*
She finds her father in the megaron speaking to Castor and Leda. The great hall is large and beautifully lit, and she limps past the frescoed walls toward the throne. Next to her, the painted figures are running, hunting, and fighting, the colors as brilliant as the morning sun, frightened boar, rabid hounds, and heroes with spears, their long hair like ocean waves. Flocks of geese and swans fly over the shimmering plains, horses galloping beneath them.
Tyndareus sits on his throne near the hearth, holding a cup filled with wine, and Leda, beside him, occupies a smaller chair draped with lambskins. Castor is leaning against one of the columns, his manner relaxed as usual. When he sees Clytemnestra, he smiles. “You are always in trouble, Sister,” he says. Like Polydeuces’s, his face is already sharp with manhood.
“Cynisca will recover soon,” Tyndareus says.
“I am glad,” Clytemnestra replies. She is aware of her brother’s amused stare behind her: there is nothing Castor enjoys more than trouble and the sound of someone else’s scolding.
“We were lucky it was a girl,” Tyndareus continues. Clytemnestra knows this already. A king’s children can burn down houses, rape, steal, and kill as they wish. But hurting another noble’s son is forbidden.
“Cynisca offended your daughter,” Clytemnestra says.
Her father frowns in annoyance. “You offended Cynisca. You didn’t give her a fair fight.”
“You know the rules,” Leda adds. “When two girls are wrestling, one wins and the other loses.” She is right; Clytemnestra knows it, but matches aren’t always that easy. Leda has taught them that there are winners and losers in every fight, and nothing can be done to change that. But what if the loser is your loved one and you have to watch her fall? What if she doesn’t deserve to be beaten and turned to dust? When Clytemnestra asked these questions as a child, her mother would always shake her head. “You are not a god,” she said. “Only gods can intervene in such matters.”
“Cynisca would have killed Helen.” Clytemnestra repeats what her sister said, even though she knows this isn’t true. Cynisca would have just hurt Helen badly.
“She wouldn’t have killed anyone,” Tyndareus says.
“I know Cynisca,” Castor intervenes. “The girl is violent. She punched a helot to death once.”
“How would you know her?” Leda mocks him, but Castor doesn’t flinch. They are all well familiar with his tastes anyway. For a few years now, Clytemnestra has started hearing moans and whispers from behind closed doors. Servants and the daughters of noble warriors have been in her brothers’ beds and will continue to be so until Castor and Polydeuces decide to marry. When she walks around the palace, Clytemnestra watches servant girls pouring wine, cutting meat, and scrubbing floors, and she wonders which among them have slept with Castor. Most, probably. But then it is easy to pick out those who have been with Polydeuces. They are the ones who look like Helen, fair hair and skin, eyes like water springs. Not many.
“Father,” Clytemnestra says, “I did only what soldiers do in war. If they see a friend dying next to them, they come to the rescue and fight.”
Tyndareus tightens his grip on the cup. “What do you know of war?” He lets the words linger in the air. “What do you know of anything?”
*
“Finally someone gave Cynisca what she deserved,” Castor says cheerfully as they leave the megaron. He carries his sister on his shoulders, and Clytemnestra looks at his hair bouncing as he walks. She remembers when they used to do this as children, Clytemnestra on Castor’s back and Helen on Polydeuces’s. The two boys raced each other carrying their sisters, tumbling and laughing until their faces hurt.
“I wanted to kill her,” she replies.
Castor laughs. “Well, you’ve always been bad-tempered. And you always cared more about others than about yourself.”
“That’s not true.”
“You know it is. Not that you care about everyone, of course. Just your family.”
They reach the stables, close to the lower part of the palace, where the ground is more even and less rocky. Some young men are training; others are feeding the horses.
“Come,” Castor says. “Let us ride awhile.” They share one sturdy stallion, named for Ares, the god of war, and ride into the plain, toward the Eurotas. They pass the fig trees, the scorched earth dotted with yellow and red flowers, closer and closer to the river. Ares’s hoofs raise a cloud of dust and sand until they finally splash in the water of the river. Castor rides fast, whistling and laughing, and Clytemnestra clings to him, her ankle hurting, her face warmed by the sun. When they stop, Castor helps her down and they sit on the riverbank. Grass and flowers grow here, but sometimes corpses can be found too, putrid and rotten.
“You know Father is right, though,” Castor says, lying on his back. “Cynisca had every right to beat Helen.”
“She didn’t. Helen is different.”
“We are all different in our own way.”
Her eyes meet his. “You know what I mean.”
Castor smirks. “You are wrong in protecting her too much. You underestimate her. If Cynisca kept beating her, Helen would have fought harder the next time.”
“And what if she had died?”
He lifts his brows, amused. “People have always challenged each other. The strongest rise and fall, the weaker come and go. But some keep standing.” He plays with a blade of grass before ripping it out. “You inherit Father’s and Mother’s strength, but Helen has strength of her own. She may be sweet and frail, but she is crafty. I wouldn’t be surprised if she outlived us all.”
His wit warms her like a sun-hot stone. This is how her life has always been: pleasure and misery, games and races, her brother always next to her ready to unravel the mysteries of the world and laugh at them.
For a moment, she wonders what it will be like when he is gone.
3
A King
EVERY TIME A stranger arrives in Sparta, the palace turns into a house of whispers. News travels as fast as sea breeze and the servants make every surface shine like gold. In the late afternoon, when the light is thinning and the air scented, they call Clytemnestra for her cleansing. “An important man will be here for dinner,” they twitter.
“A warrior?” asks Clytemnestra as they walk toward the baths in the darkness of the corridor. Her ankle hurts less every day, and soon she will be able to run and exercise again.
“A king,” they say. “Or that is what we heard.”
In the bathroom, Helen is already cleaning herself in the painted clay bath, the old wounds on her arms dressed with herbs. Her face is smooth, luminous again. Only one bruise remains, on her left cheek, where the bone was broken. Two more tubs are ready beside her, filled to the brim with water, and behind them an old servant woman is preparing soap. It is made from olives, and it smells rich and fruity.
“Have you heard?” Helen asks.
Clytemnestra takes off her tunic and climbs into her tub. “It’s been a while since we had any guests.”
“It was time,” Helen says, smiling to herself. She always enjoys it when visitors come to the palace.
The door opens. Timandra rushes into the room, breathless, and leaps into the cold bath. Her feet and hands are dirty, her hair messy. She has already started to bleed but her body is still lean, without any trace of feminine curves.
“Clean yourself, Timandra,” Clytemnestra says. “It looks like you’ve been rolling in the dirt.”
Timandra laughs. “Well, that is what I was doing.”
Helen smiles and her face glows. She is in a good mood. “We can’t be dirty for a while,” she says, her voice lively with excitement. “A rich king is coming.”
The servant starts combing her hair, her brown spotted hands untangling Helen’s locks as if they were spun gold. Timandra feels for knots in her own dark hair. “I can be dirty,” she says, eyeing Helen. “The king must certainly be for you.”