Helen gasps and Clytemnestra moves slightly, peeping. She sees Menelaus step forward while Helen steps back. The movement is elegant, like a wave, but there is danger in it. It seems as if he could hit her, but he doesn’t. He takes her small hand into his and says, “You are always asking about things that don’t concern you, Helen.”
She bites her lip and says nothing. Menelaus watches his wife, then adds, “We were just speaking of Mycenae and of the gold we owe to Sparta. We made a pact with Tyndareus, and pacts must be respected.”
Clytemnestra feels her body relaxing, her fear ebbing away. Odysseus’s words fade, and all that remains is a noise in her head, a faint note of warning.
She feels the baby kick and takes a step back. Once, she would have walked into the room and shielded her sister. She would have protected Helen against anyone and anything. But now she can’t.
She wanted this, she thinks bitterly. She chose this man out of spite, and now she must have him.
*
Penelope and Odysseus’s departure a few days later leaves Clytemnestra alone once more. That night for dinner, they are joined by Cynisca, her father, Lysimachos, and a few other Spartan nobles. To avoid the empty place next to Agamemnon, Clytemnestra sits beside Helen, who looks up at her, surprised. She smells her sister’s scent, honey, crocus, and almond from the trees that grow near the stables. They stare at each other for a moment. Then Menelaus takes her small white hand in his own, and Helen looks away. Clytemnestra feels colder where her sister’s eyes touched her. She wonders why they haven’t gone back to Mycenae yet.
The servants are bringing platters of onions and cheese, the smell trailing behind them, while Tyndareus talks about his last hunt. Cynisca often intervenes, boasting about her own hunts, looking at Agamemnon with a longing that disgusts Clytemnestra. Helen barely touches her food.
“So the son of Laertes is traveling with your niece?” Lysimachos asks Tyndareus.
“He is,” Tyndareus answers.
“That seems a good match,” Agamemnon says.
“You like Odysseus?” Cynisca asks him, sipping her wine.
Agamemnon doesn’t blink. “I don’t like him. I respect him. He is clever.”
“Some say he is the cleverest man alive, a man of endless tricks,” Leda says.
“Tricks don’t make heroes,” Menelaus says.
Clytemnestra scoffs and turns to her cheese. She is ready to retort if anyone insults Odysseus again, but her father changes the subject.
“What news from the East?”
“Not much,” Agamemnon says. “The city of Troy still challenges the Greeks at sea, but no one will fight it.”
“Many say the city is impenetrable,” Leda comments.
“Where is Troy, Mother?” Philonoe asks, her voice shrill in the hall.
It is Agamemnon who answers. “On the other side of the Aegean Sea. Farther north than Maeonia”—he turns to Clytemnestra quickly—“where your sister’s husband lives.”
“Farther than Lesbos even,” Leda adds, and Philonoe nods, going back to her onions, which she selects one by one and savors like sweets.
“No city is impenetrable,” Agamemnon says. “If the Greeks united their armies and fought together, Troy would fall.”
Lysimachos scoffs. Spartans don’t fight others’ wars. “That seems unlikely.”
Something flickers in Agamemnon’s eyes, but he speaks no more of it.
When the moon appears in the sky, Tyndareus calls for entertainment. Wooden blocks are set on one side of the hall for guests to throw knives at. Tantalus has told Clytemnestra that in Maeonia, such distractions are common. Whenever he holds a feast in his halls, there are musicians who play lyres, jugglers, and dancers. Acrobats and exotic animals are among his favorite performers. Once, a striped hyena—Clytemnestra had never heard of it—had escaped its trainer and roamed in the palace before it was caught. Tantalus described the hyena’s cry, which sounded like cackling laughter, and the two of them started laughing together.
Cynisca stands, knife in hand, still stained with meat fat. She throws it at the block, and when it sinks close to the center, everyone applauds. Leda urges Phoebe and Philonoe to try, and Agamemnon gives them suggestions. Clytemnestra looks away. She focuses on a small dog eating the leftovers at her father’s feet. He swallows quickly, avidly, and when he is done, he looks up to the table for some more.
He is not so different from the men, she thinks. Their faces are shiny and hungry under the light of the lamps, their shadows sharp. They keep throwing their knives, fighting for food and wine, as servants clatter back and forth on the floor, which is sticky with spilled juice and fat.
Clytemnestra stands and excuses herself. She moves through the hall, eager to escape, just as Agamemnon throws his dagger. It hits the wooden block right at the center.
*
In her room, Clytemnestra stares at the ceiling, remembering when she and Helen talked of the stars twinkling in the sky and the gods watching over them.
“Do you think they see us now?” Helen always asked.
“No,” Clytemnestra said. “They are too busy watching others. How could they watch everyone at the same time?”
For the first time in weeks, she falls asleep lulled by such thoughts.
*
It starts with pain, as if someone were cutting her open with a sharp blade. Clytemnestra wakes up and falls off the bed, gasping. There is no blade. Out of the fur blankets, it is cold. A shy light is waking in the east; it must be dawn. She tries to stand but the pain returns, stronger than before. The baby is ready to be born. She tries to call for help, but no sound comes. Her hands are clutched; her breath seems gone. She kneels, then stands, gritting her teeth, trying to focus on other times she has felt a pain as severe: when she fell down a ravine, tearing her shoulder; when Castor had woken a bear during a hunting trip and she had jumped into a thorn bush while running away; when a girl had stuck a spear blade above her hip in the gymnasium; when the lynx’s claws scratched her back.
She manages to stumble out of the bedroom and onto the main corridor of the gynaeceum. She catches her breath when the next pain comes and hurries to her mother’s room. It is cold and she is wearing only a thin tunic, but sweat pours down her forehead. Breathe. She bumps into someone on her way to Leda’s quarters and raises her eyes. It is Helen.
“What is it?” Helen asks, preoccupied. She is pale and her eyes are red, as though she has been crying.
“The baby is coming,” Clytemnestra whispers, her voice strangled. She leans against the wall because the pain is worse.
Helen’s eyes open wide. “I will call Mother . . .”
Clytemnestra shakes her head. “Take me to the midwives. It is coming now.” She makes a rasping sound when another pain makes her hunch over. Helen lets her sister lean against her and drags her to the kitchen. Clytemnestra feels her sister’s cold skin against her own, the smell of fruit and oil coming off her.
“Does it hurt too much?” Helen asks. They are almost running now, Clytemnestra breathing hard and holding Helen’s arm tightly.
“I have felt worse,” Clytemnestra manages, and her sister gives her a feeble smile.
Downstairs, near the servants’ rooms, there is no light. Helen takes a torch and storms into the empty kitchen. “Where are the women? Where are the midwives?” she cries. There is no one. “Wait here,” she tells Clytemnestra and hurries out of the room.
Clytemnestra falls onto a chair, screaming. Putting a hand between her thighs, she feels dampness.
A woman hurries into the room, her black hair tied back. “It is all right,” she says. “Your sister has gone to call your mother and the elders. Your husband is also coming.”
“Tantalus,” Clytemnestra croaks.
“His ship arrived in the port last night. He is riding to the palace now.” The woman makes her squat and tells her to breathe. In and out, in and out.
Tantalus is coming, Clytemnestra thinks. He is almost here. She stares at the ceiling, at the sacks of wheat piled in the corner, at the midwife’s pale face. The pain reaches its peak. Clytemnestra shouts and overturns a table. Berries and reeds roll on the floor around them.