The camp had not been loud last night, but now it was a different sort of quiet. Helen could hear boots trudging and horses breathing. She heard campfires crackle and greetings exchanged. But none of it told her anything. She had to see.
She was still wearing her dress from last night. She slipped on her sandals and picked up an animal fur from the bed to wrap around her shoulders, as if it might make her invisible. Then she stepped toward the tent door and pulled back the heavy canvas.
She needn’t have worried about being seen; no one was looking her way. Each man was occupied by his own business. Nearby someone was cooking blood sausages for breakfast—Helen could smell them as they spat their fat into the flames. Outside the next tent, a man was dressing a wound on his leg while another cleaned blood from his armor. But Helen’s attention was taken by another man, carrying great armfuls of golden cups and plates, which he added to an already enormous pile at the center of the camp. It glittered in the morning sun, swelling from the earth like a great burial mound of gold and silver and ivory.
It was then that she saw it. There on the horizon, rising behind the pile of plunder, was a great column of smoke. Troy was still burning.
Helen gasped at the sight of it. She had seen the flames last night, reaching up from the citadel like grasping hands as the chariot had carried her away across the plain. But even then she had thought the fire would be quenched; Troy was too great to burn. But as she glimpsed the tips of its black silhouette over the tent tops, she knew that the city was gone.
It was a shock to see it, to think of the grand terraces burned black, the serene temples stripped bare, and yet Helen realized she did not mourn those lonely halls that had been her home for so many years. Her own dream of Troy had faded long ago. But it was the people that haunted her. The lives lost in the long war, names she knew and names she didn’t, faces she had seen and those she imagined. She thought of Iphigenia, killed before the war was even begun. Of Hektor, his proud body defiled, just as his beloved city was now. And all the new dead, those lost in the fighting last night. Was their blood on her hands too? Could she take the weight of them upon her shoulders? It was too much for one person to bear. Her chest grew tight, her eyes stinging as she watched the black smoke of Troy stream toward the heavens. But then she remembered what Hektor had said to her that afternoon in the hall before he had gone to his death. The war had not been fought for her. Not really. She knew it was easier to believe that than to face the terrible alternative, and yet it also seemed the more likely truth. What did men ever sacrifice for the sake of a woman?
The women, Helen thought suddenly, remembering that hall of terrified faces. Had they made it out? But as her eyes returned to the camp, she found her answer.
Among the men and the tents and the horses, women were being pushed and dragged, hands bound, hair streaming. Helen recognized many of them from the citadel, though their fine clothes were torn and dirtied. The longer she looked the more of them she spotted—tied to posts outside their captors’ tents, kneeling in the mud. Some were crying. Others were silent, their eyes empty. Helen wondered if it would have been better for them to have perished in the fire.
Helen spotted one woman digging her heels as she was led through the center of the camp, and realized with a jolt that it was Andromache. Her black veil was gone, her dark hair a tangled mass, her right eye horribly swollen. There were clear tracks through the sooty grime of her face where tears had fallen.
As Helen stared, Andromache’s wild head turned and the good eye fixed on her.
“Bitch!” she screamed, pulling on her bonds to get closer. “Whore!”
Helen shrank back into the doorway, but it was too late. Andromache was shrieking like a wild animal, wrenching her wrists against the rope that tethered her.
“They threw my boy from the walls! Do you hear me, bitch? May the gods curse you! May you never—”
Her words were cut off as the young prince leading her sent a sharp elbow into her face. She dropped to her knees, blood dripping, and gasped as the prince wrenched her forward.
As she began to raise herself, shaking, from the mud, Helen turned her face away. She stepped farther back into the tent, not wanting to see any more. But just as she was about to turn her back on the camp, another figure caught her eye. Slumped by a door post, fair hair hanging from a lolling head, thin wrists bound to the wood. The longer she looked, the surer she was.
Helen quickly poured a cup of water from the jug inside the tent, and hurried across the muddy thoroughfare.
“Kassandra,” she whispered, crouching down. “Kassandra. It’s me, Helen.”
There was no response from the hanging head. She reached a tentative hand to the bare shoulder.
“Here. I brought you some water. You should drink.”
Finally the head stirred. As it lifted, the fair hair fell aside to reveal a face.
Helen gasped. It was her friend, yes, but that sweet face was so changed. The young cheeks were hollow, the pink lips pale and cracked. There were grazes and bruises but . . . it was her eyes that disturbed Helen the most. Gone was the brightness she had once looked forward to seeing more than anything else.
“Please. You must drink.” She held the cup to Kassandra’s lips, her voice strained with rising tears.
Only then did Kassandra seem to see her.
“Helen,” she said, a flicker of that old light returning. Her lips split into a strange smile, but it only made Helen more afraid.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “For everything.” Helen wanted to throw her arms around her friend, to hold her, to shake the life back into her, but she was afraid that she might shatter.
“I’ll help you,” she said. “I’ll speak to Menelaos. You can come back to Sparta and—”
“I am claimed,” said Kassandra, looking at something Helen could not see. “Lord Agamemnon said he wanted me, and so I am his.”
Fat tears rolled down Helen’s cheeks. “Well, perhaps . . . perhaps he will change his mind. I’ll talk to Menelaos and . . . I can’t just let you—”
“It’s all right.” Kassandra turned her head so that she was looking straight at her. “It’s not your fault, Helen. It is the way of the world. The gods’ will.” She paused, her eyes losing focus for a moment before returning to stare at the cup of water Helen still held. “I do not think I will suffer for long. I feel it, even now. Death awaits me in Mycenae.”
“No,” said Helen, taking her friend’s cheek in her hand. “You must not say that. Lord Agamemnon is my sister’s husband, and she is kind. She will treat you well.”
Kassandra looked up at her. “I wonder whether she will be the same sister you once knew.”
Helen opened her mouth, but Kassandra’s gaze slid away from her once more.
“Lord Agamemnon’s homecoming may not be as he expects,” she said vaguely, as if she spoke of things distant from herself. She fell silent, her gaze elsewhere, and as Helen watched her friend’s vacant face—lips curled somewhere between a smile and a grimace—she knew that something in her had broken. It was as if she were slipping away from the world, or had simply ceased to care what happened in it.
Helen let her hand fall from Kassandra’s cheek and set the cup of water down in the dirt. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to make things right, or if she ever could.
She slowly stood up and stepped back, away from the slumped body that had been her friend.
And as she moved away, eyes still stuck to that face, she felt a firm hand grip her shoulder.
“Helen.”
She turned to see Menelaos standing behind her.
“It’s time to go.”
* * *
He led her unresisting down to the sand. None of the other ships had been readied yet—there was still plunder to divide, slaves to allocate—but Menelaos seemed impatient to set sail. Hele
n could not even see any gold on board.
“Will you not miss the victory sacrifices?” she asked quietly, as they stood on the deck, waiting for the anchors to be taken up.
“It is my brother’s victory,” was his gruff reply. “Let him celebrate it. I have spent enough of my life on these shores, and spilled enough blood into their sand.”
They were standing side by side, looking out over the open water. Helen’s insides squirmed as the silence spread between them. The guilt she felt for the war was one thing, but this was quite another. She had convinced herself, all those years ago, that leaving with Paris had been the best thing for them all. That Menelaos didn’t care enough to miss her. That he had all he needed, and all that she was willing to give him. But to see him now, to see how he had aged, his tanned face lined with weariness and loss, she knew that she had hurt him. “I’m sorry,” she said, though the sound barely came out. She thought she felt Menelaos shift a little.
The silence spread again, a little thinner than before.
“Will I be your wife again?” she asked to the sea. “When we return to Sparta?”
The waves lapped the side of the ship.
“Is that what you want?” asked Menelaos eventually.
The question surprised her, and she realized she had yet not asked it herself. Ever since she had seen Menelaos from the battlements a strange feeling had grown within her. A longing for home, for family, for her old life—or parts of it. But could she really go back? Could she be Helen of Sparta again? And Menelaos—was that what she wanted? To be his wife once more?
“I was not a very good one,” was all she could think to say.
There came a noise from beside her, almost like a laugh. And yet there was no humor in it.
“Perhaps we were deserving of one another,” said Menelaos quietly.
Again, Helen was taken aback. She had expected rage, blame, curses—had been dreading them since Menelaos had appeared in her chamber in Troy. A part of her wanted to hear it, to feel the lashes on her tainted soul. She had been prepared for it. She had been ready. But this?
“It does not excuse what you have done,” he continued levelly. “And I do not—cannot—forgive you. Not yet. But I know that I played some part in your unhappiness. In driving you away.”
Helen swallowed the sudden emotion that rose in her throat. It surprised her to hear him admit his part, and to feel how much it meant to her, to have even a little of her guilt lifted. “You were good to me, in your way,” she whispered. “You did not deserve . . . I was just so lonely. He saw that and he . . .” She could not bear to say Paris’s name aloud. Not to him.
“A wife should not be lonely in her own home,” he said stiffly, still facing out to sea. The waves continued to lap, slapping the wood beneath them. After a moment he spoke again. “I never knew how to be with you,” he said, his voice so low it was almost carried off by the wind. “All of Greece had wanted you for its wife. You were mine, but I had not won you.”
He had never spoken like this before. Helen listened to every word, not wanting to interrupt.
“I thought that a child would change things. But it just made everything worse.” He sighed into the wind. “You seemed to despise me.”
“No,” she said, reaching to lay her hand over his. “I never despised you. Nor Hermione.” She swallowed. It was the first time she had said her daughter’s name aloud in many years. “I was just so afraid. I didn’t want another child and I pushed you away. But I still cared for you. Even then. Especially then.”
It felt like a confession, to finally speak that unnatural, unwomanly truth out loud to him after all this time. She turned to look at him, and saw his brow furrow. But he did not look angry, only thoughtful, and a little sad. They were both quiet, watching the waves.
“I cared for you, too,” he said at last.
The words were so simple, so few, and yet they struck Helen like a gust of wind.
“I am not a man of words,” he said gruffly. “It is not always easy for a man to make his feelings known.”
“What about Agatha?”
The words were out before Helen could stop them. And for the first time Menelaos turned toward her.
“I saw you once. With her,” she said, the memory rising, blurred and sharp at once. “I saw the way you touched her. The way you kissed her.”
Menelaos stood looking at her, his face weary.
“That was . . . different,” he sighed. “Simpler. She was a slave and I was a king. She could not reject or despise me, but neither could there be real love.”
He turned his face away again, gripping the ship’s rail in his callused hands. He spoke so plainly, without apology, as if his infidelity were nothing. And what pained Helen was knowing that it was true. No one condemned him for it. No blood had been shed for his unfaithfulness. No widows cursed his name.
Helen’s own shaking hands gripped the rail as he went on. “Agatha gave me the son I needed, and I was grateful. But a man’s feelings for his wife are different.” He drew in a slow breath. “They go deep, like old roots. Twisted and confusing—difficult to separate from himself. Difficult to dig out.”
Helen stood looking at him. Was he saying that he had loved her? That a part of him loved her still? He had returned to staring out at the waves, but she did not push him to say more. She felt that they had said more to one another in the last few minutes than in all the years of their marriage.
Something had changed between them. An almost imperceptible shift, born somewhere in the words they had spoken. The silence that stretched between them now was of a different texture, full with their consciousness, and the invisible wall that had once stood there felt as though it had been eroded, at least in part. Helen took a deep breath and sent it out over the glittering sea. Her fears felt smaller now. After all that had happened, after all she had done and said, Menelaos did not despise her. He had listened, really listened, and so had she. She knew that the home she was returning to would not be the same one she had left. And Hermione—that other guilty wound on her heart—would barely remember her. Maybe she could begin again. She would try her best to be a mother to her, or at least a friend. Her daughter would be about Kassandra’s age. Yes, she could do that, she told herself. She could go home, she could try again, she could make things right. Not as Helen of Sparta perhaps—that name felt too heavy now, that crown too tight. No, maybe this time, finally, she could just be Helen.
As the ship began to move and clear water filled the space between them and the shore, Helen and Menelaos stood side by side, watching the horizon.
CHAPTER 56
KLYTEMNESTRA
It had been six days since the rumor had reached Mycenae. Troy burned. The Greeks victorious. At first Klytemnestra had not believed it. So many stories had reached her halls over the past ten years, and there had proven a lot more chaff than wheat. But for the last few days a rumbling nervousness had been growing in her gut. Could it be that this story was true?
The rumors had brought no word of Helen—the very cause for which the Greeks had claimed to fight. If Troy truly had been taken, she had to believe that her sister was alive. That she was on a ship bound for Sparta, or already there in those painted halls. She had to believe that the war had been for something, that all those lives—Iphigenia’s included—had bought something other than gold and glory.
She knew it should bring her relief to think of her sister safe and well at Sparta, but in allowing herself to entertain that truth she had to confront another, more fearful possibility—that Agamemnon was at this very moment making his way back to Mycenae.
She had made preparations, just in case. There were men posted from here to the coast, each with a beacon stacked high and instructions to set them alight should Agamemnon’s ships be spotted. If her husband did return, Klytemnestra would know about it. Since the preparations had been made,
she had taken to strolling the citadel walls several times a day. Aigisthos walked with her this afternoon, so she was trying to keep her pace measured, her glance casual. It was not working.
“I wish you would stop worrying,” said Aigisthos, squeezing her hand.
She looked at him, feigning ignorance.
“I can see you scanning the hills,” he said. “You are many wonderful things, my wife, but you are not as subtle as you believe.” He gave a teasing grin, but she found it hard to pay back.
“I’m just anxious,” she said quietly, her eyes returning to the hilltops. “It feels as if something is approaching. Something terrible.”
“Well, if the war is truly over, then your noble husband may be on his way right now.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant,” he said, his voice becoming sober. He squeezed her hand again. “But if he does come, we will be ready for him. There’s nothing to fear.”
She wished she could believe him.
“Promise you’ll help me,” she said, turning to face him. “When the time comes. Promise you’ll be there.”
He stopped walking and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Of course I will.”
She allowed a ghostly smile to curl the edges of her lips. It felt as if they had been made of lead these past few days.
“Whatever comes, we’ll face it—” But Aigisthos’s lips stopped moving, his eyes caught by something over her shoulder. Klytemnestra turned.
A beacon was burning.
Klytemnestra’s heart began to race, her skin suddenly hot as if the fire had been set in her own flesh.
He’s here.
Aigisthos stood frozen beside her.
“Find Eudora,” she said. “Have her shut the children inside their chambers.” She turned to him, steadying herself in those familiar eyes. “You know the plan.”
And with no more words they hurried down from the wall to make their preparations.
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