“My dear brothers?” I had to ask, had to hear it all.
“They fell together. They were preparing to join the Trojan folly. But the arrows of Apollo felled them first.”
So Agamemnon had been right, with his cruel words. They were gone; we would not hunt or ride together, ever again. But I had not killed them. Almost alone of the men I knew, they had not perished in Troy. Persephone had been gracious, and did not call them because of me.
Suddenly I was so tired I could barely stand. The bright daylight swirled around me. I was back in the palace, but all was changed, and everyone was dead.
Menelaus collapsed on the bed with me. “I shall never clasp his arm again. And we quarreled when we parted.”
It took me a moment to understand that he meant Agamemnon. “We are always tortured by our memory of the last time we were with anyone, what we said, what we did not say. With Mother—oh, Menelaus, how can any of us bear what the years have put upon us?” I thought longingly of the elixir and its mercy, but no, I needed to feel this.
“We cannot,” he said. “That is why the aged are so stooped.”
I needed to see it all. The palace, with all its rooms that called out to me, each with a memory. The megaron, where Clytemnestra and I had selected our husbands. The gates, the back one where Paris and I had run away, the other where Clytemnestra and I had stolen away that day, to the city. The great meadow, where Menelaus and I had first strolled as husband and wife, and where we had seen Gelanor. Gelanor . . . gone now, too. The woods where I had hunted with my brothers, and the riverbank where I had raced, and oh! they were all still here, but the moments when they changed my life were gone, as vanished as Troy.
The Hermione tree had grown huge in the years since it was planted. Its leafy crown rustled quietly in the benevolent midsummer breeze. The horse mound, yes, that was where the evil had all begun. I must go to it, confront it, must stamp on its earth and curse it.
The mound lay a fair distance outside Sparta. I remembered how long it had taken us to reach it, my heart hammering and my whole being gripped by confusion and embarrassment. Now I retraced those steps, walking calmly, aware of everything I had missed before: the quiet valleys on either side, the dark woods, the heat of midday stilling the land.
Raise a mound to it, so that it remains a memorial to this day and this oath, Father had said. His voice had been loud and strong that day, not the cricket’s song it was now reduced to.
I saw it up ahead. It was lumpy and uneven, but it was unmistakable.
Mounds—the tumulus of Achilles, the memorial of the horse. One led directly to the other. Hideous things, ugly on the landscape.
Closer to it, the earth was higher than I had thought. I climbed up one side, aslant, grabbing tufts of grass to pull myself up. Under here, under here the bones lay—oh, the men had kept their promise! I sat down on the top of it, remembering the men who had sworn. Father had thought to avert blood-shed, and instead he had induced it.
Omens. If I were beginning again, starting out in life, I would ignore all omens, neither heeding them nor trying to disable them. If we chose to pass them by, then perhaps they would lose their power, as old gods and goddesses, no longer worshiped, fade away and lose their grip on us.
How sweetly the wind blew over these grasses, caressing them. Like the grass at Troy, that the horses fed upon. Horses. Troy. Live ones and wooden ones. Troilus and his horses, Paris riding wild horses. Hector, breaker of horses. Dead ones littering the Plain of Troy. The mysterious little horses on the island of Scyros. The slaughtered horse, sleeping here.
I sank my head down on my knees, closed my eyes. I did not know what I had expected to find here, but it had not been this slumbering, drowsy mound. I must have dozed, for when I opened my eyes the tall, swaying grasses swam in my vision and a woman stood before me.
It was no one I knew. She was looking at me with narrowed eyes, bending down to see my face.
“Not so beautiful,” she said.
Who was she? “Good,” I said. “For that old song has grown wearisome, past its time.”
“But I suppose there are some who would insist on pretending that it is still there.” Her voice was hostile, and she kept staring at me.
I did not rise, and she sat down beside me, shading her eyes.
“I heard—we all did, here in Sparta—that Helen had returned.”
So she was a woman from the town. “Yes, after many a journey.”
“Twenty-four years it has been, to be exact.” Her words were clipped, but there was something in them, something in the tilt of her head . . . I looked into her eyes. Brown eyes, staring back at me.
“Time has not passed in a normal fashion for me—the gods confused the years for all of us at Troy—but I trust your reckoning.”
“Twenty-four years means your daughter is now thirty-three. Hermione, whom you left. Did you ever think of her?”
This townswoman was bold, to question me so. I was still, and again, queen of Sparta. “Every day,” I said. “She was with me in Troy. She walked the streets with me, she warmed herself before Priam’s fire, she trudged with me to Mount Ida.”
“No, I did not.” The words were bitten off, flung out.
Hermione? I could not think. “But—you are—?”
“Your abandoned daughter!” Now she leapt up, the better to look down upon me. “The one you ran away from! Left me here like a toy that is tossed aside! Yes, I am Hermione!”
I pulled myself up, not as quickly as she. “My dearest daughter, I—”
“Daughter? I am ashamed to be your daughter. The daughter of Helen of Troy! A byword for shame!”
I looked at her. There was nothing there I could recognize from the child I had left. This woman had brown hair, brown eyes, a face that was pretty but unremarkable, and wide feet, clad in sturdy shoes, peeking out beneath her gown.
“My shame is not your shame,” I said.
“I come here often, to try to understand what began here.”
“But you cannot,” I said. “It is but an empty mound, its grasses sighing as the wind passes over it. You would have to hear your grandfather speak, see the men gathered.” I reached out; I needed to touch her. She stepped away.
“How could you have left me?” she asked. “How could a mother have left her child? And to run away with that boy, he was only a few years older than I—”
“I did not leave you. I tried to take you with me. You did not want to come. You wanted to stay with your tortoises and your friends.”
“I was nine years old! How could I comprehend what you were asking?”
“You could not.” I took another step toward her, but again she drew back. “Paris knew that.”
“Paris! Do not say that name! The name that robbed me of a mother, and drove my grandmother to end her life.”
Once she had liked him. But now he was just a symbol of her loss. “Paris—”
“I said do not say that name!” Now she turned to go.
“Wait—” I reached out for her. “Please, do not leave!”
She whirled back, drew herself up, gathered her mantle around herself. “How many times have I wished to say that to you, to beg you? But you were out of earshot.” She paused. “Long out of earshot.”
“My mother . . .” I held out my hands. “Please, tell me.”
“It was I who found her. Yes!”
As if I had been struck, I shrank back. This horror I had never imagined. I had thought it was one of her attendants, one of the guards. Not Father, not Hermione. “No—”
“Who did you think it was, then? Or did you not think of it? I came into her chamber early—she always liked to share a breakfast with me, and after you were gone, I had nowhere else to go. I went in there, even before the sun was up—and found her. She had been dead since night, so they told me, because she was so blue—and I took those cursed swan feathers and burned them up in the brazier, and if I could, I would have burned you!”
Now
. . . now I must hold her. In spite of her pushing me away, I enveloped her in my arms, and I was sobbing. “That would have been justified,” I said. “The swan—let him be gone from our lives.” Oh, the glory of the gods and their brief visitations—not worth the sorrows that trail thereafter.
Hermione did not pull away, but let me embrace her. “Take me to her tomb,” I said. “Let me leave an offering there.”
The tombs lay in a partially natural cave, not far from the palace. A small grotto in the hillside had been enlarged to allow their carving. There were four of them: Mother’s, Castor’s, Polydeuces’s, and an empty, waiting one for Father.
“I come here every day,” said Hermione. “As my cousin Elektra comes to her father’s grave, and vows to avenge him.”
Little Elektra. But, of course, she would be a grown woman now. How could anyone mourn Agamemnon, least of all the sibling of the sister he had so mercilessly slain? “I am not sure what needs avenging,” I said, hesitantly, not wanting to alienate Hermione.
“That mother who took a lover!” she said fiercely. “It seems to run in the family.”
Now I could not help but smile. “It was a curse, a powerful one, visited on us. I see it has come true.” But I did not want to talk about it. All I cared about, now, was my daughter. And the tombs of my dear mother and brothers.
“Here,” she said, showing me the large stone box that was embedded in the cliff. A wilted wreath lay on top of it.
Mother. Oh, Mother. I draped myself over the cold stone. I had brought nothing—but no, that was not true. I had brought myself.
“I am here—Helen . . .” I murmured endearments as I pressed my lips against the sharp corner of the tomb. “Your Helen.” I need not tell her what had passed since we had parted. I need not tell her of the time in Troy. I need not tell her of what had befallen me since. The dead are kind that way, they do not want a full recounting.
“And here, your brothers.” Hermione was showing me the other tombs.
I knelt before them, asking them for guidance. “You always guided me before,” I said. “You taught me so many things.” I did not tell them I was grieved that they were gone; they knew that. We must not speak to the dead of things they already know. That insults them.
“A tomb waits for Father.” She indicated it. “But after me—the line of Tyndareus will die. I am its last,” Hermione said. Her voice was like a sad falling note.
“You cannot know that.” She was still of childbearing age. “There will be another husband for you. Neoptolemus was not worthy. I saw the unspeakable things he did in Troy. You speak of my desecrating my own name, but he desecrated his father’s, Achilles’s. You are free, and now someone you love will come.”
“As the daughter of Helen—” she began.
“You will be expected to be beautiful, and passionate. Are you?” Now I must be bold. I looked at her closely. Her face was pleasant, and her hair thick and shining.
She drew back, blushing. “Passionate . . . I do not know.”
“You will not until the man you love holds you.” I leaned forward. “With women, it is the man, and not the moment. That is the truth of it. With men it is the reverse.”
I had seen my daughter, and we had made tentative steps toward reconciliation. The past would always be there; she would mistrust me for a long time, but she had, warily, admitted me into the forecourt of her life. It was more than I had dared to ask.
LXXVI
Afraid of frightening her away, like a butterfly alighting on a flower, I did not approach her too boldly in the days that followed. I let her go about her ways, although my eyes never tired of looking at her—but only when I could look secretly. Time. Time would bring all things about. I had to believe that.
And time I had in abundance. There was nothing stretching out before me, nothing to reach for or retreat from. I looked over the palace and the grounds—so modest compared to Troy’s—and satisfied myself that they were well cared for. Little had changed—no new halls had been built, no new adornments had been added. Without Mother, Father had had no interest in such things. I wondered whether Father had ever thought of marrying again, but he told me, staring with his watery, filmy eyes, that no family would even consider marrying into the House of Tyndareus—as cursed, now, as that of Atreus.
“Then Menelaus and I make a suitable pair,” I told him. “What of the Aetolian slave girl Menelaus left behind? I remember she was with child.” I tried to make the question light and of no matter.
“She had twins. They are now grown men, still living in the palace. They were waiting all this time for both Menelaus and me to die before Hermione could have an heir. Well, they are now disappointed in their hopes of the throne. Let Menelaus award them something, send them away.”
All these unfinished things I had left behind, now sprung back into life again. “I wish to see Clytemnestra,” I said. “Have you seen her since—Does she ever come here?”
“No, daughter, and I could not go to her. I did not wish to leave Sparta in the hands of the twins with all those . . . upheavals. It did not seem wise.”
“We could go together now. Menelaus will prevent any mischief.”
He sighed. “I fear I am too fragile now. I could not endure the jolting of the chariot, nor the final climb up the mountain.”
I noticed that Father asked me very little about Troy. He did not seem curious about it. Does curiosity flee with age, along with agility? Or was he, like Mother, awash with shame?
“I will make ready to go within a few days.” I was longing to see Clytemnestra, share at last all that had passed in those long years.
Menelaus was not pleased; he tried to forbid me to go. My sister had murdered his brother and lived with another man. It came too close to home.
“I do not condone what she has done; I abhor it. But she is my only living sibling, and your brother committed a great crime against her. We need not carry it further. Only remember, as you loved your brother, despite his evils, so do I love my sister. If I do not go and see her again, it adds another wrong to the great weight of the war.”
“I suppose you’ll want to take Hermione? I won’t have her around that woman!”
I had thought of it; had she not lived with Clytemnestra at one point? But I knew her response would be no. “I understand,” I said. “I will go alone—except for the drivers and guards, of course.”
He took my arm. “Be careful,” he said.
“Do you think she would harm me?” How odd that he would hint that.
“You have not seen her in many years. You do not know what you will find.”
“As was the case with you and me,” I reminded him. He looked hangdog, as he often did. “I will be wary,” I promised.
* * *
Going to Mycenae! To be there without the oppressive presence of the brothers, to be with Clytemnestra again! I did not think about Aegisthus; I did not make room for him in my mind. The day was clear and clean, and I had two chariots to carry myself and my attendants, and a slower wagon laden with gifts. I had scoured the palace for something to present; this was difficult, as there would be much the same things at Mycenae. There would be the same alabaster ointment jars, the same brown-painted handled jugs, the same fragrant scented robes. We rumbled down the steep incline and out onto the plain, dotted with plane trees and small orchards and fields of barley. No destruction here as in Troy, but the absence of men to tend things had caused a subtler ruin. Neglect stalked the land. Many of the men had not returned from Troy and it would be another generation before the land could flourish again.
Why, why had they gone? What persuasive power did Menelaus have? He must have promised them a quick resolution, glory, and spoils. None of it had happened; no one got spoils but the leaders and the few lucky ones who returned. Instead of enriching Sparta, the war had impoverished her.
My charioteer pointed to a grove of poplars by a stream. “There,” he said. “Where Menelaus gathered the army.”
/> He had spoken of it. What a cursed place, dooming all those who had convened around it with high spirits. I saw a large plane tree, a bit apart. That must be the one Menelaus had planted to commemorate the war. Seeing it gave me a chill. I thought of the oak of Troy, that other emblem of the war. There was nothing left of it.
Leaving the plain, we started climbing the hills, the chariots pulling out ahead of the heavier cart. Hawks soared overhead, playing in the sky.
We had to stop for the night, and we chose a little dale that seemed safe and sheltered. The birds were replaced in the sky by bats flitting out from their resting places, quick dark darts against the fading light. Safe, tired, I slept soundly. Tonight I did not need the elixir of forgetfulness.
At first light we were on our way again. But sometime in the night Menelaus’s warning words had spread inside me like a stain, and now they colored everything I saw. I felt my apprehension growing as we drew nearer to Mycenae. Suddenly everything looked suspicious. The people who watched us from the fields looked sullen. The sky lost its hawks and became dimpled with clouds.
What would I find? Now it seemed naïve to think Clytemnestra and I would meet again as if nothing had changed. I should have sent messengers ahead to tell her I was coming. I should have given her an opportunity to prepare herself, or to refuse to see me. I gripped the handles of the chariot as we lurched along.
The men were laughing and joking. For them, the day was fair. I felt my heart thudding, as if I were being chased by a pack of dogs. Something hideously oppressive hovered over us, and they could not see it, could not feel it. But that vision of mine was revealing it, and it grew stronger the nearer we got to Mycenae.
Hurry, hurry! I wanted to urge them. Perhaps we could get there before it happened. It was important that we do so. That was why I had set out on this journey on this particular day. Now I knew it.
“Faster!” I suddenly said, startling my driver. “We need to go faster.”
He smiled. “Oh, there’s plenty of time, my lady. As it is we shall arrive well before dark.”