The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  Polyxo had been my dearest girlhood friend, and although less than a year had passed since we had last seen each other, that girlhood had become little more than pretty memories for both of us. I could entertain her with tales about the cosmopolitan delights of Athens but could speak no further. I could tell her that I had learned to dance and play the flute and apply cosmetics, that I had discovered the luxuries of perfumes from the East and fabrics that caressed the skin like a lover’s kiss, but I could not tell her that I had known the lover’s kiss itself. And most assuredly, I could not let slip even the merest hint that I commiserated with her bodily condition. I also knew that by the time Polyxo was delivered of her child, I would have grown too large to pay her a visit. I hoped that she would forgive me for not being able to call upon her then, explaining that Tyndareus had imprisoned me within the walls of the gynaeceum for the next half year.

  I forced my tongue to lie, made myself appear frivolous, and identified Aethra as Theseus’s mother, yes, but also as my slave, kidnapped by Castor and Polydeuces in retaliation for my abduction.

  Aethra and I had a few months in which to formulate a plan. As I grew ever larger and neared my time, I threw tantrums, some genuine, some fabricated, all designed to send the servants scurrying from my presence. They became grateful to Aethra for assuming the martyr’s mantle and resigning herself to accepting responsibility for all my daily needs. After I passed my eighth month of pregnancy, during which my fifteenth birthday went all but unnoticed, I sent Aethra to petition Tyndareus. She confessed that she could no longer handle me on her own. “I am only a common house slave. Helen needs the firm hand and stern guidance of a married woman and a family member,” she insisted. “We must send for Clytemnestra.”

  Tyndareus acquiesced easily, glad of any opportunity to see his favorite child again. My rejoicing was as immense as my fear. Clytemnestra and I had little use for each other. Yet we were blood, thicker than water or wine. I knew, however, that I was taking the greatest gamble of my life.

  Three weeks after she had been sent for, my sister arrived. Her appearance astonished me as much as mine shocked her. Clytemnestra’s body was even larger than mine, although her eyes and cheeks were as sunken and hollow, her pallor as sallow as it had been the last time I had seen her—the day she pleaded with Tyndareus to spare her from Agamemnon’s bed.

  I hoisted myself from my chair and waddled over to embrace her gently. “If I had known, I would never have summoned you from childbed,” I murmured.

  My sister immediately burst into tears. “There is no child,” she wept. “She was born dead. A shriveled little thing. Perhaps I cursed my own body when I found out I was carrying Agamemnon’s child. I could bear to nurture the seed of the House of Atreus, I thought, if I bore us a girl. The gods heard my pleas and accepted my libations, but they saw fit to mock me by killing my girl inside me.” I stroked my sister’s hair and tried to soothe her. “I even had a name for her,” Clytemnestra sobbed. “Iphigenia. The mother of a strong race.” She released herself from my embrace and bared her breasts as if to indicate their uselessness as appendages. “See! I am heavy with milk but have no daughter to suckle.”

  “Does Agamemnon know you lost your baby?”

  Clytemnestra shook her head. “Three full moons after we returned to Mycenae, he left in the company of his brother Menelaus for a raiding party; I have not seen him since. When he departed, I told him that I might be with child, although I already knew that one had been growing within my womb for two months.”

  I explained my purpose in summoning her and told her that I had willingly gone to Theseus’s bed. Aethra glumly concurred that I spoke the truth. “I had hoped never to be ransomed,” I admitted, and extolled the virtues not only of my lover, but also of the delights of his palace and of Athens itself.

  Clytemnestra nodded her head. “Mycenae is even wealthier than Athens,” she told me, “and I was just as quick to acclimate myself to its riches, although not to its king. Agamemnon is as terrible as he is magnificent. I do not love him, I cannot love him, nor will I ever bend to his will, although I pretend to do so.” She added that despite Agamemnon’s initial lust for her, their marriage had been nothing more than an advantageous political alliance. The High King shamed her daily by making eyes at her own serving women, even fornicating with them if the opportunity arose. It was clear that the palace at Mycenae was home to an intensely mutual enmity.

  I did not expect her to feel any love for the monster who had murdered her husband and infant son before her eyes. And now, my proud and beautiful sister had lost another child. Still, I would not become like her, already hollow and bitter before she reached her twentieth summer.

  “If you are so miserable in his bed and household, why not take a lover?” I suggested boldly. “Particularly since Agamemnon’s attentions are so easily distracted by the female form.”

  “You can do that. The laws are different here in Sparta.” True, if a husband was weakly made and incapable of getting strong sons—the future of Sparta’s martial dominance—then his wife was permitted to seek out a man who might prove a more potent sire.

  “I have tasted love and will settle for nothing less when I am married,” I averred.

  My sister laughed for the first time since her arrival. “Bold words, my child, bold words! As if you had the ability to choose whom to wed. Aethra, I thought you had taught this simpleton the ways of the world!” Her taunt made me reconsider the decision I had taken. Many times a day I questioned my sanity, but I had no choice. Princess Helen of Sparta could not bear a child outside of marriage.

  Clytemnestra, because she could never bear to see me happier than she, began to regale me with a list of the luxuries she had become accustomed to in Mycenae. Through the kingdom’s extensive commerce, she was able to enjoy elaborate textiles, terra-cotta vases, oils, beads, trinkets attractive for nothing except their frivolity, precious metals, and grains. “The Mycenaean king is venerated almost as a god,” my sister told me. “The people call my husband Zeus Agamemnon—the very resolute Zeus—for he will have his way in all things, and woe to any who try to block his way.”

  “That certainly appears to be true in his choice of bedfellows,” I said. Clytemnestra glowered at me. If she had been in possession of one of the silver-handled daggers she had bragged about, she would have lodged it between my breasts. I began to understand how she might have been able to come to terms with being Agamemnon’s wife. If the High King was treated almost as a demigod, that would have elevated the status of his queen as well; if not as high as his exalted stature, it was still greater than the ordinary Achaean chieftain’s queen, thus putting her closer to my demimortality. In Clytemnestra’s mind, she would finally be able to compete with me on more even ground. Our rivalry had begun when I was born. I foresaw no finale to it.

  In her usual unobtrusive manner, Aethra began to assemble everything we would need in preparation for the birth of my child: plenty of warm water for the birth itself, cool water for sipping and for soothing compresses, clean linen for bandages and for swaddling, soft sea sponges and carded virgin wool to stanch bleeding, fresh olive oil to be warmed when the time came, salt, honey, and barley water. If barley water was not to be had, we needed a supply of fenugreek or mallow juice to cleanse the newborn. A sharp sterile knife would be necessary to cut the umbilical cord, and a soft pillow would be required on which to rest the infant. We sent for cuttings from the pink flowering Cretan dittany plant, which, once extracted and mixed into a posset with water, would aid me in expelling the afterbirth. I would need plenty of things to smell in case I fainted during the delivery. To that end, Aethra laid by a store of pennyroyal as well as apples, quince, melons, lemons, and cucumbers. I jested that if I didn’t lose consciousness, the three of us could enjoy a refreshing dessert.

  My sister’s heavy postpartum appearance was a surprise element that made good sense to use to advantage. Tyndareus believed, as did the servants, that Clytemnestra was about
to give birth any day. He cosseted her as though she were the infant herself, taking great pains not to upset her delicate condition, for she might be carrying the future High King of Mycenae. My sister did nothing to undeceive him. In fact, she played her role to the hilt, indulging in histrionic emotional displays. “She was such a loving sister to make so lengthy a journey in her condition, all to take a selfish little brat in hand.” I wish I had been able to enjoy her performances. I listened to the descriptions of Clytemnestra’s dramatics from Aethra, as I was still not allowed to leave the gynaeceum to consort with anyone, including Tyndareus. I could not have gone far, even if I had been permitted to appear in public. My body had grown so large, I felt like there were two Helens. My breasts, already full due to nature’s gifts, had become pendulous and painful. When I walked, I waddled as though I were wading through the muddiest waters of the Eurotas, yet I felt as dry as a desert plain. I could stomach no food, and if I drank too much water, no matter how much I craved it, I could not keep it down. I was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to stand another hour of such bodily torment and couldn’t wait to expel the baby.

  I feared what might happen if we didn’t propitiate Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, although I could not very well expose my visage to the Spartan people, let alone the residents of the palace. So, under cover of darkness one night, cloaked like bandits, our heads and faces shielded with woolen shawls, Clytemnestra, Aethra, and I sneaked out of the palace to her temple and left offerings of pomegranates and cucumber on her altar.

  Only one element remained and we needed to figure out how to obtain it without arousing suspicion, as we had been maintaining the fiction that the pregnant Clytemnestra had come to Sparta with her own Mycenaean nurse. Babies were commonly delivered by midwives who traveled with a purpose-built birthing stool, the employment of which greatly eased parturition. Aethra owned no birthing stool. If we found a Spartan midwife and requested the loan of her equipment, she would undoubtedly ask questions that we could ill afford to answer. We could trust no one. Old Adraste, who had celebrated my transition to womanhood, had died of a fever the previous year.

  It was late in the afternoon about five days after Clytemnestra had arrived that I began to suffer the first contractions of labor. Most assuredly I was unprepared for the force of the sensation. I thought I had been punched upward from the womb to the breastbone by someone with the strength of Heracles. For certain, the baby would end up springing forth from my chest. The contractions continued, forcing me into my bed, where, as I whimpered and moaned like a whipped dog, Aethra urged me to lie still with my feet drawn up together and my thighs parted. She soaked a cloth in warm olive oil and attempted to ease my labor pains by massaging my stomach and genital area with it. Then she laid the cloth, still warm, over my abdomen while she went to fetch sheep’s bladders, which she would then fill with more warm oil and rest them on my stomach to soothe me for a longer period of time than the cloth might do.

  Exhaustion from being so pummeled from the inside out sent me into a fitful slumber where I dreamed I had stepped into a raging stream during a rainstorm. My attempts to cross the stream were thwarted by the swift current that lapped around my ankles like lashes of rope, quickly swelling until the waters were swirling about my knees. Soon my thighs were engulfed by the angry undertow, then I was waist deep in water. Terrified, I awoke, screaming that I was drowning.

  I was alone.

  My bed had become the raging waters of my dream. The linens were soaked through and I was lying in a tremendous puddle. I grabbed one of the wooden bedposts and heaved myself into an upright position, managing then to stand and thus escape the watery grave of my waking nightmare. As I did so, more liquid poured from my body as though I were a human waterfall. I screamed again when I saw that the fluid was no longer clear, but a viscous yellow-green and tinged with blood. “I’m losing my baby!” I cried.

  Aethra came running as fast as her bad hip would permit her, soothing me before she could attend to the flood in my bed and on the floor. “This is natural, Helen,” she assured me. “It means the baby is ready to be born.” She cleansed my body with cool clean water, helped me to sit on the bench by my dressing table so she could change the bed linens, and handed me a cloth to bite down on to stifle my cries of pain until she could locate Clytemnestra. She found her strolling by the blooming oleander along the reedy banks of the Eurotas and hastened her back to the palace. “You’re about to give birth!” she whispered to my sister, ushering her into my room and barring the door.

  “The stool!” Clytemnestra exclaimed. “We still don’t have a birthing stool!”

  My anxiety increased. Aethra had told me that if all else failed, she could deliver the babe while I sat up in bed. She urged me to try to recall who might be nearing her time or who had recently given birth. I had only one Spartan friend. Would Polyxo’s midwife help us? “Tell her it’s for the queen of Mycenae. Say the queen went into labor unexpectedly and that her nurse had traveled with her to Sparta carrying only her knife and her medicines. Say that her sister alone has been given permission to attend her, but that Clytemnestra forbids anyone but a Mycenaean to deliver her child.”

  With no one else we could take into our confidence, it meant that Aethra herself, with her slow and uneven gait, would have to make the journey to the outskirts of the city to locate Polyxo. She would remain absent from my childbed even longer while she went to find the midwife. If Polyxo was not at home, or if the midwife was not to be found or refused to relinquish her stool until such time as the queen of Mycenae saw fit to give birth, we were royally ruined. Even if the request came directly from the palace, the midwife might be reluctant to surrender her equipment indefinitely. Not only would she be deprived of the tools of her livelihood, but also other mothers might lose their babes or their own lives if their delivery was endangered.

  “How long has she been gone? Where is she,” I moaned. “Has she descended to Tartarus to get that stool? I’m going to die!”

  “You’re a daughter of Zeus,” Clytemnestra replied. “You are never going to die if he has anything to say about it. Now breathe,” she urged me.

  The pain was more intense than I can possibly describe in words and still do justice to its enormity. “I can’t. It hurts too much. I want to die.”

  “No, you don’t. And you can’t. You’ll just have to accept the fact that you are fated to survive childbirth. Now, watch me.” She urged me to breathe through my nose and showed me how to exhale in bursts, like the wind blowing a toy boat across a pond.

  Once, my body had been athletic and strong, but the months in Athens followed by those in Aphidnae had provided me scant opportunity for sport. I felt like an ill-made vessel, too weak to be employed for the purposes for which it was designed. My body was drenched in sweat. Clytemnestra applied numerous linen compresses soaked in cool water and lemon juice to relieve my suffering, but she might as well have been trying to contain a flooded river with a wine kylix.

  It seemed an eon before Aethra returned, carrying the birthing stool. My contractions were growing closer together. The stool was an odd-looking contraption, like a sturdily backed throne, closed on its sides from the crescent-shaped seat down to the floor, with armrests shaped like the letter pi—p—so I could grasp them during delivery. Clytemnestra expressed concern that she and Aethra were the only ones to attend the birth. “I had three women in addition to the midwife, one on each side of the chair,” she said.

  “We two will have to be sufficient,” Aethra said calmly, indicating with her tone that my sister was not to say things that might further agitate my already fearful state.

  “In Pisa, they placed a hyena’s foot on top of my own when I sat on the birthing stool,” Clytemnestra continued heedlessly. “They say that if you place the right foot of the beast on the expectant mother’s foot, it will ease the birth, but if you mistakenly use the left foot of the hyena, it will cause death.”

  “Tell her to keep quiet,” I shr
ieked, as another contraction racked my body. They had seated me on the stool with my legs spread wide. Desperately, I wanted to believe that Clytemnestra was as fearful as I for my health and that of my child but that she handled her anxieties differently. I clutched the pi-shaped arms of the birthing stool, in too much pain to berate her or to beg her to keep her unhelpful thoughts to herself. I prayed that the baby would arrive before sundown as our small oil lamps might not provide enough light for Aethra to see properly.

  “Get her another compress,” Aethra ordered Clytemnestra. “And hold your tongue—if you can. I’m sure a healthy babe is as important to you as it is to your sister.” Aethra demanded that I begin to count aloud, so that we could time the contractions. It was so hard to speak and breathe the way they wanted me to, in those short, swift exhalations.

  “Have you pared your nails?” I panted, panicking.

  “Of course I have,” Aethra replied. “Now count.”

  When I could no longer get past the number fifty without experiencing another rebounding assault, Aethra said, “It’s time.” She told Clytemnestra to stand behind the chair with a clean folded cloth of the softest linen and to hold it beneath my buttocks, cushioning me while I pushed out the babe. If my sister could manage it, she was to use her other hand to sponge my face and upper body with cool, refreshing water.

  “Shhhh,” Aethra soothed, donning an apron. “All will be well. I promise you, Helen. Now, it’s time to push.”

  “Push?”

  Aethra explained how to work up a rhythm of breathing and pushing, breathing and pushing, so that my body was working in tandem with the child’s to expel it through my womb.