“Staring, are you?” he snapped. “Look your fill. That’s what your Trojans did to me. Crippled me!”
“You aren’t crippled—” I started to say. He still moved, just not as a young man.
“You can’t see the end of it!” His voice was savage. “Trace its path, and you shall see well enough where it ends!” He grabbed my hand and pulled me over to him, lifted up his undergarment. “That’s what your Paris did to me. But he had already done it anyway, when you chose him.”
“I am truly sorry,” I said. I meant it. The ruins of Troy, the killing and destruction, left me with no appetite for any more sorrow or revenge. Menelaus’s deficiency could not bring Paris back, could not make children sing again in the streets of Troy. All of it was useless waste.
“A bit late for that,” he said. “A bit late. Have you not wondered why I have not sought your bed as is my right after all this time?”
“I heard you call Cassandra polluted, and I thought you felt the same about me.” I had not tried to change his mind, either. It served my purpose well.
“It is hard to look at you and think that. It is harder to look at you and know I have this . . . this impediment.” Ashamed, he covered the vivid scar and said, “Now you will tell everyone, tell them that Menelaus has lost his manhood—twice!”
“I shall tell no one anything,” I said. “We are siblings in our misfortune, playthings of the gods. Neither of us has deserved what we got.”
“You deserved it. You brought it about, for all of us.”
Should I speak what was in my heart, even though it would hurt? “I meant, I did not deserve the glory, the beauty, and the love of Paris; nor did you deserve being branded a cuckold and a lesser warrior than your violent brother.”
“Always Paris!” he cried. “Always he is here!” He put his hands on my head and squeezed. “If only I could squeeze him out, crush him out of your head.”
I pulled myself away. “He is a part of me; you cannot.”
He turned and flung himself on his bed, lying stiffly to accommodate his disability. “He paces Hades!” he muttered. “Why can he not find peace?” He coughed. “And leave us in peace?”
* * *
The pharaoh announced that we were to be transferred upriver to Thebes, where we would be more comfortable. What he meant was that we would be more remote, the better to hold us prisoners. But as far as we knew, he had not attempted to raise any ransom money for us, or even told anyone we were there.
We rode in a long ceremonial boat, gilded at its bow and stern, with a fragrant cedarwood canopy where we could watch the land slide by under our blessed shade. The sun baked the riverbanks, crocodiles languishing upon them, tails trailing in the cool water. It was several days’ sail, but at sunset on the fourth day we saw huge temples on the left bank, glowing red in the dying light. They seemed to stretch out forever, row upon row of columns. From our boat I could hear deep, rumbling chanting from across the water, as priests performed their nightly rites.
A nervous official showed us the largest temple, after we had been settled into our quarters and received by the pharaoh’s deputy. Across the Nile lay tombs, elaborate secret burial vaults. The pharaoh was already constructing his, even though he was still young, our guide told us. “For we must be prepared for that next world,” he said solemnly.
We picked our way through the vast temple, where columns larger than any tree on earth supported stone roofs. There were statues so tall their heads almost touched the ceiling—some were of pharaohs and others of their strange gods with heads of crocodiles, jackals, or hawks, bigger even than the horse of Troy. All these were tended by robed priests and priestesses with shaven heads.
“Look.” Menelaus pointed to one that had the head of a crocodile.
Farther up the Nile there is a vast city where the priests have a temple that is bigger than Troy. It has statues five times the size of a man. We must go there. As soon as this war is over. Paris. Paris had wanted to come here, and see these things, and—
Now I could not see them, not without him. I could not bear it. I turned and ran from the temple.
That night I dreamed of him. He was standing right beside me, sorrowed that he was not here. I know as well as you it cannot be, he said, repeating his words of long ago.
“Hush.” Menelaus was sitting awkwardly on my bed, shaking me. His big hands were on my shoulders, but he did not caress me.
Paris faded, slipping away in the dark.
“I heard you cry out,” said Menelaus. “It is but a dream.”
He must have heard me cry Paris, and yes, Paris had been but a dream.
“I thank you,” I said, touched that he would try to wake and comfort me, even though he must have heard me call his rival’s name.
Even though I had fled from the temple the day before, when Menelaus was summoned to meet with some officials I returned to it. Painful as it was, I felt that somehow Paris was here, or rather, that even his glaring absence from a place he had longed to see somehow made me feel closer to him. I was wandering in the cool dimness—even at scorching midday—when a boy appeared, taking my arm and pulling me to one side of the temple. I could not understand him, but he seemed sure that I had come for some purpose, and that he knew what it was.
“Seer—very wise,” he said, or rather, that was all I understood. I took my place in a little room in the vastness of the temple and waited. A woman came into the room. “Helen? I know of you.”
How could I understand her? But I did. I was not sure what language she spoke, or how I knew it. I nodded. “Yes,” I said.
“We are honored that you walk amongst us, if only for a short time.” What age was she? I could not tell. “Now”—her voice turned brisk—“you have sought me out for what I can give, the famed elixir.”
I had not sought her out, nor did I know of this elixir, but I would not contradict her. “Yes,” I agreed.
“We in Egypt have long been masters of potions,” she said. “We can make you young, old, astute, forgetful—”
“Oh, give me that one, for I would forget much!”
She smiled. “Only those who have lived intensely want this potion. Those who have not lived enough desire something else to make what they have done more meaningful, magnify it.”
What if I told her? I have caused a fearful war. I have caused thousands of deaths. I am in custody to the man I fled. “Give me the elixir of forgetfulness!” I begged her. “Teach me to make it, so that I may replenish it as long as I live, for I shall have need of it forever!”
“It is very powerful,” she said. “So powerful that should you see your mother and father and children slain before your eyes, you would feel no pain.”
My mother had slain herself already, and what of Paris, dying? What of Troy, blazing? Was it truly strong enough to blot those out?
“I want it!” I said.
“As you wish,” she said, and fell to her preparations. The vial she handed me was filled with a warm golden liquid. I drank it all, quickly, as instructed. I could feel little besides a warm tingling inside where the elixir was caressing my stomach.
“Only wait,” she said. She began cleaning her implements, putting away her bottles and jars.
I reached out and touched her arm. “You promised to teach me,” I reminded her.
While she took the bottles of syrup and dried grains and little pieces of bark and explained the proportions and the order in which they must be mixed, I felt a carelessness stealing through me, a lightness. I hoped I would remember what she was telling me, for suddenly it all seemed sublimely unimportant. Yet at the same time I knew it was vitally important.
Her delicate fingers stoppered the bottle. “Now think on those painful things,” she whispered. “It is time to test it.”
I took a deep breath and thought of Troy. I could see the flames and smell the smoke, even hear the cries of the doomed, but it was as if I were beholding a wall painting. It did not send stabs of pain through m
e. But those were buildings and people I did not know. Bracing myself, I thought of Paris. Oh, there was still grief there, still a piercing of the heart. “It is not enough!” I said. “Give me more.”
She looked surprised. “You can still feel it? I fear more would be dangerous. Is the pain muted enough that you can endure it?”
I nodded. Perhaps it would be a betrayal of Paris were it to vanish altogether.
We remained in Egypt for seven years—impossible to believe, but that was how many times the Nile overflowed its banks, and that was how they measured years, so it was true. Who could have thought it would drag on for so long, who could have thought we could have endured it? But the elixir . . . the elixir gave me the power. It compressed and collapsed time, so that the seven years flitted away like seven days.
Menelaus was able to extricate himself from the pharaoh’s grasp after many negotiations, and we were on our way, floating down the Nile, the sail folded away, the current hurrying us along toward the sea. The women carrying water jars down the steep banks stopped to look at us, as people always did when a boat passed by. They stood, tall and erect, watching as we left their world.
Menelaus took my hands. “It seemed to me that you belonged here, that you had stayed here all through the war. Yes, that the real Helen—you—had come to Egypt, where you waited for me. What went to Troy was not the true Helen but a double, a phantom. In that way, I hate to leave. This Helen who has been here with me, that is the Helen I competed for, the Helen whose loss I grieved.” Thus he had found a way to live with it.
It seemed the opposite for me. The real Helen had gone to Troy, the Helen who had passed seven years here was a phantom, a ghost. Now that ghost would fade and disappear, and the real Helen must face Sparta at last.
LXXV
We landed at Gytheum. That was very hard. It had all begun there: that innocent day I had gone with Gelanor and encountered Aphrodite; the nine days later I sailed away with Paris. As we swung into the harbor, I cast a forlorn look at Cranae, riding tantalizingly in the waves, beckoning. Our night there . . . I felt waves of remembrance surging through me, more than remembrance, desire and longing. It was no more. All vanished, all come to this: a penitent, chastised return to Sparta for the erring, captive wife.
Menelaus mounted the gangplank and stepped ashore. He bent down and poured a libation to the gods. “I thank you,” he said, “for bringing me home.” He knelt for a long time, while the men waited to secure the ship.
“Come.” He held out his hand to me. It was a command. I was to obey, go back where I had been, take that place I had left so many years ago.
Night fell. We should have stayed in Gytheum, set out in the morning for Sparta. Chariots were waiting, but they could have waited longer, until dawn. Instead Menelaus mounted one and ordered, “To Sparta! I have waited a generation, I can wait no longer! Girls born the day I left are long since mothers!” He held out his hand to me and I took my place by his side.
Going back. Going back, along the road I had thought never to travel again. Menelaus encircled my waist with his arm. “Now it all begins again,” he whispered close in my ear. “Everything is erased. It is as if it never happened.”
I looked at him, at his face covered with wrinkles, his thinning hair. “It happened,” I said. But I had no wish to make him unhappy. “What will we find?” I murmured. “I am fearful.”
“We cannot know,” he said. He clutched the hand grip of the chariot and stared straight ahead. The chariot lurched forward.
Cresting the last rise, we saw Sparta before us: Sparta, sleeping beside the Eurotas, calm and beautiful. The swift-flowing river caught the moonlight sparkle and tossed it back at us, laughing. The citadel, the hilltop palace, was easy to see from where we stood.
I clutched Menelaus’s arm. “Let us wait here. It would be better to ascend in daylight, when the palace is up and stirring.”
He frowned. “Wait outside our own palace? How foolish!”
He flicked the reins and the horses moved forward, up the hill.
It was still dark when we reached the gates. The doors were fastened shut. I saw that they were still the same red-painted wood ones I had left. Menelaus called for the guards, and they, sleepy-eyed, swung open the gates, not really caring who we were.
The grounds were quiet, the only sounds the crunching of our chariot wheels. Everything was bathed in moonlight, the sinking moon painting all it touched in cold white light.
You will return in moonlight. Yes, as I had left Sparta in moonlight, now I returned to it in the same way, as foretold.
We dismounted. Before us it was utterly still, waiting.
I walked slowly toward the building where I had lived. It was horrible that it was still the same. It should not have been. All that had passed should have been reflected in its stones. But how could it have been?
We pushed the doors open and went inside. Nothing was altered. I and Menelaus might have left it yesterday. Silently I passed down through the corridors. I reached the bedroom. Moonlight shone in, touching the bed.
“Tomorrow we will see it all,” said Menelaus. “We will see it, and know the worst. In daylight we can face it.”
The moonlight was slanting, withdrawing its fingers from the chamber. Soon it would be dawn. I did not know if I could confront it. Where was Hermione, a grown woman now? I wanted to see her, embrace her; yet I did not want to. I knew she would hate me. How could she not?
The unkind sun came up. He would not spare us. We must behold Sparta. Menelaus, apprehensive but less so than I, dressed himself and made ready. I did not know what awaited me. I was soon to find out.
My father tottered out to see us; his guards had informed him of our arrival. At first I did not recognize him—he was a bent, crippled old man. He could not hold his head up but had to peer at us sideways.
“Daughter?” he said. His voice was thin and quavering.
“Yes, Father,” I said, coming to him and taking his bony hands. Now that I was close, I saw that he was almost blind; a white film lay upon his eyes.
He embraced me, and it was like being embraced by an empty cocoon. “Daughter,” he kept murmuring. Then he pulled back and squinted at me. “You are old!” he said. “Your hair is gray!”
I laughed, for the first time since I had entered this place. “Yes, Father. Much time has passed. Or perhaps it is your eyesight?”
“I don’t see much these days, but I can see that silver is crowding out the gold in your hair. And—your face has lines.”
“You see altogether too well, then.” And my aging must be very visible, for him to see it. “Tell me, Father. Tell me what has passed.”
“My dear child . . .” His dull eyes filled with tears. “So many deaths. They are all gone—your mother, your brothers. And your sister Clytemnestra is a murderess. She killed Agamemnon the moment he returned.”
“What?” Menelaus cried. He swung around and grabbed Father.
“Agamemnon landed, with all his war booty and his . . . that woman he brought from Troy. Clytemnestra greeted him with all ceremony, pretending to be overjoyed at his return. The beacons had alerted her, and she knew he was coming. She ushered him inside with great fanfare. He went first to the warm bath she had prepared for him in a silver tub. Naked, un-protected, exulting in his return—she entangled him in a net and stabbed him to death!”
I felt a rush of . . . yes, pride. After all Agamemnon had done to her. It was justice for Iphigenia! Was this what I had passingly glimpsed in my vision?
“Now, Odysseus, he was just the opposite,” said Father. “When he returned to Ithaca—”
Must we hear about Odysseus? Would that he had been stabbed as well!
“—he went in disguise, to see what had happened in the palace in his long absence. Wily man! For the palace was beset with enemies, although his wife had remained faithful. He had to kill them all before he could resume his rightful place. Agamemnon was not so foresighted. And so he lies in a tomb,
whereas Odysseus reigns again in Ithaca.”
“What of . . . the Trojan woman?” Menelaus asked.
“She was killed as well,” said Father. “Before she even entered the palace.”
Cassandra. Cassandra, another Trojan casualty.
“But who reigns in Mycenae, then?” Menelaus sounded desperate.
“My daughter Clytemnestra,” he said. “My shame! And her lover, her cousin Aegisthus. Oh, the curse on my house has been fulfilled!”
“And the rest?” I asked him, not wanting to hear any more about the curse. “There were others, returning home. And Hermione?” I remembered the dreadful taunt of Neoptolemus, that he would have her.
“Oh, they came. That son of Achilles stormed in here and took Hermione against her will, forced her to marry him. But it was short-lived. The violent man attempted to steal treasure from Apollo’s temple in Delphi, and was killed. Now people speak of ‘the debt of Neoptolemus’—meaning that as you kill, so shall you be killed.” Just as he had cruelly killed Priam at an altar, he himself had been struck down beside one.
“Hermione? Where is she?” I asked.
“Here. Here in the palace. She is a childless widow, with no hope of another marriage: her mother’s notoriety and her husband’s violence have stained her.”
Hermione—in her thirties now, alone.
“I must warn you, she is not pleasant,” said Father. “I hesitate to say this about my own grandchild, but much has befallen her.” He took my arm. “Do not attempt to see her, not right away.”
She was here, nearby. Only a few steps away. Yet I must wait. “Neoptolemus—did he not have another woman from Troy with him?” He had taken Andromache. What had become of her?
“Oh, yes, that tall woman. She escaped from him when he married Hermione, and ran off with someone—they went north.”
Andromache. Safe. I had not been able to vouchsafe it myself, but now Hector could rest.