I began another song. Mother put her hand over my mouth. “He’s already asleep, Iphigenia. Give our ears a rest.”
She released me, and I turned to regard her. Through the fog of my dissipating mind, I knew there were things I needed her to tell me.
I couldn’t ask the questions I didn’t remember so I asked the questions I did remember.
“What is it like to be married? Will I have to live with Achilles’s family while he fights in Troy? Can I go to live with father in the army camp instead? How long will the fighting last? Is Achilles a good man? When Orestes is grown and becomes king of Mycenae, will you come to live with me so that I can take care of you as you’ve cared for me?”
Clytemnestra let me ask questions until my words ran out. The wind had spoiled her elaborate braids, and the dust emphasized the lines of her face, making her look weary. Her eyes were wet and red.
“Every marriage is its own,” she said. “Achilles will decide where you’re to live, and you’ll wait for him there, as I wait for your father. Achilles is a hero, which is a good judge of a man, although a good man is not always a hero. I’ll visit you when I can, but I’ll never be as happy as I was yesterday, with all my children in my house.”
Mother worried her hands as she spoke. Her knotted knuckles had grown larger in the past few years as her arthritis worsened in proportion to her worry over the crisis whirling around her sister Helen and the scoundrel who abducted her to Troy. Mother wouldn’t have sent a pig into battle for her whore of a sister, but the kings had been called to war by their oaths, and all her men would go. She’d always known she’d be left to raise Orestes without you, but until that morning she’d believed that she would have me with her to share both loneliness and companionship. Now I was supposed to wed a stranger and disappear as completely as if I’d gone to war.
My mother, stern and sentimental, always happiest in that moment after she set things in their designated places: dyes by hue, spices from mild to pungent, children in their proper rooms — easy to assess and admire.
The first thing my mother told me about Helen was, “She is my sister, but not my sister. Zeus fathered her when he was in the shape of a swan. We share the same mother but she was born in an egg. I was born the normal way. Helen distorts the world around her. Never look at her too closely. You’ll go blind.”
I was young when she told me that, still so young that I stretched up for her hand when I wanted to take an unsteady, toddling step. Nevertheless, I still sensed that she had said something important, even though I didn’t understand what it meant.
When Helen came to Mycenae during my ninth summer, I was old enough to walk on my own, but I still didn’t understand the things my mother said about my famous aunt. Helen seemed glamorous and mysterious and unfathomable — like you.
I wove through the maze of the servants’ feet and legs, trying to catch a glimpse of her. Hushed words of praise drifted down, all uttered in the same awed tones, whether the speaker was a slave, a servant, or a hequetai, a man or a woman. They marveled over Helen’s skin like beaten gold; her deep blue eyes the shade of newly fallen night; the smooth swell of her high, brown-tipped breasts.
You were busy with your brother Menelaus, the two of you clapping each other’s shoulders as you exchanged information about recent military encounters. You didn’t even glance at your beautiful sister-in-law, or at the way your wife paced uncomfortably, barking at the slaves to carry out orders they were already rushing to fulfill.
Your men retreated to the megaron to drink and discuss. We women went out to the courtyard. Slaves erected a canopy to shelter us from the sun, and set up benches for us to sit on. Clytemnestra walked among them, shouting that the canopy was hung too low, the benches were in the wrong places, bring more food, bring thicker blankets, and don’t forget to set aside lamps and oil to set out at dusk.
Helen arrayed herself on a bench near the front of the canopy where fresh breezes would reach her first. She arranged her garments fetchingly around her form as she lay down. She brushed her hand through her braids, allowing the breeze to blow through her stray hairs so that she looked tousled and intimate and all the more beautiful. I thought she was very vain to pose like that.
A girl my age nearly collided with me as I stood watching Helen. She gave me a glare, and then turned abruptly away as if I wasn’t worth her time. “Put my bench there,” she directed a slave, pointing to a spot near Helen. I wanted to ask her who she thought she was, but before I got the chance, my mother caught me by the shoulders.
Her grip was harder than normal, her fingernails digging into my skin. “Come sit down,” she said, guiding me to the bench where she sat near Helen.
I sat at Clytemnestra’s feet while she ruffled my hair, and looked up at my aunt. From below, Helen was just as beautiful, but her features looked sharper. Braids coiled around her face like snakes, bound back by a beribboned brass headband that caught the gold flecks in her eyes.
Mother kept a firm grip on my shoulders as if she could keep my mind from straying by holding my body in place. She began a monologue about house keeping, a subject that was impersonal, factual, and utterly under her control. “Next month, we’ll begin drying the fruit stores,” she said. “It was too cold this year for the figs. We lost nearly half our crop. But we’ve traded for nuts that will keep us through the winter.”
“You’re an excellent steward, sister mine,” said Helen, not bothering to disguise her boredom.
“Mother,” interjected the awkward girl who had collided with me earlier. “I found you a perfect one.”
She extended her hand, in which nestled a cube of goat cheese, its corners unbroken. A bemused smile crossed Helen’s face as she looked down at the morsel.
“Thank you,” she said awkwardly, taking the cheese. She rewarded the girl with an uncertain pat on the head.
The girl lay stretched out on the bench, imitating Helen, but to completely different effect. The languorous pose accentuated her skinny, ungainly limbs. Stray tangles poked out of her braids like thistles.
“You’re Hermione? You’re my cousin?” I blurted.
Hermione bristled. Her mother looked down at me with a slow, appraising gaze. “Why, hello,” Helen said. “Are you my niece?”
Clytemnestra’s hand tightened protectively on my shoulder. “This is Iphigenia.”
Helen’s eyes were hot like sunlight on my cheeks. I burned with embarrassment.
“She’ll be a beauty someday,” Helen said to my mother.
Clytemnestra shrugged. “There’s time enough for that.”
Hermione pushed a tray of honeyed figs out of a slave’s hands. It clattered to the ground. “None of those are good enough for my mother!” she shouted.
Helen looked uncertainly at Clytemnestra, and then over at Hermione, and then up at the sky. She gave a sigh. “I don’t know how you do it, Clytemnestra. I was never raised to be a mother. I was only taught to be a wife.”
“Children are just small people, Helen,” mother said. “Albeit, occasionally stupid ones.”
Helen tugged a red ribbon off of her headband and held it out to me. “Here, Iphigenia, would you like this?”
Wordlessly, I accepted. The ribbon was soft and silken and magic with her touch.
“I’d like to talk with you, Iphigenia. Somewhere where other people can’t listen in. Just you and me. If your mother will agree?”
Helen lifted her gaze to Clytemnestra’s face. Mother’s fingers dug into my shoulders.
“Of course,” said mother. “She’s your niece.”
I knew my mother didn’t want me to be alone with Helen. I also knew that I wanted to be near that beauty, that glamour, that heat. I pulled the ribbon taut between my fingers.