*
They can’t avoid banquets forever, so the next day, they gather in the dining hall at the king’s request. The place has changed after all these years under Menelaus. There are more torches, more weapons on the walls, more cowhide on the floor, more dogs gnawing at the bones, and more women. They bring spiced meat and cheese to the table without the battered, downcast look of helots; they keep smiling, and they wear bright, clean tunics. Menelaus sits at the head of the table and, around him, Helen and the best of his warriors. Among them there is an ugly man with a thick beard and a broken nose—“Cynisca’s husband,” Castor says when Clytemnestra asks about him. “You remember her, I am sure?”
She nods. “What happened to her?”
Castor looks as the man laughs and cheers with Menelaus. “Her family is more and more powerful. They are among the few Spartans Menelaus trusts. Cynisca is often in the megaron, whispering in the king’s ear.”
“Where is she now?”
“Resting, I believe. She didn’t take Tyndareus’s death well.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
Castor frowns. “Near the dyers’ shops, I have heard. Why?”
Clytemnestra shrugs. “I am just surprised that she isn’t here.”
A servant pours some wine for Castor, smiling and pressing her body against him as she passes, but Castor ignores her. Clytemnestra remembers all the times she saw her brother sneak away from the servants’ quarters after spending the night with a girl there.
“You used to spend a lot of time in bed with servants,” she says.
“I took my fair share, yes.” Castor grins, and for a second, his face looks like it used to. Then he lowers his voice. “But these girls already have to entertain Menelaus.”
Clytemnestra follows the servant with her eyes as she fills wine cups along the table. She leans back every time she passes one of Menelaus’s warriors, and when they call for her, she startles. It is true what Tyndareus used to say, Clytemnestra muses. No matter how much kindness you show her, a slave will never learn to love you, for she has known too much pain.
Helen stands and walks away from her husband to sit next to her daughter. Little Hermione is eating figs with Polydeuces, and whenever her hands are sticky, he wipes them carefully with a piece of cloth, as if she were his own child. Menelaus seems not to notice. Hermione has her father’s hair, like fire-forged bronze, and Helen’s eyes, light as seawater. But where her mother’s face is delicate as a pearl, Hermione’s is sharp as a dagger. She is an odd beauty.
Meat, cheese, and olives are served as the loud chatter echoes from the walls. Phoebe and Philonoe are discussing the man Phoebe is meant to marry, while Timandra and Castor gobble food and wine. Leda is chewing a piece of spiced lamb without talking to anyone, and Clytemnestra moves closer to her on the bench.
“Mother,” she says, “where is the priestess?”
Leda’s eyes are large and foggy. “Why?”
“I want to talk to her about the prophecy she made fifteen years ago.”
Leda’s raven hair is tied in beautiful plaits, and she touches it absentmindedly. “She is gone,” she finally says.
“How?”
“I sent her away.”
Clytemnestra remembers when her father used to take a woman, a helot, to his room when she was little. Leda found out and told everyone at dinner that she “sent the servant away.” But one day when Clytemnestra was walking to the village, she found the helot’s dead body, rotting in the mud.
“When?” she asks.
Her mother’s face remains impassive. “Not long after you left.”
“What did Tyndareus say?”
“He wasn’t happy. But after what he had done to you, after all the pain he caused us, he couldn’t give me orders.”
“How did you feel?”
Leda frowns. “What?”
“How did it feel to send the priestess away?”
Leda puts down her wine and grabs Clytemnestra’s hand. Her eyes are big and dark with grief. “Listen to me. I have let vengeance lead my thoughts and actions. Don’t make the same mistake.”
“Vengeance is our way of life,” Clytemnestra says.
“It doesn’t have to be. All the time I hated the priestess, I could have spent loving my Helen. All the time I hated your father, I could have loved his children.”
“You do love us.”
“Yes, but hate is a bad root. It takes its place in your heart and it grows and grows, letting everything rot.”
On their right, Menelaus is laughing at some of his comrades’ jokes. Cynisca’s husband touches the servant as she brings him a meat platter, and her hands tremble.
“Promise me you won’t be as vengeful as I have been,” Leda whispers.
Clytemnestra looks away from the servant and into her mother’s eyes. “I promise.”
*
At night, when warriors and nobles have gone to sleep, she walks down the narrow streets that run around the palace. The air is hot and moist, but she is wearing a cloak that hides her face. At her waist, she carries the small jeweled knife her mother gave her when she left for Mycenae.
The streets are quiet. The only sounds are occasional barks and howls, soft moans, and babies crying. She passes wagons full of hay and a young man kissing a servant under some leather skins hanging by a window. When she gets closer to the square, she turns left into a side road that leads to the dyers’ shops. She slows her pace. She listens to the soft sounds that come out of doors and windows—a woman singing to her child, an old man snoring. Then she looks across the road at the opposite wall and stops. A window is open and she peeps inside—a large shield gleaming near the door, a wooden table and a bench on which a golden cup sits, half filled. And by the flickering light of a lamp, a woman with her eyes closed. She is wearing only a light tunic that barely conceals her tiny breasts, yet the heat is so strong she is sweating. The lamp illuminates her short hair, beak nose, and pointed chin.
Clytemnestra steps cautiously around the outside of the house, watching the inside from the only other window. The woman seems to be alone. She tries the door, but it is locked, so she climbs over the window ledge and lands inside the room as carefully as she can.
Cynisca opens her eyes, suddenly alert, and for a second, the two stare at each other. Then Clytemnestra blows out the lamp. The light flickers and dies, leaving them in complete darkness. “It’s been a long time since you and I saw each other,” she says. She can feel Cynisca’s sour breath somewhere in front of her, the wooden table behind her.
“I knew you were here,” Cynisca says. “What do you want?”
Clytemnestra walks around the table, one step at a time. She takes off her cloak and leaves it aside, the fabric slipping between her fingers. She feels Cynisca’s stillness in the dark and knows she must act before lines and contours become visible to them.
“When my husband was murdered here, in my home, fifteen years ago,” she says, “where were you?”
Cynisca gasps, loud enough for her to hear. She swallows to speak but Clytemnestra interrupts her. “Never mind. I know where you were. You followed my sister in the streets—you hit her with a stone and left her to bleed.” She feels the golden cup under her finger, the edge jagged, not smooth like the ones in the palace. “You did that to help Agamemnon. You helped him get what he wanted, but he didn’t reward you.”
Cynisca stands. “He rewarded me. He protected my family and gave me power in Sparta.” Her voice is deep and there is something like pride in it.
“How generous of him.”
“He can be a generous man.”
“So you say. Although I am sure the best reward for you was to see me fall. To know I lost everything I loved and cared for.”
Cynisca doesn’t speak. She moves in the shadows, and Clytemnestra knows she will try to reach the shield.
“Can you imagine what it feels like to lose your child? To have him murdered?” Her hand is tight around her knife and she tries to relax her grip.