Beauty's Daughter: The Story of Hermione and Helen of Troy (23 page)

“This has to be done in secrecy,” he cautioned, “so as not to arouse the suspicions of the Myrmidons. They’re a brutish lot. I know, because I’ve sailed with them for years.”

We were deep in conversation when Ardeste and Zethus returned, fingers interlaced, glowing with the happiness that love bestows. Guiltily they apologized for the cold hearth and empty breadbasket. Zethus rebuilt the fire, and Ardeste began to prepare a simple meal.

We discussed the plans while we ate. Leucus had restored my hope of seeing Orestes again, and I swallowed my envy and agreed to let the lovers have their separate hut until we left.

“I’ve come to know many of the fishermen here,” Zethus said. “I can speak to them without attracting too much attention.”

“You can probably do it more easily than I can,” said the captain. “The fishermen believe I’m a Myrmidon.”

Zethus soon discovered that it was not as easy as he’d expected. The Myrmidons were everywhere, roaming the streets of Krisa and making trouble, and the fishermen feared that the Myrmidons would steal their wives and lovers as soon as their men set sail for Corinth. Nevertheless, Zethus recruited thirty-nine fishermen who relished the idea of taking the ship from under the noses of the Myrmidon guards.

But Leucus was worried. “We’re still short by eleven men,” he said. “Enough rowers if we have good weather, not enough if a winter storm strikes.” He was worried, too, that one of the fishermen would give away the plot and our plans would be ruined.

We couldn’t wait any longer, even if we didn’t have the rowers we needed. Winters in Krisa were severe. Local women had told Ardeste about the storm that swept in last year as female worshippers of Dionysus were going up to Mount Parnassus to dance and sing as they did every year at this time. “Many women froze to death, buried in snow,” Ardeste reported. We’d leave before the weather worsened and before word of our scheme leaked out.

Leucus scouted the ships anchored near the beach and chose one of the smaller vessels. He and Zethus secretly provisioned it. Hunched against the cold, we silently slipped aboard, Zethus coming last, leading Onos. Leucus himself raised the anchor stone, and the fishermen leaned into their oars and rowed us away from the beach, into the deep water. But Aeolus roared out of the north, a fierce blast of wind that drove our vessel back toward the rocky shore. The fishermen rowed desperately to keep the ship from foundering. Waves smashed against the rocks, hurling up a spray that fell on us like freezing rain. I wrapped myself in a thick woolen robe and prayed for the storm to end. Ardeste had never been on a ship, and she was ill from the moment we left Krisa. The donkey lowered his head and endured.

After long days and nights of buffeting winds and sleet, our ship entered the quiet harbor at Corinth. The true owner of the ship recognized it as one seized by Pyrrhus and painted with Pyrrhus’s emblem, and he and his men rushed out shouting, armed with sticks and rocks. Leucus did what he could to calm them, and I offered the merchant a gift of silver spangles in addition to the return of his vessel. Our fishermen-sailors headed into the city of Corinth to reward themselves with a night or two of carousing before they considered how to make their way back to Krisa.

And I had to decide what long road to follow now.

26

THE CORINTHIAN OWNER OF
the ship we’d returned offered us the hospitality of his home. The food and drink he served were the best available. The bed was comfortable, and I was weary to the bone, but the gift of sleep would not come to me. I tossed restlessly. Should I go to Mycenae to speak to Electra, asking her help in finding Orestes? Or should I go first to Sparta and ask my parents for their support in searching for him? My father might help me, but I was not sure about my mother. Helen and I barely knew each other when she came back into my life. No doubt she understood her sister Clytemnestra’s hatred of Agamemnon. He’d killed Clytemnestra’s first husband, and he would have killed Iphigenia if Artemis hadn’t intervened. My mother might even have felt that Clytemnestra was right to rid herself of her cruel husband. If that was true, she wouldn’t support Orestes, and she wouldn’t help me. Better, then, to go to Mycenae, and not to Sparta.

Finally, my mind made up, I slept.

When morning came, the four of us set out along the road from Corinth to Mycenae. It was midwinter, but as we made our way southward, the weather became milder. When we couldn’t find lodgings in a town or village, we lay down our fleeces, wrapped ourselves in our woolen robes, and huddled close to Onos the donkey for warmth.

After several wearying days of travel we reached Mycenae and entered the city through the main gate. The citadel loomed high on a hill above the city. People conducted their business, tradesmen came and went, vendors in the agora watched over their wares spread out on ground cloths. The tantalizing smell of cooking drew hungry customers. Yet this was not the lively, noisy place I remembered from my visits here with Menelaus and Helen.

Perhaps the low-hanging gray clouds muffled the sounds I associated with the city. There was no music of lyres and syrinxes, no vivacious chatter among women with baskets on their arms haggling with women selling eggs and cheese, brooms and wine jars. There was no passionate arguing among the men, no shouts of laughter from the children. No one smiled. They finished their errands and hurried away, heads down, eyes on the ground, not stopping to talk with their neighbors.

We bought lentil stew from one woman stirring a steaming pot and bread from another, then carried our food to the shelter of a large canopy. A family was having their meal nearby, an old man, a younger man, his wife and their baby, and their little boy. The boy reminded me of Pleisthenes. The last time I’d seen my brother, he was about the age of this boy, and it broke my heart to remember him. Safe by his mother’s knee, the boy smiled at us, and I smiled back. Encouraged, he dashed away from his mother and came to gaze curiously at us. I asked him the usual questions—his name, how old he was. His mother retrieved him, and a tentative conversation began among us.

The old man asked where we’d traveled from, and Zethus, adept at conversations with strangers, explained, “We’ve been to Delphi to consult the oracle. Now we’re on our way home to Sparta.”

It was not the truth, but it didn’t matter. The mother remarked that King Menelaus and Queen Helen had returned to Sparta at last. “You’re fortunate that your king and queen have come home to you,” she said. “Not like what happened here in Mycenae. We haven’t yet recovered.”

“A pity,” Ardeste said sympathetically, and glanced at me. I kept silent.

The boy’s father joined the conversation. “A terrible tragedy,” he said. “Agamemnon should never have been murdered by his faithless wife. And no one could tolerate her lover—Aegisthus the usurper is the one thing on which we all agree. Agamemnon should have killed them both and taken back his throne. That would have settled the matter.”

“And what of Orestes?” I struggled to get the words out. “Has he come back?”

“Oh, he came back, all right, and avenged his father’s murder! He and his friend, Pylades, made short work of those two adulterers,” the boy’s father said.

“Orestes should not have done what he did,” his wife said. She dipped bread into the stew and gave it to the boy, who stuffed it into his mouth. “He must be punished. His sister, too. Electra is as guilty as Orestes, for she urged him on.”

Her husband interrupted. “I say he did the only thing he could do. Now we’ve heard that Apollo has sent him into exile.”

She frowned at him. “And I say he should have let the law take its course.”

“Apollo’s word is above the law. Exile is punishment enough.”

“So you say,” his wife said irritably.

“But you feel sorry for Electra, don’t you?” the husband asked. “Never allowed to leave the citadel! They say her brother receives his torment from the Furies, and Electra from her sister, Chrysothemis.”

The old man—I took him to be the grandfather—listened to the conversation, shaking his head sadly. “As you can see, we disagree among ourselves,” he said. “It’s been many months since the murders. Some people call Orestes a hero and say that killing Clytemnestra was justified. Others take the opposite view, that a son’s duty is to defend his mother, no matter what terrible thing she has done, even murdering his father. Everyone in Mycenae has an opinion, and the city is divided. Relatives don’t speak to each other. Friends no longer converse. We’ve become a city of silence. After the murders we refused to allow Orestes to sit at our tables, to share our meals, even to speak with any of us. Now we, too, are afraid to speak to each other. Only to strangers.” He smiled sadly.

The younger man had begun to gather their belongings, the mother shifted the baby to her hip and took the boy’s hand, and the grandfather reached for his walking stick. “May your visit to Mycenae be pleasant,” the old man added. “And your journey home a safe one.”

After they’d gone, we sat staring at each other. We, too, were silent.

RAIN WAS THREATENING, AND
Zethus went to inquire about lodging. When he came back, he’d located rooms for us and a place to tether Onos. On our way to the rooms, Leucus told us that he planned to leave for Sparta the next day. This came as a surprise. I’d assumed he would stay with us, and I was disappointed.

“Why Sparta?” we asked.

“To look for Astynome. The last I saw of her she and her child were sailing with Helen and Menelaus as Helen’s servant. Astynome hoped to make her way to Mycenae to find Agamemnon. She still believed he intended to marry her. I warned her that he would not. But Astynome would not believe it. She thought she could change his mind. I prayed that she stayed in Sparta once they arrived, and didn’t come to Mycenae, and that she wasn’t here during the terrible murders.”

“But what have you to do with Astynome?” Zethus asked curiously.

Leucus smiled sheepishly. “I fell in love with her from the day Agamemnon took her as the spoils of war. I loved her when Apollo insisted that Agamemnon return her to her father, and I loved her even more when she came back to Agamemnon pregnant with his child. When the child was born, I wished that he were mine. I have never stopped loving Astynome, and it’s my fondest hope to find her and persuade her to marry me.”

Love,
I thought, deeply moved by his story.
People will do anything for love.

The next day as Leucus prepared to continue his journey to Sparta, I thanked him and told him how grateful I was for his help, and gave him a gift to deliver to my mother: her silver spindle. I had carried it with me ever since she’d left me and run away with Paris.

“Let her know that I’m well. Tell her that Pyrrhus is dead, if she hasn’t heard.” I hesitated. Should he tell her I was searching for Orestes? I decided against it. “Tell her—tell her that I’m still her daughter.”

Leucus dropped the spindle into his bag and heaved the bag onto his back. We wished him well and watched him go.

“I hope he finds Astynome,” Ardeste said, sighing. “And that she consents to marry him.” Zethus patted her shoulder affectionately, and the lovers smiled into each other’s eyes.

AFTER LEUCUS HAD GONE,
I unpacked the embroidered peplos I’d worn to visit King Strophius. It had gotten wet during the stormy voyage from Krisa and looked bedraggled, but I put it on anyway and fastened my bracelets, an ankle ring, and earrings. Then I draped myself in a woolen shawl. It would have to do. “I’m going to the citadel,” I announced.

I was determined to go alone, though both Ardeste and Zethus insisted it was too dangerous. “You don’t know what you’ll find up there,” Zethus said, and Ardeste added, “This is not the same as visiting King Strophius.”

They argued persuasively. I reminded them that they were my servants and I would make my own decisions, and they reminded me that as my servants they were bound to protect me. In the end it was my choice. Ardeste and Zethus would stay at our lodgings with the donkey. If I hadn’t returned by sunset, Zethus was to come looking for me.

Ardeste rearranged the shawl to cover my red hair. “You don’t need to announce yourself from a distance of fifty paces,” she said.

I had spoken boldly, but I was uneasy, and my heart beat much too fast as I climbed the road to the citadel, past the tombs of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon and probably of Aegisthus as well, though I didn’t stop to look for it. I recognized the two standing lions carved in the rock above the Lion Gate, the main entrance in the massive wall surrounding the palace and a complex of buildings. Only one man was visible in the guard house; he glanced at me without interest. The sprawling citadel seemed nearly deserted.

When I’d visited Mycenae with my parents as a child, and later stayed here with my aunt and my cousins, the citadel had bustled with activity. Laborers had carted in oil, wine, and grain from the surrounding olive groves, vineyards, and fertile fields, and artisans had worked at blacksmithing, pottery making, and wool dyeing. But now there seemed to be no one at all. The granary and storage rooms were deserted. I followed the broad path that used to be paved with smooth marble slabs. Now the path was uneven, many of the slabs broken or missing. Where were the artisans? The guards? The heralds?

A woman emerged from the main palace. Thin and dark haired with a nose as sharp as a hawk’s beak, she so closely resembled Clytemnestra that I nearly spoke my aunt’s name. The woman stared at me with narrowed eyes. “Who is it?” she demanded.

I was unnerved. Her voice sounded almost exactly like Clytemnestra’s. Could this be her ghost?

“Hermione of Sparta, widow of Pyrrhus.” My mouth was dry as dust. I removed the shawl that hid my hair.

The woman stepped closer, arms folded across her chest. “Hermione, of course! Who else has hair like yours! I’m Chry­so­themis, in the event that you didn’t recognize me. What brings you here?”

Chrysothemis! Though I was not pleased to see my cousin, I was relieved that I had not encountered her mother’s ghost. “I’ve come to offer you and Electra my condolences. I’ve heard that terrible tragedies have befallen your family.”