Helen of Sparta

by Amalia Carosella

  I did not know what to say, so I said nothing. But Theseus stopped me and turned my face up to his.

  “Even if we can have nothing more, it does not matter to me, as long as we have each other. I do not think my heart can beat without yours.”

  I brought his hand to my chest, over my heart. “Then I will have to make sure it never stops.”

  He leaned down and kissed me, for the first time since before our daughter had been born. Nothing more than a soft brush of his lips against mine. But even so, even after all that we had been through, and in spite of all our pain, my pulse quickened in response.

  I knew then that Aethra had been right.

  “Come,” Theseus said, lifting me up into his arms. “You’ve time for a nap before Aethra brings the evening meal, and you are white with exhaustion.”

  The next morning while he bathed, I tore all my weaving from the loom and began again, unable to bear the reminder of the future I had envisioned, of the family we might have been. If Theseus noticed, he did not comment, but the basket never emptied of yarn, and the colors I needed always sat ready.

  It was days before I realized what I wove, my mind too distracted to make sense of what my fingers did. Fire and smoke leapt from shining gold towers into a purple sky.

  The burning city of my nightmares.

  Theseus stared at it over my shoulder for a long moment, and for the first time since our daughter’s birth, he left me to pray.

  I wished I were well enough to do the same.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Pirithous arrived by sea and rode through the gate with the last of the sunlight.

  “You should have sent for me sooner,” Pirithous said in greeting. “To celebrate if not to mourn.”

  Theseus shook his head. “It happened too quickly to think of it, and my wife has not been well.” He clasped hands with his friend. “It is good to see you.”

  Pirithous grasped his shoulder. “I only wish I brought you better news. We must speak, and better it be done in private.”

  “My rooms—”

  “You will not wish your wife to hear what I have come to say. Not after what’s happened. I am not sure you will wish to hear it yourself, but it must be said.”

  Theseus studied his face, noticing the lines of strain. “We’ll go riding.”

  Pirithous nodded.

  Theseus caught a servant by the arm. “Have fresh horses brought. And send a message to my queen. We’ll return to her before the evening meal. A feast in Pirithous’s honor.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Theseus glanced up at the balcony of his room. More than a month after the loss, Helen still spent much of her day there, weaving and resting. He did everything he could to raise her spirits, but it was clear her heart still ached. He could not blame her for it. But he wished she had not begun weaving a burning citadel. It did her no good to dwell on the futures she had abandoned, and it made his heart break to think she might be wishing she had not left Sparta to be his wife. Would she have preferred that war to the loss of her daughter? He could not ask. He did not want to hear the answer.

  Helen stood at the rail, dressed in a simple chiton of red linen. She had wrapped the golden cord belt in a crisscross pattern from her hips to her rib cage, tying it beneath her breasts. The sunset gilded the bare skin of her thigh where it showed, and he closed his hand into a fist to keep from imagining the softness of it against his fingertips.

  It had been too long since he had loved her, but he worried she would not welcome his touch the way she once had. It was another question he feared the answer to.

  “She is still as lovely as ever, Theseus.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And she will be pleased to see you, no matter what news you’ve brought. If only because you had no part in her sorrow.”

  Pirithous snorted. “Then perhaps I should give thanks to the gods, because until now she has barely tolerated me but for love of you.”

  The horses were led out to them and they mounted. There was not much light left for the ride, but the distance from the palace would keep them from being heard. Theseus pressed his fist to his forehead, offering Helen the salute, and was rewarded by a smile before they left.

  When the palace and the city were behind them, they dismounted. Theseus led the way to a small spring in a grove of olive trees where the horses might drink, and Pirithous could wash the dust of his trip from his arms and face. He had taken Helen here, once. And he had made love to her in the dappled sunlight, on a bed of olive leaves and their cloaks.

  Pirithous crouched by the stream, staring into the water. “You know that I sent men out, after we learned of the unnamed price, and again when the Egyptian god sent warning.”

  “Of course,” Theseus said. “And you have learned something from them, after all this time?”

  Pirithous splashed water on his face, turning the dust on his skin into mud. “Zeus fears the child of two demigods will unseat him from his throne. You birthed a goddess between you, Theseus, and Zeus wanted no threat to his power.”

  Theseus let out the breath he had been holding, but the ocean roared in his ears, and he steadied himself against the flank of his horse. “Zeus lied.”

  “I am sure the threat to Helen was real enough. If you had refused them and born a second child with Helen, and those children united against the gods . . .” Pirithous shook his head. “Perhaps if Helen had been more devout, more obedient to their commands, as you are, it would have been different, but I doubt Zeus would have risked it. If his daughter hates him, it is no one’s fault but his own.” He paused, his lips curving. “And perhaps Leda’s. That woman was filled to bursting with venom.”

  “Helen was right,” Theseus murmured. The words settled like stone in his stomach. All those times she had accused Zeus of accomplishing nothing without deceit. She had never trusted the gods, and even when she had tried to, with Poseidon—his father had taken advantage of her desperation, even if he had not lied outright. He could not imagine Helen agreeing to the terms, otherwise. She was queen, and Spartan besides, too aware of her duty to throw away the lives of so many, even for her own daughter.

  “You cannot blame yourself, Theseus. You did what you had to do to save your wife, perhaps even your city. If you had not obeyed, your nobles would have seen to it that you no longer wore your crown. You would have lost everything. Helen would have lost everything.”

  Theseus laughed, but the sound was broken and hollow even to his own ears. “The gods would have taken everything, you mean. Everything I had built in their service, to honor them above all, struck down because they could not trust me to raise a child who might love them.”

  Pirithous gave him a look filled with pity. “After everything the gods have done to you, Theseus, what reason could any child of yours have to love them? Even the blindest man can see the injustice, the cruelty with which they’ve treated you. Your children would have loved you, as Acamas and Demophon do, but they could not have loved the gods who caused you so much pain, and took their mother, even if you insist upon your own loyalty.”

  “No longer,” he said, his hand so tight a fist at his side that his knuckles ached. “I have done my duty and then some, and this is how they have repaid me. With deceit. With betrayal. The gods will have nothing more from me. Zeus will have nothing more from either of us.”

  “And what of your father? And Athena?”

  Theseus shook his head. “If they do not answer me now, they will find I no longer answer them.”

  Pirithous wiped his face on his arm, smearing dirt more than cleaning it, and rose. “Will you tell Helen?”

  “It will only give her more pain when she has not put the worst of it behind her yet. I still wake to find her crying in the night, though much less frequently now. On her good days, you would not know she suffered, and she behaves toward me as if nothing h
appened between us. But on other days . . . She still has not forgiven me, I think, for letting her daughter die in her place.”

  They led the horses from the grove and mounted again, turning them back toward the walls.

  Pirithous pressed his lips together, studying the horizon. “She will,” he said after a moment.

  To Theseus, it sounded like a threat, and he glanced at his friend, sidelong. “She is not some servant to bend to your desires, Pirithous.”

  He shrugged and offered a smile, too artful to be reassuring. “I would never dream of toying with her thoughts, of course. But leave it in my hands, all the same. She will gaze upon you with adoration before the night is through, Theseus. I promise you.”

  He wanted it too much—this rift between them healed. His heart had ached for too long, and so had hers. Whatever Pirithous had in mind, it was better if he did not know.

  Coated with dust and horse hair from the ride, they both needed a proper bath before the feast, and Theseus sent word ahead to have it prepared. Helen met them in his room, overseeing the maids while they heated the water and laid towels for their guest.

  “My lady.” Pirithous bowed over her hand. “Theseus said you would be pleased to see me, but I confess I did not believe him.”

  She smiled. “I assure you my presence was simply a question of expedience. I’m too hungry to wait for you to dally with the maids.”

  He laughed and swept her another bow. “I promise that if I do dally, it will be quickly done.”

  Helen waved him away to the bath that had been drawn for him, and the maid shut the door only far enough for modesty, not privacy.

  Theseus smiled. “You make a very wise queen.”

  Helen sighed, raising her eyes to the ceiling when Pirithous began making exaggerated noises of pleasure. She crossed the room and poured three cups of wine before passing one to Theseus and taking up another for herself.

  “If he wanted to take his time, he should have considered that before making off with you on a sunset ride.”

  “He needed to speak to me privately,” he told her, though she would not have asked directly. “It seemed the best way to keep it from the servants’ ears at the time.”

  “The servants’ ears? Or mine?”

  Theseus stroked her cheek, his fingers finding their way into her hair. Soft as silk. Her eyes dropped and her face flushed. Tonight, he thought. He would not spend another night as a coward in his own bed. He had to try. And perhaps it would help her to find room in her heart to forgive him if her body remembered the way.

  “He wanted to give me his personal regrets, and feared upsetting you with the mention of it.” It was not entirely a lie, and in the service of her health, he felt it warranted.

  “Oh,” she said.

  He kissed her forehead. “Thank you for this. I know it was not only to hurry him, for Aethra might have accomplished the same goal.”

  “Pirithous was kind to come so quickly,” she murmured. “He honors us by it, and it is only right he be shown the same respect. But do not tell him I said so. He does not need any encouragement.”

  One of the maids squealed in obvious delight, and Helen wrinkled her nose.

  “With us standing right here?” she asked.

  Theseus chuckled. “Because we’re standing right here.”

  “I gave the maids strict orders.”

  “Yes, and I’m sure Pirithous has driven those orders right from their heads, or fogged their minds with enough lust that they’ve forgotten at least.”

  Helen’s eyes widened, the blush in her cheeks draining away. “He can do that?”

  “Just as he encouraged the guards to look the other way when you left Sparta. I’ve used the same power to help calm you, when you wake in the night, though I cannot say I have ever used it to get a woman in my bed.” He grimaced. “Gifts from our fathers.”

  Helen fell silent, her lips pressed into a thin line and her body going stiff.

  “Helen?” Theseus frowned, dismayed by the transformation. “What’s the matter?”

  Her jaw tightened, and she shook her head as if to clear it. “Can any god gift it? Or must you be born with such a talent?”

  “The gods can give any gift they please to any man. But Pirithous and I were born with it in our blood.” He smoothed the crease from her forehead. “What’s upset you so? If you fear I abused you, I swear upon the Styx, I have never sought to influence your thoughts or change your mind. Nor has Pirithous. I thought you knew—that everyone knew.”

  She shook her head again, her gaze shifting over his shoulder. He turned to look, his eyes falling on the loom, with its flame and smoke rising over a city.

  “I always wondered how I could have gone with this prince, knowing what I do. Even to escape Menelaus, it seemed impossible. And in the dreams, sometimes, I wanted him. But how could I have betrayed my people? But if what you say is true, if some men are blessed by this—this power, and I have succumbed to it already, even in so small a way as you have described . . . What if the prince shares it? What if that is why I followed him?”

  He lifted her chin, catching her eyes with his and trying desperately to ignore the chill that settled in his heart with the words.

  “It does not matter now,” he told her. “He will never take you. Not as long as you are my wife.”

  “Well then,” Pirithous said, announcing his presence. “I told you I could dally quickly enough.”

  Theseus dropped his hand from her face and she turned away, busying herself with the wine jug at the table. He dragged his attention to Pirithous, who was dressed only in a towel.

  “I suppose you did not think to bring any clean tunics in your haste,” Theseus said.

  “I supposed you had more clothing than you’ll ever wear and wouldn’t begrudge the lending of it to your cousin. Or am I your brother now, since you’ve married my half sister?”

  He sighed. “The chest to your right, Pirithous, and be sure you don’t expose yourself to my wife.”

  “Of course.” Pirithous grinned, taking the wine cup from his hand. “You’d better hurry, Theseus. I have it on good authority that Helen is starving.”

  Helen rolled her eyes and crossed the room to the chest Theseus had indicated. Theseus’s last sight of Pirithous included the tunic she had thrown at his head.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Pirithous sobered at once after Theseus disappeared into the bathing room, and for the first time, when he looked at me, I did not feel as though he imagined me in his bed. I turned my back on him to let him dress, and tried not to be bothered by the lack of humor in his eyes. I had never known Pirithous to be serious, and I did not want to think what it meant now.

  “Theseus said you would not be offended if I offered you my sympathy,” he said quietly, coming to the table after he had dressed. “But there is more that I would say, though he would not wish me to.”

  “If Theseus thinks you are better served by keeping it to yourself, perhaps you should listen.” I took a long drink of my wine, already unsettled by what Theseus had told me, echoing as it did the dream I’d had the night before.

  It was the nightmare I had hoped never to have again. I could still feel the strange prince’s hand at my waist, and taste the dust rising from the movement of so many men. I had felt his desire, thick in the air, infecting me, and I wished for Theseus to take me away.

  “It is something you should know, and I believe it will give you comfort. Theseus has only kept it from you this long out of fear that the people of Athens will learn the truth.”

  I looked up at him then, searching for some hint in his features. “Why should Theseus fear his people? He only serves them.”

  “Not in this,” Pirithous said, stepping so near to me, I could feel the heat of his body and his breath against my ear. “And if they learn of it, he would lose
his kingdom, and all he has done will be for nothing. You will be lucky to escape with your lives.”

  “Pirithous—”

  “Your daughter lives,” he breathed. “He exchanged her with another, stillborn, and secreted her away.”

  My heart stopped and my breathing with it.

  “You must not tell him what I’ve said, Helen. If even for a moment the people of Athens suspect, through a look exchanged between you or a whisper at the wrong moment, they will find her and kill her, just as surely as if he had left her to die. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I did not think I would ever have air in my chest again. My daughter. Our daughter. And Theseus, forced to let me grieve, unable to even tell me what he had done, knowing it would bring me too much joy. Suffering my anger, my pain at his betrayal, though he had never betrayed me at all. Though he had chosen me and our daughter over the gods. Even over Athens.

  Pirithous stepped back, and I stared into his face. His lips curved as he raised his cup to drink. It was as if he read my mind.

  “Thank you,” I managed to say, grasping his hand.

  He set aside his cup and kissed my fingers before letting me go.

  When Theseus came from the bath and we descended to the feast below, I clasped my husband’s hand, hoping that in my touch, he would feel everything I could not say. He raised his eyebrows, looking down at me, before his gaze shifted to Pirithous, who had donned a mask of innocence almost at once.

  Perhaps I could not mother her myself, but it was enough to know she lived, and Theseus had made it so.

  More than enough.

  I did not stay long at the feast, too distracted by my thoughts and not trusting myself to keep from my eyes the secret Pirithous had told me. When Pirithous began boasting about the woman he hoped to win as his wife, I excused myself, leaving Theseus to drink with his friend.

  Weaving kept me occupied while I dreamed of the daughter I had thought lost. I let my mind wander while I worked, trusting my fingers to draw what they wished in the fabric. Since it had begun that way, I saw no reason not to finish it in the same manner.