Helen of Sparta

by Amalia Carosella

  Of course, if he meant me for Menelaus, he need not rush things quite so much. Menelaus was already well-known from the years he and Agamemnon had spent living in the palace, exiled from Mycenae, and now he had proven himself in war as well. Sparta would have no trouble accepting him as its future king.

  I had to believe Tyndareus would consult my feelings before he chose my husband, or else I would go mad. What was the point of being so beautiful if that beauty could not at least ensure peace? Surely one of the men it might attract would serve Sparta better than Menelaus.

  “Now, Helen.” Leda tugged at the sleeves of my dress, urging me to lift my arms so she might pull it up over my head. I hesitated for only a moment. It would do nothing to help me if I fought her, and everything to increase her fury when she discovered what I had hidden.

  I shrugged out from beneath her hands and stripped the fabric from my body, hiding the wool I had kept between my legs in the cloth as I did so.

  Unlike the small tubs, the communal baths were fed from a hot spring and always warm, but I shivered all the same as I stepped down into the pool. It was large enough to swim in, and if I had not been so afraid the blood would show, I would have done so. Instead, I clamped my legs together and held as still as possible in the water.

  One of the slaves picked up my shift, shaking it out. The wool rolled free onto the tile, leaving a trail of red.

  Leda pressed her lips together.

  “For how long?” she asked.

  I said nothing, watching the warm water weave faint tendrils of blood through the carved dolphins on the bottom of the pool. Dolphins were sacred to Apollo, and I hoped I did not owe my dreams to him. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was the only Olympian I could respect in the least. She was strong and beautiful, and no one would ever make her marry against her will.

  “You will go straight to the shrine and make an offering of your morning meal to Zeus, your father.” Leda scrubbed my back with a coarse sea sponge, making my skin sting. “And you will spend the morning on your knees, begging for his favor.”

  She shoved me deeper into the water to rinse the hard soap from my skin. Normally, the servants would have used sweet-smelling oils. But normally, a bath was not a punishment. My hair would stink all day from the tallow, like rancid fat. I grimaced. Perhaps it would keep Menelaus from coming too near.

  “You will return by midday, and you will tell Tyndareus what you have done.” She let me go, leaving me the soap to wash the rest of my body. “Let him decide your punishment, and determine your fate now that you’re a woman. This is the last time you will betray me.”

  “Yes, Mama.” The words sounded very small.

  Leda did not spare me another look.

  My morning meal waited for me at the table in the megaron, the remnants of last night’s feasting still in evidence. Kraters, empty now of the watered wine mixed for the guests, still stood on their pedestals at each corner of the room for easy access by the servants. The long tables and benches, littered with wine cups and empty platters, had not been put away yet.

  At the family table, Pollux and Menelaus sat on either side of my usual stool. Pollux looked as though he had barely slept, but he smiled and called for me to join them. I could feel Leda’s glare, and only shook my head, collecting my bread, smeared with honey, and a pomegranate. It made a meager offering, and I wondered if Leda meant to shame me before the priests, too. More likely, she wished to keep me from eating any of it myself.

  Pollux rose as if to follow, but Leda’s sharp voice brought him back to his seat, and I left alone.

  The path up the hill to the shrine had long turned into packed dirt, and in truth I preferred the sacred grove to the temples. It seemed more fitting to me that a god should be worshipped in a garden than trapped inside stone walls.

  Of course the shrine had not always been a garden. It had begun as nothing more than a stone altar before the face of Zeus in the rock, but Leda and Tyndareus had made it into something finer. Flowering trees and bushes scented the air as thickly as incense before the shrine came into view, and a seashell path led to a raised limestone altar, exquisitely carved. They had also built the bower to shield the stone of Zeus from the elements and encouraged grapevines to grow over the frame.

  It had been done after the swan came, before my birth, and Pollux claimed to remember playing in the dirt here while Tyndareus worked. It was a rare thing for a king like Tyndareus to build a place like this with his own hands. Perhaps they had hoped that with their sweat and labor, Zeus might forgive them for the insults they had given.

  Now the shrine was tended by two priests, watering the plants and clearing away the offerings left for the god. It was peaceful and quiet, for most of Sparta’s people prayed to Zeus at the temples. But not us. Tyndareus and Leda always insisted that we make our offerings here. Pollux and I had made almost daily trips to the shrine while Tyndareus fought for Mycenae, and we had offered kids, lambs, golden cups and bowls, and wine.

  Steps had been cut into the hillside and an archway built at the top to remind those who passed through it that this was a sacred place. On either side of the arch, Tyndareus had planted oak trees, hiding the inside of the garden from sight. The bark of these trees would not be harvested for cork, unless the priests required it.

  I did not notice the priestess until I had entered, removing the scarf from my head out of respect. When she looked at me, her mouth twisted, and then she laughed, a sound like silver chimes in the wind.

  “Oh, Helen. What a sad sight you make now.”

  I flushed and walked to the altar, setting my offerings out and keeping my head down as I knelt before Zeus’s image. Tyndareus swore he had once seen the face come to life, after I had been born, but I felt it more likely someone had put poppy milk in his wine. As a child, I had prayed and prayed for some sign from the god who was supposed to be my father, aching for Zeus’s acceptance when my mother looked on me with such loathing, but I received nothing for my troubles. Pollux had never seen anything, either, and by my tenth summer I had given up.

  Now, I pretended to pray so that I would not have to speak, but I felt the priestess watching me, and though she waited in silence, I did not think she was convinced.

  After a time, she asked me, “What do you pray for, Helen?”

  I sat back on my heels and covered my hair once more with the scarf. “My mother told me that I should beg Zeus for his favor, since I have lost hers.”

  The priestess laughed again. “Do you honestly believe you ever had hers to begin with? Pollux may have been born of love, for Zeus took Tyndareus’s form when he came to her then, but you, Helen, you were born of rape and shame. She would have had you dashed on the rocks if not for fear of the gods.”

  My face burned, though I did not think my cheeks could become much redder than they were already. “No woman deserves to be treated in such a way.”

  “Leda was given a great honor, to bear Zeus’s son. She cursed him for it, as did Tyndareus, who could not see beyond his own pride. If Zeus had not loved Leda so well, Sparta itself would have fallen. Leda’s rape by a swan was less than your parents deserved in punishment. Zeus showed her mercy.”

  “And does Zeus punish me for the sins of my parents now?” I looked back at the priestess where she sat on a low stone bench.

  Her auburn hair hung loose down her back, myrtle flowers floating in the soft curls like gulls on the sea. A scallop-shell pendant rested at the hollow of her throat, and sparrows and doves darted around her feet, picking at the crumbs of past offerings. Strange that I had never met her before, but I wished that she had not dedicated herself to the gods. Perhaps Menelaus might have fallen in love with her, instead.

  “Do you feel so ill-used? The most beautiful woman alive, with a brother who loves you well—Pollux will never forsake you. And a man who would offer you the same, though you spurn him.” She seemed to
look right through me, pinning me to the earth. “Is there someone else you would prefer over Menelaus? You have only to name him and he will be delivered.”

  “No.” I rose to my feet. I did not like the way she spoke of Menelaus, as if he were nothing more than a convenience. “I ask nothing of these gods. Let Menelaus love me for his own reasons, or better yet, not at all.”

  The priestess smiled, but there was little kindness in her expression. “To hear such a thing from your lips is absurd. Have you no idea of the power you hold over men? Menelaus will continue as he has begun. I could not stop it if I wished. Nor could Zeus.”

  Her words sent a prickle of unease down my spine, though I did not know why. I had never heard a priestess speak as she did. By all rights, the gods should have taken great exception to her arrogance, priestess or not.

  I did not want to worship gods as cruel as this—gods cruel enough to rape my mother after she objected to being deceived, or willing to waste the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of men in a useless war. I did not want to believe we could not be free.

  “Menelaus has the right to make his own choices,” I said at last.

  “And yet . . . ,” she said.

  My stomach twisted at the weight of those two words, and at the thoughts that followed in my own mind. And yet, I kept from him his fate. I kept from him the truth of what I saw coming. But this priestess could not have known what I had done.

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. The dreams had come to me as a warning, I was certain, for I had dreamed of smaller moments in the past and seen them brought to life through my inaction, and avoided when I interfered. Once I dreamed that Pollux would be thrown from his horse and break his arm while riding with Castor, and I begged him not to go. He had come back with a sprained wrist and claimed if it had not been for my warning, he would have suffered worse.

  The dreams did not tie me to the future, but they gave me the opportunity to alter it. I saw it even in the small details that changed from nightmare to nightmare. One night, Ajax the Lesser would find me in the temple; the next, I cowered in a bedroom, listening to a warrior break down my door. It was as if the future itself were still in motion, unset until the moments claimed us.

  The priests would not see it that way; nor would Menelaus, I was certain. He would see my dreams as proof that we were meant to marry, and he would use it to win me.

  But if I did not marry Menelaus, no stranger could steal me away. Everything rested upon that choice.

  “Good day, Princess,” the priestess said.

  When I looked up, she was gone.

  I did not spend the morning on my knees as Leda had ordered me, but I sat where the priestess had been, trusting that as angry as my mother was, she would not come to check. The only other person who came to the shrine that morning was Pollux, and I made room for him on the bench.

  “I’m sorry, little sister,” he said. “I heard Nestra speaking of it last night and meant to warn you. She promised me she wouldn’t tell Mother until morning, but then I saw them speaking together at the feast, and it was too late.”

  At the feast. I traced the carving of a bull in the stone, worn smooth from wind and rain and the touch of other fingers. “She told Menelaus, didn’t she?”

  Pollux’s jaw tightened. “She had no business speaking of such a thing to anyone but our parents. No right to spread the news of your bleeding like gossip. Tyndareus will not be pleased to realize he is the last to know.”

  “I’m to speak to him at midday.” I sighed and rested my head against his shoulder. At least it explained why Menelaus had come to my room the previous night. He had wanted the truth of more than just my dreams.

  “When you tell him why, he’ll understand.”

  “I hope so.”

  Pollux squeezed my hand. “If he doesn’t, I will speak for you. I’ll tell him I told you to keep it a secret. That I made you conceal the truth. He can be angry with me, instead, if he must.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I laughed, sitting up to look at him. “You didn’t even know yourself.”

  When I saw his face and the grief in his eyes, my stomach twisted. I had never seen him look so wretched before. Pollux was at worst serious, but never miserable.

  “What’s the matter?”

  His gaze slid to the grapevines. “He spoke as if he knew it all, as if you had told him everything, or I swear to you I never would have said a word.”

  My heart turned to stone in my chest, making it difficult to breathe. “What?”

  “It was after the morning meal. We were on our way to the practice field. He said you had told him. That you had cried in his arms, confessing that he would hate you if you let him love you now. He wanted my counsel as to how he could reassure you.”

  I released my brother’s hand. The back of my throat burned with bile. “You told him he will be my husband.”

  “Helen, I thought he knew. You have to believe me. The way he spoke of it, it seemed impossible that he did not.”

  I stood and paced to the altar, staring at the empty stone eyes of Zeus. What was Menelaus thinking? Everything else rested on that. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he would not see it as proof. Last night he had told me they were only dreams.

  “I’m sorry, Helen.” I heard Pollux stand up behind me, but I did not turn. “I know that I said he deserved to hear it, but I never would have told him without your permission.”

  “What did he say? When you told him.”

  “He did not say anything, but the color drained from his face, and when he sparred against Castor, I thought he would batter our brother into the dirt. He left the field soon after, and I came here to warn you. I would not have you caught unaware by Menelaus as well as Leda in the same day.”

  “Leda is finished with me. She says now I am a woman, I am to be Tyndareus’s trouble, not hers.”

  The face of the statue unnerved me. There was no kindness or sympathy in the rock. But there was no kindness or sympathy in the gods, either. Not the Olympians, nor had I ever heard Alcyoneus speak of his Egyptian gods as compassionate, though I had begged my tutor for stories of his people, fascinated by the differences as much as the similarities.

  I rubbed my face and turned to my brother. “I should go, or I’ll be late to see Tyndareus. Will you come with me?”

  Pollux’s mouth relaxed from the thin line it had become. “I intended to, whether you asked it of me or not. Leda will have poisoned him with her anger already, though I expect he will be more upset with Nestra than you.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  We left the shrine together, and walked back in silence through the cork oaks that had taken root all over the hill. I could see in Pollux’s face that he meant to make it right.

  If Tyndareus did not punish Nestra, I had a feeling my brother would.

  Tyndareus pushed away his meal of bread and goat cheese, the lines on his face more pronounced than ever. The megaron had been cleared of all but me, Pollux, and Leda, though Pollux’s attendance was more oversight than anything else. He had slipped in while the others left, and he stood now in the shadow of one of the large pillars, out of Leda’s sight.

  “This has gone on long enough. Helen betrays even her kingdom with this deceit. You must take your daughter in hand!”

  Tyndareus leaned back in his chair, giving Leda a long look. “And why is it only when she has misbehaved somehow that she is my daughter and not yours?”

  Leda drew herself up, regal and furious. “If you had allowed me to punish her as she ought to have been punished, instead of letting her behave so willfully, none of this would have happened. What she has become is your doing, Tyndareus, not mine!”

  “And what precisely has she done?” Tyndareus asked, his gaze resting on me. The plaster floor beneath my feet was painted with two charging bulls, one the gray of a thunderstorm and t
he other sea-foam white. I would have gladly faced a herd of them, horns sharp and nostrils flaring, rather than Tyndareus now. “What is it that has offended you so utterly?”

  “Ask her yourself.” Leda did not look at me.

  “Helen?”

  I bowed my head. “I hid from my mother that I had become a woman, out of fear of marriage.”

  “According to her sister, Helen has been bleeding for the last six months at least!” Leda said. “I will not tolerate it, Tyndareus. This lie is too great to be overlooked, even for you.”

  “And yesterday you would have had her punished for speaking the truth.” Tyndareus’s voice was cool. “What would you have her do, Leda? No matter how she behaves, it will not please you. You punish her for nothing more than her birth.”

  “And you have spoiled her for it!”

  “Enough!” Tyndareus rose from his seat. “You have brought her to me for punishment, and I will see to it. You may go.”

  Leda opened her mouth, then shut it. Tyndareus had spoken as her king, not her husband; the dismissal was clear. Leda might rule absolutely as queen and high priestess when leading rituals of thanksgiving and mystery, but in this, she had little power. She glared at him and left, the heavy door slamming behind her.

  Tyndareus sighed and retook his seat. The rest of the tables had been cleared away by now, the floors swept and washed. No wonder Pollux had come to see me. While I had been at the shrine, the rest of the palace had been cleaning. Someone had even thrown herbs in the fire, and the scent of lavender hung in the air.

  “Princes should not slink about in the shadows, Pollux,” Tyndareus called. “Nor should a son of Zeus lower himself to such behavior. If you are intent on remaining, you will stand before me openly.”

  Pollux straightened, stepping out from behind the column. Tyndareus waved him to my side.

  “Am I correct in assuming you are here to defend your sister?”