I didn’t need a second invitation. I thwacked my brothers’ backsides so fast and so hard with one of their own practice swords that the bruises left them looking like a pair of leopards. By the time they scrambled to their feet and out of reach, I was breathing hard, but I’d never felt happier. My brothers filled the air with their protests until Glaucus silenced them both with a look.
Then they had no other choice but to stand by, pulling long faces, while their teacher gave his attention to evaluating my improvised performance: “Good energy, even if it’s not focused. Bad technique, but that’s understandable and it can be corrected. Too much enthusiasm. There’s no shame in honorable combat, but there shouldn’t be so much unnatural pleasure. The man with the greatest thirst for blood ends up drinking at Hades’s table. Men!” At the word, my brothers tensed like hunting hounds. I giggled to hear him use that word to address a pair of boys still shy of their fifteenth birthday, but I bit off my laughter the instant Glaucus glared at me. “Men, we welcome your new comrade.”
The startled looks on their faces were beyond description.
“Is this a joke?” Polydeuces demanded. “Are you saying it just to punish us because we didn’t fight well today? We’ll do better tomorrow, I swear it by Zeus!”
“She can’t join us,” Castor said, shaking his head. “It’s—it’s—it’s just wrong.”
Glaucus soon put a stop to their protests. “Your sister has explained why she wants to share your lessons, and she makes good points. She’s younger than you, but already she knows the wisdom of being able to take care of herself and her people, once she’s our queen. Good: A weak ruler means a weak land; a weak land means war. Now if you can give me any reason why I should not teach her along with you, say it. If it makes sense, I’ll heed it, but remember this: It must be a reason that would apply if she’d been born a boy. If all you can say is She’s a girl! then save your breath. You’ll need it to outrun me, and the gods help you when I catch you.”
“But—but she’s a—She’s too young!” It was lucky Castor caught himself before he could utter the words that would earn him a beating.
“She doesn’t need to worry about protecting herself once she’s queen,” Polydeuces put in. “We’ll do that. We’d do it even if it weren’t our duty! Helen, don’t you trust us to take care of you?”
Before I could reply, Castor plowed on, “And she’s weak. Look at her arms! All scrawny. She’ll get hurt, and she’ll never be able to keep up with us.”
Glaucus folded his arms across his chest. “If she can’t keep up, she’ll get no special treatment. She can give up and go back to the palace anytime she likes. Once she does that, I won’t allow her to rejoin us. Understood? All of you?” He gave me a hard look. I said nothing, but I clenched my fists and made a private vow to Zeus himself that the only way I’d leave the training ground would be as a small, cold corpse.
I was still enjoying thoughts of And I’ll be dead and then they’ll all be sorry! when Glaucus added, “As for her age, she’s older than you were when your father first turned you over to me.”
“Father!” Castor cried, like a starving man discovering a loaf of bread. “He’d never risk anything happening to Helen. She is going to be queen one day.”
“Castor’s right,” Polydeuces said eagerly, his head bobbing up and down. “He’ll never hear of her training with us.”
“Exactly,” said Glaucus, and he smiled.
So we entered into a pact of the deepest secrecy, my brothers and Glaucus and I. It was agreed that I would train in the use of sword and shield and spear whenever I could slip away from the women’s world of distaff and spindle and loom inside the palace walls. Glaucus made Castor and Polydeuces promise that they would not speak of my lessons to anyone, not a word, not a hint. They clung to their initial reluctance. Castor kept repeating, “But what if Father finds out anyway? What will he do to us then?” until Polydeuces pointed out that I’d soon get tired of doing a man’s work; it would be only a matter of time before I quit on my own. Castor didn’t look convinced, but he went where Polydeuces led. Glaucus had them take the gods’ own oath, swearing by the dreadful powers of the river Styx, the black water that flows between the lands of the living and the realm of Hades, lord of the dead.
Of course, Glaucus laid down some exceptions to our pact for me. “If you’re clumsy enough to make anyone suspicious—anyone to whom you owe honor and obedience, I mean—and you’re asked a direct question about where you’re going or what you’re doing, tell the truth.”
I nodded. I knew that lying was wrong, but I drew a broken line around the whole matter of concealing my sword-training from my parents. If I didn’t tell them I was doing it, it wasn’t the same thing as telling them I wasn’t.
“If you’re discovered, it won’t be anyone’s fault but your own,” he went on. “I know how to keep secrets, and your brothers have sworn.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “I’ll make sure no one follows me, and I’ll always come in disguise. And if Clytemnestra asks me where I’m going, I’ll beat her until she stays quiet.”
“Do that, and we’re through,” Glaucus told me. “I’m not teaching you how to fight if it means you’ll turn into a tyrant. The world’s got enough of those. If you want to learn from me, you’ll work for the privilege, and you’ll know that not all of my lessons will take place on the training ground.”
3
LESSONS
My next lesson came between the time Glaucus first agreed to show me how to fight and the time I was at last able to steal away from the palace and join my brothers on the training ground. Seven days! Gods, how could seven days seem like eternity?
On the first day, I leaped out of bed, eager to throw on my “borrowed” tunic and run to the training ground, only to find Ione standing in my doorway with a stack of newly woven fabric.