Theseus rode up from the port at the head of an honor guard, his chariot drawn by three shining horses, white as sea foam. A woman stood at his side in a flowing gown of pale yellow, her face and hair hidden. Even from this distance, I could make out the finery of her clothing and the glint of golden bracelets and necklaces. It seemed Pirithous had not spared any expense.
The women surrounding me whispered to one another. Theseus hadn’t had a woman in his bed but me since he’d returned from Sparta, and few of them had been pleased with the development once they realized it would remain that way. Not that they knew who had displaced them, but the fact that they found his celibacy alarming told me more than I wished to know.
“Helen’s curse,” one of them hissed. “They say any man who looks upon her will never see another woman again. And now she has bewitched our king as well.”
“Don’t be foolish,” another answered. “If he were bewitched by Helen, he’d hardly be marrying an Egyptian princess. It isn’t as though he needs a wife, and Athens certainly has no need of a queen as long as Aethra runs his household and serves as high priestess.”
The first woman sniffed. “Better for all of us if she went to Hades instead and Theseus remained unmarried. Then he would have to choose one of us to run the household at least.”
“And you think it would be you?” The second woman laughed. “You barely lasted a month in his bed.”
My face burned beneath my scarf, and I moved away as quickly as possible without drawing attention. Devoted as Theseus might be to me now, and as beautiful as I might have been to him, I was already nervous enough about our wedding night without hearing stories of the other women he had kept before me. Not when, in all the time I had slept beside him, he still had not yet done more than kiss my forehead and wish me pleasant dreams. I was beginning to fear he never would. Or worse. If a palace woman had only pleased him for a month, what hope did I have of lasting any longer? Perhaps he simply had not wished to tire of me until after we married . . .
The parade worked its way up the switchback to the palace gates. They had drawn near enough now that I could see Pirithous and Demophon, brown as the desert, riding on horseback behind Theseus’s chariot. Demophon looked as though he had aged a full year, though they had been gone only four months.
“My lady?”
Acamas tugged on my sleeve, peering into my face. He kept his voice just above a whisper. Theseus had trained him so; whispers carried farther than low tones.
“Aethra says you should come in now, so that you might be waiting.”
“Of course.” I glanced about me to be sure no one watched. The others had eyes only for the procession.
Acamas led me across the courtyard in silence, and we slipped into the palace through the servants’ quarters. He knocked on the door to the queen’s room and Aethra pulled it open, a frown clearing the moment she saw me. I should not have left my rooms, but now was the safest time, and I had taken no unnecessary risks.
“Fortunate for you that Acamas knew where to find you so easily,” Aethra said, pulling me into the room before I had time to respond. She shooed Acamas away. “Go greet your father and brother. It wouldn’t do for you to be absent from the megaron.”
Acamas bowed and sprinted back off down the corridor before Aethra had shut the door.
“Theseus should be at the gates even now,” I said, unwinding the shawl from my face and hair.
Over the last months, Aethra and I had removed every extra footstool, tasseled cushion, golden wine cup, bowl, vase, and tripod from the room, and with the excuse of the princess coming from Egypt, we’d been able to repaint the walls as well. For appearances, I had chosen Egyptian images: reeds and water lilies and shining obelisks, painted in earth tones, with borders of olive wreaths for Athena. But I spent most of my time in Theseus’s rooms, unless I was dressing or the servants were cleaning in his.
“What will you do with the slave girl?”
Aethra took the bone comb to my hair. We had needed to redye it nearly every month to keep the gold from showing.
“If Pirithous does not wish to keep her, I suppose we will send her to serve Athena. The goddess won’t let a slave girl ruin Athens with a wagging tongue, especially if she favors you.”
I didn’t reply. Theseus had been sacrificing to the gods every day since Pirithous and Demophon left. We ate so much lamb and mutton, I did not know if I would ever be able to taste it again without the flavor of his anxiety. Athena, Aphrodite, Hera, Zeus, Poseidon, even Hermes, all received offerings at least once a week. He spent nearly as much time on his knees in the temples as he did in the megaron, and all of it, by his own word, to secure our marriage. And, I thought, because he still feared Zeus’s price.
Everything that could be done, every blessing that could be obtained from the priests, he had seen to in preparation for this day. Theseus had even gone to the temples before leaving for the port of Piraeus to ask the priests when we might be married, now that the false Egyptian princess had arrived. I worried more about Menelaus, though we had heard nothing from Mycenae or Sparta since we had sent Pirithous away.
Aethra dressed me in the finest clothes I had ever seen. The flounced skirt was made entirely of rare silk and dyed in brilliant blues and yellows. Chiming gold ornaments, sewn to each tier of fabric, tinkled when I moved. The shift beneath was all but sheer and pure white, so light I barely felt it on my skin, but I did not feel exposed, and the blue silk of the bodice fit me perfectly with a gold-accented belt at my waist.
Aethra insisted that I let her powder my skin with umber and ocher, both, to darken it, and I endured the application of kohl and malachite to my eyes without complaint. Even the least informed knew the Egyptian style, and the paint would further obscure my features. “You can’t hope to paint me this way every time I step out of these rooms,” I objected.
She stepped back to study her work. “It is the first impression that will matter most, Helen. If we paint you brown from the sun tonight, the people will remember you that way later no matter how pale you become.”
I swallowed my aggravation and closed my eyes obediently as she touched up the face paint around them.
Acamas burst through the door, making me flinch, and Aethra cursed as she smeared a line of kohl.
“Father,” he gasped. I had no doubt that he had sprinted all the way from the megaron. “And the Egyptian.”
“Catch your breath, Acamas,” Aethra said, licking her finger to fix the smudge on my face. “And then stand outside. When the woman arrives at the door, show them in. No one else.”
Acamas disappeared, and Aethra stepped back to look at me again, her eyes narrowed. “Well, it will have to do. Between your hair and the paint, I can’t imagine anyone would recognize you when they expect an Egyptian princess. Even Theseus will have to look twice.”
I grimaced. “He won’t like that.”
“If it means your freedom, he’ll say nothing against it.” She twisted a lock of my hair into place. We had dyed it as close to black as we could that morning, when word of the ships had come to the palace. “You look beautiful no matter how you are dressed or adorned, my dear.”
A knock on the door warned us, and I rose to stand out of sight. Aethra wiped her hands on a towel, then turned to welcome her son and his false bride.
“Welcome!” Aethra kissed the girl’s cheeks through the veil that covered her face and drew her inside.
Theseus followed, his gaze searching the room. He found me, and shut the door on the nobles and servants who loitered in the hall. I did not dare to greet him in front of the woman. The less she knew of her role, the better, though I imagined she must have been flummoxed to be greeted as nobility.
“Pirithous says she is called Layla,” Theseus said, his voice low. “And he kept her veiled and hooded during the journey. None but he and Demophon know her face.”
“Thank the gods Pirithous has that much sense.” Aethra stripped the gold cuffs from Layla’s arms and passed them to her son. “Come with me, my dear, and we’ll have you bathed and dressed in something a bit less stifling, shall we?”
The girl ducked her head. “Thank you, my lady. If it pleases you.”
Theseus shut the door to the bathing room behind them, hesitating for a moment before turning back to me. His eyes devoured me, as if cataloging every detail of my appearance. My face burned beneath his scrutiny.
“You make a splendid Egyptian,” he said, just when I felt as though the silence would smother me.
I let out the breath I had been holding and dropped low in a henu. “My lord honors me.”
He crossed the room, and his hand found my fingers, urging me to rise. I glanced up into his face to see he searched mine even as he slipped the gold cuffs up my arms. I traced the patterning of the olive leaves in the gold without looking. The cuffs had been Aethra’s until now.
“And when this banquet is over, and we are left alone to our marriage bed, will you honor me?”
I swallowed, though my mouth seemed filled with sand and an ocean roared in my ears. “We marry tonight?”
Theseus nodded once, our eyes locked together. “The priests say the day is auspicious enough. If you will have me?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice rough. “My answer will always be yes.”
He drew me against his body, his forehead falling to touch mine. I closed my eyes, breathing him in. Dust and sweat from his journey mixed with the scented oils from his bath that morning, filling my head. Our noses brushed.
“Helen—” His voice broke, and I felt the tension of his shoulders beneath my hands.
He tipped my face up with a gentle finger beneath my chin, and our lips met for the first time. His mouth, warm and confident, tasted of pomegranate. My hand closed into a fist around the material of his tunic, drawing him closer as my lips answered his.
I clung to him when he pulled away, wondering if he felt my body trembling the way his did. My arms slipped around his neck, and my fingers twined themselves into the close curls of his hair.
Theseus sighed, one of his hands sliding up my arm, our foreheads pressed together once more.
“Helen, I—”
I stopped him with a kiss.
Whatever he had to say, I felt sure it would wait.
Aethra scolded us for it later when she found the paint on my mouth smudged and marking Theseus’s lips, but Theseus ignored her to repeat his error one more time before she managed to tear us apart.
“The king of Athens cannot arrive at his wedding feast covered in dust from the road,” she said, all but shoving him into the bathing room.
A strangled noise came from my throat at the loss of his touch, but Aethra only glowered at me and shut him from the room.
“You would think he had not been king for thirty years and married twice in that time, fool as he is for you.”
She pushed me down onto a stool and went about fixing the damage Theseus had done. I stared at the door to the bath and wished he would hurry.
“There. And by the look of you, no one will ever say that Athens did not treat a princess of Egypt with all due courtesy. The court will be stunned into silence at your banquet.”
Our wedding banquet. My stomach twisted into a knot, and the woman from the palace wall came to my mind. No more than a month in his bed and he had tired of her. How long could I hope to please him, once we were wed? I wished I had thought to ask if he had kept women other than his wives while he was married, but even thinking the question caused my heart to ache. I could never force the words past the lump in my throat to voice it.
Please, let him be pleased by me tonight.
I had scarcely finished the thought when Theseus returned, his hair still damp beneath the olive leaf circlet and his skin gleaming bronze with oil. He pulled me up, looking on me with eyes brighter than sunlight on the sea. His long tunic was blue silk like my gown, and I wondered whether Aethra had chosen his clothing to match or whether he had done so himself.
“Washed and dressed, you look very much the king.” I smiled.
“And that is the difference between us, for you never look less than a queen.” He kissed my forehead, careful of the paint on my face while we stood under Aethra’s eye. “Are you ready to wear your crown?”
“For as long as you will have me as your wife.”
“Acamas!”
The boy opened the door so quickly at his father’s call, he must have been standing with his ear pressed against the panel. “Yes, Father?”
“Tell Menestheus it is time, and have the queen’s circlet brought to the megaron.”
Acamas bowed, grinning, and ran off before Theseus led me out on his arm. For the first time since I had arrived, we walked together in daylight.
For a wedding gift, Theseus, Hero of Attica, king of Athens, had given me freedom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Helen hesitated at the entrance to the megaron, and Theseus paused with her, covering her hand on his arm. He smiled to see her biting her lip, and squeezed her hand.
“If Aethra were here, she would tell you to mind the paint on your face that took her so much time to apply,” he teased.
Her face flushed beneath the umber, and she looked up at him, the lines around her eyes smoothing as some of the tension left her. “Then I am lucky that Aethra is not here to scold me. Won’t she be at the banquet?”
“Aethra will bless our marriage herself,” he assured her. “And Pirithous will be there with Demophon. You’ll meet Menestheus tonight and most of the important nobles. But fortunately, you speak Egyptian, not the tongue of these lands. You need do nothing more than smile politely and mark their faces.”
She pressed her lips together and inhaled deeply through her nose, then let it out with a sigh. Whatever her answer was, she spoke it in Egyptian, but he did not mistake her wry smile or the flash of amusement in her eyes. And in that moment, he did not care what the cost would be when it came, only that Helen was at his side, and she would be his queen, his wife.
She stepped forward, her chin raised high, and every line of her body filled with the confidence of a woman who knew she was the child of a god. Just as any child of the pharaoh would. As any daughter of Zeus might, though until this night he had never seen her adopt such a pose.
Acamas grinned and knocked on the door, signaling the guards inside to open them. Helen’s eyes widened, and he thought he heard her gasp when she caught her first sight of the megaron in daylight.
Theseus hid a smile and cleared his throat. “I’m sure it is nothing compared to the pharaoh’s palace.”
She stared at the walls, covered floor to ceiling by frescoes of the heroic deeds of his youth, flowing together from one section to the next and bound between the twists and turns of a golden labyrinth. On the wall straight ahead, a bullring and his team of bull dancers leapt over the charging animal; on the left, his labors along the Isthmus road as he confronted and vanquished the twisted men and creatures at the gates to the Underworld; and to the right behind his throne, at the heart of an intricate maze, his battle against the Minotaur, though by all rights it ought to have been griffins instead.
It hadn’t been his idea to have it painted, but Aethra had insisted it would be a reminder to his people that it was by his power that Athens had been freed. More than once it had served to silence a noble who might otherwise have argued with his ruling in a dispute. Everything had a purpose, he supposed, and if the labyrinth of his life had led him to Helen, he could hardly complain of the trials he had suffered along the way.
Pirithous met them at once, breaking Helen’s stare by bowing over her hand. “My lady, you are transformed. Never have I seen anyone so beautiful.”
Helen inclined her head, but her eyes
lit at his performance.
“You know Pirithous, of course, king of the Lapiths,” Theseus said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “And my son, Demophon, prince and heir of Athens.”
Demophon bowed, kissing the back of her hand with all Pirithous’s charm and none of the other king’s flirtation. “My lady, might I introduce to you my brother Acamas, prince of Athens.”
Acamas stepped forward, frowning to smother his smile, and offered her the Cretan salute. “My lady.”
“And this is my cousin and one of my advisers, Menestheus,” Theseus said.
“Princess,” he said, bowing low. “All of Athens is honored by your presence, and by the pharaoh’s favor.”
Helen smiled politely and said nothing, but raised her eyes to meet Theseus’s as if looking for some kind of guidance he knew she didn’t truly need. Her performance was flawless.
“Thank you, Menestheus,” Theseus said. “On behalf of the princess.”
Before anyone else could approach, Theseus guided her around the great round hearth to the table set before his throne. The gallery above was filled to bursting with men, women, and children, all eager for a glimpse of their new queen. It was a compromise to Menestheus to allow them. Not that he begrudged his people the right to see her crowned, but after these months together, the idea that Mycenae or Sparta might come to reclaim her brought him too much pain, and every man or woman who saw her risked recognition. This wife, he meant to keep.
“I’m sure you’re hungry after your journey,” he said, more for the benefit of the others than hers. “Some wine, perhaps?”
He seated her and poured the wine himself, offering the first drops to the gods, though he had already offered a true libation when he had arrived with the slave earlier. He raised his cup, and the conversations in the hall dwindled to silence.
Helen of Sparta Page 23