“My husband sent for us,” said Clytemnestra. “He said that you wanted to marry my daughter.”
“Why would I tell him that? I’ve never even seen her.”
For a long moment, mother fell silent. (My head, ringing with emptiness, the sound of forgotten memories.)
“You’ll forgive me if I sound skeptical,” she said at last, “but either you are mistaken, or my husband is lying. What should a loyal wife believe?”
Achilles’s eyes hardened like metal.
Before Achilles could speak, the slave Iamas pushed himself between the two of them. He turned toward Clytemnestra, panting, his face red with exertion.
Mother snapped, “What do you want?”
Iamas told them your plans. He revealed how the armies had delayed in the harbor, waiting for a wind. He told of how the goddess had demanded a sacrifice, and how the wedding was a ruse designed to lure us to my death.
All around us, the air was as still and expectant as a held breath. (Me, in my bed, forgetting green and figs and wool.)
“Tomorrow,” Iamas said, “They will do it tomorrow at dawn.”
My imagination caught on the moment when you forged your plan with Menelaus, Odysseus, and Calchas. My mind had become a scatter of half-forgotten fragments. Tatters of old memories hung in the places of things I could not recall. I couldn’t remember Menelaus’s face, so I saw my mother’s instead, wearing the beard you had when I was younger, black through and through. A restless Achilles paced as Odysseus, sandals of gold kicking up dust as he paced the fog-filled copse. Calchas wore a thin linen robe instead of priestly raiment. He turned to you, and it was Helen’s mouth sneering around his demands, her indigo eyes filled with visions of my blood.
Will you sacrifice your daughter?
I will.
Was your voice loud and resonant? Did mother-Menelaus clap you on the back? Achilles-Odysseus would have spoken with grudging respect, a flicker of admiration in his chary eyes. “You’re a callous son of a bitch,” he’d have said, “but you do what must be done.”
Did you sink your head and whisper? Did Helen-Calchas crane her shapely neck to hear you, the red ribbons on her headband fluttering over her ear?
“Tomorrow,” Iamas said. “They will do it tomorrow at dawn.”
He knelt before Clytemnestra.
“I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you. A slave owes his loyalty to his master, but he owes his loyalty to his mistress, too. I came to Mycenae with your dowry. I was a young man then. I’ve always been yours.”
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” mother pleaded. “We could have ridden back to Mycenae. Agamemnon would never have known.”
“I tried to,” said Iamas. “I am a coward.”
If it was necessary that you kill me, did you have to use a wedding as your ruse? Do you see how cruel it was to promise me all the treasures of womanhood that I would never possess?
Perhaps you thought you were marrying me off, after all, one way or another. As I if were Persephone, spending my youth on the arm of Hades. But there will be no spring for me.
Orestes struggled and cried in my arms. He could hear his mother. He reached for her voice. The sounds of Clytemnestra’s weeping carried on the air, tiny pitiful sobs.
As for me, I felt airy, as if I were standing on the top of the limestone cliffs that surround Aulis harbor like the broken half of a bowl. Betrayal forced all our hearts to skip a beat, but mother and Orestes could still cry.
Parts of me were already gone. I knew there was no turning back.
“Tomorrow,” Iamas said. “They will do it tomorrow at dawn.”
Mother’s grip was painful on my arm. “Come on,” she said, dragging me out of the tent. Orestes screamed as we went. It was the sound I would have made if I could have.
Achilles saw my unprotected face. He shielded his eyes (dark and chary, above a beard like adolescent scrub) with his sword arm. “Does the girl have to be here?”
“My husband has made fools of us all,” said Clytemnestra. “He tricked me and used your name to do it. People will think you find it amusing to lure young girls to their deaths.”
Achilles paced angrily. Iamas flinched each time Achilles’s sword clanked against his armor. “He had no right to use my name.”
“You could make them stop this. They will listen to you. You’re a hero. If you tell them to stop, they’ll have to take heed.”
Achilles halted. “You want me to tell Agamemnon to stop the sacrifice?”
“For the sake of your reputation!”
“But how will we get to Troy?”
Mother approached him. At once, the stern and proper woman I had known all my life vanished (Helen arraying herself on the bench, the folds of her garment decorating her languorous body). She became a softer, reticent figure, her eyes averted, her hands gentle and hesitant as they lifted her hem to show her plump calves. Her fingers fastened on the laces of Achilles’s breastplate. Her lips moved near his neck, so close that her breath stirred the fine golden hair on his nape.
“You’ll find a way,” she murmured in his ear.
Achilles stayed silent. Mother lowered herself to her knees. She stared up at him, coy and alluring, through lowered lashes. Soft brown curls escaped from her braids to soften the angles of her face. Her breasts rose and fell with her breath.
“Do you want me to beg?” she asked. “My daughter and I are helpless. We have no choice but to implore you. Help us.”
Achilles stepped back, repelled by her need. Mother held out her hands, her wrists upturned in supplication. (“My sister was born from an egg. I was born the normal way.”)
“Do you want my daughter to beg instead? She will! She’s always been virtuous, but what good will her honor do when they send her virgin to her grave?”
There was desire in Achilles’s eyes. It was not for nothing that my mother was Helen’s sister. But Achilles’s gaze was hard and disdainful, too. For my mother was Helen’s sister, and Helen was the whore who ran from Menelaus.
“Your daughter need not debase herself on my account. I will settle the matter of my honor with Agamemnon-”
Mother clasped her hands in gratitude. Achilles held out his hand to silence her.
“I will settle the matter of my honor with Agamemnon. And then we will sail to Troy.”
For the first time, Achilles’s gaze came to rest on me. His eyes searched my face. I wondered what he saw there. I knew that I was not ugly. I thought, perhaps, in different circumstances he might have chosen to save a helpless woman with my youthful complexion and night-dark eyes. But to stir him that day, I would have had to be even more beautiful than Helen. Her beauty had gathered a thousand ships in the harbor. It would take something even greater to convince them to sail home without their war.