The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  I closed my eyes and relived every recollection of my four Spartan boys; from the pains I labored under to bring them into this world to the toys and pets they loved, to the sound of their laughter and of their shrieks and sobs. Pleisthenes and my twins, Aethiolas and Maraphius, would be frozen in time for me as seven-year-old boys, for that was their age when they were taken by the Spartan elders to enter the agogi system. And Nico? He would always be a full-cheeked, chubby-limbed whirlwind of energy, who made every moment of his too-brief life into a discovery. Dry-eyed and brave, as they would have wanted their mitera to be, I mourned the sons I would never come to know as young men.

  Rounding Cape Sounion released another flood of memories. I’d first sailed those dark waters with Theseus, who would remain forever dear to me. It was there that his father, old Aegeus, had so tragically, and needlessly, become a suicide. Menelaus thought it was the sea spray that had misted my cheeks, but this voyage marked a new beginning for us, or so I hoped, and I did not wish to embark by dissembling.

  Our frank discussion was interrupted by a frantic shout. Phrontis, the ship’s skilled and reliable steersman, had suddenly fallen dead with his hand still gripping the tiller, and we were about to drift off course unless someone took the helm immediately. Poor Phrontis was pried from his post, and two oarsmen swaddled his body in a cloth of white linen and carried him below deck. Menelaus himself took the tiller and steered us toward the nearest port. Phrontis had been a fine man, and my husband wished to give him a proper burial.

  It seems so odd to me to write the words my husband in reference once again to Menelaus. It was strange then, to think of him that way after so many years, but I forced myself to do so because Menelaus still saw me as his legal wife despite all that had transpired. My beloved Troyan husband was dead, and no amount of convincing myself that I no longer owed a wifely duty to Menelaus would restore Paris Alexandros to my arms. Everything that had mattered to me in Ilios—Paris Alexandros and our four precious children—was irretrievably lost to me. My destiny was once more tied to Menelaus.

  After according the steersman full funeral honors, we hoisted the sail and made for Sparta. Soon, we could see the tip of the Peloponnese. Once we had safely navigated the treacherous waters off Cape Malea, we’d not be far from Gythium . . . and home.

  Home. That, too, was a strange word in relation to Sparta, for I had been so long in Ilios that my homeland’s fertile plains and rolling hills, rich with clover, and the riverbanks where the graceful stalks of galingale grew, would seem like foreign shores.

  But the winds changed and the seas kicked up around Malea. Menelaus, lacking a skilled steersman, had trouble negotiating the conditions. His other vessels, too, were floundering. Instead of sailing into Gythium, we were being blown off course to the south and to the east, back toward Crete.

  We had been so close. Now, every gust of wind wafted our ship farther and farther away from Laconia.

  THIRTY

  I would not see the palace of Sparta for another nine years. The storms that we encountered off Cape Malea on the day that Menelaus and I expected to return home, destroyed half his fleet. The remaining five vessels, ours among them, were borne by Poseidon all the way to a most foreign and exotic land.

  It was there, in Egypt, that we began to rebuild our lives and our marriage. We had landed on an island at the mouth of the great and powerful Nile River. Called Pharos, it was ruled by Lord Thon and his wife, the Achaean-born Polydamia, who welcomed us with tremendous hospitality.

  Our sojourn there was intended to be as brief as possible. At first, we tried once more to sail for home but we met with repeated delays due to unfavorable weather conditions. Then Menelaus grew fascinated by the wealth of commodities available to the Egyptians. Seduced by the notion of replenishing Sparta’s empty coffers, the man who had once achieved his wealth by raiding coastal towns and cities turned to trading along the north coast of the Dark Continent, soon amassing a tremendous fortune in precious metals, ivory and amber, textiles and exotic animal hides.

  For a long time, I was anxious to return to Sparta, having at last reconciled myself to dwelling once more on Achaean shores, despite my fears that I might be as reviled in my homeland as I was all those years in Ilios. I was well aware that the Spartans no longer bore much love for Helen. Yet I would reclaim my throne and soon recapture their hearts. I was still one of them; I was Leda’s daughter. I would meander once more along the reedy banks of the Eurotas and ride into the foothills of Mount Taygetos as I once did in more carefree times. There were days when my heart ached for the familiar scent of eucalyptus. How I longed to revisit the sacred grove.

  At first, it was difficult for me to understand why Menelaus did not appear as eager to sail for Laconia as I was. Didn’t he wish to regain his kingship? He seemed far more interested in his new role as a skillful merchant. Perhaps the long war had wrought a change in him. I found myself beginning to admire this new Menelaus.

  Thus resigning myself to remaining in Egypt indefinitely, I immersed myself in their culture, learning about their system of laws, their medicine—which was far more advanced than the Achaeans’, with their abundance of herbs, both healthful and maleficent—and their storytelling. In Achaea, where our tales were sung by bards who passed them down to one another through the generations, the Egyptians told their stories on sheets made from thin strips of the dried, pressed pith of the papyrus plant, through picture writing and illustration. When we finally left Pharos, I insisted that Menelaus bring home a great quantity of the delicate material. As I have availed myself of the papyrus sheets to write this memoir, using my father Zeus’s feather as a stylus and a dye distilled from plants, I’ve found that it is significantly preferable to our method of scratching on clay tablets.

  When we first landed at Pharos, I had seen thirty-eight summers and Menelaus had seen forty-seven. While my youthful face and figure showed no signs of aging, my husband had grown thick about the torso. His hair was now more gray than red. And he walked with a pronounced limp from the leg injury he received when the ceasefire was broken by Pandarus. The first time he undressed, I noticed a scar the length of my thumb that ran vertically along his abdomen. The sight of it both moved and deeply troubled me, for it was the result of the wound inflicted by Paris Alexandros. How different things might have been if his thrust had proven fatal. I wept anew for Paris Alexandros, certain that Menelaus’s scar would fade long before my memories did.

  In many ways, no matter how old any of us had been when the conflict began or when it finally ended, we all came of age during the Trojan War, and very little that was good grew out of its aftermath. Menelaus blossomed late, finally emerging from his brother’s ugly shadow; but I had always believed he had it in him, if he could only trust himself.

  I remember a conversation we had one day, soon after we’d arrived in Egypt. We were sitting on the Nile riverbank enjoying a pastoral repast, and Menelaus took my hands in his and looked wistfully into my eyes. Even now, with his temperament milder and not prone to outbursts of anger or jealousy, it was rare for me to be able to read his expressions. “Do you know why I couldn’t kill you that night in Ilios?” he asked me.

  I nodded.

  He seemed surprised. “I want to tell you, anyway. It’s something that I should have said to you before. Many times. I . . . I couldn’t kill you because I still loved you. I know that I was never good at showing it. I realize now that there were . . . years, perhaps . . . when you more than likely had no idea how much I cared for you. Remember on our wedding night, when I was so amazed that you were mine?”

  I found myself choking back tears. “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Helen, I never stopped being amazed. And I had no idea how to live with that. It wasn’t manly, as my brother so often reminded me. My love for you made me weak, he said. Well, of course I didn’t want to be weak! But I didn’t want to be my brother, either. I know how cruel he was to Clytemnestra.”

  “You should hav
e strived to be unlike him in other ways as well,” I said. “Sparta’s temples. And her tombs. My family tomb.”

  “I was a brutal, thoughtless fool then. Wielding my power, asserting my authority as king of Sparta, blindly following my brother instead of heeding the counsel of my wife, whose people I ruled. After all these years have passed, will you forgive me?”

  I thought about it as I watched a lily pad float up the river, borne by the swift current. “No,” I said. “I can forgive you for sending soldiers to take my cosmetic pots and my mirrors, but not my brothers’ armor and not the relics of our sacred sites. Some things are not so simple to forgive.”

  Menelaus looked away. “If I had that part of my life to live again, I would do things very differently. I would not have despoiled the temples and the tombs.” He looked back at me and forced a chuckle. “And you could have kept your mirrors, too. I would have told Agamemnon to go to Hades.”

  He made me laugh. This, too, was new. Mirth and humor had never been among my husband’s qualities. Suddenly I was giggling like a young girl, all out of proportion to his remark. It simply felt so good to laugh after all the ugliness we had endured. “Do you know the real reason why you could not kill me?” I asked Menelaus.

  “I just told you,” he said earnestly.

  I shook my head. By now, the hair I’d lopped off after the death of Paris Alexandros had grown back. It was not as long as it once had been, but still it brushed my shoulders. “No, you silly man,” I gently teased. “Although your reason touched me very deeply. You couldn’t kill me . . . because you can’t. I’m half immortal, remember? Only by will of my father Zeus can I depart this world.” I reclined on the riverbank, resting my head in his lap. My fingers played in the long grass. “But I wanted to die that night. More than anything else in the world, I think—and I have wanted some things very, very much—as we both know!”

  Something had happened to us as a married couple. Although we had been apart for more years than we had ever been together, our relationship was beginning to settle into something strangely comfortable. We had shared the most horrifying experience, yet in many ways had lived it separately. Perhaps it provided us with a frame of reference by or through which all human behavior, particularly our own, would henceforth be judged.

  A messenger from Lord Thon came running toward us. I recognized him as Proteus, a young man who spent more time swimming in the bay of Pharos than on dry land. He believed himself a reincarnation of the Ancient of the Sea. Apart from a short cloth wrapped about his waist, the youth was nearly nude, although he wore an elaborate collar about his throat that reached partway down his chest.

  “News from Mycenae!” Proteus told us. “The High King Agamemnon is dead!”

  I gasped in delight as much as in surprise. Menelaus rose and pulled me to my feet. “How did it happen?” he asked anxiously.

  In our tongue, the boy spoke haltingly, but we understood this much from what he said: “After making his hecatomb to the gods, Agamemnon and his fleet set sail from Ilios; but, damaged by storms and shipwrecks, only his flagship made it to the shores of Argos. There he and his concubine, the Troyan prophetess Cassandra, princess of the once-great city, were greeted with great pomp by Queen Clytemnestra. Cassandra refused to enter the grand palace of Mycenae, crying that she saw blood on its walls and death inside.

  “But Agamemnon, while feigning modesty at first, had walked barefoot on a trail of purple robes that Clytemnestra had spread from his chariot all the way into his Great Hall. Clytemnestra insisted on bathing him herself, and when the High King had settled into the deep tub, the queen ensnared him in a monstrous net, trapping Agamemnon like a fish.

  “Cursing him for slaughtering her first husband Tantalus and their infant son before her eyes, for sacrificing Iphigenia, and for his endless whoring, including his intention to replace her with Cassandra in the royal bed, Clytemnestra drew a dagger from within the folds of her garments and stabbed her adulterous husband until his blood rendered the blue-green waters of the bath incarnadine.”

  My heart rejoiced. I wanted to sing. O, brave Clytemnestra, you have avenged the death of my beloved daughter, and for this, despite our many quarrels in the past, you will dwell in my heart forever. I would propitiate the gods for giving her strength and guiding her hand. When next I saw my sister, I would humble myself by kissing her hem. How I longed to embrace her!

  I urged young Proteus to continue his story.

  “Then Clytemnestra and her consort Aegisthus cornered the frightened Troyan princess, who foresaw that her days were numbered from the moment she had boarded Agamemnon’s ship. Cassandra, too, was murdered. Aegisthus is now preventing the people of Mycenae from honoring Agamemnon with the proper funeral rites, to the anger of Clytemnestra’s eldest daughter, Electra, who had adored her father.”

  After the messenger had departed, Menelaus and I sat in silence for several minutes. I think each of us was waiting for the other to speak first.

  “I loved my brother, but I cannot say that your sister was not justified.” Menelaus was extremely pensive. “And yet I find it difficult to believe that it was she who wielded the knife. It is against a woman’s nature.”

  But I well knew that such savage revenge was most certainly in Clytemnestra’s nature. “Do you wish to sail for Mycenae?” I asked him. “To confront Aegisthus on your brother’s behalf?” Frankly, I cared little for what happened to my sister’s treacherous lover as long as Clytemnestra remained unharmed.

  After thinking about it, he said no. “You’re crying, Helen,” he said, enfolding me in his arms. How different his body felt from the way I had remembered it: as hard, passive, and dispassionate. His embrace felt surprisingly comforting. “Don’t tell me you weep for Agamemnon?” I looked into his startled gaze.

  I shook my head. “I weep for Iphigenia.” And then, I finally confided to my husband the secret I had kept for years.

  “He thought she was his child. That day in Aulis.”

  “Does that make it any better? Any worse? That he believed he was slaughtering his own daughter, rather than knowing he was murdering ‘the faithless Helen’s’ child? His crime was unconscionable.” I told Menelaus why my sister never felt affection for her other children, that it repulsed her to carry in her loins, then raise, the issue of the monster who had butchered her first husband and their tiny son.

  So Menelaus decided not to quit Egypt to avenge his brother’s murder; in fact, we remained there for several years after learning of Agamemnon’s death. But I sent word to Clytemnestra that her sister rejoiced in her revenge, adding that I hoped this event would provide us with an opportunity to repair our fractured relationship. “We have both suffered much,” I told her. “Now that the past has been avenged, can we look with shining eyes toward a better future?” I received no reply.

  All told, we dwelt in Egypt for nearly nine years. And while I stayed in Pharos, learning from Polydamia to speak Egyptian and how to read and write hieroglyphics, Menelaus sailed to Cyprus and Lycia; to Sidon and Arabia; to Libya, where lambs are born horned, and where, with three lambing seasons a year, not a single person ever goes hungry. My husband amassed a fortune on those travels.

  For a long time now, I had found myself enjoying his companionship. As I had learned to admire his solidity, he had come to appreciate my sensuality, permitting, even encouraging, me to school him in the arts of Eros so that he might know how to properly pleasure the most desirable woman in the world. He proved himself to be a most apt and ardent pupil.

  In many ways, I believe that the intervening years between our leaving Ilios and returning home to Sparta were beneficial to our marriage, for Egypt was a neutral territory on which Menelaus and I could construct a new foundation of love and understanding. Forgiveness does not take place overnight; the scars from the wounds we’d inflicted on each other since we’d first wed needed time to fade in order for us to be able to rebuild our lives.

  One morning in our final year in Eg
ypt, Menelaus and I exchanged a glance and mutually acknowledged that it was time to go back to Laconia. Sparta was being ruled by Megapenthes, the bastard son that Menelaus got on the slave girl Pieris after I had left for Troy with Paris Alexandros. It was time for Helen to reclaim her birthright and her throne. Menelaus had permitted the usurper, though of his blood, to reign in Sparta long enough. I insisted that upon our return, he would have to banish Megapenthes and his mother from the kingdom or there would be trouble.

  The harbor of Pharos has a sheltered bay, and it was there that my husband’s vessel lay. Within a few days, we made our plans to journey home. Menelaus’s sailors readied his ship, loading it with provisions and the precious cargo he’d acquired from his many trading ventures. We were only a day’s sail from Sparta with a clean hull and a brisk south wind, but no sooner had Menelaus given the order to sail, when the wind died. The doldrums prevailed for twenty days, during which the sailors exhausted their provisions.

  Menelaus and I were both disillusioned by the long delay. My husband glumly reasoned that the gods must be against us after all. That night he had a dream that he believed to be prophetic. The sea nymph Eidothea appeared to him in her robes of kelp and informed Menelaus that he had to capture Proteus in order to be able to sail away. She told him how he might achieve this wondrous feat; when he related her directives, I said that I had never heard of anything more disgusting.

  Eidothea said that every day, when the chariot of Helios was directly overhead, Proteus, the Ancient of the Sea, waded out of the bay of Pharos to enjoy the sunbright sand, and the seals would emerge from their caverns to bask around him.

  “She instructed me to bring three other men and hide ourselves among the seals,” said Menelaus. “Then we are to surprise Proteus by seizing him and demanding that he let us know which god it is who is so angry with us that he, or she, will not let us sail for home. We must compel Proteus to tell us what to do to set things right and get home safely.”