Helen’s small feet disappear from Clytemnestra’s sight. She hears her sister running along the corridors, faint like the flutter of wings. Leda strokes her hair as if she were a frightened dog while whispering to the women. Clytemnestra tries to catch the words, but their voices are too low, her sickness too strong. Next to her, the helot girl is cleaning her vomit.
“Drink this,” Leda says, holding a small cup to her lips. It smells disgusting and Clytemnestra tries to jerk away her head, but her mother keeps her still. She drinks and suddenly feels very tired, her eyelids drooping against her will. She rests her head on the wheat sacks, her limbs numb. I am pregnant, she thinks. My training in the gymnasium is over.
*
Sitting on the bed, she feels sicker than ever. Leda has given her herbs, to crush and mix in her wine, but she doesn’t like the numbness.
Servants moved her things to Tantalus’s room after the wedding, and now she stares at the bare wall, willing the world to stop spinning.
“I will have to go back to Maeonia for a little while,” Tantalus says. He keeps pacing the room, a cloak wrapped around his lean body. He ran to her in the kitchen as soon as he heard the news, his eyes sparkling like snow under the sun. She had never seen him so happy.
“Why?” she whispers. Her voice feels like a crow’s croak.
“To announce the coming of an heir. Also, I haven’t been back for months. I need to make sure everything is in order and safe for us to return. I’ve left my most trusted advisers to rule in my stead, but I am careful every time I go back. It is unwise to let a man who isn’t king sit on a throne for too long.”
She shuts her eyes in a useless attempt to ease her headache.
“It isn’t winter yet,” he adds, walking to her, caressing her face, “so the weather shouldn’t delay us. I will be back in spring, before the baby is born.”
“Take me with you,” she says.
“We will go together after the birth. Once we leave, you won’t come back here for years. Your brothers have just left. I am not sure your family is ready for another of you to go so soon.”
He is right, she thinks. Just a few more months here. Besides, her parents need to see their grandchild when he is born. They need to check that he is strong and healthy—she can’t take that away from them.
“The people in Maeonia,” she says feebly, “they will think I am different from you.”
“You are different.” He laughs. “They will love you because of it, just like I do.”
He rests his head against her heart, and she lets him hold her.
*
On their last night together before he leaves, they lie naked on the blankets, listening to the quiet of the palace. The room feels like a cavern, the breeze cold but pleasant on their skin.
He tells her that in Maeonia, there is never silence. There are birds singing at night and torches always lit in every street and corridor, servants and guards outside every door. But there is quiet to be found too, when you walk in the gardens and the shaded colonnades, the air scented with roses, the palace walls painted with griffins and other legendary creatures.
Her body is curved into his arm, and his sweet breath tickles her head.
“And our baby?” she asks. “Will he train and grow into a strong warrior?”
At least if she is carrying a boy, she won’t have to give him up for training, like every Spartan woman.
“You will train him,” he says. “You will be queen and free to do as you please.”
She kisses his chest, tasting the spices in the oils he uses. He cups his hands around her face and pulls her closer. His heart beats against her skin. She lets desire flood her veins, lets her heart grow heavy with longing. Outside the windows, the moon shines pale and luminous, bathing their bodies in light as if they were gods.
*
When she wakes, the bed is cold with Tantalus’s absence and the room feels too still. Sickness rises in her. To try to stop it, she thinks of happy times.
She remembers playing hide-and-seek with her brothers and sister. Once, trying to hide from Polydeuces, she and Helen had sneaked into a helot village far from the palace. The hovels where the helots lived were made of wood, their foundations muddied; the streets were narrow and littered with filth. Stray cats and hungry dogs scavenged while pigs and goats rested behind fences. Helen looked apprehensive but she kept going, her hand in Clytemnestra’s. A few children, tiny and bony as the dogs around them, were sitting in the mud, playing with the pigs. They gazed at Helen and Clytemnestra, their eyes large and gleaming, their bodies frail like the skulls of babies.
“Let us find somewhere to hide,” Helen said, pity on her face. Clytemnestra kept walking until she found a stinking granary. She hurried inside, dragging Helen with her. The floor was covered with dust and animal droppings, and the heat was unbearable.
“He will never find us here,” Clytemnestra said, satisfied. Light filtered through the wooden beams, striping the girls’ faces. To pass time, they started looking for white stones.
“I don’t like it here,” Helen said after a while.
“One who risks nothing is nothing,” Clytemnestra recited. It was something her father often said.
“But this place is awful,” Helen retorted. “And if the priestess finds us here . . .”
Clytemnestra was about to reply when she saw it—the head of a snake hiding in the darkness. It was gray with stripes on its back.
“Stay still,” Clytemnestra ordered.
“Why?” Helen asked, turning. She froze. “Is that venomous?” When Clytemnestra did not reply, Helen persisted, “I think it is. It is not brown and yellow—”
Several things happened at once. Clytemnestra stepped back toward the entrance of the granary. Helen shrieked. The snake struck as quickly as a sword, but before its fangs could reach Clytemnestra’s arm, a spear pierced its head. Then Polydeuces entered the granary, breathless. He took back his spear, checking the spike covered with the snake’s venom. He turned to his sisters, kicking the dead reptile with his foot.
“I found you.” He smiled. “You lose.”
Helen laughed and Clytemnestra shook her head, in awe of her brother’s swiftness. Lizard killer, Spartans call the spike at the end of their spears.
Later, when they were walking back to the gynaeceum, Clytemnestra took Helen’s hand in hers. It was warm and smooth. “I am sorry. You were frightened and I didn’t leave.”
Helen shook her head. “I wasn’t,” she said. “I was with you.”
*
The memory has a strange taste in her mouth. She and Helen were each the other’s world back then. But nothing can ever stay the same. You can’t step twice into the same river.
*
Her belly grows; the skin feels stretched on her breasts. The sickness slowly gets better. At times, it returns in waves, like a high tide, but then it goes away again, as quickly as it came.
Tantalus’s absence is like a shadow—she can feel it, yet whenever she turns to look at it, it is gone. She decides to stop looking and spare herself useless pain. In a few months, he will be back, and the baby will be born, exposed to the elders and introduced to her family. Then she will move to the east and become the queen of people whose customs will be alien to her.
The servants from the kitchen come to cut her hair. They make her sit on a stool, brush her long, brown mane, then slice it off with a sharp knife. Clytemnestra remembers looking at the other women of the palace as they passed from girl to woman, from daughter to mother. After it was cut, their hair covered the floor like a carpet and she and Helen would step on it, letting it tickle their soles.
When the servants show her her reflection in the water bowl, she touches the ends of her short hair and thinks that the cut suits her better: it enhances her eyes and cheekbones.
The priestess also comes, her pale, chill hands touching Clytemnestra’s belly.
“The gods watch us all,” she says, her voice screeching like a seagull’s cry. “They bless those who are loyal and punish those who aren’t.” She doesn’t say whether Clytemnestra will be blessed or punished, but Clytemnestra doesn’t care. The child she is carrying will be heir to the throne of Maeonia, and there is nothing the priestess can do about it. So she lets her speak her dark words until it is time for her to go back to her temple.