Beauty's Daughter

by Carolyn Meyer

  Hippodameia began then to recall her own wedding, interrupted so brutally by the arrival of Achilles. “I’d spent the day with my mother and aunts and sisters. They walked with me to the megaron where my father and the man I was to marry were making their sacrifices to the gods. I remember the scent of flowers. How nervous I felt when I saw the man who was to be my husband! His eyes were kind. But at that moment Achilles stormed in with his henchmen and the murders began.”

  “And yet, in spite of what he had done, you came to love him,” I remarked, wondering how that could be possible.

  “Yes,” Hippodameia admitted, “I did. There was goodness in Achilles as well, and when I discovered that goodness, my feelings toward him changed.” She took my hands in both of hers and looked earnestly into my eyes. “Pyrrhus is his son. If you can, try to find the goodness in him, too. You may not love him, but it will make your life bearable.”

  Though I did think she was wrong—I saw no hints of goodness in Pyrrhus—I thanked her.

  Astynome arranged my shimmering veil, and when the heralds had twice come for us and we could not delay any longer, the three of us went out together to the beach where the rites would take place and my father would hand me over to my husband. It was to be a hurried affair. Menelaus was eager to take Helen home to Sparta; Pyrrhus would tolerate no more delays before returning to Phthia.

  Pyrrhus had never looked more handsome; I gave him that. He wore a beautiful white tunic banded in blue and belted over a kilt fringed with tassels, and a necklace of amber beads that were favored by warriors. His long, wheat-colored hair was freshly washed and oiled. He had grown a beard. But handsome as he was, he was not Orestes.

  I must stop thinking about Orestes, I told myself. My lover is gone.

  Animals were sacrificed, and libations of wine were poured on the ground. I scarcely heard the words being spoken. My father, smiling, joined my hands with Pyrrhus’s.

  My lover is gone.

  The feasting and drinking went on until after the stars appeared. I looked for Hippodameia and Astynome but couldn’t find them. Queen Helen, luminous in her beauty, was the center of attention, just as she had always been. She was playing a lyre and singing in a pure, silvery voice, her golden hair streaming, marble-white skin glowing in the torchlight. Every man listened as though no one else in the world had ever sung such songs.

  Pyrrhus led me back to his tent. We walked in silence. We had nothing to say to each other. I was surprised to find Andromache there, though I should not have been. She huddled in a corner, watching us warily. Pyrrhus grasped her by the shoulders and steered her out of the tent. “Tonight I lie with my wife,” he said. She went away silently. I knew she was relieved.

  My husband took me angrily, forcibly, with no regard for my feelings. I closed my eyes and submitted, weeping for Orestes.

  My lover is gone. Gone. Gone.

  19

  Leaving Troy

  THE REMAINING GREEK FLEETS prepared to sail for home. Odysseus had already departed with his ships. Menelaus’s fleet was ready to set out for Sparta. Helen had agreed to take Astynome, along with her baby, as her servant. Astynome had confided to me that although she had accepted this offer, her goal when she reached Sparta was to find her way to Agamemnon in Mycenae. I considered that foolhardy. Not only was Clytemnestra not likely to welcome her as a replacement, but Agamemnon had declared his love for Cassandra. Hippodameia begged to be allowed to come with me, and when I asked permission from Pyrrhus, he did not deny me. I would have at least one friend—two, if Andromache could be counted.

  Someone else had joined us: a Trojan named Helenus, twin brother of Cassandra, brother of Hector and Paris, though not nearly as handsome as Paris. Helenus had been the rival of Deiphobus to marry my mother after Paris was killed, but luckily for Helenus—or Helen might have stabbed him instead—Priam chose Deiphobus. Helenus was said to have the gift of prophecy, taught him by his sister, Cassandra, but people believed his prophecies, unlike hers.

  “Helenus will make a useful servant,” Pyrrhus said. “I need someone to make accurate predictions.”

  Maybe it would be good for Andromache to have her husband’s brother nearby. Or maybe not—that depended on many things. Helenus was unlikely to forget that Pyrrhus had also murdered Priam, Helenus’s father, and countless other noble Trojans. I marveled that my husband could sleep at night with so many in his household who no doubt wished him dead.

  We were ready to set sail. I had looked in vain for Zethus. No one seemed to know what happened to him after he’d fulfilled his duty, signaling the Greek ships and then letting the men inside the wooden horse know when the troops had arrived. I had to assume he’d been killed in the turmoil and bloodshed that followed. I greatly feared that his body lay rotting within the walls of the ruined city.

  THE GODS HAD DECIDED to toy with the Greeks once more—or perhaps the men had misjudged the winds. Pyrrhus had told me he expected to reach Phthia in three days. Menelaus had given a similar estimate of the time it would take his ships to get to Sparta. But they hadn’t counted on the violent tempests that swept the Chief Sea, scattering the ships and drowning many men who, until the water finally closed over their heads, had clung to the belief that they’d soon be with their wives and children again.

  Now, after a long and violent voyage, Pyrrhus’s ships—what was left of them—arrived at Iolkos, the main seaport in Phthia. I was very glad to be on dry land after days of relentlessly churning seas, towering waves, and winds that tore at the sail. The Myrmidons had reached their homeland at last, and when we stepped onto the shore, even the most hardened among them kissed the ground.

  We camped at Iolkos while the ships were unloaded and Pyrrhus’s share of the Trojan treasure was piled onto donkey carts. That night the men celebrated, and after much wine had been drunk, Pyrrhus summoned a ship’s captain, a man named Leucus, and ordered him to burn all the ships bearing Pyrrhus’s emblem, the horns of a bull on a rayed star.

  Leucus was not a Myrmidon but came from the island of Skyros, where Pyrrhus had spent his boyhood. “All of them?” Leucus asked, and hesitated, frowning.

  “Yes, all of them!” Pyrrhus shouted angrily. “Are you questioning my command?” He struck Leucus squarely in the face. Blood spurted from the captain’s mouth. His front teeth were now gone.

  Leucus didn’t flinch. He gave the order to the men, who ran drunkenly from ship to ship with flaming torches, setting fire to the entire fleet. I watched the leaping flames with a sinking heart and understood that Pyrrhus was destroying our connection to the rest of the world.

  The blackened hulls of the ships were still smoldering when Pyrrhus led his war-weary troops on the long journey overland toward the heart of Phthia. The rough path, sometimes not much more than a goat track, wound through the mountains. There were no carrying chairs. Hippodameia, Andromache, and I struggled to keep up with the soldiers and the donkey carts. Helenus did what he could to help us, until Pyrrhus grew suspicious of the Trojan’s nearness to Andromache and ordered him to stay away. Runners dashed ahead to scattered villages to alert the inhabitants to our approach. Peasants emerged from their huts to greet the battle-scarred warriors, trying to recognize the men they hadn’t seen for ten years.

  I saw no young children in these villages, only hollow-eyed women and a few stooped old men; the younger men and boys had left their homes long ago to follow Achilles into battle. There were tears of joy as women welcomed their husbands, and half-grown boys and girls shrank from fathers who were strangers to them. There were tears of grief, too; many women wailed and scratched their faces when they realized their husbands were not among those who had come back.

  The villagers quickly organized themselves to prepare a feast, slaughtering their fattest animals and bringing out dust-covered wine jars saved for years for this occasion. After we’d eaten and drunk our fill and stories had been told and retold, we moved on to the next village, and the next, Pyrrhus’s army of Myrmidons shrinking
as the men reached their homes.

  I’d lost count of the days when at last we crossed a broad plain marked with stands of leafy green trees, sparkling springs, and a fast-moving river. Pyrrhus pointed out the citadel on the crest of a high hill. “Pharsalos!” he shouted. “Capital of Phthia, the kingdom of the Myrmidons!”

  Walls constructed of huge, rough boulders—walls twice as thick as those at Sparta and Mycenae—encircled the citadel and extended down the hill to surround the town below. Outside the walls lay abandoned fields, once planted in grain but now overrun with thistle, and we entered the sleepy lower town through unguarded gates hanging on broken hinges. The narrow, crooked streets were unpaved and dusty, and the mud-brick houses, even the large ones of the wealthier citizens, were neglected and crumbling, the sagging roofs in need of thatching.

  “It’s nothing like Troy,” murmured Andromache, walking beside me.

  The inhabitants watched us warily, unsure how to respond to this stranger who announced himself as Pyrrhus, king of Phthia. No one rushed out to bow or to clasp his hands.

  Pyrrhus’s face darkened. “Has no one told them their king has come home at last?”

  “They’ve been too long without a ruler,” I said, hoping to tame his growing anger. “It will take a little time for them to get used to having a king again.”

  We reached the top of the steep, winding path to the citadel. “So far from the sea!” Hippodameia exclaimed, breathless from the climb.

  “My grandmother, Thetis, lived here with Peleus,” Pyrrhus growled. “She was born of the sea, and yet she made this her home for many years. And my father was born here!”

  Achilles had indeed been born in Pharsalos, but as a boy he’d been sent by Thetis to live in the palace of the king of Skyros. Achilles had not yet reached full manhood when he lay with the king’s daughter, and Pyrrhus was the result of that union. Pyrrhus grew up in Skyros; he had never before seen Pharsalos, and the people of Pharsalos had never seen him.

  We wandered through the moldering chambers of the palace. Small animals had taken up residence in nearly every room; birds fluttered from their nests near the ceiling. Sheepherders had no doubt used the place as their own and kept their flocks here with them. I’m not sure what I expected, but certainly not this. Compared with Agamemnon’s magnificent citadel at Mycenae and Menelaus’s beautiful palace at Sparta, this was not much better than the tents and crude huts in which we’d lived on the beaches of Troy.

  “Welcome to your new home, Hermione,” Pyrrhus said sourly. He was surely disappointed too, but his pride wouldn’t allow him to show it.

  I wanted to weep, but I’d learned that tears were usually pointless and accomplished nothing. Instead, the next day I sent for workers from the town to clean out the birds’ nests and dung piles. The sleeping fleeces were infested with vermin and had to be taken out and burned; fortunately, there were plenty of sheep to provide fresh ones. Most of the cooking pots had been stolen from the kitchens. I found clay bowls and the two-handled drinking cups piled on shelves thick with mouse droppings. The bowls were chipped and cracked, and many of the cups were missing one handle.

  I took a few cups to show to my husband, who was sucking marrow from a bone pulled from the previous night’s fire in what had once been the megaron. He had spent the morning having the donkey carts unloaded and the goods put into one of the storage rooms that could be secured.

  “These cups are not usable,” I pointed out. “Perhaps there are some silver goblets among your treasure.” The image of my half of the beautiful wedding goblet floated into my mind, and I brushed it away.

  Pyrrhus snatched a damaged cup from my hands and knocked it sharply against the wall, breaking off the second handle. “Good enough now, I think,” he said, and handed it to me with a smirk.

  If this was to be my home, then I would do whatever was possible to transform this crumbling heap of stone, this maze of dismal rooms, dark corridors, and gloomy halls, and make it livable. I asked Pyrrhus to hire masons from the town to repair the damaged walls. “Helenus can oversee the work,” I said, and grudgingly my husband agreed.

  But no one in the city of Pharsalos, or in the kingdom of Phthia, seemed to know anything about the proper decoration of a royal palace. I doubted that I could find artists who knew how to paint wet plaster with the scenes I remembered from my home in Sparta, or artisans skilled in laying tiles on the floors and finishing the wooden columns of the great hall—even if I could convince Pyrrhus to pay for it.

  Long ago my mother had ordered tables and chairs and couches when she was expecting Prince Paris to visit Sparta. Remembering that, I ventured down to the lower town with Ardeste, my new maidservant. Ardeste had grown up in Pharsalos; she knew the town well and found craftsmen for me. When I explained what I wanted, they bowed and smiled, but they had no idea how to do those things. I had to settle for something much simpler, much cruder.

  Sometimes I blamed poor Ardeste for not finding the kind of craftsmen I wanted. Sometimes I took out my frustration on some unlucky fellow who had never built anything more elaborate than a sheepfold.

  And I argued constantly with Pyrrhus.

  “Are you mad, Hermione?” he shouted at me. “You are no longer living the luxurious life of the spoiled daughter of a rich king, thinking you have only to snap your fingers and whatever you want will be yours!”

  “Who are you to talk?” I shouted back at him. “You took your share of the Trojan treasury, and I know that Menelaus handed over part of the spoils as my dowry. So please don’t tell me that I have to live like a pig farmer’s wife!”

  My efforts to improve the palace and make it livable helped me to forget, if only briefly, that I loathed my husband. Pyrrhus was no better than I’d expected him to be. We settled into a cool but practical relationship in which I saw to the running of his household, with the assistance of Hippodameia. He was free to swagger around as king of Phthia with his faithful horde of Myrmidons, terrorizing the villages and exacting tribute from the villagers. I had found not one scrap of affection in my heart for Pyrrhus. We had as little to do with each other as possible. I was quite happy that Andromache shared his bed, but on those nights when he was not with her or one of his other concubines, he came to my bed and I received him. It was my duty to provide him with sons.

  Then Andromache announced that she was expecting a child.

  No doubt I should have foreseen this. In the beginning, after Hector was killed by Achilles, I had felt enormous pity for Andromache. As if her husband’s death weren’t terrible enough, Pyrrhus had flung their little son to his death on the rocks below the walls of Troy. Pyrrhus brutally compounded the savagery by seizing Andromache as his concubine, dooming her to whatever misery he chose to inflict. I’d seen the bruises on her body and the marks made by her shackles. Who would not have pitied such an unfortunate woman?

  Now she was carrying a child. She seemed pleased—almost content.

  “Pyrrhus could not be happier,” Hippodameia told me when Andromache gave birth to a son. To my own surprise I suffered pangs of jealousy.

  I, too, wanted a child, but not Pyrrhus’s child—Orestes’. When I was alone, I took my half of our wedding goblet from the place where I’d hidden it. I could not imagine that I would ever forget him, and painful as it was, I vowed that I would not. Every day, I touched my lips to the rim where his lips had once been and renewed my vow: Someday, Orestes, we will be together again. We will marry, and we will have a child.

  Hippodameia sensed my yearning. “Andromache has had a life marked by tragedy, but I think she has prayed to the goddesses to deny you a baby.”

  “Do you believe it could be so?” I thought Andromache and I were friends, and it hadn’t occurred to me that she might turn against me.

  “Oh, yes,” Hippodameia said. “I do.”

  “Why would she want to deny me a baby?”

  “So that she can replace you as Pyrrhus’s wife.”

  “But surely she doesn’t
love him! It’s not possible! She once swore to me that she’d kill him if she ever had the chance!”

  “Andromache doesn’t love him,” Hippodameia said, “but she does want to be queen.”

  From then on I was highly suspicious of everything Andromache said and did. I watched her closely. She was only a concubine, yet after the birth of her baby boy I noticed that she occupied a special position in the royal household. She had given Pyrrhus a son, and I had given him none. I was ready to blame her.

  Then I received another shock: Hippodameia was pregnant. Her belly was already swelling.

  “Who?” I asked. “Who is the father?” I hoped she’d say it was Helenus.

  But she looked away, avoiding my eye. I knew the answer.

  20

  Murder and Revenge

  PYRRHUS AND HIS MYRMIDONS had left Phthia, marching west. Helenus had made a prophecy, and Pyrrhus had decided to consult the oracle at Zeus’s shrine at Dodona to learn what it meant. They’d been gone for nearly three months. Life in the cheerless palace was more tolerable without Pyrrhus. One day when I’d retired to my bedroom to escape the wails of infants that were not mine, I was at my loom when Ardeste announced the arrival of a visitor. Visitors were rare, and I was eager to learn who had found his way to the citadel of Pharsalos.

  “He doesn’t wish to give his name, mistress. But he sends you this.” Ardeste held in her palm a small wooden carving of a horse, a miniature of the huge wooden horse at Troy. Zethus! Could it be? I dropped my shuttle and, without bothering to see to the condition of my hair or my well-worn peplos, ran to greet him in the anteroom.

  Zethus strode toward me, his hands outstretched in greeting. I was so pleased to see him that I wanted to embrace him, but I stopped myself and welcomed him in the formal manner our positions required.