“That is the problem with your brother,” Clytemnestra says. “He thinks only of what he wants. He forgets that there is a world around him, filled with people whose wishes he is not considering.”
“Oh, he doesn’t forget. He just doesn’t take them into account. So he got you, and I married the most beautiful woman in all our lands.” He smiles as if trying to convince himself of his good fortune. Then a thought crosses his face and he turns serious again. “But it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t love me and never will. Helen loses interest easily and can’t seem to be happy unless she has someone’s attention. It is strange: she who is such a light is always seeking someone to show her the way.”
“She was happy before you came along,” Clytemnestra says.
Menelaus laughs. “You know very well she wasn’t. That is why she came to me in the first place.”
Clytemnestra tilts her head. “Did you summon me here to discuss your marriage?”
“No,” he says, and his expression shifts. Now he looks more like his brother: sharper, greedier. “I have to leave for my grandfather’s funeral. A ship is waiting to take me to Crete, but I wanted to make sure you were here first. You must keep things in order.”
“What things?”
“There is an important guest here from Troy on a diplomatic mission.” She raises her eyebrows but he continues. “The deal he came for is made, but he is staying longer. Help my wife entertain him. And make sure your brothers return those girls to whoever they were promised to.”
She wants to ask if Agamemnon knows about this. But of course he does. That is why she was sent here in the first place.
“You speak of these women as though they were cows,” she says.
Menelaus laughs. “Cows, women, goats, princesses, call them as you wish. They are the same to me.”
And he wonders why his wife doesn’t love him.
She smiles coldly and excuses herself. As she walks along the corridors lined with weapons of former Spartan rulers, she finds herself thinking of her grandmother.
This was once a palace of mighty queens. Of warrior women and daughters of Artemis. Now it belongs to a man who treats his wife as a golden trophy.
*
After a quick bath, she wears a Persian green dress with a dark woolen cloak and leaves the gynaeceum. The servants told her that Helen isn’t in the palace, so Clytemnestra takes the path that leads to the temple of Artemis. She has ordered Leon to find her brothers and tell them she is in Sparta so she can speak to her sister alone.
Helen is sitting by the columns of the temple, her hands smoothing her white dress. On her head is a golden diadem, thin but precious, on her shoulders a leopard skin. She looks peaceful. Behind her, the spring at the foot of the mountains pours and rushes. Above them, the sky is blue and bare.
“Helen,” Clytemnestra says, and her sister turns. Her cheeks are red with cold but her eyes light, like summer water. Helen jumps forward and hugs her. Clytemnestra feels the warmth of the leopard skin and closes her arms around her sister’s waist.
“I knew you were coming, but I didn’t know when,” Helen says.
“Were you entertaining that Trojan prince?”
Helen blushes, though Clytemnestra can’t tell why. “I was.”
Clytemnestra searches her face for any trace of sadness or emptiness. But Helen’s eyes are lively and her lips are curved into a smile.
“They told me you were unhappy. You look happy to me.”
Helen’s laugh is crystal clear. “I am not sad anymore.”
“I am glad. Is Hermione well?”
“Of course she is. She is only annoyed that her uncles don’t play with her much these days.” She chuckles. “So she plays by herself. You should see her. She draws the most wonderful things in the sand, and sometimes she makes adornments with feathers.”
“So does Chrysothemis,” Clytemnestra says. “And Mother? How is she?”
Helen shrugs. “She didn’t take well the departures of Phoebe and Philonoe. Phoebe was good with her, especially when Mother drank too much.”
“We should hide the wine then.”
“I have tried. It just makes her angry. She spends most of her time in her room now, so we visit her.” She sits again on the stone floor at the temple’s entrance. Her hair is plaited and it makes her eyes look bigger.
“We need to speak to Castor and Polydeuces,” Clytemnestra says. “They must let the women go back to the men they were promised to.”
Helen’s face is amused. “You never change. You’ve just arrived and are already planning to fix everything.”
“If I don’t, who else will?”
“With everything that happened to us, we should have learned to let things be. We don’t want to end up like Tyndareus.”
We don’t want to end up like Leda either, Clytemnestra thinks. Their mother has always believed the gods decided for most men, but Clytemnestra never accepted that. To exist in the shivering knowledge that gods could do and undo things as they wished: how could anyone live such a life? No. The gods are cruel and have little time for mortals.
Helen takes her hand. “Besides, our brothers aren’t holding anyone against their will.”
“What do you mean?”
“Phoebe and Hilaeira came here of their own accord. They love Castor and Polydeuces.” She looks down, then adds, “Who wouldn’t?”
Clytemnestra draws away. “We can’t force Sparta into civil war. These women were promised to the king of Messenia’s sons.” Helen stares at her, frowning. “I can’t stay here and fight a war while Menelaus is away. I have a family, children to take care of.”
“We are your family too,” Helen says with a sad smile.
“I am not risking a civil war against Messenia,” Clytemnestra repeats, “so that Castor can sleep with yet another woman.”
Helen stands, shaking her head. “This is different. I will take you to him now if you like. He’ll make you understand.”
*
On their way back to the palace, they pass the working helots and the stables, where the mares are resting. By the haystacks, next to a black stallion, a girl is retching, her hands keeping her hair out of her face. She lifts her head to look at them—her face is wet with sweat and sickness.
“Pregnant,” Helen says.
“We have all been there,” Clytemnestra replies. “She will be happy once the child is born.”
“Will she?”
Clytemnestra turns to look at her sister, but Helen’s face is unreadable.
Inside the palace, Helen stops just outside the wooden door of Castor’s room. “You go in,” she says, “Menelaus will be leaving soon, and I must say goodbye.” Clytemnestra nods and Helen hurries back the way they came, her shadow following her, long and lean on the stone floor.
There is a shuffle, and her brother opens the door before Clytemnestra can knock. His face is brighter than it was the last time she saw him, and his oiled curls fall jauntily around his head.
“You are always trouble, Brother,” she says.
Castor laughs. Unable to be serious, Clytemnestra laughs too. After all the times he said the same to her when they were little, he finally gets his payback.
“You have waited a lifetime to tell me that,” he says. He moves aside to let her in. The room is bare, plain stone and simple furniture. On a bed carved of dark wood sits a young woman with auburn hair.
“This is Phoebe, Sister,” Castor says.
Phoebe looks at her. There is something unsettling in her gaze, as if her eyes were blades trying to peel off Clytemnestra’s skin. “Castor told me all about you,” she says. “He says that you too love your freedom, yet you have been married off to a cruel king.”
“Did your father promise you to our cousin?” Clytemnestra asks.
“He did. Do you know him?”
“I’ve never met him.”
Phoebe stands and walks to the window. Her hair falls down her back like a cascade of fire. She wouldn’t be pretty, Clytemnestra considers, without that hair.
“In my land,” Phoebe says, “they call me and my sister Daughters of the White Horse. We love to ride, and our horses are whiter than sacred cows. You don’t have horses like that here.” She stops, taking a breath. “When my father promised me to your cousin Idas, Idas said that he would kill my favorite horse. He didn’t want me to love it more than my husband.”