Helen Had a Sister

by Penelope Haines

  He was tall, in his mid-thirties. His muscles spoke of a man’s strength, although his palpable energy meant there was something still youthful about him. He accepted my good wishes gracefully, and a moment passed when we studied each other. I realised Agamemnon had already spoken to him, and he was as curious as I to know who he would be working with.

  “I think we will yoke together as a good team, Myrto.” I smiled at him and he nodded, not yet ready to commit himself. I liked him for his caution; it indicated a man who would think before he acted.

  I’ve never admired those who try too hard to please.

  I watched Agamemnon and the troops depart. Calchas went with them to ensure no gods were offended during the campaign. He had read the omens and declared them good. I was glad he was going, for though I disliked his influence on my husband, I was sure he would cause trouble for me had he stayed.

  I was confident I could redress the balance of influence over Agamemnon in my favour when he returned. It was too early to tell my husband, but I had missed my courses for three weeks. I hoped to have good news for him when he returned.

  “Abantes was picked up drunk again last night.”

  I groaned. “That’s the third time this week. What was he doing this time?”

  “He was refused entry to the wine shop because he was too drunk. So he decided to climb onto the roof and urinate on the customers.”

  I stifled a giggle. “What have you done with him?”

  “Given him the choice of working for the next few weeks with the team that’s extending the drainage ditches, or being locked up until Agamemnon gets back and deals with him.”

  I thought about that. “What did he choose?”

  Myrto grinned. “Digging ditches, of course. He didn’t fancy being imprisoned for an unspecified length of time, nor the flogging Agamemnon would sentence him to. He may be a pisshead, but Abantes has never been stupid when it comes to self-interest.”

  I smiled. I enjoyed Myrto’s company. He was intelligent, efficient, and I liked his pungent comments. We met most mornings to discuss events. There had been few significant issues, but we had proved we could work together and had established a template for managing Agamemnon’s future absences.

  I had formed the habit of going for a walk through the town in the early hours of the morning, when porters were still delivering fish, vegetables and flowers to the market, and artisans were busy warming up their fires or, depending on their craft, sharpening their tools. I liked the haphazard arrangement of a town still barely awake. Shopkeepers, still sleepy and relaxed, rolled their awnings up and arranged their wares. The casual informality of the scene suited me.

  Bearing Leda’s instructions in mind, I waved and smiled, and as my confidence grew, stopped to exchange words with people I passed. In a short while I knew that Milos’s shop served the best pomegranate tea in town, and Arianna’s honey-sweetened pastries were always worth stopping for. I was introduced to their young children and their aged parents. I began to develop a mind map of the city. The citizens worked hard, for long hours, and most were law-abiding. They were shy about discussing their politics, but I was building up enough of a picture from diverse gossip to realise with some surprise just how distressing the civil war of the last couple of years had been to ordinary people.

  Arianna finally plucked up the courage to say, “No one benefited, my lady. Well, maybe some of the nobles. Down here in the town we lost business as the war took hold, and some lost their lives. All we want is peace. May the gods protect your husband and give him a long reign.”

  Praxis, her husband, butted in. “Warriors only want war and glory, and they see each other, nothing else. They don’t know us working people exist until they wonder why they can’t get food or goods any more because they’ve killed us and destroyed our livelihoods. All I’ve got to say is we can live without warriors, but no one lives very long without farmers producing food and merchants selling it.”

  “What about when our troops go off to conquer other kingdoms?” I asked, mindful of Agamemnon’s intent to expand Mycaenae’s territory.

  Praxis shrugged. “Then it’s not my worry. As long as it’s not affecting my family or business, that’s fine.”

  I smiled at his pragmatism and moved on. Like the warriors, I had never previously noticed townspeople, either here or at home in Sparta. I had taken them for granted, like the helots, and never considered they might have their own opinions on the doings of the great and noble.

  Clustered up on the hill near the palace were the villas of the nobles. This was a different world to the noisy town just a few blocks away. I saw few citizens on my perambulations here and almost no women. Upper-class wives lived very cloistered lives, rarely being seen beyond the confines of their homes. The only women on the street were maids, already busy sweeping out doorways or receiving grocery deliveries. I waved to them and to the doorkeepers, receiving some strange looks in return. I was, of course, always accompanied by my own maids, and frequently by Myrto, but the sight of their queen freely wandering through the streets was a novelty. I left them to make what they would of it. I wanted to change Mycenean ideas of what women could do. Even if they would never enjoy the liberty a Spartan woman took for granted, I thought any relaxation of their rigid rules separating women from society would only be good.

  The current occupants of these affluent homes were those who had pitched their lot in with my husband. They had displaced Thyestes’ and Aegisthus’s supporters, and their continued loyalty for my husband depended on the wealth and power they could accumulate under Agamemnon’s rule. While I felt safe walking through the market and the poorer streets of our town, I felt exposed and vulnerable when dealing with these nobles. They tacitly supported my husband, but it didn’t take a lot of intelligence to see how tenuous this loyalty was. They currently allowed me to operate unmolested, but I wouldn’t have trusted any of them within a spear’s length of my person if they felt their privileges were being threatened. Agamemnon, no fool in these matters, had a premium regiment made up exclusively of young lordling warriors from these houses.

  “Are they so good that you give them elite status?” I had asked him in some confusion.

  Agamemnon snorted. “They’d run if they were faced with a real enemy who knew how to fight, but they’ve had basic warrior training and grown up hunting stag, wolf and boar. They understand no gentleman can act like a coward so they stand firmly enough together. The elements of warrior pride are there for me to build on, and it’s a good way of my gaining their loyalty. They’ll be all right once they’re battle hardened. In the meantime, they are hostages for their families’ good behaviour – although I would never say that to anyone other than you.”

  The troops returned, and the city once again filled with men. Agamemnon was in a foul mood. They had sustained a small but significant loss outside of Sicyon when a ragtag group of desperate fighters had ambushed Agamemnon’s troops. They had tackled them in rough terrain and attacked, using the topography to great effect. Mycenean troops, used to the brute force of the phalanx, were completely unprepared for a foe that crept up in the dark, attacked viciously and from some distance with bows and arrows, then melted back into crevices and gullies where our troops couldn’t follow.

  Agamemnon was used to winning his battles, and the blow to his pride was considerable. Consequently, he sulked and blamed anyone and anything he could for the defeat – his hoplite captains for failing to adapt to this more mobile form of warfare; Calchas for not warning him of the disaster; the gods for failing to support him. I’m sure he’d have blamed me if he could. I noticed he didn’t blame himself.

  I trod round him warily. After his fifth retelling of the disaster I was increasingly bored with the story. I tried to pacify him. “Warfare is what it is: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Like hunting, much of the thrill is in the uncertainty of the outcome. This is the first defeat you’ve had in a year or more of conflict. By
anyone’s standards that is exceptional.”

  Agamemnon glared at me. “We lost good men to those scum. Who uses a bow for warfare? It’s a coward’s ploy to kill a warrior at range who can’t fight back.”

  I thought it had been a very effective technique and would bear thinking about, but possibly this wasn’t the time to discuss battlefield strategy with my husband, so I gave a mental shrug and began to undress for the night.

  Agamemnon strode around the room ranting about the unfairness of troublesome natives, the treachery of defeated people and the importance of maintaining the Mycenean way. I listened with half an ear as I twisted a heavy bracelet off my wrist. The carving on it was quite exquisite.

  Suddenly I heard a loud crash. In his vigorous pacing, Agamemnon had managed to knock over the pile of armour freshly returned from the smith. He stood for a moment in horror before stooping and gathering his gear together. He couldn’t have displayed more concern if he had been examining his favourite child. His breastplate and shield were fortunately unscathed, but his helmet, having taken the brunt of the fall, was dented.

  I moved to stand beside him, and we both surveyed the damage. I could see his distress. The damage to the helmet was significant and would require a return to the smith to beat it smooth and polish it again.

  “It’s ruined. Look at it. It’s ruined,” he kept repeating.

  I felt his anguish was disproportionate, but I endured it for several minutes.

  Finally, bored with the pointlessness of his reiteration, I said, as soothingly as I could, “It can be fixed. It will be as good as new once the smith has mended it.”

  “What would you know?”

  Agamemnon swung round towards me, his eyes a blaze of hate, raised his right hand and smashed it into my face. I fell in a heap to the ground.

  I sat up, staring at him in shock, feeling my cheek begin to swell. Then, to my eternal shame, I burst into tears, climbed to my feet and ran from the room.

  As I fled I heard him cry, “Nestra …”

  * * *

  I hid in the small room we used for storing linen and cried as if my heart was broken. Such an easy thing to say, but I suppose it was true. I cried for love lost and the trust he had betrayed. I cried for my stupidity; I cried for Leda’s advice, which I had ignored. Mostly, although I didn’t know it, I cried for the girlish innocence gone in that blow. I was such a tangle of emotion I couldn’t think or reason. The physical pain was slight; the pain of ripped love was incalculable.

  Sometime later Agamemnon opened the door of the closet and found me. “Nestra.” His voice was heavy with grief and tears. “Nestra, I am so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry, so sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  His childlike grief and distress found a partner in my own. I let him pull me into his arms. “I’m so sorry, Nestra. My horrible temper. I promise I won’t ever do that again. I don’t know how I came to lose it, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Please say you’ll forgive me.”

  “Please, please.” His grovelling and begging went on and on, and I felt a sick swell of contempt at his self-abasement.

  Eventually I let him propel me back to our room and bed. All I wanted was to be left alone, but I was in a city still strange to me, and I had nowhere else to go.

  I lay beside him in the dark, wondering how the person I thought I was had allowed herself to be defeated so utterly. I had no idea what to do now.

  * * *

  In the morning Agamemnon left early. We were both subdued, not knowing what to say to each other. I checked my reflection in his bronze shield and saw the bruise had spread into the tissues of my eye socket, swelling the lid and blackening my eye. The maids came in, and I tried to turn my cheek from them to hide the mark. It was foolish, for there was no way to hide the damage, but I was ashamed. The younger girl, barely twelve years old, glanced at me as she reached to do my hair, and I watched her freeze as she took in the state of my face, although she made no comment.

  The older maid, busy straightening the bed, didn’t notice at first. Then she turned to say something, saw the marks and stopped dead. “Zeus! What happened, my lady?”

  I gave a light laugh. “Oh, nothing. I was clumsy.”

  She shook her head. “No, lady, you were not. Someone hit you,” she said flatly.

  I tried to deny it, but she pressed on. “Who was it? Your husband?”

  She took my silence for agreement.

  “Bastard!”

  I looked at her in some surprise. Her name was Chryseis. Mother had chosen her as one of the servants in my wedding train to accompany me from Sparta, and I had discovered she was a good worker. I knew no more of her than that. I hadn’t expected sympathy from a slave.

  I ducked my head. “Well, what’s done is done.” I tried to sound casual and composed. “It’s nothing, really.”

  She looked at me shrewdly. “Madam, it is not a ‘nothing’. It can happen, but it is not lawful for a man to beat his wife.”

  I shook my head. “There was no beating. Just a slap, nothing more.”

  I saw in her eyes she disagreed, but she said nothing, took a soft cloth soaked in cold water and held it against the bruise.

  “Hold it in place, Io. I will be back with a tincture.”

  I was embarrassed by the attention, but Chryseis’s competence was soothing. She returned in a few minutes with a bottle of oil from which she tipped a few drops onto another pad.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Hypericium, my lady. It will help the bruise disperse and heal. You should hold a pad of this against the bruise four times a day until it disappears.”

  “Are you a healer?” I asked in surprise.

  “I learnt some healing when I was a child, a long time ago,” she smiled. “I was thirteen when the slavers took me, but my grandmother had taught me well.”

  I nodded my thanks and held the pad against my face while Io put my hair up. I could feel my skin tightening. My eye felt a more natural size as the swelling from the bruise diminished.

  I gave my thanks as I dismissed them. I had never before thought to value a slave’s comfort.

  Agamemnon found me at noon and called me away from the women with whom I was winding thread for weaving. He led me onto the long terrace that surrounded the palace, far enough away to avoid being overheard.

  “Nestra, about last night …”

  I watched him fidgeting, his eyes not quite meeting mine.

  “I want you to know I have never felt so ashamed of myself. I don’t know why I lost my temper, but it won’t happen again. I am so sorry, and I need you to forgive me. Please say you will.”

  I stared at him in silence. I wasn’t being obstructive, I simply didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how I felt. There was a sense of boundaries needing to be redrawn between us, and I was uncertain how to do this.

  I saw he was unnerved.

  “Nestra, please forgive me. I’ve got you this as an apology. I want you to know I’m really sorry.”

  He held a leather pouch out. I reached towards him as he opened it and poured a necklace into my hands.

  I gasped. The jewel glittered in the noonday sun.

  “Let me put it round your neck.”

  I let him do the clasp, and the necklace hung heavy against my breast. I looked down and saw it lying on my skin.

  “It is magnificent,” he said. “You are magnificent. Nestra, I love you so much. Please try and forget last night and forgive me. I love you. It will never happen again, I promise.”

  Perhaps he was honest. We all make mistakes, and I had some petty guilt myself around my own failures to be a perfect wife. How could I judge him? Maybe this was a situation from which we had both learnt a lesson.

  What were my options? I could go home to Sparta. My parents would probably receive me kindly; but then what? Sparta was my childhood and belonged in my past. Mycenae was my fu
ture and my life, for me to make of it what I could. I tried not to flinch as I imagined the look in Leda’s eyes. She had been right to caution me. I had set my heart on this marriage and ignored her advice. Agamemnon was the man I had chosen from all the suitors who had vied for my hand. I loved him, or at least I had loved him. I wasn’t sure what I felt now. I had loved the companionship we shared, the warmth of late-night passion in our bed, the laughter shared memories brought. Was one blow to cancel all of that?

  It was a silly thought, but had Agamemnon and I been quarrelling, or had I done something wrong, I could have accepted the chastisement. But I had not provoked him. I couldn’t fathom the divide between the vicious hate that had propelled the blow and the love Agamemnon professed, although I believed both emotions were genuine. The ambiguity made me feel uneasy and adrift from my own certainties. I had lost confidence in my own judgment. It was simpler to try and put the incident behind us and hope it never happened again.

  I sighed.

  “I forgive you,” I said finally. “Just don’t ever let it happen again.”

  He gave a great laugh and gathered me into his arms, twirling me around like a dizzy girl in a dance.

  That night I sat beside my husband at the feast held in the great hall for the returned troops. There were some who grumbled, or pretended to be shocked, that a woman sat openly at such a public event, but I ignored them. They should be used to my ways by now.

  “I am your wife, and your nobles can like it or lump it,” I had told Agamemnon when he raised his eyebrows in question. “I am your queen and the only woman who will host feasts in my own house.” I kept to myself any embarrassment about being seen with a bruised face. The slaves had done what they could to disguise the marks.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Why not, after all? I like having my beautiful bride at my side.”