Beauty's Daughter: The Story of Hermione and Helen of Troy (29 page)

Chrysothemis had declined the king’s invitation to the wedding. Orestes was relieved when he learned that his other sister would not make the journey from Mycenae. “The Furies were terrible, but I think my sister Chrysothemis was nearly as bad. She despises me. She was always closest to my mother.” Electra was not only relieved but pleased. And when Asius heard, he said, “Chrysothemis would surely punish me severely for helping you both escape.”

Iphigenia, though delighted that Orestes and I would marry, announced that she would soon leave Athens. “I’m returning to Brauron, to the shrine to Artemis,” she explained. “I will spend the rest of my days there as her virginal priestess. I promised I’d dedicate my life to Artemis if she spared me for a second time. I owe her that much. I’ve persuaded our magnificent charioteer, Asius, to accompany me and to stay in Brauron and attend me, if our good king Menestheus will agree.”

Menestheus nodded his assent.

“But I shall stay here for the weddings,” Iphigenia said. “I don’t want to miss any of it!”

THE GREATEST SURPRISE WAS
the arrival of my parents. Menelaus and Helen of Sparta would attend my wedding.

Heralds announced that the royal ship from Sparta had entered the port of Piraeus, and I asked Asius to take Orestes and me down to meet them. I was terribly anxious, but Orestes was completely calm. “If anyone should be uneasy, I should be,” he said. “Menelaus tried to persuade the courts in Mycenae to sentence me to death.”

Orestes and I had never talked about the murders. What was there to say? He had been severely punished for what most people thought was a justifiable killing. But I knew that my father felt Orestes had not been punished severely enough. Menelaus likely disapproved of my marrying a man who had committed matricide. I convinced myself that I didn’t care if he disapproved—he had forced me to marry Pyrrhus, who was surely guilty of far worse crimes than Orestes could even think of.

I watched my father step from the ship into the small boat that brought them to shore. Menelaus’s red hair was faded now and streaked with gray, but his strong body showed few signs of age. He walked a little stiffly, possibly from the wound he received at Troy, but that was all.

He turned to assist my mother. Boatmen on other ships in the port stopped what they were doing and stared at Helen. Nothing about her had changed. Her golden hair still shone like sunlight. Her flawless skin still glowed. Her gown clung to every curve of her lovely body. Her smile still dazzled. Only when she looked at me did a tiny frown appear between her eyes of hyacinth blue.

“Well, Hermione,” my mother greeted me with her musical voice, the only quality I shared with her. “How nice that Orestes wants to marry you. But it seems you’ve been neglecting your appearance. Just look how dark your skin has become! All those freckles! Have you tried to bleach them? I’ll send my maidservant to do something with that hair.”

MY WEDDING DAY WAS
both bitter and sweet. Like the scenes created by Hephaestus, the god of the forge, for Achilles’ great shield, the celebration was filled with beauty and sadness. Zethus had been dead for a full waxing and waning of the moon. All of us mourned him. Ardeste suckled her baby and wept for the baby’s father. I knew how deeply she must miss her Zethus. I missed him too. He had been an important part of my life since I was a young girl.

But still Ardeste wanted to celebrate my wedding to Orestes, and for that day she set aside her own pain to share in my joy. She had water brought from a sacred spring on a slope below the Acropolis and directed the servants to heat it for the baths that Electra and I enjoyed. Zethus’s infant son kicked and gurgled in his basket nearby while Ardeste helped me dress in my new peplos, the color of pomegranates. She combed my hair into a smooth braid and arranged the lustrous veil glittering with gold and silver spangles. Queen Clymene made me a gift of a pair of jeweled armlets, and my servant tied on soft new sandals.

The day was cloudless and bright. It had been a fine harvest, and amphoras filled with wine lined the racks in every available storage room. The granaries were full to bursting with barley, dried lentils, and beans. Jars of oil, some scented with herbs, were bottled and stoppered and stored on shelves. Down in the agora the cooks had worked throughout the night, slaughtering sheep and cattle and roasting them on spits; ovens had been fired up to bake hundreds of loaves of bread; enormous platters were filled with juicy figs and pears soaked in honey and spices. The citizens of Athens had been invited by their king and queen to celebrate a bountiful harvest and the weddings of four royal visitors whom the gods had brought to their city.

We made a fine procession to the agora. King Menestheus escorted Electra, and my father escorted me. “A woman in love is always at her most beautiful,” my father said as he walked with me to where Pylades and Orestes waited to greet their brides. “And I am well pleased by your choice of a husband.” That was all he said about Orestes. It was all he needed to say, and all I wanted to hear. I cared for his approval more than I’d allowed myself to admit.

Musicians entertained the guests, and a bard plucked his lyre and recited wedding poetry. A pair of tumblers sprang and whirled through the crowd, leading the dancers; young girls held hands and swayed, and young men showed off their astounding leaps. A traveler in a broad-brimmed hat and winged sandals smiled and raised his hand. Above us Aphrodite, the goddess of love, spun in a cloud and blessed the marriages, and we felt her blessings fall upon our heads like warm sun and gentle rain. I hoped that dear Zethus was also rejoicing and sending his love to Ardeste, who stood quietly weeping, her baby in her arms.

The wedding party feasted and laughed and danced and sang until Helios drove his flaming chariot below the rim of the earth. Then we poured libations on the ground and drank wine blessed by the gods and began the long climb back up to the Acropolis as darkness wrapped itself around us and torches lighted the way.

Orestes brought his half of our golden wedding goblet to my quarters, and we joined the halves together and drank from the goblet and pledged our love anew, fulfilling our promise. We lay on fine new fleeces, making a gift of ourselves and our bodies until Dawn reached her rosy fingers into the great vault of the sky.

SOON AFTER OUR WEDDING,
Orestes received an invitation from the people of Mycenae to return there and to become their king. His long exile was over. As a wedding gift King Menestheus gave Orestes a ship and fifty rowers. Electra and Pylades sailed with us, with Leucus and Astynome, little Chryses, and their newborn daughter. Ardeste, too, wished to come with us, and we welcomed her and baby Zethus into our household. The next summer my son Tisamenus was born.

Helen never lost her ethereal beauty, but she and my father grew aged. In time Helen and Menelaus departed this life for the Elysian Fields, and Orestes succeeded my father as king of Sparta. He ruled the two kingdoms fairly and well.

SCHOLARS HAVE LONG ARGUED
about whether the Trojan War was an actual historical event and if Helen of Troy really existed. I have no idea if their story is “true,” but I do know that the ancient myths have been told and retold in countless versions for thousands of years. Archaeologists have dug through several layers of ruins that once were Troy. Tourists clamber over the remains of Agamemnon’s citadel at Mycenae. Thousands visit the Acropolis in Athens—although nothing remains there of the late Bronze Age, when most historians believe the Trojan War, or something like it, took place in what is now Turkey.

The most famous description of the Trojan War is the long epic poem that we know as
The Iliad.
The poet Homer lived in the eighth or ninth century B.C.—no one knows for certain—some four hundred years after the war supposedly took place; his poem is based on countless retellings by innumerable poets over four centuries, all passed on orally; nothing was written. Add to that the question of whether there was actually a single poet named Homer, or whether a number of “Homers” contributed their ideas. In any case,
The Iliad
covers only the final months of the ten-year war. The long and bloody story opens when Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest warrior, gets extremely upset because Agamemnon has demanded the return of his girlfriend and refuses to fight unless he gets her back. (That raises another question: did it really last for ten years, or was that just another way of saying “a really long time”?)

The other great epic poem attributed to Homer,
The Odyssey,
covers another ten years (or another “really long time”) after the war ends and centers on the adventures of another character, Odysseus, who takes his sweet time returning home to his patient wife, Penelope.

There are no written records of this period. The Greeks at this time, about 1200 B.C., had a writing system, but it all disappeared when their civilization fell apart soon after the end of what may have been a trade war with the Trojans. Nobody knows for sure. But that hasn’t stopped historians from making educated guesses, and ancient Greeks and Romans and many others down to the present time from writing plays and poems and novels—and making films—about Helen, Orestes, Electra, Achilles, Iphigenia, and many other colorful and compelling characters who are the subject of myths.

You can add me to the long list of writers inspired by the Greek myths. I’ve drawn most heavily from Homer’s
Iliad
to imagine the story of Hermione, daughter of Helen of Troy, and the young man she loved, her cousin Orestes. Much has been written about Helen; painters and sculptors have tried to capture her beauty, but almost nothing has been written about Hermione. She can be found mentioned in various myths, but those brief references provided me with little material to write about her life—only that at one time she married the son of Achilles, a man named Neoptolemus in some sources and Pyrrhus in others, and that she eventually married her cousin Orestes. That gave me the idea for the basic and timeless plot of a novel that is almost wholly the product of my own imagination: Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl and boy find happiness at last.

Carolyn Meyer

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Greeks:

Hermione’s family:

Menelaus, king of Sparta, Hermione’s father

Helen, queen of Sparta, Hermione’s mother

Pleisthenes, son of Menelaus and Helen

Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus; king of Mycenae

Clytemnestra, sister of Helen; queen of Mycenae

Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

Chrysothemis, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

Warriors and Allies:

Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest warrior

Pyrrhus, Achilles’ son

Patroclus, Achilles’ cousin and closest friend

Odysseus, close ally of Menelaus and Agamemnon

Hippodameia, girl captured by Achilles

Astynome, girl captured by Achilles

Menestheus, king of Athens

Clymene, queen of Athens

Trojans:

Priam, king of Troy

Hecabe, queen of Troy

Hector, eldest son of Priam; Troy’s greatest warrior

Helenus, son of Priam

Deiphobus, son of Priam

Paris, son of Priam

Andromache, wife of Hector

Cassandra, daughter of Priam

Gods:

Zeus, greatest god

Hera, wife of Zeus

Apollo, Zeus’s son, god of light and prophecy

Artemis, goddess of the hunt and of childbirth

Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty, and desire

Athena, virgin goddess of wisdom and warfare

Hermes, messenger god

Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes

Aeolus, god of the four winds

Characters created by the author:

Pentheus, vizier at Sparta

Zethus, former servant of Paris, friend of Hermione

Ardeste, Hermione’s servant and friend

Marpessa, old crone

Leucus, sympathetic seaman

Asius, giant guard and charioteer

(There are also dozens of other characters who make brief appearances.)

Homer.
The Iliad.
Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1990.

Graves, Robert.
The Greek Myths.
Mount Kisco, N.Y.: Moyer Bell, 1988.

Vermeule, Emily.
Greece in the Bronze Age.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.

Plus innumerable websites for information on Greek gods and the twelve Olympians; on characters of Greek mythology such as Helenus, Cassandra, Deiphobus, Philoctetes, Calchas; ancient sites in Greece and Troy such as Tenedos, Mycenae, Sparta, Gythion, Aulis, Dodona, Tiryns, Pharsalos, Iolkos, Delphi; and descriptions of clothing, food, and customs of Bronze Age Greece.

C
AROLYN
M
EYER
is the award-winning author of more than fifty books for young people, including seven titles in the popular Young Royals series. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Visit her website at
www.readcarolyn.com
.