The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  I shivered to think of what might have been my fate. No wonder Tyndareus had never smiled kindly upon me. I always thought I had been guilty of some transgression that had made him cross. His withholding of affection punished both wife and child. I remember now how often I heard my mother weep in the silence of her rooms when she believed there was no one to witness her tears. One day, long before she brought me to the sacred grove, when I must have been no older than three summers, I broke away from my nurse to visit my mother at her loom. I supposed I missed her. Her bare foot was propped up on a special foot support, and her chiton was pulled up above her knees so that she could twist the loose wool around her leg before spinning it. A basket holding the finished yarn rested beside her chair. A thick strand of red wool dangled loosely from her fingers while Leda sat trancelike, her gazed fixed on her spindle as though she would impale her heart upon its point. A single tear ran down her cheek, and I followed its course until it dropped onto her lap and made a tiny stain.

  As “Mitera!” escaped my lips, my nurse caught up to me, grabbing me by the hand at the exact moment my mother turned to look at me. Her exquisite face wore a mask of ceaseless sorrow, or so it seemed, with her downcast eyes and her generous mouth turned down as if to stifle a sob. And as I tried to break free of my nurse’s grasp and run to comfort her—oh, how I wanted to lay my head in her soft warm lap—I was tugged back, taken from her sight, and trotted down the corridor to the room we called the nursery.

  I now remember many other times, when perhaps I was even younger, that I would hear Tyndareus’s voice raised in anger against my mother, calling her to account for her suspected infidelity in the sacred grove. Her own voice would answer in a soft, placating tone that would, as their quarrel escalated, be replaced with one of enmity, and finally by one of supplication. Each time she would ask Tyndareus to be pleased that Zeus saw fit to favor their household with his progeny and that the kingdom of Sparta would indeed be blessed by my presence.

  His reply would invariably be the same, and it was not until that day when my mother brought me to the sacred grove and revealed the truth of my paternity that I understood what he meant when he would tell Leda, “The child’s beauty may be a blessing to her future husband, but every day I am reminded by it that she is no daughter of mine, and such a blessing becomes a curse on the House of Tyndareus.” The words faithless whore, which of course I didn’t understand the meaning of at the time, struck my mother across the face like a slap, and that much even a child of three can comprehend. Stung by her husband’s insults, she would retreat to the comfort and solace of her loom, no longer permitted to be a priestess, no longer wanted as a wife.

  Tyndareus refused to forgive my mother for her infidelity. And the sky goddess, Hera—my true father’s wife—as jealous as any mortal woman, never pardoned Zeus for the indiscretion of becoming my father. But in this I was not unique. Zeus was notoriously profligate with his seed, for which Hera appeared to spend mortal lifetimes punishing him. Invariably, if one of Zeus’s demimortal offspring was faced with calamity, Hera employed all her wiles in order to prevent her husband’s intervention. So Zeus made but one appearance in my life and that was to create it. Trumpeting his animal lust for my mother, he descended to earth, soaring heavenward after he had slaked his passions.

  Although Zeus never revisited me, other immortals of Mount Olympus saw fit to call at various times throughout my life. When I felt the shadow of their protection or the sting of their spite, I knew they were beside me. And as my body began to show the first signs of womanhood, I came to realize that my passions have been inherited honestly. My unabashed cravings for the blazing consummation that only two bodies can know—yes, Hermione, that was passed to me by immortal Zeus.

  On the afternoon following my visit to the sacred grove, while my nurse was napping, I went looking for my mother to ask her a question. I think I must have wanted to know something more about the Goddess, what she looked like, I suppose. I remembered that Leda had mentioned the mask that the women used to hang from the tree by the temple. Was she beautiful, I wanted to know. Fearful to behold? My mother was not at her loom. The spindle had been thrust like a dagger into a hank of bloodred wool that rested in an osier basket beside her stool.

  I don’t know why, but I remember feeling that something was wrong. And I knew, deep inside, that I had to return to the sacred grove. There was no guard at the palace gate then. Tyndareus never feared intruders. The plain was broader than I remembered it. Crossing it alone seemed to take so much longer. I had to shield my eyes from the sun to keep from squinting, and I tripped and stumbled on a rock, tumbling facedown into the dry grass. It scratched my cheeks, as though I were giving a dutiful kiss to Tyndareus through the prickles of his beard. When I reached the poplars, I tried to remember which path we had taken the day before to get to the little temple, then chose the one that looked most worn. The wind sang a sad song through the trees, which sighed their response and inclined their bodies in acknowledgment of the music. I came upon the ruins, but saw no sign of my mother. “Mitera!” I called, and when I received a reply, I looked up to seek its source. In the same instant that I realized that what I had heard was my own echoing voice, I glimpsed my mother’s sandal floating above my head.

  A gasp broke unbidden from my lips as my eyes trailed the slender length of her body, past her long slim legs, her narrow waist, the breasts that gave me suck when the wet nurse refused to give her nipples to Leda’s bastard child, to the soft gray veil that formed a silken noose around her swanlike neck.

  TWO

  Tyndareus acquiesced to the wishes of the people of Laconia and gave the queen a proper state burial, but it was a subdued ritual without the usual feasting and celebration. There were no funeral games. Because I was the one who had found my mother’s body, I was carefully watched during the proceedings, lest I do something foolish, though I can’t imagine why they were so worried. I wasn’t thinking about following her to the underworld and couldn’t have succeeded had I tried. Even Clytemnestra tiptoed around me for a full moon cycle before resuming her usual sisterly torment.

  I was crushed by my mother’s death; the trauma of discovering her corpse and the heartrending grief over losing the only parent I had known overwhelmed me. Clytemnestra’s reaction betrayed a very different emotion. She knew she had never been our mother’s favorite. Many times, I saw my sister steel herself against shedding a single tear in Leda’s memory. Clytemnestra would clench and unclench her fists until the impression of her nails left half-moon lacerations in her palms. Where I felt incalculable sorrow and loss at Leda’s passing, Clytemnestra found triumph. My perfection no longer made me anyone’s golden child. “Mitera is dead and Zeus is too important and too busy on Mount Olympus to concern himself with you. You have no parents. But I have my patera, and he likes me best!” It was a churlish remark, but as I would soon realize, an accurate one. I was parentless—and nearly friendless as well—and between the two of us, Clytemnestra wielded more authority than ever before. This newly won power visibly delighted her, while of course it sickened me.

  I thought my mother should have games, because I knew that it was proper and that without them she was not accorded all the honors of her station; but I was far too young to do anything about it. A week or so after her body was laid in the ancestral crypt, I ran the length of the plain near the grove and back to the palace and pretended that I was competing in the virgins’ footrace at the Hera’s Festival games and that there were other runners at my side. In Leda’s name I beat them all and was crowned with the olive wreath and allotted a share of the sacrificial cow.

  Hermione, it still pierces my heart that I never came to know my own mother until after she was gone. I have never stopped regretting it. Just as I began to learn who she really was—how much more than merely the woman who gave me life—she took her own away. To me, Leda was beautiful but distant, a sad figure who kept her sorrows and her secrets to herself until that day before she ende
d her unhappy life. This much I guessed, simply from overhearing my parents’ quarrels: The earth, like a woman’s body, is the giver of life; but nature can also be capricious—unpredictable—and men desire that which they can control and fear that which they do not understand.

  My mother’s unhappy marriage to Tyndareus had its genesis in something larger than both of them. The Greek chieftains such as Tyndareus, men of bronze, no longer wished to accept that the earth goddess alone was responsible for the miracles of creation. Like any mortal woman, they argued, she could be fickle and untamable. True, she yielded up her bounty to the skilled tiller of the soil, but she also caused droughts and floods, fire and famine. She was the great creator and sustainer of life, but also the great destroyer of it. For men to acknowledge her power was to concede their own. Once, there had been procreation celebrations in which the acolytes of the Goddess would enact mating rituals. That was back in the days when kings were inferior to queens in a culture that honored the mysteries of the life-giving female. Then came the invader kings from the north and everything began to change. Compromises were made to encompass elements of Goddess worship into the new religion in order for the ways of the Olympian sky gods and their mortal creators to gain acceptance. Throughout all Achaea it became the custom for an invader king to demand to marry a priestess of the Goddess in order for his reign to be secure. Such was the course of events with Tyndareus and my mother Leda.

  As the high priestess of the Goddess, my mother acknowledged a power greater than that wielded by her husband, lord and king, who was himself capable of giving birth to nothing. Yet Tyndareus could not allow any challenge to his supremacy, especially one led by his queen. He despaired of appearing a weak ruler, controlled not just by his wife, but also by her ties to an ancient religion that had little use for the contribution of men unless it was in the service of mother earth. Tyndareus believed that capitulation, or even acquiescence to the power of the Goddess and her followers, left his throne ripe for usurpation and his body for certain death.

  As I grew into womanhood, I learned from my own experiences that men would seek to tame a woman’s body and spirit to their needs as they would look to control the earth, sea, and sky. I eventually came to mistrust both the old and the new ways. I resolved instead to follow the instincts of my body and the promptings of my heart. Looking back, I realize that this folly was just as silly—and as dangerous—as the dictates of the man-made Olympian gods or the female-worshipping precepts of the Goddess.

  Clytemnestra, too, had little use for religion. My older sister worshipped power and all that it might bring her. Although she at first resented the comparison of her dusky prettiness to my golden perfection, Clytemnestra eventually learned to cultivate the power she could wield in being considered the daughter of darkness. Her eyes were a much deeper shade than mine, more like obsidian than nut brown. Her hair cascaded to her waist and, especially when it was oiled, gleamed like polished ebony. Clytemnestra always reveled in the dramatic. And her moods were dark, even when she was a girl. How else could she, the most ordinary of Leda’s children, distinguish herself from me, her younger sister, destined by the Fates never to age once I reached my full bloom?

  Clytemnestra and I despised each other for many, many years. When I began to fully understand her, it was already too late. How could I love her as deeply as I might have wanted to, or felt it was my duty to, when she saw my beauty as her curse and sought to blame me for every ill that ever befell her?

  Many times when I was younger, as a form of self-protection from a lascivious gaze or a jealous taunt, I tended toward aloofness, learning to guard myself except when passion served my turn. Now I smile to write this, but there would come a time when passion often served my turn. Clytemnestra most certainly, and most of my playfellows, cruelly ostracized me from their games and kept me from meeting their brothers or any boys for whom they had conceived a fondness. My nurse encouraged me to join the other girls, thinking that I was developing an unnecessary shyness, but she was blind as a bard to their behavior. My elder sister, who was old enough to know precisely what she was doing, never missed an opportunity for devilment at my expense. When we were supposed to observe the solemnity of a funeral rite, for example, she would pinch me through my robes, hoping to give me a bruise as big and dark as a ripe plum. Or she would convince me to wrestle with her on the stone pergamos where she could easily best me because of her size. She would grab my hair until I shrieked in pain. When a clump came out in her hand, she’d claim that it was all part of our sport.

  We Spartans placed great emphasis on the perfection of the physical form. Boys and girls were equally encouraged to excel in competition at various sporting endeavors. I would watch the girls or boys wrestle one another—often naked, as was our custom, to discourage prudish sensibilities about the beauties of the body.

  I still remember the day when I was finally asked to join a game with Clytemnestra and her friends, joyful beyond measure that they were finally accepting me into their circle. One girl would be blindfolded with a linen rag and she had to remain sightless until she touched one of her playmates, who aimed to lead her on a merry chase with their singing and laughing voices. I was too trusting, just glad that my older sister had found it in her heart to include me. Clytie lured me straight into a bush of nettles, hoping that the stings would mar my flawless skin. I distinctly recall that I refused to give up the chase, despite the searing pain. For one thing, I wanted to win. For another, I didn’t want my older sister to ostracize me anymore, and I was so sure that if I could prove that I wasn’t afraid to follow her, she would have to play with me from now on.

  Gamely, I broke through all the brambles to reach the other side, tagging Clytemnestra, who felt robbed when she saw that I had emerged unscathed and unscarred.

  I was not the only sibling Clytemnestra resented. My twin half brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, were extraordinary young men with a nearly unparalleled taste for adventure. Polydeuces was the greatest boxer in all of Greece. I wish you had seen him, Hermione. He defeated every opponent who ever challenged him. And Castor had such skill with horses. Once I saw him tame a black Mycenaean stallion that all but breathed fire from his nostrils. With one caress tenderly ministered to the angry steed’s rear fetlock, Castor rendered him as gentle as a newborn calf.

  And so, from my fifth summer, when I made my awful discovery, I grew to womanhood without a mother to nurture and guide me. I might just as well have been an orphan, as the anger that Tyndareus had visited upon my mother for her faithlessness was transferred to her golden child. He was Clytemnestra’s father in every way, but never mine, showing not even a pretense of paternal affection. It was Clytemnestra, his natural daughter, who grew up in his image: pragmatic, hard, and unforgiving.

  Though she had five summers on me, Clytemnestra and I were schooled side by side in dance and needle arts, in music and drawing, in the arts of the application of cosmetics, and in the arrangement of flora. My sister seemed to relish it, reveling in my failures. Despite my physical perfection, when it came time for the practical application of our lessons, my tiny fingers were clumsy where hers—owing to the greater dexterity of age—were nimble; my valiant efforts to master the practical arts as skillfully as she did always fell far short of the mark. Throughout our lives, Clytemnestra had few opportunities to prove herself my superior, and she made the most of every one of them.

  We kept pets then, rabbits and small birds. Once I tried to teach a philomel to repeat a melody that a blind poet had sung to us one evening after supper. I must have been about seven years old then. The bird had a beautiful voice, which I taught myself to mimic, but I could not train it to learn the poet’s ode. Clytemnestra could not decide which of us was vainer—the nightingale, for soundly failing under my musical tutelage, or me, for believing it would freely sing at my bidding. She threatened to strangle the bird if I didn’t leave off instructing it. So I gave up, quite sure that she would be true to her word.


  Despite years of ill treatment at her unchecked hands, there have been times throughout my life when I must concede a begrudging admiration for my older sister. The fierceness she showed in her maturity was, on occasion, laudable in her youth. I remember the autumn after my mother died—Clytemnestra was ten summers old—it was before the festival of Dionysus, and Tyndareus reminded us that a sacrifice was required of the royal family in order to ensure a good harvest and stave off Demeter’s anger at once again losing her precious daughter Persephone to the dark embrace of Hades. Instead of taking a goat or lamb from the stables, he asked my sister to forfeit her pet rabbit Artemis, named for the gentle creature’s not-so-gentle rampages in my stepfather’s garden. My sister refused. It was the one time I can ever recall Tyndareus exacting a punishment where Clytemnestra was concerned. He threatened to take a birch rod to her himself if she insisted on denying his request and shaming the royal household. Clytemnestra, who barely reached the old man’s waist, told him that she would willingly accept the penalty and stubbornly stood her ground. In front of the servants, Tyndareus swore like a sea raider and raised his hand to his favorite child, who took off for the garden shed and threw her small, defiant body over that of her cherished pet.

  The king could not allow a ten-year-old girl, no matter how beloved, to publicly embarrass him. He followed her, his purple and blue robes trailing behind him like the angry wake left in the path of the sea god Poseidon. Wrestling his own small daughter, who struggled fiercely to protect her rabbit, Tyndareus finally succeeded in prying her hands from its thick white fur, all the while scolding Clytemnestra for her defiance of the wishes of the gods. How she screamed—yes, she did yell out “murder”—when Tyndareus removed his own knife from its sheath and, holding Artemis by her lop ears, slit the poor beast’s throat, its hot blood spraying Clytemnestra’s snow-white chiton.