Beauty's Daughter

by Carolyn Meyer

  Menestheus nodded his assent.

  “But I shall stay here for the weddings,” Iphigenia said. “I don’t want to miss any of it!”

  THE GREATEST SURPRISE WAS the arrival of my parents. Menelaus and Helen of Sparta would attend my wedding.

  Heralds announced that the royal ship from Sparta had entered the port of Piraeus, and I asked Asius to take Orestes and me down to meet them. I was terribly anxious, but Orestes was completely calm. “If anyone should be uneasy, I should be,” he said. “Menelaus tried to persuade the courts in Mycenae to sentence me to death.”

  Orestes and I had never talked about the murders. What was there to say? He had been severely punished for what most people thought was a justifiable killing. But I knew that my father felt Orestes had not been punished severely enough. Menelaus likely disapproved of my marrying a man who had committed matricide. I convinced myself that I didn’t care if he disapproved—he had forced me to marry Pyrrhus, who was surely guilty of far worse crimes than Orestes could even think of.

  I watched my father step from the ship into the small boat that brought them to shore. Menelaus’s red hair was faded now and streaked with gray, but his strong body showed few signs of age. He walked a little stiffly, possibly from the wound he received at Troy, but that was all.

  He turned to assist my mother. Boatmen on other ships in the port stopped what they were doing and stared at Helen. Nothing about her had changed. Her golden hair still shone like sunlight. Her flawless skin still glowed. Her gown clung to every curve of her lovely body. Her smile still dazzled. Only when she looked at me did a tiny frown appear between her eyes of hyacinth blue.

  “Well, Hermione,” my mother greeted me with her musical voice, the only quality I shared with her. “How nice that Orestes wants to marry you. But it seems you’ve been neglecting your appearance. Just look how dark your skin has become! All those freckles! Have you tried to bleach them? I’ll send my maidservant to do something with that hair.”

  MY WEDDING DAY WAS both bitter and sweet. Like the scenes created by Hephaestus, the god of the forge, for Achilles’ great shield, the celebration was filled with beauty and sadness. Zethus had been dead for a full waxing and waning of the moon. All of us mourned him. Ardeste suckled her baby and wept for the baby’s father. I knew how deeply she must miss her Zethus. I missed him too. He had been an important part of my life since I was a young girl.

  But still Ardeste wanted to celebrate my wedding to Orestes, and for that day she set aside her own pain to share in my joy. She had water brought from a sacred spring on a slope below the Acropolis and directed the servants to heat it for the baths that Electra and I enjoyed. Zethus’s infant son kicked and gurgled in his basket nearby while Ardeste helped me dress in my new peplos, the color of pomegranates. She combed my hair into a smooth braid and arranged the lustrous veil glittering with gold and silver spangles. Queen Clymene made me a gift of a pair of jeweled armlets, and my servant tied on soft new sandals.

  The day was cloudless and bright. It had been a fine harvest, and amphoras filled with wine lined the racks in every available storage room. The granaries were full to bursting with barley, dried lentils, and beans. Jars of oil, some scented with herbs, were bottled and stoppered and stored on shelves. Down in the agora the cooks had worked throughout the night, slaughtering sheep and cattle and roasting them on spits; ovens had been fired up to bake hundreds of loaves of bread; enormous platters were filled with juicy figs and pears soaked in honey and spices. The citizens of Athens had been invited by their king and queen to celebrate a bountiful harvest and the weddings of four royal visitors whom the gods had brought to their city.

  We made a fine procession to the agora. King Menestheus escorted Electra, and my father escorted me. “A woman in love is always at her most beautiful,” my father said as he walked with me to where Pylades and Orestes waited to greet their brides. “And I am well pleased by your choice of a husband.” That was all he said about Orestes. It was all he needed to say, and all I wanted to hear. I cared for his approval more than I’d allowed myself to admit.

  Musicians entertained the guests, and a bard plucked his lyre and recited wedding poetry. A pair of tumblers sprang and whirled through the crowd, leading the dancers; young girls held hands and swayed, and young men showed off their astounding leaps. A traveler in a broad-brimmed hat and winged sandals smiled and raised his hand. Above us Aphrodite, the goddess of love, spun in a cloud and blessed the marriages, and we felt her blessings fall upon our heads like warm sun and gentle rain. I hoped that dear Zethus was also rejoicing and sending his love to Ardeste, who stood quietly weeping, her baby in her arms.

  The wedding party feasted and laughed and danced and sang until Helios drove his flaming chariot below the rim of the earth. Then we poured libations on the ground and drank wine blessed by the gods and began the long climb back up to the Acropolis as darkness wrapped itself around us and torches lighted the way.

  Orestes brought his half of our golden wedding goblet to my quarters, and we joined the halves together and drank from the goblet and pledged our love anew, fulfilling our promise. We lay on fine new fleeces, making a gift of ourselves and our bodies until Dawn reached her rosy fingers into the great vault of the sky.

  Epilogue

  SOON AFTER OUR WEDDING, Orestes received an invitation from the people of Mycenae to return there and to become their king. His long exile was over. As a wedding gift King Menestheus gave Orestes a ship and fifty rowers. Electra and Pylades sailed with us, with Leucus and Astynome, little Chryses, and their newborn daughter. Ardeste, too, wished to come with us, and we welcomed her and baby Zethus into our household. The next summer my son Tisamenus was born.

  Helen never lost her ethereal beauty, but she and my father grew aged. In time Helen and Menelaus departed this life for the Elysian Fields, and Orestes succeeded my father as king of Sparta. He ruled the two kingdoms fairly and well.

  Notes from the Author

  SCHOLARS HAVE LONG ARGUED about whether the Trojan War was an actual historical event and if Helen of Troy really existed. I have no idea if their story is “true,” but I do know that the ancient myths have been told and retold in countless versions for thousands of years. Archaeologists have dug through several layers of ruins that once were Troy. Tourists clamber over the remains of Agamemnon’s citadel at Mycenae. Thousands visit the Acropolis in Athens—although nothing remains there of the late Bronze Age, when most historians believe the Trojan War, or something like it, took place in what is now Turkey.

  The most famous description of the Trojan War is the long epic poem that we know as The Iliad. The poet Homer lived in the eighth or ninth century B.C.—no one knows for certain—some four hundred years after the war supposedly took place; his poem is based on countless retellings by innumerable poets over four centuries, all passed on orally; nothing was written. Add to that the question of whether there was actually a single poet named Homer, or whether a number of “Homers” contributed their ideas. In any case, The Iliad covers only the final months of the ten-year war. The long and bloody story opens when Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest warrior, gets extremely upset because Agamemnon has demanded the return of his girlfriend and refuses to fight unless he gets her back. (That raises another question: did it really last for ten years, or was that just another way of saying “a really long time”?)

  The other great epic poem attributed to Homer, The Odyssey, covers another ten years (or another “really long time”) after the war ends and centers on the adventures of another character, Odysseus, who takes his sweet time returning home to his patient wife, Penelope.

  There are no written records of this period. The Greeks at this time, about 1200 B.C., had a writing system, but it all disappeared when their civilization fell apart soon after the end of what may have been a trade war with the Trojans. Nobody knows for sure. But that hasn’t stopped historians from making educated guesses, and ancient Greeks and Romans and many others down
to the present time from writing plays and poems and novels—and making films—about Helen, Orestes, Electra, Achilles, Iphigenia, and many other colorful and compelling characters who are the subject of myths.

  You can add me to the long list of writers inspired by the Greek myths. I’ve drawn most heavily from Homer’s Iliad to imagine the story of Hermione, daughter of Helen of Troy, and the young man she loved, her cousin Orestes. Much has been written about Helen; painters and sculptors have tried to capture her beauty, but almost nothing has been written about Hermione. She can be found mentioned in various myths, but those brief references provided me with little material to write about her life—only that at one time she married the son of Achilles, a man named Neoptolemus in some sources and Pyrrhus in others, and that she eventually married her cousin Orestes. That gave me the idea for the basic and timeless plot of a novel that is almost wholly the product of my own imagination: Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl and boy find happiness at last.

  Carolyn Meyer

  Albuquerque, New Mexico

  Main Characters

  Greeks:

  Hermione’s family:

  Menelaus, king of Sparta, Hermione’s father

  Helen, queen of Sparta, Hermione’s mother

  Pleisthenes, son of Menelaus and Helen

  Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus; king of Mycenae

  Clytemnestra, sister of Helen; queen of Mycenae

  Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

  Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

  Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

  Chrysothemis, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

  Warriors and Allies:

  Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest warrior

  Pyrrhus, Achilles’ son

  Patroclus, Achilles’ cousin and closest friend

  Odysseus, close ally of Menelaus and Agamemnon

  Hippodameia, girl captured by Achilles

  Astynome, girl captured by Achilles

  Menestheus, king of Athens

  Clymene, queen of Athens

  Trojans:

  Priam, king of Troy

  Hecabe, queen of Troy

  Hector, eldest son of Priam; Troy’s greatest warrior

  Helenus, son of Priam

  Deiphobus, son of Priam

  Paris, son of Priam

  Andromache, wife of Hector

  Cassandra, daughter of Priam

  Gods:

  Zeus, greatest god

  Hera, wife of Zeus

  Apollo, Zeus’s son, god of light and prophecy

  Artemis, goddess of the hunt and of childbirth

  Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty, and desire

  Athena, virgin goddess of wisdom and warfare

  Hermes, messenger god

  Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes

  Aeolus, god of the four winds

  Characters created by the author:

  Pentheus, vizier at Sparta

  Zethus, former servant of Paris, friend of Hermione

  Ardeste, Hermione’s servant and friend

  Marpessa, old crone

  Leucus, sympathetic seaman

  Asius, giant guard and charioteer

  (There are also dozens of other characters who make brief appearances.)

  Bibliography

  Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1990.

  Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. Mount Kisco, N.Y.: Moyer Bell, 1988.

  Vermeule, Emily. Greece in the Bronze Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.

  Plus innumerable websites for information on Greek gods and the twelve Olympians; on characters of Greek mythology such as Helenus, Cassandra, Deiphobus, Philoctetes, Calchas; ancient sites in Greece and Troy such as Tenedos, Mycenae, Sparta, Gythion, Aulis, Dodona, Tiryns, Pharsalos, Iolkos, Delphi; and descriptions of clothing, food, and customs of Bronze Age Greece.

  I

  At the Center of Disastrous Events

  THE MIDNIGHT HOUR being well past, the day is now Wednesday, the eighth of February, 1587. The sound of hammering in the great hall of Fotheringhay Castle has not ceased. In a few hours the most important day of my life will dawn. I have written letters to those I love. My red petticoats and my black gown lie ready. My women, dressed in black, sit with me, and I ask one of them to read aloud the story of the good thief crucified beside our Lord.

  When she has finished, the women are weeping. “It is true that the thief was a great sinner,” I remind them, “but not so great as I have been.”

  I lie down and close my eyes, though I have no wish to sleep. Outside the door of my dreary chambers, the guards tramp back and forth, back and forth, stationed there lest I try to escape. They need not worry My body remains here, but my thoughts have already flown away, back to my earliest beginnings and all that has followed.

  Chapter I

  Farewell, Scotland

  I WAS THE CAUSE OF MY FATHER’S DEATH.

  My father, King James V of Scotland, drew his last downhearted breath and died when I was just six days old. “He had not been ill,” my mother explained to me years later, “but was deeply saddened by his defeat at the hands of the terrible English.”

  Henry VIII, king of “the terrible English,” was determined to take over Scotland. In the bloody battles between the two countries that shared a border, the outnumbered Scots always got the worst of it. After my father’s humiliating loss at his last battle, he took to his bed.

  My father had badly wanted a son who could be the next king. When he married my mother, a French duchess, he already had three illegitimate sons, but by law a bastard could not inherit the Scottish throne. My mother bore him two more sons; both infants died. I was my father’s last hope, and when the news reached him of the birth of a lass—a girl—that bitter disappointment was more than he could endure. Had I been a boy, he would still be alive. I have no doubt of that.

  From my earliest days I have too often found myself at the center of disastrous events. That was the first. My birth killed my father, and I became queen of Scotland.

  I was playing with my friends when the guard rushed in from the watchtower and announced to the queen, “My lady, the ships flying the colors of France are moving up the firth,” and my mother burst into tears.

  “Mither?” I jumped up from my game and ran to her. I touched her cheek. “Maman?” I asked, changing to French, my mother’s language.

  She dabbed at her eyes and tried to smile. “Shall we go see the ships, Marie?” Her voice trembled. She took my hand, calling to my friends, “Come, dear little Maries!” All four of my friends were named Mary, as I was, but my mother called us by the French version of the name—even Mary Fleming, who was pure Scots. To everyone, they were the Four Maries. Trailed by governesses who always seemed to move too slowly, we dashed eagerly out of the castle and peered down over the stone parapet to see for ourselves these foreign ships far below us. A strong north wind, chilly even in July, whipped our skirts and petticoats and blew our long hair into our faces.

  “Look,” my mother said, “the king of France has sent his own royal galley for you. This shows how much he honors you.”

  “Me?” I gazed up at my mother, puzzled. It was the summer of 1548, a few months before my sixth birthday, and there was much I did not yet understand.

  Maman sighed deeply and pulled me close. “The time has come to explain it to you, ma chère Marie.”

  At the age of nine months I was carried in a great procession to the royal chapel at Stirling Castle and crowned Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, in a solemn ceremony. I remembered none of it, of course, but the event was described to me so often—how I reached out and tried to grasp the scepter; how I did not stop wailing throughout the ceremony—that in a few years I came to believe I actually could remember it all.

  I was barely a year old when the Scottish Parliament signed an agreement with England declaring that when I reached the age of ten I
would marry Prince Edward, the son of King Henry VIII. I was pledged to marry the “auld enemy”! That promise was not enough to satisfy King Henry. He demanded that I come to live in England until my marriage—for my safekeeping, he said. My mother refused to allow it. Fearing that King Henry would have me kidnapped, my mother moved me from Linlithgow Castle, where I was born, to Stirling Castle, far north of the border and better fortified against an English attack. But still my mother did not feel easy. We moved again, to an even more remote castle.

  While we were there, news came from England that Henry VIII had died. Nine-year-old Edward was the new king. I was four.

  “I am certain it is safe now,” said my mother. “We can go home to Stirling.”

  But she was wrong. The English continued their attacks along the border. They mowed down ten thousand Scots in the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh and began the march to Stirling. In the dead of night my mother and I were bundled onto a litter and carried to an Augustinian priory on a quiet lake far from the smoke and noise of battle. Within a few days the Four Maries and their mothers joined us on the island of Inchmahome. I would have happily stayed on that pretty island, unaware of the bloody fighting that still raged, chasing butterflies, gathering eggs from the hens’ nests, and devouring the rich buns the monks baked for us every morning.