Helen pushes her sister aside. “You are shaming me.” She turns to Cynisca. “I will fight you.” She ties her hair back, her hands shaking. Clytemnestra bites the inside of her cheek so hard that she tastes blood. She doesn’t know what to do.
Helen walks to the center of the ground, and Cynisca follows her. There is a moment of stillness, when the sand glimmers and a soft wind blows. Then Cynisca strikes. Helen leaps aside, graceful and quick as a deer. Cynisca steps back and moves slowly, thinking. The most dangerous kind of wrestler, Clytemnestra knows—one who thinks. Cynisca prepares to strike again, and when she does, Helen moves in the wrong direction and is punched in the neck. She falls sideways but manages to grab Cynisca’s leg and drag her down with her. Cynisca jabs her fist at Helen’s face, again and again.
Clytemnestra wants to close her eyes, but that is not how she was taught. So she watches, thinking of how she will hurt Cynisca later, in the forest or by the river. She will take her down and make her face purple until the girl understands that some people must not be touched.
Cynisca stops punching and Helen crawls away, her face swollen, her hands bloody. Fly, fly away, Clytemnestra wants to shout, but deer have no wings, and Helen can barely stand. Cynisca doesn’t give her time to compose herself. She strikes and kicks again, and when Helen tries to hurl her backward, Cynisca leaps on her and snatches her arm from under her.
Clytemnestra turns to Tyndareus. He is watching the fight, his face expressionless. He will do nothing, she is sure of it.
Helen cries out, and Clytemnestra finds herself running to the center of the ground. Cynisca turns and her mouth drops open in surprise, but it is too late. Clytemnestra takes her by the hair and hurls her aside with all her strength. Cynisca raises her head from the dirt, but Clytemnestra puts her knee into her backbone, because the dirt is where the girl belongs. She hooks an arm around her head and pulls, aware of Helen, lying half conscious in the bloody sand a few inches from them. It is over, Clytemnestra thinks, but Cynisca takes her leg and twists her ankle, hard. Clytemnestra trips, and Cynisca takes a moment to breathe, her eyes bloodshot.
“This is not your fight,” Cynisca says, her voice hoarse.
You are wrong. Her leg hurts, but pain doesn’t trouble her. Cynisca lunges at her. Clytemnestra moves aside and shoves her to the ground. She stands on Cynisca’s back so she won’t rise anymore. When she feels the body give in, she limps away. Helen is barely breathing, and Clytemnestra lifts her from the sand. Her sister wraps her arms around her, and Clytemnestra takes her away, her father’s angry stare following her like a hound.
*
Clytemnestra’s ankle swells. The skin grows purple; the foot slowly becomes numb. A servant dresses the wound, her little hands quick but gentle, her eyes downcast. Helots, people like her are called, former inhabitants of the valley, now slaves since the Spartans took their land. They are everywhere in the palace, their faces dull and sad in the torchlight, their backs bent.
Clytemnestra rests her head against the wall, rage twisting inside her. Sometimes her anger feels so real that she wishes she could cut it out with a knife. She is angry with Cynisca for daring to touch her sister; with her father, for letting Helen be beaten; with her mother, who never intervenes when the king’s indifference hurts her daughter.
“It is done,” the girl says, checking Clytemnestra’s ankle. “You should rest now.”
Clytemnestra springs up. She needs to check Helen.
“You can’t walk,” the servant says, frowning.
“Bring me my grandmother’s stick,” Clytemnestra orders. The girl nods and scampers away toward the king’s quarters, where Tyndareus keeps his family’s things. When she comes back, she is holding a beautiful wooden cane.
Clytemnestra never met her grandfather Oebalus; she knows only that he was the son-in-law of the hero Perseus. Her grandmother Gorgophone, on the other hand, is well marked in her memory. A tall, strong woman, she married twice, something unheard of in her country. When her first husband died—a king of Messenia whose name Clytemnestra doesn’t remember—Gorgophone married Oebalus, even though she was older than him. She outlived him anyway, and Clytemnestra remembers when Gorgophone, wrapped in sheepskins before she died, told her and Helen that their family was a dynasty of queens.
“You girls will be remembered longer than your brothers,” Gorgophone claimed in her deep voice, the lines on her face as dense as those of a cobweb, “just like me with my dear brothers. Alcaeus, Mestor, Heleus . . . good men, brave men, but does anyone remember them? They don’t.”
“You are sure of this?” Helen asked. She was only twelve, yet her face was as serious as a woman’s.
Gorgophone stared at them, her eyes clouded but alert. “You are fierce and loyal, but I see wariness inside you too. I have lived among kings and heroes for so long, and they all grow too proud. When men grow proud, they become too trusting. Sooner or later, traitors cut them down.” She was mumbling, though her words had clarity and wisdom. Clytemnestra felt compelled to listen. “Ambition, courage, distrust. You will be queens soon enough, and that is what you will need if you want to outlive the men who’ll wish to be rid of you.” Gorgophone was dead a few hours later, and Clytemnestra had turned her words over and over in her head, savoring them like drops of honey left on the lips.
Her ankle is now throbbing. Leaning on her grandmother’s stick, Clytemnestra walks past the stony halls and corridors. The lit torches on the walls cast shadows that look like black figures painted on amphorae. She reaches the gynaeceum, gritting her teeth against the pain in her leg. Here the windows are smaller, the walls painted with bright patterns. Clytemnestra walks to the baths, where Helen is meant to be resting, and stops outside for a moment. She can hear voices, loud and clear.
“I will not tell you,” Helen is saying. “It is not fair.”
“It is not fair that she fought you. You know how things are. If one can challenge you, others will.” It is Polydeuces. Her brother’s voice is sharp, like an ax blade. Helen keeps silent. There is the sound of water and of Polydeuces’s impatient steps, back and forth, back and forth.
“Tell me, Helen, or I will ask Clytemnestra.”
“There is no need,” Clytemnestra says, entering the room.
Helen is lying in a painted clay bath. The wounds on her arms are dressed with herbs; her face is broken and battered. Her lips are swollen, and one of her eyes is half-shut so that the light-blue iris is hardly visible, like a glimpse of clear sky on a cloudy day. Polydeuces turns. He is slender like Clytemnestra but taller, and his skin is the color of honey. At twenty, he will soon stop training and go to war.
“It was Cynisca who challenged Helen,” Clytemnestra starts. Polydeuces is about to leave, his face twisted. She grabs his arm. “But you will do nothing. I dealt with it.”
Polydeuces looks at her leg. There is a spark in his eyes that Clytemnestra knows too well: her brother is like a flame, always ready to pick a fight. “You shouldn’t have,” he says, shaking her away. “Now Father will be angry.”
“With me, not with you,” Clytemnestra says, knowing how much her brother hates disappointing Tyndareus.
“She protected me,” Helen says. “The girl was killing me.”
Polydeuces clenches his fists. Helen is his favorite, always has been.
“She had no choice,” Helen continues. She speaks slowly, in pain.
Polydeuces nods, opens his mouth as if to say something, but then leaves, his steps light on the stony floor.
Helen closes her eyes, rests her head against the edge of the bath. “I am ashamed,” she says. Clytemnestra can’t tell if she is crying. The lights are dim and the air smells of blood.
“At least you are not dead,” Clytemnestra says. Neither Tyndareus nor any other Spartan would agree that a life with shame is better than a glorious death, but Clytemnestra doesn’t care. She would rather live. Glory is something she can earn later.