“When have we ever believed in prophecies?”
Helen doesn’t answer. Her face is as naked as it was when she was a child, before she had learned to hide her weaknesses. She touches the necklace, feels each golden flower under her fingers. For a moment, Clytemnestra thinks she will let it go, but then Helen asks, “Did you know about Tyndareus and Leda?”
“What do you mean?”
Helen raises her eyes and there is something cold in the light blue, like a frozen river. “You know what I mean.”
“I didn’t know about Father,” Clytemnestra says. She sees her sister’s expression change, her soft features hardening. She can do nothing to stop it.
“You knew about Leda, then. You knew she lay with another man.”
Clytemnestra doesn’t move. She can feel anger blistering under her skin and something else too, cold and slippery. Fear.
“You knew and you didn’t tell me,” Helen repeats.
“I only heard what Castor told me, but he wasn’t sure.”
“So who is my father?” Helen asks, clenching her fist around the necklace.
“I don’t know. I just knew Leda fell for a foreigner who left the palace before you were born.”
Helen turns away from her. Clytemnestra feels as if she has been slapped.
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie.”
Helen shakes her head. The space between them is growing like a whirlpool, sucking them into its blackness. “What about Polydeuces?” Helen asks.
“What about him?”
“Does he know about any of this?”
“He always says he doesn’t remember and refuses to say anything.”
Helen laughs, a cold sound Clytemnestra doesn’t recognize. “Because he loves me.”
“I love you,” Clytemnestra says.
Helen turns to her again. Her eyes look strange. “No, you don’t. You lied to me. Now please go away.”
It is worse than being kicked, worse than being stabbed. Physical pain can be healed, Clytemnestra has learned that, but what about this? No one has taught her about this. She stands quickly, walks out, and closes the door behind her. She feels faint, emptiness sucking her from the inside. She brings her hands to her face and feels the wetness on her cheeks. It only makes her angrier. On the other side of the door, she hears her sister punching the stool or the table. She wants to go back, but somehow the door seems impossible to open again.
8
The Most Beautiful Woman
WHEN HELEN WAS fourteen, the hero Theseus had come to Sparta for her. Word of his great deeds had been spreading throughout their lands for years—the fights against bandits around the dangerous roads to Athens, the killing of a king at the holy site of Eleusis. There was no greater honor than to catch the attention of such a man, so Tyndareus said.
“What does he want from me?” Helen had asked Leda. “I am too young to marry.”
“He wants to look at you, that is all.”
“He thinks himself the son of a god,” Polydeuces snorted, “so he wants a divine wife.”
Helen frowned. “I am not divine,” she said. Then she repeated, “And I am too young to marry.”
Theseus arrived in Sparta accompanied by his friend Pirithous, prince of the Lapiths, a northern mountain tribe. Theseus was handsome like a god, even handsomer than Polydeuces, while Pirithous had a thick beard and skin raw from the sun. They liked to speak of their adventures together, of how their friendship had formed after they had stolen a herd of cattle, of all the girls they had seduced. They laughed at the memories, and the people in the palace laughed with them, as though those girls had been dull and useless. Theseus truly believed that all women wanted to please him, Clytemnestra realized. As for the rest of the world, it either bored or annoyed him. Only Pirithous made him laugh, made his eyes glitter with excitement.
“Men who find solace only in other men are to be distrusted,” Castor told Clytemnestra and Helen one morning as they were watching Theseus and Pirithous fight in the gymnasium. “They don’t respect anyone else, let alone a woman.”
Theseus filled the Spartan halls with gifts—among them, the bed made of Egyptian ebony—yet he never asked for any marriage. Soon everyone forgot why he had come to the palace. Then, one summer day, Theseus claimed he was ready to go back to Athens and succeed his father on the throne.
The night before he was to leave, while the servants slept and Pirithous prepared the horses, Theseus broke into Helen’s room and kidnapped her, as silent as air. Clytemnestra woke in the early morning in the empty Egyptian bed. She screamed and ran to her father, her heart beating so fast it hurt. Castor and Polydeuces hurried outside, gathering servants until they found a helot who had seen Theseus riding east.
“They are taking Helen to the small town of Aphidnae, my lords,” the helot said when dragged to the megaron. Clytemnestra didn’t know where Aphidnae was or what that meant. Polydeuces punched the painted wall and stormed out of the room. Castor and Clytemnestra followed. At the stables, Castor stopped her.
“You stay here,” he said.
When Clytemnestra ignored him and took a horse, Polydeuces shouted, “Didn’t you hear your brother? You stay here!” They spurred the horses and were gone in a cloud of dust.
Forced to wait without any news of the person she loved most, Clytemnestra took refuge in the temple of Artemis. There, near a spring at the foot of the mountains, she sat between two wooden columns and prayed. She was not very good at it, because she was impatient. She gave up quickly and wandered around the mud-brick walls until she found Tyndareus talking to the priestess.
“I don’t understand why your sons went to fetch her, Tyndareus,” the priestess was saying. “It would be an honor for any girl to lie with Theseus. Helen is ripe for marriage, and she is still a virgin.” She had flowers in her hair and a long thin dress that showed her sharp-edged body.
“I want Helen back,” Tyndareus said. Then he turned, feeling watched, and saw Clytemnestra. He walked to her, leaving the priestess, and said, “Let us pray together for your sister’s return.”
Her brothers came back at nightfall. Helen was slumped over Polydeuces’s horse, her head resting against her brother’s back, her arms scratched. Clytemnestra was still in the temple with her father when she saw them coming. She had never prayed so much in her life. She sprang up and ran to the palace.
Two servants left Helen in the gynaeceum, while Castor and Polydeuces spoke with Tyndareus and Leda.
“Theseus was already gone when we got there,” Castor said, “but we found her. Two farmers told us where she was hidden.”
“What did he do to her?” Leda asked.
“She needs to rest. And I am going to ask the women in the kitchen to bring the goose fat to her room.”
Leda covered her face with her hands. Clytemnestra didn’t know what it meant then, but goose fat mixed with crushed herbs was helpful for women who were in pain after lying with a man.
“We’ll go back tomorrow,” Polydeuces said, “now that Helen is safe. I’ll take ten of our best men and we’ll sack Aphidnae.” He looked wild, distraught.
Tyndareus shook his head. “Theseus is now king of Athens. Athens is powerful, and we can’t go to war against it, not for such a reason.”
Such a reason. Clytemnestra wanted to tear out her hair, but Polydeuces preceded her.
“Your daughter was raped by this man for his entertainment. He didn’t even ask for her hand in marriage!”
“That is good for Helen,” Castor intervened. “Something tells me she wouldn’t want to marry him.”
Tyndareus waved a hand. “Theseus is a hero, and he does what heroes do. Do you know how many other girls like Helen there are? Do you think their brothers went to war over it? They didn’t, because they aren’t fools.”
That was the end of it.
Back in their room, the air was stinging, suffocating, but Clytemnestra endured it. It was her fault Helen had been taken: if only she had woken, if only she had seen Theseus . . .