The Memoirs of Helen of Troy Read online

  Many years later, I was telling this story to Paris Alexandros. He laughed and said to me, “You really expected no one to be looking at you? One might as well have tried to eclipse the sun!”

  FOUR

  Clytemnestra is blessed, I thought as I walked with her and Tyndareus in a procession from the gynaeceum to the home of her new groom. As Tantalus actually dwelt on the Ligurian Sea, in the wedding ritual his home would be represented by the far wing of the palace used by the guests of the royal household. She loves her husband and will be delighted to share his bed and bear his children. Such was not always the case, I knew. Women did not choose their own husbands; they were chosen for them by their kyrios, which for both Clytemnestra and me was Tyndareus, the king being her father and my male guardian. I supposed that he would do his best to ensure her happiness, as she was his natural child; but I despaired to think what manner of husband Tyndareus would eventually choose for me. First came the pledge, the engue, where the kyrios would hand over the bride to the groom and publicly state that it was for the express purpose of “plowing legitimate children”—yes, those were the words, as though his daughter’s body were a fertile plain. Then came the ekdosis, or transfer of the bride to the groom, where she would leave the oikos or household of her birth and join his. My sister looked as though she was very much anticipating the plowing part.

  Clytemnestra is blessed, I continued to think as the women of the town threw flowers at her feet, that she loves Tantalus—for the way he gazes at her or makes her laugh—as much as Tyndareus loves him for his trading prospects in the Adriatic.

  After a few more steps, I began to feel a pain, a bit like a stitch that comes from running, except that it wasn’t in my side; the sharpness settled just below my stomach. Suddenly I halted and cried out when it felt as though I had been stabbed in my womb. I clutched my belly and gasped to see blood trickling down my legs, staining my white robe crimson. My head swam a little, mostly I think because I had not yet eaten—(there would be a final feast after the groom had accepted his new bride into his “home,” and I had been saving room for all the courses). But I recall being overcome with a queasiness and fatigue, which, coupled with another stab of pain, caused me to sink to my knees. Someone cried out, “The princess has fallen!” and a moment or so later, the procession halted.

  Clytemnestra turned around to see me doubled over in the road, my knees clutched to my stomach. She disengaged her arm from Tyndareus and approached me. “Get up,” she demanded, and I complied, embarrassed now that all eyes, even those of the common people, were fixed upon me. I smoothed the creases from my chiton and brushed away the dirt, but there was no disguising the bloodstains. Clytie’s eyes blazed like a brazier. “I knew you would somehow find a way to spoil it,” she hissed. “Even today, you must be the center of attention!”

  Shame burned my cheeks. My sister was right; I had indeed managed to ruin the most important day of her life. I had most assuredly been an embarrassment to the royal family and had suffered the humiliation of making the transition to womanhood in front of everyone in Sparta. Of course, that’s not what I thought was the matter at the time. I remember feeling angry that boys were pointing their fingers, girls were giggling, men tried to hide their blushes, and women laughed outright at my misfortune, since I was sure I was dying from some kind of deadly internal illness.

  Tyndareus joined his daughter, and Clytemnestra appealed to him to get rid of the distraction. Once again, both of us were weeping, but my tears were born of shame while hers were, as always, of anger. “Go home, Helen,” Tyndareus demanded. “Go back to the gynaeceum and stay there.” I was being banished. He wouldn’t even allow me to remain in the procession, blending my voice with the other women who sang the traditional songs to the bridal couple. I would not be welcome at the final feast and would not join the well-wishers who would bid the pair a last farewell from Sparta. As Tyndareus scanned the faces of the onlookers, he spotted Polyxo’s open countenance. “You there! You’re Helen’s friend. Take her back to her room and see that she does not leave it for the rest of the day.” I saw him toss her something—a small coin or trinket—as though he would purchase her loyalty.

  I clutched my skirts to my body as we made our way back to the palace. “Don’t be ashamed,” Polyxo said, uncurling my hand from the wrinkled linen. “It’s natural. You should never stop up your ears or blind your eyes when your body is sending you a message.” We reached the gynaeceum and I realized that Polyxo and I would be alone for the rest of the day. My nurse was attending the wedding festival, of course, and Tyndareus would not think to punish her by sending her back to care for me.

  The water from Clytemnestra’s ritual bath remained in the tub. I unbound my chiton and slipped it over my head. Polyxo retrieved the bloodied garment from the tile floor and placed her hand on my arm to stop me from climbing into the bath. “What are you doing?” I asked her. “Stop it, I want to wash.”

  “Not here,” she insisted, tossing me the chiton. “This time, you come with me.” I dressed again in the stained garment and Polyxo combed my hair. “Act proud,” she said.

  The town was empty. Everyone was either observing the festivities or participating in them. No one saw two young girls, one slim and fair, the other plump and dark, heading to the outlying fields. Eurodyia, Polyxo’s mother, welcomed us into their humble farmhouse and gently inquired if my belly and back still ached as though I had done a day’s work in the fields. As I had never experienced such toil, I didn’t know how to reply. She laughed at my honest confusion and prepared an herbal posset for me to drink that would relieve the pain, showing me how she made the concoction so I could duplicate the recipe every month when the pains came.

  “Every month?” I gasped. Eurodyia laughed at me again. “I’m sorry.” I blushed. “My nurse isn’t comfortable speaking about bodily acts, and I have no mother to teach me these things.” Eurodyia’s smile fell immediately, the creases along either side of her mouth turning earthward. She looked over at her daughter and then took me in her arms and held me. Even though I was too big a girl to be rocked as one would soothe a baby, Eurodyia did so. And I wept. I could not remember the last time I’d felt the loving contact of another being. My nurse, who was a servant of Tyndareus, was ill at ease in the role of a nurturer and thus kept her distance. My mother had been gone for years by then, but even so, I still couldn’t recall her embrace.

  “Shall I wash this for you?” Eurodyia asked me, fingering the linen of my chiton.

  “I’ll do it,” Polyxo volunteered. “May we go to the river?”

  Eurodyia assented. I drained the contents of my posset—already I was beginning to feel its restorative effects—and Polyxo and I bid her good-bye. But before we reached the banks of the Eurotas, Polyxo and I called upon some of her friends, girls who had previously been accustomed to avoiding my company. “They really are kind,” Polyxo assured me, although I was not entirely convinced. “I think you will be surprised.”

  There were six of us all told, until we visited an elderly midwife named Adraste, known to Eurodyia, though not known well. Adraste had been a priestess of the old religion and knew the ways of the Goddess, but she feared retribution from Tyndareus if she continued to lead women in worship. “Your mother would have been joyful that you chose to celebrate your passing into womanhood by following the transition rites,” she told me. “You have done well,” she added, addressing Polyxo. Adraste retrieved an enormous willow basket from a hiding place under the floor, and after placing a length of white cloth and several peaches into the basket, slipped it over her arm and led us down to the river.

  Beside the Eurotas, Adraste handed dried gourds and tambourines to the other young girls and taught them a simple song. The lyric praised the Goddess for creating and sustaining all life, then honored me (my name was inserted) as one of her daughters for reaching the day where I, too, had become capable of creating and sustaining life. As the girls sang, Adraste ground the peach pits with
a marble mortar and pestle until the texture was a fine paste. She offered the bowl to Polyxo while she unpinned my chiton, letting the garment fall like a soft cloud about my bare feet. Polyxo applied the paste in a slow, swirling motion to my limbs, breasts, belly, and inner thighs. She was sloughing away my child’s skin, Adraste explained, removing the dry, dead layer that was no longer necessary to nurture and protect my body. Then I would step into the current to cleanse and purify myself, washing away the body of a child and emerging a woman, with a virgin layer of new skin. The blood that flowed from my womb would commingle with the current, to honor the constant flow of creation, adding the fluid of my life-giving loins to the life-giving river.

  My chiton was offered up to the river, too, and when I emerged from the Eurotas with nothing to cover my nakedness, Adraste took the clean white cloth from her basket and wrapped me in it. I was enveloped in the scent of eucalyptus. She offered me a pomegranate—one filched from Clytemnestra’s bridal offering to Aphrodite, she acknowledged gleefully—and bade me peel it. I was mortified when some of the ruby-colored seeds burst in my fingers and stained my new garment, but Adraste assured me that was supposed to happen. The crimson-spotted cloth was symbolic of my new fertility. I offered the seeds to the other girls, who each partook of a dozen or so, to pray for their own fecundity. There were so many seeds, and I was making a dreadful mess of my new white shift. Several inches of fabric had turned a rich shade of violet. Adraste laughed. “It means you’ll be very fruitful,” she said. “And I don’t doubt the signs for an instant,” she added, appraising my beauty.

  The following morning I rose and dressed early so that I could bid Clytemnestra good-bye before she and Tantalus rode down to the harbor. Her body was stiff and unresponsive to my farewell embrace. Evidently, she still resented my inadvertent diversion of the previous morning. Not for a single moment was she willing to soften, although she knew as well as I that it might be several seasons before we saw each other again.

  A year seemed to fly as swiftly as Bellerophon on his winged horse. Only once did we receive news of my sister and Tantalus. They were both well and happy, and she had just learned that she was with child. I tried to imagine Clytemnestra with a babe at her breast and could not summon a clear picture. Perhaps if she was as contented as she claimed, she might be a loving mother as well. I had my doubts of it, though.

  By my thirteenth summer, I was already developing into a fine young woman, slim-hipped, long-legged, full-bosomed. My red-gold hair nearly reached my waist. I became fond of wearing it unbound, letting it swirl around my shoulders and down my back like a shower of molten bronze. Ever since I had discovered my mother hanging by her own veil, I had refused to wear one; although it flouted our custom and angered Tyndareus that I was displaying myself, causing excitement among the men and spreading envy among the women. My twin half brothers took it upon themselves to watch over me. I think they feared that my own curiosity would be more of a danger than the lusts of strange men. I idolized my older brothers—they had four winters on me—and spent as much time with them as they would allow. Having seen seventeen summers, Polydeuces and Castor had become strapping young men who turned many a Spartan girl’s head and broke several hearts, so it had been rumored, during their numerous cattle raids in Messenia and Arcadia.

  I would follow them down by the reeds along the banks of the Eurotas or up to the plains above the city where Castor allowed me to ride his horses once he’d broken them. We would race through a carpet of wildflowers: me—bareback on one of his snow-white stallions—and Castor, barefoot, with his shining black hair streaming in the wind, his bronzed chest glistening with moisture. Although he occasionally suffered from spasms that would cause his breathing to seize up, he insisted on running full-out every time, and I remember him being as fleet of foot as the massive beasts he tamed.

  I would sit on a rock under the open sky and watch Polydeuces engage his mirror image as a sparring partner. In their sporting with each other, he sometimes drew blood. I would gasp and run to attend Castor, and the twins would exchange glances in their secret unspoken language that only the two of them would ever understand and laugh at me for worrying like a wife. There were slight differences between the boys if you knew them well. Castor’s health was sometimes fragile, but he never allowed it to deter him from living every day to the extreme. Polydeuces had a touch of divinity about him. His smooth skin never bruised no matter how hard a blow he received. What they shared was a restless nature and a luminous joy for life’s adventures—the more foolhardy and daring, the better. I possessed the same impetuosity but was starved of the opportunities to express it. My brothers’ gender afforded them a freedom that would be denied to me forever, and while I could not have adored them more, I admit that I was envious that they could leave the boredom of Laconia at will.

  One dry summer afternoon will be forever etched on my memory. In a way, it changed the course of my life. I had climbed an olive tree to gain a better view of my brothers’ wrestling match, pleased as only a younger sister can be that they had invited me to judge their sport. I had just settled myself on one of the branches when I spied a messenger breathlessly running toward us, waving his arms as though he were fleeing a great calamity. “Clytemnestra has returned home!” he informed us. “The king has asked me to summon you immediately.”

  I leapt from my perch into Castor’s arms, and we raced back to the palace. Of course, the twins arrived long before I did.

  A great commotion had our servants scurrying for cover. The cacophony of angry voices led me to the Great Hall, where Tyndareus sat on his throne. His hair looked like it had not seen a comb since yesterday; his impressive headdress was askew. Clytemnestra had prostrated herself like a supplicant at her father’s feet. Her body, which had been so lovely and voluptuous not two summers ago, had wasted away. She was too thin now, almost frail, and when she raised her face to Tyndareus, her pallor was that of a woman in deep mourning: eyes hollow and sunken, skin blotchy and pale. Her dark hair, neither dressed nor ornamented, hung wildly down her narrow back. Even her garments were unkempt and appeared to be torn and ragged. I placed my hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp. What had happened to my once-proud older sister?

  The Dioscuri flanked Tyndareus, a twin on either side of the carved throne. Standing above the hysterically weeping Clytemnestra was an imposing bearded figure, mottled with freckles and richly clad in a lapis-colored tunic and a cloak with an intricately embroidered golden border. He wore bronze gauntlets and greaves as though he were dressed for battle. His russet-colored hair formed a lion’s mane about his shoulders and was held in place with a heavy gold circlet.

  I asked one of the serving women who he was. “Agamemnon, High King of Mycenae,” she whispered, then scuttled off like a beetle lest she be caught conversing with the princess.

  I wanted to approach my sister. If ever a woman looked in need of comfort, it was Clytemnestra. In that instant I forgave her maltreatment of me on her wedding day and darted past a guard, throwing myself on my knees at her side. “Clytie,” I whispered, and she looked up and threw her arms around my neck. Her sobs commenced anew, and I rocked her as if she were a newborn babe, stroking her hair, gently smoothing the errant strands off her face. I remember being shocked to see bruises and scratches on her bare arms, but I had not the opportunity to question her about their origin.

  “Helen, this is no place for you!” Tyndareus thundered. His outburst caught the attention of the High King, who turned to look at me. His eyes, cold and gray as the blade of a knife, cut mine down with one stroke.

  “The beauteous Helen,” he sneered softly. The tone of his voice sent a shiver of fear coursing through my body. Tyndareus ordered me to leave the Great Hall, and I made a grand show of doing so, only to return on tiptoe almost immediately, hiding behind an extremely large and unsuspecting guard.

  What my prying eyes saw terrified me far more than Agamemnon’s look had done. The High King told Tyndareus that Tanta
lus had conspired with the sea raiders and was thus a traitor to all Achaea. Agamemnon had therefore sailed to Pisa and had brutally murdered him. But that was not all. Agamemnon had also slaughtered Clytemnestra’s infant son right before her eyes and was now claiming her as his bride, being a spoil of war. He had returned Clytemnestra to her homeland in order to convince Tyndareus to bless the new union. My sister tore her hair and beat her breast, keening like a woman in mourning—as indeed she was—for her butchered husband and child. She pleaded with her father to send the High King away, dismissing him as the barbarian he had shown himself to be, promising Tyndareus that she would do anything he wished—marry someone else of his choosing or become a priestess in the temple of whichever god or goddess he saw fit—if only he would spare her from going to Mycenae with Agamemnon. I wondered what Tyndareus would do. Clytemnestra had always been his favorite. I could see from his deeply rutted brow that he was in an intolerable predicament.

  Agamemnon argued that in the past, he and Tyndareus had favored each other, thereby setting a precedent for diplomatic relations between Mycenae and Sparta. He had helped Tyndareus wrest the Spartan throne from his brother Hippocoön, and Tyndareus had aided Agamemnon in recapturing the High Kingship of Mycenae from his uncle Thyestes. Much remained to be gained from an association between the two kingdoms, he reminded Tyndareus, his assured voice and commanding presence overriding Clytemnestra’s passionate protestations.