“It makes the arrival all the more special,” said one of my brothers, Castor. He was some five years older than I, dark-haired like Mother, but of a friendly and light disposition. He was my best friend among my siblings, cheerful and heartening, amusing yet always thoughtful and watchful of me, the youngest. “If it were easy to find, it would not be the prize it is.”
“Prize?” Coming up beside us, puffing and thumping, was Castor’s twin, Polydeuces. He was as fair as Castor was dark, but he lived in the shadows of caution and doubt, belying his looks. “I see no prize, just a dry and dusty ascent up Mount Parnassus. And for what? For a seer to tell us what to do? You know if Mother does not like what she hears, she will just ignore it. So why bother to come, when she could just stay in her chambers, call a seer, and have a divining rite there?”
“It is Father who must know,” said Castor. “He will give weight to what the oracle says, even if Mother does not. It is his throne, after all, that is in question.”
“It is his brother who has driven him from it. Now, dear brother, let us clasp hands and vow to avoid such strife.”
“We can rule together. I see nothing to prevent it.” Castor laughed.
“If Father does not regain his throne, we will hardly be likely to follow him,” said Polydeuces.
“Well, then, we’ll make our way boxing and wrestling, win all the prizes, have lots of cattle and women—”
“You’ll always make your way, I am sure.” Suddenly the eldest was beside us, our sister Clytemnestra. “That is a great gift.” She turned to me. “Are you tired?”
I was, but would not admit it. “No, not at all!” I walked faster to prove it.
At sundown we reached Delphi at last. We had climbed and climbed, until we finally passed a spring, where others—who seemed to have come from nowhere—were refreshing themselves, splashing water on their faces and filling their waterskins. The spring emptied into a pool, a pool shaded by overhanging trees, with dappled sun playing on its surface. It was very calm there, very restful, and I dipped my hands into the surprisingly cold water, letting it restore me.
It was too late to go to the oracle, and so we spent the night in the field that lay just below the sacred buildings. Many others were there as well, sleeping in the clear open air. The stars above us were bright and cold. I looked at them and promised myself to ask my brothers to tell me the stories about them. But this night we were so tired we all fell asleep instantly.
The sun hit my eyes and woke me up very early. It did not have to peek over a mountain, as in Sparta, but flooded the sky with light the instant it rose. All around me others were stirring, folding their blankets, stretching, eager to seek the secrets of Delphi.
Father was not himself. I could tell by the way he greeted the other pilgrims around us. He spoke to them but did not seem to hear their answers. And his response was vague, beside the point.
“We must hurry, so we are first at the oracle.” He looked around at all the others, taking their measure. “Their concerns are everyday ones, not the very future of a throne.” He pushed us to be on our way.
The oracle. The future. Omens. Prophecies. Until then, I was free. I was a child of no importance—or so I believed. After this, they ruled my life, the soothsayers, the fixed limits of the gods, the parameters that defined me.
Father was hurrying toward the oracle, leaning forward against the wind in his haste to get there first, when suddenly a shriek rang out from a rock on the path. Perched on it was a crone, a woman who, in her dark robes and hood, looked more like a vulture or a raven than a person.
“You! You!” she—I swear it—cawed.
Father stopped. All of us stopped. He went over to her, stood on tiptoe to hear her as she leaned over on her rock and spoke to him. He scowled, then shook his head. He was arguing with her! I saw him gesturing. Then he came over to me and dragged me over to her.
I did not want to go. Why was he forcing me? I twisted and tried to get away.
“Child, child!” she cried in her ugly, high voice. Father lifted me, squirming and trying to escape, and held me fast. He thrust me up to her. She leaned forward and grabbed my head, and her voice changed. She began uttering strange, unearthly cries. Her hands felt like talons, gripping me so tightly I feared my head might burst open.
“Bring her up in Sparta, then!” Her voice was now a sound like the water in the pool we passed at the entrance to Delphi, distant and dim. “But she will be the ruin of Asia, the ruin of Europe, and because of her a great war will be fought, and many Greeks will die!”
“Let me go, let me go!” I cried. But Father held me fast, and the woman breathed in and out harshly, a horrible sound, half gasping and half roaring. Mother stood there, too, rooted and unmoving. My parents’ helplessness frightened me most of all. It was as though she had by some power paralyzed them.
“Troy,” she muttered. “Troy . . .”
Then suddenly the spell was broken. She stopped her labored breathing and released my head. My scalp tingled and I fell back into Father’s arms.
We continued the march up the path to the oracle, the famous one who sat in a secret place and breathed in fumes—or conversed with the god Apollo—and Father sought her out. But what she said I do not know. I was still shaking after the assault of the woman.
“The Sibyl,” corrected Clytemnestra. “She is the Herophile Sybil and she wanders about giving prophecies. She is more ancient than the oracle, more important.” Clytemnestra knew such things. She was six years older than I and made it her business to know such things. “What she says always comes true. Whereas what the oracle says—well, there are tricks to it. It does not always happen as people think.”
“Why did she grab Helen?” Polydeuces demanded.
Clytemnestra looked at him. “You know why,” she said.
“I don’t!” I said. “Please, please, tell me!”
“It is not for me to tell you,” she said. “Ask Mother!” At that, she gave a wild laugh almost as frightening as the Sibyl’s.
* * *
We hurried—or so it seemed—back to the palace of my grandparents. Mother and Father secluded themselves, conferring with the old king and queen, and I was left to wander about my barren chambers. Oh, I did not like them, and my scalp still hurt from the grip of the Sibyl. I touched it gingerly and felt the ridges of scabs there.
Great war . . . many Greeks will die . . . Troy . . . I did not know what it meant, but I knew it alarmed Mother and Father—and even Clytemnestra, who was usually fearless, the first to drive a chariot with unruly horses, the first to break a rule.
I picked up a mirror and tried to see the injury on my head. I turned the mirror this way and that, but the injury was too far back for me to see. Then Clytemnestra snatched the mirror from my hands.
“No!” she cried. There was real alarm in her voice.
“Can you see the top of my head?” I said. “I cannot. That is all I want to do.”
She parted my hair. “There are grooves there, but nothing deep.” She kept the mirror firmly clenched in her hand.
II
Thus it was that I learned I was forbidden to use a mirror. It was such a simple thing—a polished bronze surface that reflected back a poor image in any case. I had seen little when I held the mirror up to my head. The face I saw, fleetingly, was not the face I had imagined.
Can we envision our own face? I think not. I think we imagine ourselves invisible, with no face at all, able to blend perfectly with everything around us.
Mother looked at herself in a mirror often enough. It seemed that every time I came into her room she was peering into it, raising her eyebrows, turning her head to see a different side of her cheek, or licking her lips. Sometimes what she did brought a smile to her face, but more often it brought a frown, and a sigh. She always put the mirror down when she saw me, even going so far once as to sit on it so I could not take it up.
Was my mother pretty? Attractive? Alluring? Fair? Lovely?
Beautiful? We have so many words to describe the exact degree in which a person pleases our senses. Yes, I would say she was all of these things. She had, as I have said, a long thin face, which made her unusual; in our family, the faces were round or oval. Her nose was a perfect thin blade that set off her wide-set, slanted eyes—that was what you noticed when you looked at her: those large slanted eyes, which never met yours directly, and dominated her face. The most arresting quality about her was her vivid coloring. She had very white skin, very dark hair, and cheeks that always seemed flushed and glowing. She had a long thin neck, too, very elegant. I would have thought she would be proud of that, but once when someone said she had a swan’s neck she ordered her out of the room.
Her name was Leda, a lovely name, I thought. It meant “lady” and she was always dainty and graceful, so in choosing that name for her my grandparents had given her something to grow into.
My own name, Helen, was less certain. I asked Mother one day—when I had again come upon her peering in the mirror, and she hastily put it away—why I was named that, and what it meant.
“I know that Clytemnestra means ‘praiseworthy wooing,’ and since she is your firstborn, I thought that meant that Father’s wooing had won you.”
She threw back her head and gave a low, amused laugh. “Your father’s wooing was such as he is, political.” Seeing the puzzlement on my face, she said, “I mean by that he was in exile—again!—and took refuge with my mother and father. And they had a marriageable daughter, and he was eager to be married, so eager that he promised great gifts to them if they would surrender me, and so they did.”
“But what did you think of him, when you first saw him?”
She shrugged. “That he was not displeasing, and I could abide him.”
“Is that all a woman can look for?” I asked, very hesitant, and also a little shocked.
“Yes.” She looked hard at me. “Although in your case I think we can ask for more than that. Drive a harder bargain. Now, as to the others’ names: Castor means ‘beaver,’ and indeed he has grown up to be very industrious, and Polydeuces means ‘much sweet wine.’ Your brother could use more wine, if it would serve to lighten his spirits.”
“But my name! My name!” Children are most interested in themselves. I was impatient to hear my story, the special story of myself from before I could remember, a mystery to which only Mother and Father held the key.
“Helen.” She took a great deep breath. “It was hard to choose your name. It had to be . . . it had to reflect . . .” She nervously began to twirl a lock of her hair, a habit she reverted to in times of uncertainty or agitation; I knew it well. “It means many things. ‘Moon,’ because you seemed touched by the goddess; ‘torch,’ because you brought light.”
“I was a baby. How could I have brought light?”
“Your hair was bright and shone like the sun,” she said.
“Moon—sun—I cannot be both!” Why was this so confusing?
“Well, you are,” she said. “Their light is different, but it is possible to be both. To have attributes of both.”
“But you also call me Cygnet. What does that mean?” I might as well have it all, have all my names explained.
“Cygnet means ‘little swan’—a tiny one, just out of the egg.”
“But why did I remind you of that? You don’t even like swans!” One day we had been walking near the lake at my grandparents’ and a flock of swans had made their way toward us. My mother had turned her back on them and hurried away, and Father had yelled and thrown stones at them. His face had turned red and he had yelled, “Get away, you filthy monsters!”
“Oh, I used to like them well enough,” she said. “They were my favorite birds when I was a little girl and living here with my own parents. I would go out to the lakeshore and feed them. I loved to watch them float on the water, with their lovely curved necks and their white feathers.”
“But why did you change your mind about them?”
“I learned more about them when I was grown up. My wonder at them fled.” Suddenly she bent down and took my face in her long thin hands—long and thin like her face. “Do not look too closely at something, do not come too near, or you might lose the wonder. That is what separates children from adults.” She stroked my cheek. “Believe in everything now. Later you cannot.” She gave one of her dazzling smiles. “Once I loved them, and I still love the swan in you.”
“Then I shall go and see the swans every day,” I said stoutly. “While I can still like them, before I find out . . . whatever it was that changed your mind.”
“Hurry, then. We will be leaving here soon. Your father has his throne back, and we return to Sparta. The swans come there only rarely. They do not live there, do not touch down often.”
Oh, it was good to be back! Back in our lovely sprawling palace, high on its hill above the valley of the Eurotas River, looking down over the city of Sparta on the plain. I had missed it so. I loved my chamber, with its paintings of birds and flowers on the white walls, and the old pear tree just outside my window. And all my toys were still safe in the chest, just where I had left them when we fled so quickly.
Of course, no one would take toys, but Father was most concerned to check his storerooms and see what had been plundered while his brother had usurped his throne and lived in his palace. Father had emptied the treasure room himself and hidden its goods, buried them in the foothills of the surrounding mountains.
“But you cannot guard against everything!” he said. “And I consider every tile that is damaged an outrage, every cloak that was taken a violation! He lived here, he dared to invade my palace!” Again he was getting red-faced, and Mother tried to calm him.
“Tyndareus, these are little things. The only important thing is your throne. It is here. You have reclaimed it.”
“My brother—the swine—!”
“Your brother is dead,” said Mother flatly.
“I hate him anyway!”
Overhearing these things, I wondered how a brother could come to wrong another brother so that he would feel that way. But oh! I had yet to learn of the vile things one family member could do to another. I did not understand, because I loved my brothers and sister and they loved me, and I could not see how it could be otherwise.
My life there was full of sun and wind and laughter. I had the run of the palace, I could have anything I wished. I sang and played and learned my lessons from the amiable old tutor they brought for me. I lacked nothing, desired nothing that was not to hand. I look back on that time as my most innocent, my happiest—if happiness consists of no desires at all, no concerns, a dreamless floating.
But, as will happen, I looked up one day, when my eyes and heart were older, able to discern, and saw the high wall surrounding our palace, blocking me from anything beyond it. I began to ask to be taken outside, to see what lay in the meadows and the mountains and the city. I was met with a stern refusal.
“You must stay here, within the walls of the palace grounds,” Father said in a voice that discouraged argument.
Of course, children always ask why, but he would not tell me. “It must be as I have said,” was all he would utter.
I asked my brothers, but they demurred, which was most unlike them. Castor, who was usually adventurous, said that I must respect Father’s wishes, and Polydeuces hinted darkly that he had his reasons.
I hated being the youngest! The others could come and go as they pleased, but Helen must say inside, a prisoner! Would I never be delivered, never be freed?
I made up my mind to demand that I be allowed outside. I should be taught to hunt; I should be able to go out in the mountains with a bow, it was embarrassing that I was seven years old and still had never even held one! I marched toward Father’s quarters, shoving aside the guards on either side of the megaron. I felt odd, pushing them like that, as I was only a third their size, but I was a princess, and they had to obey me.
Today the megaron—the great chamber with its
open fireplace and its polished pillars, where important guests were welcomed—was dark and empty. The private chambers of the king, separate from those of the queen, which were upstairs and near the megaron, lay on one side of the palace, across from the children’s quarters. More guards appeared when I approached the inner chambers, and I shoved them aside as well.
I heard Father’s voice. He was there! Now was the time to speak to him! I would tell him of my longing to go outside the palace grounds. But then I heard my name. I stopped and listened.
“Helen,” he said. “Can we do it?”
Do what? I felt my heart stop, then start racing.
“It will mean you have to admit to it.” Mother’s voice. “Are you able to do that? For she is worth much more if—”
“I know, I know!” Father barked. “I realize that.” Now I could hear the pain in his voice. “But can we—can you—prove it absolutely? They will want proof—”
“Look at her!” Mother’s voice was triumphant.
“But there is nothing definite, I mean, beauty, yes, but you, my sweet, you are also beautiful—”
I heard her make a noise of dismissal. “The hair,” she said. “The color of the hair.”
What of it? I did not understand.
“There must be more,” said Father. “Have you nothing else?”
The silence told me the answer was no.
“How could you have been such a fool?” he cried. “You could have asked for something.”
“If you had ever had such an experience, you would know how stupid you sound!”
“Oh, so I am stupid!”
And then it ran along the same old channel as their usual arguments, and I knew there was nothing more to be learned. I stepped brightly into the room and made my request to leave the palace, see what lay beyond it. They both frowned and denied me. Father said it was because I was too young, Mother because I had everything I needed here.