Nobody's Princess (3 page)

“Oh, Helen, you clumsy thing!” Clytemnestra shoved me aside and ran down the steps so fast that she tripped, fell, and scraped her nose. She yelped with pain.

I was down the steps in an instant. “You’re bleeding!” I cried, helping her get back onto her feet. “Does it hurt a lot? Do you want some water or—?”

“Leave me alone.” Clytemnestra jerked away from me. “I don’t want anything from
you.
” She swallowed her tears and dashed back up to the altar, my cast-off incense clenched in her fist. She dropped it into the smoldering flames quickly, then turned her scraped, triumphant face to Mother and the priestess and waited to be praised.

“What have you done?”
The old priestess’s squawk of outrage shocked my sister back to the brink of tears.

“I…I only…,” she began, trembling. “Helen dropped the offering, so I—”

“Clytemnestra, what were you thinking?” Mother stepped between my sister and the fuming priestess, her voice unnaturally shrill. “I taught you girls the
proper
way to serve Artemis! Weren’t you listening? Didn’t you know that if an offering touches the ground, it’s no longer fit for the goddess?”

“I’m not the one who dropped it!” Clytemnestra protested, tears streaming down her face. “Helen did that! Why aren’t you yelling at her?”

“Because Helen isn’t behaving like an infant!” Mother was so rattled by the scene we were making in front of the priestess, the maidens, the other women, and Artemis herself that she continued to scold my sister even when her words made no sense.

“But she
did
!” Clytemnestra stamped her foot. “She threw the offering away on purpose! She—”

“Not another word out of you, Clytemnestra,” Mother decreed. “Not
one.
” She called for Ione and commanded her to take my shamed and sobbing sister away. Sometimes even the best parents can be as closed-minded and unreasonable as the gods.

Afterward, as we were returning to the palace citadel, Clytemnestra turned her red-eyed, runny-nosed face to me and said, “It’s not fair!
You
do something wrong and Mama yells at
me
! Just because you’re pretty, you get away with
everything.
I hate you!” Then she tried to slap me, so I pulled her hair, and poor Ione had to get four other servants to pull us apart and cart us off to separate rooms.

They put me in a storeroom where my father’s tallymen kept the bales of sheepskins that were part of the tax payments from our people. I climbed onto a thick pile of fleeces, lay down in comfort, and stared at the ceiling, thinking about what had happened. No matter what else I thought of my sister, she was right: I
had
done something bad at the temple, but I
hadn’t
been punished for it. And even when I did earn punishment for fighting with Clytemnestra, how bad was it? I was more comfortable on those fleeces than in my own bed. Was I just lucky, or was Clytemnestra right? Did things go more easily for me because I was
pretty
?

I’d never thought about it before, even though I’d heard many people say,
What a pretty girl!
when they saw me. It happened whenever guests came to the palace. As soon as our parents presented the four of us to their visitors, the newcomers would praise how big and strong and handsome my brothers were. That made me giggle. Couldn’t they see that Castor was a little cross-eyed and that Polydeuces never took his finger out of his nose except to eat? As for my sister, our guests called her things like
charming,
or
sweet,
or
delightful,
but I—

I was
pretty.
It never failed. One man even said that I was
beautiful,
until his fellow envoy was very quick to say that no one could be beautiful in the palace of Tyndareus except his queen.

Pretty.
What did that mean, really? And was I? I had no way of knowing. I’d caught sight of my reflection in pools of water from time to time, but the image was dark and unclear. I wanted better. My mother owned a mirror that had come all the way from Egypt, but up until that moment I’d never understood why she spent so much time looking into it. I decided that as soon as my punishment was over, I’d sneak into my parents’ sleeping chamber and see what
pretty
looked like.

The sun was halfway down the western sky by the time one of our house slaves let me out of the storeroom. She was a grouchy old thing who didn’t like to waste time talking. When I asked her where my nurse was, she snapped, “How would I know?” before gathering up an armful of fleeces and waddling off.

I was thrilled! If Ione was busy elsewhere, it meant I had the chance to run to my parents’ room and satisfy my curiosity right away. I stole through the corridors of the palace as fast as I could go without drawing attention. Silently I prayed:
O Aphrodite, please let me find Mama’s mirror, and see what I want to see, and get away before anyone catches me!
Who better than the goddess of beauty to help me find out exactly what
pretty
meant?

Aphrodite heard my prayers. I didn’t run into anyone on my way to my parents’ room, the room itself was deserted, and Mother’s mirror was lying out in plain sight on a little table, just waiting for me to snatch it up and stare at my reflection. I was still muttering a hasty
thank you
to the goddess when I heard, “Helen! What do you think you’re doing?” It was my mother. She’d come into the room and stolen up behind me so silently that the unexpected sound of her voice made me jump half out of my skin. I gave a little yip of shock and dropped the mirror. The loud
clang
it made when it hit the painted tiles shook my bones.

“Oh dear.” Mother bent to pick up the mirror while I stood there shamefaced. “It’s all scratched and dented. I’m going to look like I’ve caught the pox. I suppose it’s partly my fault for creeping up on you like that. I was a skilled huntress when I was a girl back in Calydon. You have to walk like a shadow when you’re tracking deer.” She shook her head over the damaged mirror, but she was smiling. “Sweet one, why are you meddling with my things?”

I clasped my hands behind my back and looked away. “I—I wanted to see what I look like.”

“
That
much I could figure out,” she said dryly. “But why now? Seven is much too young to start worrying about if you’re pretty enough to attract a good husband.”

“A what?” My head came up sharply. I stared at my mother as if she’d lost her mind. “I don’t care if I’m pretty
enough
to get a husband! I don’t
want
a husband. When you get married, you have to go away from home. I don’t want to leave you or Father, not
ever.
”

My mother laughed. She laughed so hard that she had to sit down on a carved folding stool. How
could
she? Didn’t she see how upset I was by the idea of having to marry and leave everything I really loved?

When my mother finally caught her breath, she swept me onto her lap and kissed me. “Oh, my precious little girl! Where
do
you get your ideas? First of all, you
will
want a husband one day; that I promise you. But you needn’t be afraid of leaving Sparta. You will stay here. It’s your sister who’ll have to leave when she marries. The two of you shared one birth, but you were the first one to see the light. The midwife tied a red thread around your wrist the instant you were born so that there’d be no mistakes made about your claim to the throne later on. You’re older than Clytemnestra by just enough to make you queen of your father’s land when the time comes.”

“Me?” It was the first I’d heard of
this.

My mother kissed me again. “Yes,
you.
Why are you so surprised? Has no one told you? Not even Ione?”

I shook my head. “I thought—I thought that Castor and Polydeuces would be the kings of Sparta when they grew up.”

“Ah!” My mother nodded. “Well, I can understand why you’d reach that conclusion. You’re too young to know that this land has always been ruled by queens. The only time a king rules is when his mother has no daughters. That’s why Tyndareus is king but why your brothers won’t be.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my hands, clasped quietly in my lap. I had come stealing into my parents’ bedchamber just to see my face, and all at once I was staring at my future. Queen of Sparta! “Will Castor and Polydeuces mind that they’re not kings and I’m queen?” I asked, suddenly feeling very sorry for my brothers.

My mother brushed away my fears like summer flies. “Castor and Polydeuces will be fine. They might not be the next kings of Sparta, but they’ll have no trouble making great names for themselves in this world. I have faith in my boys. And don’t you worry, my dearest one: Whether or not you’re their queen, they’ll always love you. How could anyone not love you, little Helen? You’re such a beautiful child.”

So there we were again. I could claim a kingdom, cause a scene at a shrine, refuse to sacrifice to a goddess, and get away with it all. My life would always be easy and pleasant because no matter what I did, everything would be forgiven, forgotten, laughed away because I was pretty. No, I was better than pretty. I was
beautiful.

I had no reason to doubt that this was true.

I got off my mother’s lap and picked up the mirror again. The face that looked back was certainly different from Clytemnestra’s. The cheeks were rosier, the chin more rounded, the lips fuller and more clearly shaped, the teeth brighter when I smiled. Our hair was the same color, but mine was shinier, and my eyes were the deep, striking blue of ripe grapes, while hers were ordinary brown. Did all of those small differences add up to beauty? I frowned at my reflection, puzzled. Though it was the first time I’d seen my face so clearly—even a dented mirror shows you a better image than a pool of water—I felt as if I’d seen such a face somewhere else.

Then it hit me—my brother Polydeuces! My face was a younger, softer version of his. Even our hair was the same in style as well as color, since in Sparta the nobly born men as well as the women wore their hair in long curls as far down their backs as it would grow. Polydeuces and I looked remarkably similar, but no one ever called
him
beautiful.

It was all very confusing. I needed to think about it. Very solemnly, I gave the mirror back to my mother and went to my own room.

Ione was there, spreading a new blanket on my bed. It was dyed the color of ripe barley, and one of my mother’s maids had embroidered the corners with bunches of red grapes. There was no fine new blanket for Clytemnestra’s bed. The way I saw it, I’d received this new gift as one more reward for being beautiful. I wondered if Polydeuces would be getting a new blanket too.

“What have you been up to?” Ione said, frowning. “Your sister is in the courtyard, working with her spindle. She was starting on her third skein of yarn when I left her. Go get yours and—”

“Ione,” I cut in. “Why am I so much prettier than Clytemnestra?”

My nurse gaped at me. “My poor little lamb, has the sun cooked your brains? What a thing to say!”

“I’m serious,” I insisted. “I know I’m prettier than she is. I’m beautiful. The queen herself said so. And it’s all right for me to say it too, because I’m going to be queen myself someday. I just want to know
why
I’m prettier than she is, that’s all.”

“
There’s
a fine question,” Ione snorted. “I thank the gods that I’ll be dead long before you rule this land, if that’s a sample of your wisdom, O Queen.”

“Don’t make fun of me!” I cried. My head was still full of the new, dizzying awareness of power, the power of being beautiful. Even my sister said I was treated better than she was because of it. Yet here was Ione—Ione who always gave me my favorite foods, who made me dolls, who adorned my new clothes with embroidery and mended my old ones with care, who watched over me when I was sick—here she was, defying me! Teasing me! Was she blind? Didn’t she understand that I deserved to be treated better than anyone else because I was beautiful? It was infuriating.

“Ione, if you don’t answer my question I’ll—I’ll—” I tried to think of something to say that would make this stubborn grown-up take me seriously. Then I remembered what Father’s palace manager always said to bring contrary slaves and servants back into line. If it worked for him—

“—I’ll have you whipped!”

“I live in mortal terror of your wrath,” Ione said, her face unreadable. “Far be it from
me
to keep you from learning the truth. You’re more beautiful than your sister or any woman alive because you’re not the daughter of a mere mortal like Lord Tyndareus. You must be the child of a god, of Zeus himself, master of the thunderbolt. There, is
that
good enough for you?”

“You are still making fun of me!” I shouted. “I
will
have you punished for that!”

“By all means,
try,
O Queen,” she said, with a wry smile. “But first I’m going to show you a great marvel, in honor of your true father.” Without warning she grabbed me by the belt of my tunic, sat down on my bed, hauled me across her knees, and declared: “I’m going to make it rain.”

         
2
         

A GIRL’S PLACE

She
spanked
me! It didn’t hurt all that much, but the humiliation was horrible. Ione loved me, cared for me, looked after me when Mother was busy, and yet she’d done
that
to me? I loved her with all my heart, but after she finished my punishment and left me alone with my thoughts, those thoughts were murderous. How
dare
she? I cried out my indignation facedown on my bed.

“Helen? Are you all right?” My brother Polydeuces stuck his head around one side of the doorway and peered into my room. “Some of the slaves heard you howling, so they raised an alarm. By the time things quieted down again, Ione was explaining to Mother why she spanked you.”

“What did Mama do to
her
when she found out?” I asked eagerly. I was still smarting with embarrassment, and I wanted Ione to suffer for it too, just a little.

“Nothing,” Polydeuces replied. “Mother was surprised when Ione told her she’d never spanked you before, that’s all.”

I groaned and buried my face in my arms. I felt the bed sag as my brother sat down beside me and patted me on the back in sympathy.

“Don’t cry, Helen,” he said. “It’s happened to all of us. Well, not to Clytemnestra. She’s
perfect.
” I looked up in time to see his lips curl. “Perfect at not getting caught.”

“I’m not crying,” I said. “I’m mad. She spanked me for
no reason.
I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That happens a lot,” Polydeuces said. Was that a snicker? “So, what set her off?”

“Nothing,” I maintained. And I told him exactly what had happened between Ione and me so he’d understand the vastness of the injustice I’d suffered.

When I was done, he was silent. Then he let out a long, slow whistle and said, “You threatened her with a
whipping
? Little sister, when Ione comes back, you’d better get down on your knees and thank her for not telling Mother about that.”

“Why should I thank her for anything?” I grumped.

“Because if Mother ever hears that you showed Ione that much disrespect, she’ll spank you herself.”

“Oh.” I propped myself up on my elbows and leaned my chin on my hands. Now that the first shock of my punishment had faded, I realized what a little monster I’d been to my devoted nurse. What was the point of being beautiful if my actions were ugly and mean?

I looked earnestly at my brother. “Am I pretty, Polydeuces?”

“Huh? Where did that come from?” he asked, taken by surprise.

“Lots of people say I am, even Mama. Clytemnestra says I get treated better because of it, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to Ione. She spanked me anyway, and she’s slapped me, and—”

“Ione changed your dirty diapers. How pretty were you then?” Polydeuces grinned. “She loves you, Helen, and she doesn’t want you to grow up vain and spoiled, believing you can do or say whatever you like just because you’re pretty. Even if you were as beautiful as Aphrodite, you still wouldn’t get everything your own way.”

“I don’t
want
to get everything my own way,” I told him. “I just want—I want—”

What
did
I want? I’d never thought about it before. I knew that I hadn’t wanted to worship Artemis, but Mother made me go to the temple anyway. I’d told her that I wouldn’t want a husband, not ever, but she’d acted like I couldn’t decide such things for myself.

Polydeuces was gazing at me, waiting for me to finish my sentence. If I said,
I just want to be free,
would he know what I really meant? Or would he say,
You’re
already
free, silly. You’re not a slave, right?

I wasn’t a slave, but as much as I hated carding and spinning and weaving wool, Ione and Mother forced me to spend day after day learning how to do it. What they said was: “This is what all women do, even queens,” but what I heard was:
This is all that women
can
do, and even queens have no choice about it.
Was that being free?

Clytemnestra wasn’t a slave, but when she was old enough she’d be married off and sent away to live with her husband. Would she get to choose him, or would she simply be told,
This is the man you’re going to marry,
the same way that Ione told us,
This is the dress you’re going to wear today
? Was
that
being free?

I sat up. I knew what I wanted. “I just want to say yes or no about my own life,” I said. “Always.”

“You can
say
yes or no all you want right now, little sister. The trick is getting other people to pay attention.” Polydeuces gave one of my curls a playful tug. “You’re pretty…for a toad”—his smile said he was only joking—“but even Aphrodite herself has to obey Zeus’s commands. Now, if she could get her hands on a bundle of his thunderbolts—well, if she
could,
not even Zeus would dare tell her what to do. Of course, that won’t happen. Aphrodite’s happy with the way things are. She’d rather sip nectar all day than have thunderbolt target practice make her hands rougher than mine.”

Polydeuces held out his palms so that I could see the calluses. “That’s from all the time I’ve spent learning to fight,” he told me proudly. “Castor’s hands aren’t half as tough as mine—our teacher Glaucus said so. That reminds me—” He stood up. “I’ve got to go help Castor rewrap the hilts on our practice swords with rawhide. If we don’t, Glaucus will knock them out of our hands tomorrow.”

I grabbed his wrist as he started for the door. “If I help you rewrap your swords, will you let me hold one?” A new idea had taken fire in my mind, a fire kindled by my brother’s light words about Aphrodite:
If she could get her hands on a bundle of his thunderbolts, not even Zeus would dare tell her what to do.
“Will you teach me how to use it too?” I persisted. “Please?”

Polydeuces stared at me as if I’d grown fins and scales. “Why would you want to do that? Swords are for warriors, not little girls.”

“Why can’t I be both?” I countered. “I’m just as old as you were when you and Castor first started learning how to fight.”

“How hard
did
Ione spank you? I think she rattled your brains.” Polydeuces shook his head and tried a second time to walk out of my room.

I ran after him, seized his arm with both hands, and refused to let him go. “Why
can’t
I learn the same things you and Castor do?” I demanded. “Why can’t you let me
try
?”

“I’ll tell you what, little sister,” Polydeuces replied, pulling his arm free. “You can learn from me just as soon as you can”—he took off like a rabbit, sprinting out of my room and down the hall, calling back over his shoulder—
“catch me!”

I tried. I ran as fast as I could, even though I knew I’d be in a lot of fresh trouble if Ione came back to the room and found me gone. I didn’t care. Suddenly I knew what I had to do if I was going to have the life I wanted for myself, a life in which
I
was the one who said yes or no, the one who made her own choices.

It was a useless race, one that I lost. Polydeuces had longer legs, and they weren’t all tangled up in a dress. He’d also had a lot more practice running; it was part of his warrior’s training, along with swordplay, spear-throwing, archery, horse-taming, and racing chariots over the worst terrain.

By the time I gave up trying to catch him and went trailing back to my room, I knew three things:

Even if I was pretty, it wasn’t going to be enough to bring me the life I wanted: one where I was free to make choices that mattered, one where people listened to what I had to say.

Aphrodite had the beauty; Zeus had the thunderbolts. Everyone loved Aphrodite, but everyone
listened
to Zeus.

I’d never get my hands on a thunderbolt, so if I wanted to be free, I’d better find a way to get my hands on the next best thing: a sword.

Polydeuces said he’d teach me how to use a sword if I could run fast enough to catch him. I didn’t really believe he meant that, but he did make me realize that one of the first things a warrior must know is how to
run.

Not run
away
—a Spartan would sooner die—just run. Even I knew that a fighter needed strong legs as well as strong arms. When the poets performed in our great hall, I loved to hear them sing about how famous heroes outraced the wind to reach the thick of battle.

No one can run in a dress, so the first thing I did was “borrow” a short tunic from my brother Castor. If my brothers hadn’t been too big for a nursemaid, Ione would have turned that shabby old thing into cleaning rags long ago. Castor didn’t pay attention to how his clothes looked, or even to where his clothes were. I was thankful for that.

Once I had the tunic, I tied my hair back the way my brothers did when they had their lessons with Glaucus. They called it a “club,” because that’s what it looked like hanging down the nape of the neck after they’d twisted up the long, thick strands. I’d never had to do anything with my own hair—Ione always washed and combed it for me—so it took a lot of work until I managed to do it.

Then it was only a matter of waiting for a time when I knew Ione would be busy elsewhere in the palace long enough for me to slip away. I waited until one of our countless small household crises popped up—in a household the size of our palace, they always did—and I had my chance.

I pulled on the tunic, rubbed a little dirt on my face, then said a quick prayer to Aphrodite.
Great goddess, Ione says that love makes people see things that aren’t really there. If anyone notices me today, please let them think they’re seeing my brother Polydeuces.

And then I ran. I ran without sandals, even though it hurt, because the songs said that was how real warriors ran. As I dashed out through the palace gates, I heard one of our guards call out behind me, “Good day to you, young prince! The gods bless you,” and I thanked Aphrodite for having heard my prayer.

From that day on, I ran whenever I had the chance, and the years ran with me. The hardest part was getting away from Ione and from all the times I was supposed to be with my sister and the other women, turning fleece into thread, thread into cloth, cloth into clothing. Before, I’d only disliked those chores because they were so tedious. Now they were obstacles that kept me from doing what I really loved, and I hated them passionately. I ran my best whenever I imagined that every stride was putting more distance between me and the carding combs, the spindle, and the loom.

On my tenth birthday, I was running across a field not far from the palace when a hare broke from cover in front of me and took flight.

You can learn from me just as soon as you can catch me!

I don’t know why I heard Polydeuces’s long-ago taunt at that moment. I only knew that the gods themselves had thrown a challenge my way, and I meant to accept it. Without breaking stride, I veered sharply and ran after the hare. The wind tasted sweet as my shadow flew across the grass. The hare ran, he leaped, he zigzagged wildly, but I matched him every time, move for move, until at last he slowed his pace. That was when I paused, bent my knees, and with a mighty leap flung myself onto the creature.

A moment later the hare was racing off, unharmed, and I was standing in the middle of the field holding a tuft of fur from his tail and shouting triumphantly at the sun, “
Got
you, Polydeuces!” Then I toppled backward into the meadow and watched the sky spin crazily above me as I gasped for breath and grinned.

When I recovered from my mad race, I felt ready to take every last
You can’t!
that the world wanted to throw at me and turn it into
Oh yes I can!

It was time for me to learn how to do more than run.

I got back on my feet and looked across the field to a grove of olive trees, their silver-green leaves fluttering in the breeze. The palace citadel lay in that direction, and so did the narrow strip of open ground where Glaucus gave my brothers their daily training lessons.

If Polydeuces was so dead set against girls learning the ways of sword and spear, I was certain that his teacher would be even more unreasonable about sharing his lessons. Well, the hare hadn’t wanted to give me the little tuft of fur that was now my prized trophy, but I’d still managed to take it. Why couldn’t I do the same with those lessons?