Helen of Troy (108 page)

“It is over, Helen,” Menelaus said. “It is finally over.”

Yes, everything was over. I looked at him, seeing an old man where once an eager strong suitor had stood. But what did he see when he looked at me? Something equally fallen.

“Is it, then?” I asked, thinking he meant our story.

“Yes,” he said. “The curse on the two houses ends now. Hermione is innocent of it, and Orestes has paid its dues, laid it to rest. Think of it—our grandchildren can be ordinary people. No curses, no half gods, no prophecies. How I envy them!”

“They will have a freedom we did not have,” I admitted. But the glory would have fled.

We gave Hermione to Orestes, performing all the rites. She was happy, delivered from her house of widowhood and bleakness. She had always fancied him, she confided to me (confided to me! what an unlooked-for gift she bestowed in that intimacy, little knowing what it meant to me), ever since they were children.

“Some things come out right,” I told her. “Sometimes we are given our fondest desires.”

They had a son, Tisamenus. Hermione asked me to attend her, and I did, joyously, although a midwife was nearby. I held my grandson in my arms even before his mother, gazing on his wrinkled red face and giving thanks for the dull years that had allowed me to be with Hermione and had placed her son in my embrace. A marriage, a birth: things I thought the horror of war had vanquished forever, now quietly resumed.

“He will not be a hero,” she said, cradling him. “He will not be called to walk in high places, but merely to do his duty in the ordinary way of mortals.” She looked at me. “Mother, can you be content with this?”

I leaned forward and stroked her hair, a gesture she rarely permitted me. But this was a precious moment. “I have had enough of heroes,” I assured her. “Tisamenus will have a better life without treading in that realm.”

Menelaus stepped into the chamber. “The age of heroes is over,” he said. “And I, for one, do not mourn its passing.”

Hermione looked up at him, her face full of compassion. “Father, trying to be a hero almost cost you your life, and deprived me of a father.”

“All those heroes,” he said dreamily. “All gone. We, not quite so heroic, are here to behold the sun.” He bent to look at Tisamenus’s face. “I can wish no better fortune for you. My grandson, do not be a hero.”

The age of heroes had truly passed, and Tisamenus could not be one even if he burned for it. A great bronze wall had been erected around those old heroes, it descended from the sky, and no one could lift it or trespass there. Each age bestowed its own glory, but the age of my grandson could not be the age of Menelaus.

The war at Troy seemed to grow in song, poetry, and story all the while. As it faded from living memory, it grew larger and larger. Men claimed descent from one or the other of the heroes, or, failing that, anyone who had fought in the war, which now assumed the stature of a clash between the gods and the titans.

Were you at Troy?
assumed the solemnity of an oath, and
Where were you
when the Trojan War was fought?
became a condemnation if the answer was,
Elsewhere
.

Troy, Troy. The world was in love with the Trojan War, now that it was safely over.

LXXVIII

T
here were fewer and fewer veterans of that war still alive. We saw them seldom. Once or twice Idomeneus came visiting, as did two of Nestor’s sons. Old Nestor had returned safely and taken up the reins of kingship smoothly, but others were not so fortunate. Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, now a grown man, had stopped in Sparta once to inquire about his still-missing father, who later returned to find Ithaca in a mess. Diomedes, as far as anyone knew, was ruling in Argos. But news did not reach over our mountains easily, and increasing banditry on the roads cut traveling drastically. Our world shrank, cupped in by our mountain ranges, neglected roads, fallen bridges. The more isolated we became, the more people wanted the tales of the Trojan War, when the Greeks had mounted their glorious overseas expedition. It was balm to those who could not travel even within Greece. The Trojan War was supposed to enrich the Greeks, but they were now more impoverished than ever. Who had been served by the shining piles of booty on the beach?

Hermione appeared content with her life, and Orestes doted on her. He had seemingly been cured of all the wildness, the madness that had seized him, and appeared sunnily placid. He trotted about after Menelaus, observing his duties and behavior as king, knowing that he would follow him. The two royal houses had united forever, binding their curses in the past, where they could not spill out to taint the future. Their little son Tisamenus showed flashes of his other grandmother, and in him I felt Clytemnestra and I were clasping hands once again. That this great peace could have grown from the bloody stalk of Mycenae was a miracle.

Just as was the peaceful existence of Menelaus and myself, passing quietly in the palace.

Menelaus still enjoyed hunting and he liked to take his grooms with him, as well as Orestes and little Tisamenus. He said he wanted the boy never to remember a time when he had not known how to hunt. If only my brothers were here, how they would have loved to teach him! I tried to speak of them, to keep their memory alive in the family, but it faded relentlessly. Thus do we pass away, slipping out of mind.

It was a high summer’s day when they all set out, packs of hunting dogs yelping and leaping in eager spirits, spears glistening, grooms carrying buckets of extra arrows. Tisamenus had a little hunting cap with imitation boar’s tusks, made of tightly rolled wool, adorning it. His fat little legs would tire soon, and Orestes was prepared to carry him on his shoulders. Menelaus looked stronger and straighter than I had seen him in some time; lately he had taken to stooping and was too eager to sit down, so this was a welcome improvement.

“We’ll be gone a few days,” he said. “We’ll go into the Taygetus foothills, at least, and see what we get.”

In other days I would have gone with them, but now I was just as content to stay behind. I could have kept up, but it would have been an effort, and that would have spoiled it.

How old was I now? It was hard to know, because of the odd passage of time while we were in Troy, but I must be over sixty. I did not care; I had long ago stopped caring. Still, sometimes it was a shock to remember it.

They were not gone three days, but at twilight of the second, a mournful procession mounted the hill up to the palace in the twilight. I could see that they were carrying something, very carefully; it was not a stag slung carelessly and proudly from a pole. No, this thing was contained in a blanket, laid straight in a makeshift litter.

I flew like I had in the maidens’ race all those years ago, as fleet as that lost girl. I knew it was Menelaus, and when I saw him lying there, staring up, I hated my gift for knowing.

“Poisonous serpent,” said Orestes. “He stepped on it.” He pulled back the cover and showed the swollen ankle with its angry red fingers streaking upward.

Menelaus’s face was rigid, but his eyes moved back and forth with fear.
Helen
. . . he tried to say, but his lips seemed locked.

I took his hand and squeezed it. “Do not talk,” I said. “Save your strength. We have antidotes . . .” But did we? Oh, if only Gelanor were here. Gelanor. I still missed him, still mourned his loss. He would know what to do. I sent a slave for our own physician and for medicines. Attendants carried Menelaus to the bedchamber and laid him gently on the bed. I covered him with our finest wool blanket, as if that would save him.

Helen
. . . he kept trying to say.

Hermione came running up the stairs. “Father!” she cried. She embraced him, laid her head down on his chest. She did not cry, lest it upset him. But later the physician pulled her aside and shook his head. Little Tisamenus tried to climb up on the bed and Hermione had to pick him up and take him off.

I stood in the corner, biting my fist. I had had no premonition of this. Their hunting trip seemed innocent enough. My special sight did not reveal all things to me, just some things. What good was it, then, if such a big thing slipped in undetected?

I was trembling. I thought I was past all that, past caring, no matter what happened. But I was wrong. Menelaus was dying and I was infinitely sad. I, who years ago had railed at his very existence, now grieved at what one careless step had brought him to.

No one can live forever. We know that, and we also know that some deaths are better than others, but often our deaths come in ways that seem to have no part of us. Menelaus, the warrior, should have died on a battlefield, not in bed of a snakebite in his seventies. So many in our family had died at their own, or their children’s, hands. Such a quiet death for Menelaus. But then, he had always been the quiet one.

The antidote and ointment did no good, as I knew they would not. As full night fell, I pulled a stool up to sit by his side, and Hermione sat on the other side. His restless eyes kept flicking from one of us to the other, and he looked both frightened and resigned at the same time. He kept trying to speak but was unable to get the words out. Both Hermione and I tried to assure him it was not necessary. Still, there seemed to be something he very badly wished to say.

I bent my head down to be as close as possible. “I am listening,” I soothed him.

“Helen,” he whispered, “Forgive me.”

I squeezed his hand. “I think we have long since forgiven one another, have we not? Trouble yourself no more.”

“No . . . I must tell you . . .”

“I know it all, my dear friend.”

“No. I killed your sacred snake. I had him killed, in Troy, because . . . it was the only thing I could do in my hatred. I couldn’t kill Paris, so I killed . . . him. Forgive me. It was cruel. And now he has his revenge. I die by snakebite.”

The beloved household snake, so horribly killed. I would never forget it. “It was you?”

“One of my spies.” He looked plaintively at me. “Say you forgive me. I think”-he sighed-“that is the only deed from the war that I regret. Strange, isn’t it, when so many men were killed, that I lament the death of a snake?”

“He was innocent, and not part of the war, so killing him was a crime.”

“I knew it would frighten and wound you.”

“It did.”

“Say you forgive me, Helen. Please. I must hear it before . . . I go. Before he takes me in retribution.”

“We did many hurtful things to one another, and yet we are not by nature hurtful people. I forgive you, as I hope you forgive me my wrongs toward you.”

“There weren’t any. Except . . . the one.”

Now I smiled. “That is a monumental
except.”
I felt something change in his hand, some heaviness creep across it that was not there before. “Go in peace,” I said. “Go with all forgiveness, and care.”

He relaxed, and even his lips seemed released into a smile. “Yes,” he whispered. He breathed out, but not back in.

Hermione screamed and fell across him. I stepped back and closed his eyes. Might he have peace in his journey.

“My lady, it is time.” Someone was touching my shoulder. “You have slept overlong.”

Troy . . . I had been in Troy . . . The dream . . .

“I know it is difficult, and sad, but you must rouse yourself. Menelaus can be interred but once. And today is that day. My condolences, my lady. Be strong.”

When I wept-but not just for Menelaus-the attendant of the bedchamber put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I know you sorrow for him. But still, you must-”

Yes. I must. And then, after that, I must again do what I must. And I would be strong. I had no fear of that.

There had been a place Menelaus had loved, in those early days of our marriage. It was on a hill high above the Eurotas, looking down upon Sparta and across to the steep mountains. Tumbled stones hinted that once our family’s palace had stood there, and Menelaus had spoken of building another one where we might retreat. It provided magnificent views and, being so high, would be easy to defend. But we had never built it; inertia and familiarity with our old palace had stayed our hands. And after Troy, he had not mentioned it, as if he had put all those old dreams aside. Now he would rest there, in his new palace at last.