“Yes, a marriage. I was young, disobedient, and my father’s favorite. I thought myself hard to love, but Thestius liked that I was rebellious. When he came to me to propose the marriage, I said yes. I thought it my chance to make him proud and happy.
“Our winter festival came, when the girls had to dance for the goddess Rhea. It was my favorite moment of the year—we wore dresses and masks of feathers and ran in the forest where the spirits hide. We sang to the stars, asking for warmth in the winter and rains in the summer. Your father watched me. His skin was dark and warm, and I thought that was a taste of the sunny land he came from. I let him touch the feathers of my dress, and he said I was the most beautiful bird he had ever seen. The forest heard him, because soon nightingales were singing. I followed the sound, leading Tyndareus away from the torches into the thick part of the forest where long branches make everything a secret. The morning after, he asked me to marry him.”
Leda doesn’t look at her as she talks. Her eyes are fixed outside the window, on the woods in the distance, the trees swaying with the wind.
Clytemnestra looks at her hands. “Your marriage was the result of a political alliance, but that doesn’t mean you know how I felt.”
“That is true.” Her hand grabs Clytemnestra’s wrist and she feels the strength her mother once had, the boldness. “If I could go back, I would change everything. I would stand beside you and defy your father.” Her eyes brim with sadness. “But if you are truly like me and you find it hard to forgive, I hope you will come to understand that it has been hard for me too.”
The sky darkens above them, ready to shed its tears. Clytemnestra watches the birds fly away from the trees, dancing like Leda, looking for shelter before the storm.
*
“Artemis Orthia,
we worship you!”
Clytemnestra stands by the temple as the women around her dance and sing. It is the winter festival for Artemis, when boys and girls bring gifts to the goddess, singing until dawn breaks. Torches are fixed in the ground, swaying with the thud of feet, and the dancers come in and out of the shadows, dressed in nothing but animal skins. A wolf. A lynx. A leopard. A lion. The youngest are she-bears, and they pray loudest to the goddess.
“I always forget—did a girl kill a bear, or was it the other way around?” Castor licks his lips, a jar of wine in his hand. In the light, the liquid is dark, like blood.
“A girl once teased a tamed bear on this land, and the beast clawed out her eyes,” Clytemnestra recites. “Then the girl’s brothers killed the bear, unleashing Artemis’s rage. So now we atone for the bear’s death.”
“Artemis can be quite brutal,” Castor points out, swigging his wine. Clytemnestra grabs the jug before he can finish it.
“Huntress, archer,
we worship you!
“Goddess willow-bound,
we worship you!”
Helen is standing not far from them, a leopard skin tied to her shoulders, her blond hair in a cascade of plaits. Clytemnestra looks around, but Paris is nowhere to be seen. Her sister’s eyes are on the dancers. Polydeuces rests his hand on her arm, as if that was where it should be.
“You know I once saw Timandra kissing another girl during the procession of she-bears?” Castor says. “She looked up at me as if daring me to say anything, then ran away into the shadows.”
“And? What did you say to her?” Clytemnestra asks.
“Nothing. Sooner or later, Father would have found out and flogged her anyway. Not that Timandra cared. She has always been unruly.”
A cold breeze stirs, and Clytemnestra fixes her lion skin around her neck. “I miss her,” she says. “She was never meant to marry. That wasn’t the life she wanted.”
Castor smirks. “Did you get the life you wanted? Did I?”
“Mother of the forest,
we worship you!”
The girls’ song feels like a bird’s cry now. Their dance becomes wilder. Arms, breasts, hair, legs appear and disappear as they move in circles around the torches, the painted statue of Artemis watching them. The boys are coming out of the shadows of the temple. Naked, slender bodies with masks and horns on their heads, they join the song before running away toward the forest. They will come back at dawn with their offers to the goddess, their bodies spotted with blood.
“I wanted to rule,” Clytemnestra says, “and you wanted to go off on adventures.”
“You didn’t want to marry a brute.” He speaks calmly, without the amusement that once was always on his face.
Behind them, the trees are so dark that they are one with the sky. She turns away from the she-bears and cups her hand around his cheek. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I won’t stay married to him forever.”
22
Helen’s Secret
BETWEEN THE TIME with her sister and the dinners with her brothers, her stay in Sparta becomes sweeter. She rides along the frosted hills with Castor and strolls around town with Phoebe and Hilaeira. They pass the gardens and houses in the village, walking in the patches of light and shadows that alternate between each building, and they tell each other stories.
Girls may not learn to fight in Messenia, Phoebe tells Clytemnestra, but they learn other things. They know the secrets of the woods, where each mushroom grows and the deer hide. They know the names of plants and trees, of berries and fruit. And then there are the horses. Boys and girls in Messenia are riding before they can walk, and they prize their horses above anything else.
“Do you miss your home?” Clytemnestra asks as they are walking between the roses in a garden. Phoebe is usually the one who speaks, with her fervent eyes and defiant face, but this time it is Hilaeira who answers.
“There is nothing for us in Messenia anymore.” Her words are stiff and clear. Her face is like a stone, perfectly carved, but her eyes are soft, brimming with secrets.
At night, after dinner, they gather around the flames of the palace hearth: Clytemnestra and Helen, Castor and Polydeuces, Phoebe and Hilaeira. Leon joins them, always close to his queen, and the Trojan prince. Around them, the bobbing heads of servants, who listen furtively, curious.
Paris tells many stories, of the beauty of the city of Troy, of his time growing up on Mount Ida, of his first wife and how she loved to play the lyre. Each evening, as the fire dies down, Hermione falls asleep in her mother’s lap, and Helen caresses her little head as she listens to the prince. It feels peaceful to be together in this way, like resting under thick warm covers when rain is falling outside.
When Leda joins them one evening, Phoebe tells a funny tale about lustful gods and jealous goddesses. Everyone laughs, and the house dogs rub against their legs, looking for food and affection. Clytemnestra smiles at her mother, and Leda’s eyes light up. See, Mother? she thinks. See how happy I am?
Still, in all that peace and lightness, Clytemnestra can hear a distant rumble. It is like being on a beach when the tide has receded. All is calm, yet everyone knows that soon the water will climb.
*
And then, on the tenth day of her stay, the tide rises as quickly as a winter storm.
They are lined up together in the megaron, Castor and Polydeuces standing at the side, Helen on the queen’s draped chair, and Clytemnestra on Menelaus’s throne. When she had tried to convince her sister that the throne was for her, Helen shook her head.
“You were called here for a reason, to take care of the family. Do it.” Her eyes held urgency, which Clytemnestra had never seen in her before. “Besides,” Helen added, “from what the people say about these cousins of ours, they frighten me already.” Clytemnestra had no time to ask her what the people said about the princes of Messenia, because Leon announced that Lynceus and Idas were walking into the room.