‘Menelaus should have made a wiser choice of bride,’ he had scoffed. We were in our chamber; his ships were ready in the harbour and already I looked forward to the quiet that would fall once he had sailed. I felt restless and agitated, my mind on fire with questions for my errant sister. How I wished I could talk to her, that I had been there in Sparta, that I could have seen this Paris for myself, that I had more than wild speculation to fuel my imaginings.
‘All the men of Greece wanted Helen,’ I said. ‘You should remember that, surely.’
He cast me an irritated glance. ‘If they wanted her that much, why have they all been so reluctant to bring her home?’
Again, this familiar grumble. It had been a constant refrain as he and Menelaus tried to summon the armies.
‘War is not an easy thing to contemplate,’ I said. ‘They have wives of their own, children to think of . . .’
He scoffed. ‘Troy is ours for the taking. They will sail home with riches they have never dreamed of, which they can lavish upon those wives and children.’ He strode to the window and stared through it intently. ‘But that they dared to shrink back from their duty when I called them to arms, the king of them all. Odysseus, feigning madness. Achilles, disguised as a woman. They should have been eager to fight this war when I summoned them.’
‘You have Odysseus, and Achilles, too.’ I thought of Penelope with a pang of grief. I knew that she and Odysseus must have plotted it together: that he pretended to be mad as he ploughed their fields with salt and ranted and raved nonsense. It had taken the shrewd Palamedes, whom Agamemnon had sent, to pluck their newborn baby Telemachus from Penelope’s arms and lay the infant down before the plough. When Odysseus swerved away to save the child, the pretence was exposed as a lie. My heart had leapt into my throat when I heard that particular story, and my arms had circled my swollen stomach instinctively. The thought of her baby, exposed and vulnerable on the earth, the sharp metal teeth only inches away – I felt a shiver of Penelope’s fear. And a strange sensation of jealousy lurking beneath it. She had wanted her husband to stay at home, wanted it enough to risk his dishonour and make him break the oath he himself had suggested years before. I could not quite bring myself to feel the same about my husband’s impending absence. His complaining had been driving me to madness myself as the armies were assembled.
‘Achilles, at least, was not bound to protect Menelaus’ claim,’ he reflected. ‘The rest of them, though, those who swore at Sparta – they should have kept their vow and simply been grateful it was not them who won her in the first place.’
I bristled at this. ‘Perhaps if one of them had won her instead, she would have kept her own vow and not run away in the first place.’
Agamemnon’s face darkened.
‘If, in fact, she ran away at all,’ I conceded. I had heard it a hundred ways already. Helen had shamelessly hurled herself at Paris: how was he to resist her beauty? Or she had been duped by Aphrodite, lured away by a glamour cast by the goddess and not returned to her senses until she was already halfway across the ocean to Troy. Or perhaps he had seized her, overpowered her and dragged her to his ship, she screaming piously for her absent husband all the way. I had noticed a lot of men liked to dwell on this last one, picturing perhaps how her dress might have torn beneath his cruel hands, and how she might have begged. I closed my eyes for a moment, willing the image away.
Mostly though, they talked of her as though the first scenario was proven. Who cared if it wasn’t? She was spoiled goods, anyway, a tarnished prize for Menelaus to reclaim – Menelaus, who had thought himself the luckiest man in Greece and was now the laughing stock of everyone. Everyone knew she was no better than a whore, a traitor to all of Greece, a disgrace. They loved that, all of them, as they glugged their wine and boasted of how the walls of Troy would crumble against the might of strong Greek bronze. I stayed silent. I realised that when I had seen all those suitors clamour in the hall for Helen, I had believed they were there because they loved her, but I had been wrong. They hated her. They hated her because she was so beautiful and because she made them want her so much. Nothing brought them more joy than the fall of a lovely woman. They picked over her reputation like vultures, scavenging for every scrap of flesh they could devour.
I shuddered to think what might happen if Troy fell as easily as they all anticipated. Agamemnon made to leave, but I caught at his sleeve before he could go. ‘What will happen to her?’ I asked him. I made him look at me, searched his dark eyes for the compassion I hoped he possessed. ‘If Troy falls, what will happen to my sister?’
His face gave nothing away. ‘It is for Menelaus to decide.’
‘Menelaus is your younger brother. You can convince him.’
He shook his head, just a little. ‘Helen is Menelaus’ wife. We go, as sworn, to bring her back to him. He has the right to do as he sees fit.’
‘So, you will not intervene?’
He sighed. ‘Why would I?’
For me, of course. For his wife. I do not know how he did not see that. But since talk of taking Troy had begun, I did not think he had seen anything else but their triumph.
‘You don’t care for Helen, even though she is my sister and I love her.’ My voice was low and hard and furious. ‘You don’t even care about the oath you swore. You are glad that this happened! I know you are. You want nothing but your war, to prove that you lead the Greeks.’
His eyes were unfathomable. ‘The greatest of them all,’ he said quietly.
‘I was wrong when I said that,’ I hissed. ‘You will never be the greatest of the Greeks. If my sister dies at your brother’s hand and you do not lift a finger to stop it, you will be the worst and most cowardly of them all.’
And that was how he left to go to war. It didn’t seem any better a topic of conversation to share with my daughter than the previous ones I had considered. But perhaps, I reflected, as our royal chariot bumped and jostled its way to Aulis, perhaps he had thought on my words. This marriage of our daughter: no doubt it was to secure his alliances, to fasten Achilles’ rather dubious loyalty more firmly to him. But a little of it could be, just maybe, a chance to make peace between us. To honour Iphigenia with a great husband, even if it was a little sooner than I would have wanted. And a way to see us both again.
I sat back and tried to make myself as comfortable as I could. Despite the heat and the dust whipped up from the road that swirled all around us, Iphigenia looked as fresh and beautiful as a newly bloomed flower.
‘You are right,’ I told her. ‘We will send our men to war with a great celebration, for nothing is happier and more hopeful than a wedding.’
And at my reassurance, she smiled.
The sky at Aulis was a solid, cloudless blue. We had grown so hot and tired on the journey that I had been anticipating with some pleasure our arrival at the coast, but not even the whisper of a breeze gave us any respite. My legs felt cramped as I stepped on to the sandy earth, and the taut drum of my stomach ached as though a band were tightening ever more mercilessly around me.
No one was there to greet us. I was surprised at this. All that was before us was a long stretch of tents that spread across the plains as far as I could see. Behind us, the horses snorted and scuffed their hooves in the dust, whickering for water. The herald who had escorted us, he who had brought us Agamemnon’s decree, scurried past me, and before I could speak, he was lost among the maze of tents.
The whole of the Greek army was here somewhere, but it was eerily quiet. No shouts or chatter, or any other noise that would have betrayed the presence of thousands of soldiers, broke the stillness. Perhaps it was the heat – the terrible, deadening heat – and the strange flatness of the air that subdued them.
We waited, my daughter and I. At length, I saw a moving shape among the tents, and, as I watched, it resolved itself into a man, short and broad of stature. Recognisable to me in moments.