“Where is my daughter?” she repeated.
“I want a son.”
“Then go make a bastard with one of your serving wenches,” she said coldly. She seemed to be a statue of ice, showing no fear, no emotion what ever except hatred as hard as stone. Go ahead and strike me, she challenged him wordlessly. Beat me senseless. It makes no difference.
Menalaos raised his hand and took half a step toward her, then stopped. I gripped my dagger hard and held it at the ready. Then his shoulders slumped. Saying nothing, Menalaos turned about and left the bedchamber. I stepped into the room, the dagger still in my hand.
“Put that away,” Helen commanded me. “It won’t be needed.”
So she lived as a dutiful wife while Menalaos spent most of his days hunting with his companions and most of his evenings drinking with them. He visited Helen’s bedchamber a few times; each time she rebuffed him. Often the dog raised his hand to hit her, but she stood before him without flinching.
“I am not a helpless infant,” she said. “If you strike me I will return to my father and his brothers.”
He glowered at her. “You will remain here in Sparta! You are my wife.”
“Yes,” she said. “And the mother of your daughter.”
He fled from her room.
As the months dragged on the servants gossiped about the slaves he slept with instead of his wife. Helen cared not. Her life was ruined, what did it matter what her husband did or how the servants prattled? There were rumors of bastard babies; always daughters. I told Helen that Hathor and mighty Isis had put a curse on Menalaos for murdering her baby.
“He will never have a son,” I whispered to her, my eyes burning like coals.
“How can you be sure?” she asked me.
“I have invoked the power of the goddess,” I told her. “He will never father a son.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But if he does, he will want to marry the mother and make his son a legitimate prince.”
I shook my head. “To do that he will have to kill you.”
“Yes,” she answered, and I realized the truth of it as she spoke. My eyes went wide. Helen understood the fate that lay in store for her better than I did.
For the first time in my life I felt fear for my sweet one, like a chill wave of sickness rising within me.
“If ever Menalaos has a son,” she said to me numbly, “our days are numbered.”
“Your father …”
“My father will never know,” she said, seeing the reality of it. “Menalaos will tell him that I died of a fever, or some such.”
“I will slay the dog first,” I growled.
Helen put her hand on my shoulder. “No, Apet. No. This life is not so lovely that I would cling to it.”
I felt shocked. “Don’t speak like that, my nursling! Don’t dwell on death!”
“Why not? What have I to live for?”
“The gods will protect you,” I promised. “The old goddess, she who shaped the world even before your Hera and Aphrodite came to be …”
“But what of Athene?” Helen asked in a low, sad voice. “She is the one goddess that Menalaos honors, the warrior goddess who had been jealous of me since my birth. She would be glad to see me dead and in Hades.”
So with ever-mounting dread we lived the cold days and long, empty nights in dismal, gloomy Sparta, waiting for the inevitable day when Menalaos came to Helen with a son and a new wife and a sword thrust for her throat.
Then came a visitor to her husband’s court: Alexandros, known as Paris, a prince of mighty Troy, come to collect the annual tribute that all the Achaian kingdoms paid to Priam, the Trojan king.
3
Helen would never have met Paris, would not even have seen him, had not her husband been called away to Crete to attend the funeral of Catreos, his grandfather. Even so, she was kept well away from the visitor. Her husband’s kinsmen guarded her closely.
But I made it my business to see this Trojan prince with my own eyes. No one paid any attention to another serving woman in the great hall where the men took their meals. I slipped in with the other servants and took a good look at this prince of Troy. He was young, with a dazzling smile and eyes that gleamed like stars in the sky.
I rushed to tell Helen of him. “He looks like a godling, my precious: as handsome as Apollo, by the gods.”
The maidservants chattered of little else except Paris’ splendid appearance, his flashing smile and ready wit. Every serving girl in the palace dreamed of sharing his bed, and several of them claimed that they did.
“You must meet this royal visitor,” I told Helen.
“How can I?” she asked, gazing out the window of her chamber into the dung-dotted courtyard below. “I am a prisoner in this citadel of stone.”
“You are the queen, and your husband is away,” said I. “Your husband’s kinsmen are duty-bound to obey you.”
She turned and stared at me. “Do you think I could?” she wondered aloud. “Would it be possible?”
“You are the queen, are you not? Use your power, my lamb. Use your beauty to dazzle this prince of Troy.”
“What are you saying, Apet?”
I smiled at my lovely one. “Troy is a fine, noble city. And it is far from Sparta.”
It was a fantasy, a dream. We both knew that. Yet the idea of leaving Sparta, leaving this hopeless dismal life, seemed to lift the misery that had engulfed Helen, filled her with eager expectation.
“At the very least, my heart’s love,” I said, “you will know a few hours of civilized conversation and gracious charm. Is that not worth the frowns of your husband’s kinsmen?”
“Yes!” she answered. “Yes, it is!”
Thus Helen became determined to at least cast her eyes on this charming visitor, desperate for some way to break the monotony of life in wretched Sparta. I learned from the servants that Paris went riding every morning. A woman did not ride in Sparta, not even the queen was allowed to. But I arranged to have Helen walking by the stables—well escorted, of course, by myself and a handful of young, chattering Spartan ladies—as noble Paris returned from his morning’s canter.
He and six of his Trojan guards rode into the stable grounds, past the open gate, their horses neighing and stamping up dust from the bare earth. The horses were well-lathered, I saw. Paris must have ridden them hard. I saw Helen shiver despite the warm morning sunlight. She told me later that at that instant Aphrodite sent a vision into her mind of what it would be like to have him riding her, to bear his weight upon her body.
Standing at the far end of the dusty ground that fronted the stables, with me close beside her, Helen forgot the smells of the horses and dung, forgot the stares of the stable hands at the sight of their queen, forgot even the cooing and whispering of her escorting ladies. All at the sight of Paris, prince of Troy.
He was stunning. Young, clean-shaven, with dark eyes that sparkled at Helen as soon as he caught sight of her. His midnight-black hair had been tousled carelessly by the wind. His shoulders and torso seemed slim, yet his legs, bare below the hem of his tunic, were strong and graceful. The tunic itself was a work of art, beautifully embroidered and shaped to his form.
He slid off the sweaty horse and walked straight to Helen, ignoring the grooms and his own men who had ridden with him and were now dismounting.
Dropping to one knee before her, Paris said, “You must be golden-haired Helen, Queen of Sparta. I have heard that you are the most beautiful woman in the world and now I can see that it is true.”
Had he not been a royal visitor and under the protection of not only the rules of hospitality but the power of distant Troy, Menalaos’ kinsmen would have whipped him out of the palace and sent him on his way home. But
