The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  Menelaus stepped through the hubbub of murmurs and whispers and knelt before me while I placed an olive wreath upon his close-cropped russet curls. He brought my hands to his lips and kissed them in a gentle show of formality, then I elevated him to his feet. After a few moments of awkward silence, Odysseus raised a cheer. Not to seem peevish already, the other men lifted their voices as well to congratulate Menelaus. Agamemnon came forward and enveloped his brother in a fierce bear hug.

  While the others talked among themselves regarding preparations for their individual departures, Tyndareus asked Odysseus to approach. Before the sons of Atreus, he agreed to the terms that I had heard the Ithacan allude to the night before and granted him the hand of Penelope in marriage. Weeping and trembling with joy, my cousin embraced Tyndareus, thanking him for seeing her so finely matched. She looked back at me to praise my newly announced union, but she quickly turned away, her expression guilty. She knew that mine was in no way a love match, where hers was very much the product of a mutual admiration.

  I looked forward to the day when I would no longer be subject to the will of Tyndareus, although I wished that I could have found more to cheer me about becoming Menelaus’s bride. As soon as the Achaean chieftains and their kinsmen left us, the preparations would begin for my wedding. Tyndareus seemed inclined to host the grandest celebration imaginable—more lavish than Clytemnestra’s, even—because with my nuptials the Spartans would be welcoming their future king.

  My brothers’ disappointment was evident. They thought that Tyndareus should have selected Menestheus as a way of thanking them for rescuing me from Athens. But if I viewed things from my stepfather’s vantage, Menestheus had not yet succeeded in dispossessing Theseus from his throne and thus could not guarantee Tyndareus the wealth of Athens, while Menelaus could doubly assure him the Mycenaean resources with his brother the High King married to my older sister.

  The issue of who would succeed Tyndareus would not have been important if Castor and Polydeuces had desired to claim their birthright. They would have jointly ruled Sparta, but neither wanted to be kings, informing Tyndareus years earlier that they much preferred their freedom to the trappings of royalty and the demands of tending to affairs of state. Nevertheless, they did not want to hear explanations or equivocations as to the selection of Menelaus over Menestheus. They were already feeling restless. Rather than remain in Sparta while the wedding preparations were under way, they decided to set off on a cattle raid, promising to return in time for my marriage. I felt sorry for their wives. A woman wedded to an Achaean adventurer spent many months alone.

  I haven’t written of my brothers’ wives yet, nor of how they got them, primarily because my two sisters-in-law are footnotes in my own life; I never knew the women well. Sets of twins run in my family as does enmity among cousins. Castor and Polydeuces always had a competitive relationship with Idas and Lynceus, their twin cousins from neighboring Messenia. All four of them suffered from a horrendous case of mimetic rivalry; if one set of twins desired something, the other set coveted it as well. Lynceus and Idas were betrothed to two sisters named Phoebe and Hilaeira, who were also cousins of the Messenian twins. My wild brothers took a fancy to the girls and abducted them! Castor married Hilaeira, who bore him a son, and Polydeuces took Phoebe to wife; she gave him a son as well.

  I have always remained angered by the irony that my brothers could abduct women at will, while they sought to punish Theseus for kidnapping me. Livid that they had brought retribution along with the ransom, I had found the courage to confront them about this dual standard during our voyage back to Sparta.

  “One day you’ll understand, koukla,” Castor had said affectionately. “Right now you’re too young.”

  “It’s love,” Polydeuces had added. “Love makes all the difference in the world. We abducted Phoebe and her sister because we loved them. Theseus took you like a pirate—for love of gold.”

  I held my tongue on the subject after that. But like a good pupil and a dutiful younger sister, I committed my brothers’ life lesson to memory.

  Now, several months after that conversation, I stood between the men of the House of Tyndareus and the House of Atreus. My brothers had just informed my stepfather of their intentions to leave Laconia as soon as practicable. Menelaus began to express his disappointment, saying he had hoped to enjoy their company in the coming weeks before the festivities, but Agamemnon once again manned the tiller of his younger brother’s ship, gripping his forearm to forestall his too-effusive tongue. “Let them go,” Agamemnon advised Menelaus quietly. “Their absence will ease your transition from supplicant to sovereign.” His manner chilled me, the same way it had done the first night I encountered him, when Clytemnestra was pleading to be released from his control. There was always something about the magnificent Agamemnon (I might characterize it as a kind of charisma) that made people want to obey him for fear of the consequences. Looking back, I see it was the charm of a madman, brutal and terrifying.

  Three days after Menelaus had been announced as my bridegroom-to-be, my brave brothers departed for Messenia. If I had known then what I would come to learn within weeks of our mutual parting, I would have given them a fonder farewell.

  ELEVEN

  The wedding preparations lasted for months. Nearly a year passed from the announcement of Menelaus as the winner of my hand until our nuptials were solemnized. One morning, a few days before the celebration was set to commence, a messenger came to the palace leading a snow-white mare, a wedding gift to me from Theseus. “I know how much pleasure you derive from riding,” said his missive. He went on to tell me that the milky-colored Arabian was bred by the Troyans in Asia Minor, the finest horse breeders known to man. He apologized for not being able to attend my wedding. He was leaving Athens for Tartarus, fulfilling the pledge he had made with Pirithous to capture a daughter of Zeus for him, too. I thought the journey to the underworld was a foolhardy mission, but Theseus was a man who refused to be daunted by difficulty.

  Aethra easily divined my expression as I received her son’s message. “You can ride that mare all the way to Gythium,” she said sadly, shaking her gray head, “but the Minotaur will not be waiting for you there.” She urged me to forget about her son and to focus my thoughts on becoming a daughter of Mycenae as well as one of Sparta.

  That afternoon, while I was working at my loom on a bridal shawl, a rider approached the palace at full gallop. He reared his horse, whose whinny announced the urgency of the matter. A servant came running through the gate and was told by the rider to fetch the king immediately.

  I left the gynaeceum and was right on the heels of Tyndareus when he crossed the pergamos. Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, who had returned to Sparta for my wedding, arrived at the gate a few moments later. The rider threw himself at my stepfather’s feet as though he feared retribution for his news.

  The youth had not uttered more than a few words before Tyndareus raised his arms to the skies and let out a wail so piercing and so piteous I thought the stones beneath his feet would crack with grief. “My sons!” he wailed. “Tell me, how did it happen?”

  Castor and Polydeuces—dead? My brain, my heart, my soul would not believe it. The rider must have misunderstood. It was commonly believed that Polydeuces was only partly mortal, like myself. He could not die without the intervention of great Zeus.

  “They were raiding cattle with their Messenian cousins, Idas and Lynceus,” the rider said, “when a dispute arose over who was the rightful owner of the stolen livestock. The set of twins who could devour an entire cow first would gain every head. Idas ate his cow first, then helped his brother finish his beast, thus winning the contest. As they drove the cattle back to Messenia, Lynceus of the sharp eyes determined that the Dioscuri—your sons—were following them. Lynceus and Idas ambushed Polydeuces and Castor. Polydeuces—the boxer—killed Lynceus, but Idas then felled Polydeuces with a rock, gravely injuring him, and killed Castor with his spear. Polydeuces, who barely breathes, s
ays he has no will to continue living without his twin. He begs for an unusual kind of mercy—to be allowed to die, rather than be cured of his wounds.”

  Tyndareus wept and tore the hairs from his white beard. “Their bodies must be returned to Sparta,” he told the man. The souls of the dead could not pass to their final destination, whether it was to be Hades or the Elysian Fields, without the proper funeral rites and lamentations. “What are we going to do about Polydeuces’s wishes?” my stepfather asked me. It was me he turned to that day, not his beloved Clytemnestra, for he knew that this time, as a mere mortal, she would not be able to help him. The shock of our loss had suddenly rendered Tyndareus an old man, feeble and fearful, and for the first time in my life, even as he used my arm for support, I pitied him.

  “Bring my brothers to me and I will anoint them,” I said to the messenger. “And tell Polydeuces that Helen of Sparta, daughter of Zeus, will attempt to intercede for him with their great father.”

  Our plans for a celebration became preparations for ten days of mourning. Menelaus questioned whether we should not postpone our nuptials but was advised by Agamemnon to observe the appropriate solemnities for the Dioscuri and then marry as soon as possible. By nightfall, the twins’ broken bodies had reached the palace. Lifeless Castor, black hair streaming over his shoulders, looked pale as marble, his bloody wound a gaping gash of carmine and brown. Polydeuces’s head was split open; he scarcely breathed. I kissed his trembling lips, which seemed capable of uttering but one word: his brother’s name. Would there come a time, I wondered, when I would sue to Zeus for the same relief as I now would have him grant my older brother—when immortality would become a curse and not a blessing?

  By torchlight, Polydeuces and Castor were borne on litters to our family tomb, a stone building that resembled a beehive. I bade the mourners wait outside while I poured a libation and offered a prayer to Zeus, asking him to see his way to a compromise.

  The Dioscuri were born from the same egg, yet it was commonly believed that Polydeuces’s remarkable invincibility in all things, even when compared to his brother, surely made him a demimortal. Polydeuces, they averred, must be the child of Zeus, like his half sister Helen. How one son could be sired by the king of the sky gods and his twin be the progeny of the merely mortal Tyndareus, challenges the rational mind. I believed that Polydeuces might not be fully mortal; and yet I confess not to have been entirely convinced that he was a son of Zeus. After all, Leda had never mentioned any visitation of the great white swan prior to the coupling that had produced me. But faith is one of the most fascinating elements of human nature: the belief that something is true can make it so.

  Somehow I found strength within my despair. It was not Polydeuces’s death I would plead for, but Castor’s immortality. “Almighty Zeus,” I murmured, “accept Castor for your son as well. Take them both to your bosom.” Alone, in the musty darkness of the royal crypt, I watched in silence for several minutes, waiting for my father to accept my offering and heed my prayer. Then, as I gazed upon his beautiful pale face, framed by hair as black as Castor’s, Polydeuces ceased mouthing his brother’s name. He emitted a little gasp of breath, then a sputter of air, and his lips moved their last, settling into a relaxed half smile that not so much resembled death as sleep. Both twins were now as still and silent as statues.

  I exited the tomb into the velvet night and gazed toward Olympus to thank my celestial father. High in the firmament blazed two identical stars that I had never seen before, shining more brightly than any others.

  Tyndareus was too overcome with grief to make the blood sacrifice, so for the first time in my life, I wielded the knife that shed the sacrificial blood. I had thought to breed Castor’s favorite horse—the milk-white Mycenaean stallion—with my Arabian mare, but in the course of a few brief hours, everything had changed. I ordered the horse brought to me and forced myself to look into his proud face before delivering the fatal stroke. But I was no Clytemnestra. After I had done the deed, I turned away and was sick all over the paving stones.

  Dirges and lamentations were sung by all of Sparta. Nine days of feasting and funeral games would follow, after which we would resume the preparations for my marriage to Menelaus. It was hard to think of celebration when, with every fresh memory of my brothers, my eyes were newly washed with tears. Clytemnestra and I were expected to cut our hair in mourning, but with the wedding festivities imminent, we divested each other of only a few locks.

  Clytemnestra would now serve me as I had served her when she readied herself to wed Tantalus. She had left Iphigenia in Mycenae in the care of her nurse, claiming that my daughter was too young to make the journey to Sparta. My sister sweetly said that an infant should not be exposed to funeral rituals and that as my wedding days were supposed to be happy times, she didn’t want to upset me by bringing my little girl to see me, only to take her away again a few days later. I think the truth of it was that she enjoyed vexing me. She was fully aware that a prebridal state of joy was never a factor for me. I was not anticipating my wedding night with girlish giggles, sighs, and blushes.

  On the day of my proaulia, Clytemnestra bathed me with scented water and anointed me with oils and perfumes. She dressed me in shades of burnt orange and arranged my hair in cascading ringlets. I processed with her and Polyxo and Aethra to the temple of Artemis to make the proteleia—the proper sacrifices to the goddess of virginity and transition: little clay goats and deer to represent animal sacrifice, a lock of my hair, and symbols of a childhood I would leave behind—a toy rattle I played with as a baby and a short tunic I had worn as a young girl. Clytemnestra nudged me and whispered, “The zemia!” We had made that payment when she married Tantalus, as all maidens are supposed to do before their weddings, a bribe to the goddess to ease the bride’s passage from virginity. Other Spartan girls had followed us to the temple, with wreaths of flowers in their hair, clicking castanets while they accompanied their holy song on flute and cithara. We had an audience that had to be propitiated almost as much as the deity, and of course Polyxo knew nothing of my willingly sacrificed virginity.

  “She is overwhelmed by the magnitude of her wedding celebration,” Clytemnestra said, straining her words through a condescending smile. My sister removed a gold ring from her finger and handed it to me to place upon the altar for the zemia.

  We offered a loaf of bread to Demeter and left a basket of barley groats at the shrine of Aphrodite, then continued to celebrate my proaulia day with the burnt animal offering prior to the feast. At the temple of Athena, two calves were ritually slaughtered. Menelaus drew back the victims’ heads and slit their throats. Then he skinned the beasts, cutting away the meat from the thighs. These he wrapped in fat, taking care to make the proper double fold, then lay shreds of the calves’ flesh on top of them. These tributes were burnt on a cleft stick and wine was poured over them. The thigh pieces were burned, and Menelaus and I tasted the vitals, after which the remainder of the calves’ bodies were cut into pieces, spitted, and roasted.

  When it came time for the feasting, I dined with Tyndareus and Menelaus at the great volcanic rock table. Menelaus fed me honeyed dates and made a great show of enjoying my company, but the eyes of the man who was in the process of marrying the most legendary beauty, the most desirable woman in the world, gave me the impression that he would have preferred to be elsewhere. He was doing his best to pretend to a passion he evidently did not possess.

  There was singing and the chanting of hymns, blessing our union and wishing us many healthy children. Menelaus listened to them with a strained expression while I tried to guess at the source of his anxiety.

  The following morning, on my gamos, the actual wedding day, my bath water was brought by a dark-haired little girl with the face of an angel. This chosen child reminded me so much of Castor and Polydeuces that I burst into tears at the sight of her, frightening her so much that she dropped the loutrophoros, spilling half its contents; then, weeping herself, she fled the gynaeceum. “Yo
u must put on a brave face,” Aethra soothed, massaging my shoulders and neck with her strong hands.

  “If I can do it, you can,” Clytemnestra added, filling the terra-cotta bathing tub. She scented the water with sprigs of lavender to becalm me. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, but the more I sought to push away thoughts of my recent losses—my brothers, Iphigenia, Theseus—the more those memories sought to intrude on the temporary idyll I hoped to create as I bathed.

  Clytemnestra and Aethra dressed me, adding a veil, much against my wishes. “My mother used her veil to hang herself,” I protested, “and I’ll have none of it.”

  “It’s customary for the virgin bride to wear the veil until the wedding night when her husband lifts it,” Aethra reminded me.

  “You forget I’m not a virgin.”

  “You should forget it yourself,” Clytemnestra said, and secured the veil.

  I regarded myself in the silver-backed mirror I had brought back from Athens. “I look like I’m going to my death in this thing.” I fussed with the veil’s gauzy softness, which kept tickling my nose and making me feel as though I needed to sneeze all the time. My sister had to sit me down again to readjust it.

  We left the palace with Menelaus and offered our final sacrifices to the wedding gods. That night, during the biggest feast of all, Menelaus looked particularly distressed. He was afraid to drink too much wine for fear, I believed, that he might fall asleep on his own wedding night; and yet, he was afraid not to partake for fear of being too fearful on his wedding night. If I hadn’t felt a bit sorry for his nervousness, his anxiety would have been almost comical. After dinner, another libation was made before the singing, when, once again, our procreative capabilities were much prayed for.

  The songs over, it was time for the final procession. According to custom, Menelaus grabbed my wrist in mimicry of a symbolic capture of the bride, and Tyndareus officially announced that “in front of witnesses,” he was giving me to him “for the production of legitimate children.” Then the amphithales, a little boy whose parents were both alive, representing good luck and prosperity, was chosen to escort me to the king’s quarters of the palace where Menelaus was going to be installed. He wore a crown of thorns and nuts to remind Menelaus and me of the proximity of nature in all her wild and dangerous glory, the acorn being the food of primitive man. The boy ran alongside us, carrying a torch as we rode in a chariot drawn by four white horses.