jealousy into solicitous protectiveness.
“Hermione eloped with Orestes,” I told him, sharing the details of Aethra’s tale. “I will not welcome them here, if they dare to return. I never wish to accept my sister’s murderer as our son. Not only that, should Hermione, as our only living child, one day rule Sparta, I will not permit the man who butchered Clytemnestra to sit beside her. I cannot conscience it.”
Offering no argument, my husband left us alone to continue our conversation.
“You should know,” Aethra told me, “many people believe you are dead.”
I was shocked. “How is that possible?”
“Your friend Polyxo,” she replied. “She lost her husband Tlepolemus in the war and blamed you for making her a widow. The bards sing of how she invited you to her home on the isle of Rhodes for the sake of a reunion, then lured you to a grove of trees and hanged you, just as your mother Leda hanged herself.”
I was incredulous. My only childhood friend. “She must have truly hated me beyond all measure.”
“People often hate what they cannot understand,” Aethra offered wisely.
“And the bards must be foolish old blind men indeed, to think that I can be thus killed—or killed at all.”
“Polyxo hanged you in effigy,” my old nurse replied. “But in her grief and anger, she needed to believe that it was really you.”
Menelaus gave me an exceedingly magnanimous present. Within the year, a hundred craftsmen and laborers had restored, refurbished, and redecorated the palace of Sparta, this time not to rival its Mycenaean counterpart, but as a gift to Helen. All the treasures we’d brought back from Egypt were put to sumptuous use. With the gold that Menelaus had amassed, the rooms glittered as though they had been kissed by the sun god himself. Our living quarters were lavishly renovated, with finely woven bedstuffs, purple rugs, and fleecy coverlets gracing nearly every surface. It amused me that, as he neared the age of sixty, the once-austere Menelaus was finally able to embrace my sybaritic sensibilities. A separate room on the lower floor of the gynaeceum was set aside for Aethra, who, to my delight, continued to enjoy relatively sound health for one so elderly.
New frescoes were painted in the Great Hall. Tall thrones, almost as impressive as the king’s, were built to be set beside Menelaus for our honored guests. By day, Menelaus heard petitions and entreaties, now fully content to govern Sparta in a time of peace. Listening to each request, I sat beside him, plying my handiwork; a rolling silver basket rimmed in hammered gold held my yarn and finespun stuff. My golden distaff was swathed in the dusky violet wool with which I was fashionin
g a cloak for him.
And yet we entertained without pretension, my husband in a woven tunic and mantle, his smooth feet laced into leather sandals; while I often reclined on my light chair with its amber and ivory inlaid footrest, a rug of downy wool across my lap.
In the evenings, water was poured from golden pitchers into silver bowls, and every diner had his own polished table. Minstrels and acrobats enlivened our evenings, although we occasionally needed to correct some of the details when bards sought to pay us tribute by immortalizing our lives in song.
About a year after we had returned to Sparta, I was walking alone at twilight in the sacred grove. Its lyrical beauty and tranquility have always stirred me most deeply, and the power and presence of the Goddess remains remarkably palpable. The poplars whispered to one another, and for a moment or two, I was certain I saw the ghostly image of my mother floating amid their verdant branches.
“Life is a circle, Helen,” she murmured, or was it the Goddess who was speaking through her? “It is round, like a woman. Do you know the story of the mother’s joy in finding her long-lost daughter? Their reunion completed the circle; and thus the cycle of eternal renewal between mother and daughter is celebrated once again. I deserted you, and you deserted me, but you came back to me,” Leda whispered, her voice as thin as the air.
I realized what my mother was telling me. My circle with you, Hermione, was incomplete. I deserted you, and you deserted me. We’ve spent more years resenting each other than may remain for us to enjoy together.
I opened my arms and began to lift them toward the sky. Two-thirds of the circle was complete. When you stand before me, we’ll be whole.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty—That is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”
“ODE ON A GRECIAN URN”
John Keats (1795–1821)
