On the wedding day, dawn shines bright and golden. Outside the windows, trees are yellow and orange, and the banks of the Eurotas are muddy. In the megaron, tables are laid with bowls of geese and ducks, quail and wild boar, figs and cakes, onions, grapes and sweet apples. Vases of fresh flowers are everywhere, and the door and windows are wide open to make sure the light does justice to the frescoes.
The room fills quickly with rich Spartan families. Tyndareus and Leda welcome them, offering wine. Most ask what Sparta gains with this new marriage, which economic propositions the king of Maeonia offers. Clytemnestra pays no attention to any of it. She lingers by the largest window, Helen and Penelope by her sides. Penelope looks pretty in her lapis-blue dress, while Helen wears a simple white tunic, her long hair glowing around her shoulders; she has tried her best not to outshine her sister. Clytemnestra is wearing the earrings she had on the first night she met Tantalus, and her own white dress is bound with a thin golden belt.
“Our cousin Penelope has grown,” Castor says as he approaches the girls with Polydeuces and a few other Spartan youths. Smiling, Penelope accepts her cousin’s kiss. She lets her eyes linger on the other boys, her stare as bright as the moon in a starless night.
“Soon you will marry too, I presume,” Castor says.
“Not before I find a man who truly respects me,” replies Penelope. Castor opens his mouth, but Penelope is quicker. “And what about you, Cousin? Is marriage still far off for you?” Her voice is wise and mild. She doesn’t sound as though she is looking for an argument as Clytemnestra often does.
Castor laughs. “Why settle down when there are so many Spartan women? Look at this room. It swarms with them.”
“Haven’t you already slept with them all?” Polydeuces snorts.
Castor narrows his eyes. “Not yet, I think.” The men around him laugh, and Penelope smiles. “Now, if you’ll excuse us . . .” He turns in the direction of a group of Spartiates, and the other men follow.
Clytemnestra turns to the window. “I feel strange,” she says. It’s as if her life, as she knows it, is over.
Penelope takes her wrist. “Don’t.” Then, as if she has read her mind, she adds, “We are taught that marriage is the end of fun and childhood, but it is just the same. Nothing changes much in your life.”
“How do you know?”
“I am sure of it. It is one of those things men say to make sure we feel responsible, while they can be children forever.”
Helen laughs. “I wish I could remember everything you say, Penelope. Did Uncle Icarius teach you any of this?”
Penelope shakes her head. “Father doesn’t teach me much. Mother did, though, before she died. She liked to talk, to me especially, less to Father.”
Clytemnestra searches Penelope’s face for a hint of sadness, but she seems calm. Her mother, Polycaste, had been a frail, gentle woman who died of a bad fever years before, when Penelope was still little. Since then, she has been the one running everything in her palace. Penelope, as Clytemnestra knows, has a talent for making people listen to her, and she can be, at the same time, a very good listener. One day, she will make a just queen.
Five young men take out flutes and drums. As soon as the music is playing, girls and women leap to the center of the megaron. They whirl and toss their heads, their hair waving, like branches in the strongest winds. The large windows spill sun on them. Helen takes Clytemnestra to the center of the room. She obliges, moving her wrists and ankles to the rhythm, the jewelry twinkling. Soon the men join them. Clytemnestra sees Castor jumping and beating his hands, and Polydeuces, eyes closed, head bouncing while several girls watch him, giggling.
They stop only when sweat is running down their backs. They all feel drunker now, happier. Clytemnestra takes a handful of dried fruit and sips more wine; she feels almost feverish. Someone begins to sing, the musicians accompanying. They sing of conquered cities and successful hunts and raids. Of warrior women and monumental fights.
“Is it just me, or do men look stupid when they sing?”
Clytemnestra turns to face her brother. Castor looks drunker than her, his olive skin reddish on the cheeks. This makes her laugh.
“We look like animals,” he repeats. Sure enough, as she glances around, she sees the men’s faces red with laughter, hands tight around their wine cups. Every verse they sing is more obscene than the last, which is not shocking to her—it has always been like this—but they seem almost grotesque now.
She walks around the room, suddenly in need of quiet. As she moves toward the door, she bumps into a tall girl. Cynisca. Clytemnestra takes a step back as Cynisca stares at her, sullen.
“Congratulations,” Cynisca says. Her beak nose is weirdly crooked, and there are fading bruises on her arms.
Clytemnestra wonders if they linger from their fight. “Thank you,” she says. She tries to step around her and grab a wine cup, but Cynisca moves to stand in the way.
“Loved, honorable, brave,” she says. “What a queen you will make.”
Clytemnestra keeps silent, unsure of what to say. As always, Cynisca’s expression unsettles her.
“I would be careful if I were you. The lucky always fall.”
“Many men are lucky and loved and still live happily.” Even as she says it, Clytemnestra knows it isn’t entirely true.
Cynisca smirks. “Ah, that is your mistake. You think yourself a man, but you aren’t. Lucky women never get past the envy of the gods.”
Clytemnestra could have her whipped here and now if she wanted to. But Cynisca isn’t worth her anger, so she just stares at her coldly. As she walks away, toward her loving Tantalus, she smiles. Better to be envied than to be no one.
*
In the night, while Tantalus sleeps quietly beside her, she feels restless. They have made love, drunk and excited, and the sheets now smell of their bodies. She turns onto her left side, staring at the bare wall. On the other side of the palace, sheltered by the bright frescoed patterns of the gynaeceum, Helen must be sleeping in their bed next to Penelope. Clytemnestra feels a pang of jealousy.
There is no way she will fall asleep tonight. She moves the sheets aside as silently as possible and walks out of the room. Tiptoeing along, feeling the warmth of the lit torches as she passes them, she reaches the megaron. The room should be resting, empty and quiet, but Penelope is standing there, admiring the frescoes with a torch in her hand.
“What are you doing here?” Clytemnestra asks. Her voice echoes on the walls, feeble, like the sound of bats’ wings.
Penelope turns quickly, holding the torch in front of her. “Oh,” she says, “it’s you.”
“Can’t you sleep?”
Penelope shakes her head. “These are marvelous. We don’t have as many in Acarnania.” She steps back and forth, amazed by a painted flock of birds. “They are so bright—it makes you wish you’d painted them yourself.”
Clytemnestra has never thought of this. She looks at the warrior women tossing their hair as they attack a boar and remembers when she spent hours staring at them as a child, wishing to be like them.
As usual, Penelope seems to read her mind. “But you probably just thought of hunting and fighting like them, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“We are so different, you and I. I like to see the world from its edges while you wish to be in the center, taking part in the action.”
“Why do you want to stay at the edges?”
“I just like it better there. Maybe I am scared.”
Rain is pouring outside. They can hear the droplets hammering on the roof and the horses neighing in the stables.
Penelope tightens the pale cloak over her nightdress. “I heard something today, at the wedding,” she says. Her dark eyes have a golden look in them, like the burning torch she is holding. “A rumor.”
“A rumor,” Clytemnestra repeats.
“Yes, about Helen’s birth.” Penelope speaks without flinching.
Clytemnestra stares at her clever cousin. “What did people say?” she asks. “That Zeus seduced Leda as a long-necked swan?”
“No. They say she was raped.”
Clytemnestra grinds her teeth, biting her tongue. “You know how people are,” she says, “always eager for vile gossip.”