They left, taking each her own road.
That same evening Menelaus met in his palace with old Hippasus, who had once been the lawagetas at Mycenae, head of the army under the Atreid king. His sons had brought him there in secret, disguised as a farmer on a hay cart.
The king approached him and clasped the old man tightly to his chest. Hippasus ran his hands over the king’s face. ‘The war has left its mark on you, my king,’ he said. ‘Where have the days gone when I would take you and your brother on my chariot to hunt boar in Arcadia?’
‘Those days are long gone, my old friend,’ said the king with moist eyes, stroking the old man’s thin white hair. ‘Days that will never come again. But tell me the reason for your visit. You certainly haven’t come all this way in disguise just to welcome me back.’
He ordered the servants to bring a seat and a stool, and told the maidservants to wash his guest’s feet. The old man sat down, while his sons remained standing behind him. There were four of them, big men all, with wide shoulders and powerful arms. The old man let the women wash his feet in a large basin filled with hot water.
‘I have come to bring you unhappy news. Your brother Agamemnon. .’
‘I know. He’s been killed.’
‘Murdered in his own palace by Queen Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus; he is a monster, generated by incest. His father and his grandfather are the same person.’
The king bowed his head: ‘Much horror has gathered around our family. The house of a king is always a house of blood, but we must nonetheless do what must be done.’
‘How did you learn of Agamemnon’s death?’
‘It’s difficult to explain. I visited an oracle in the land of Egypt, where I saw, like in a dream, his body butchered and his funeral mask rise like a bloody moon behind the tower of the chasm. When I landed here and did not see him come to greet me, I understood that my dream was the truth.’
‘Diomedes is gone as well. They say that he was killed in a trap set for him by his wife Aigialeia, but no one knows where he is buried. Some say that he escaped with his fleet and took on the winter sea. Idomeneus was driven away from Crete and we know nothing of Ulysses.’
‘I am alone,’ said the king, and he spoke with a deep, low voice, laden with sadness.
‘Not all is lost. Your brother’s children, Prince Orestes and Princess Electra, are safe. Electra lives in the palace but never leaves her rooms except to pay homage to her father’s tomb. Orestes is in Phocis with your sister Anaxibia: I had him brought there myself, by one of my sons. Now that you have returned, you must put him back on his father’s throne. King Nestor of Pylus will surely give you his help.’
‘I know,’ replied Menelaus, ‘but it will be another bloodbath. How can I ask my people to begin another war? Another endless siege? The walls of Mycenae are unassailable. Tiryns could only be taken by the Giants. Certainly Aigialeia and Clytemnestra have joined to see their plot brought to completion.’
‘We will help you from the inside,’ said Hippasus. ‘Many are still faithful to the Atreid dynasty and hate the queen and her lover for the atrocities they have committed.’
Menelaus remained silent in thought as the maidservants brought more seats and prepared the tables before each one of them. Hippasus’s four sons sat and, as soon as the meal was served, reached out and devoured the large pieces of meat on the trays.
‘Only if it becomes inevitable,’ said the king finally. ‘Blood disgusts me.’
Several days later, a legation from Queen Clytemnestra arrived to pay her respects to King Menelaus and invite him to Mycenae, but the envoys were told that the king was ill. He lay in his bed, seized by fever; the queen was at his side, wetting his dry lips with cool water. Machaon, the healer who had so often cured him in the fields of Ilium, was dead, slain by the sword of Euripylus. His brother Podalirius, no less gifted in the medical arts, had been lost on their return voyage. All trusted that the gods would come to the king’s aid. As soon as the king was better, he would certainly go to Mycenae to meet with his sister-in-law and immolate a sacrifice on Agamemnon’s tomb.
The envoys waited several days to see if there was any improvement, to no avail. They only caught a glimpse of Queen Helen as she celebrated a sacrifice to speed Menelaus’s recovery. They were so close that they could see the small mole on her right shoulder and smell the heavenly scent of her skin as she passed.
When the head of the delegation reported this news to Clytemnestra, the queen seemed anxious: ‘There was something strange about her when I met her at Nemea. She always spoke softly, and stayed in the shadows.’
‘I don’t know why you say that, my queen,’ replied the man. ‘I saw her very closely, in broad daylight. Years and years have passed, but she is as beautiful as ever. Her skin still has the fragrance of violets, her voice is as sweet and harmonious as when she was a young maiden, when the Achaean kings were contending her hand.’
Clytemnestra asked no more, and was satisfied with the news she had received. The king’s illness was doubtless the result of her poison. Helen was loyal to their cause.
Another month passed, and the news from Sparta was still more comforting: she was told that an artist had been called to the palace to make a mould of the king’s face in damp clay and prepare his funeral mask. The great moment was close.
But the artist who made the mould of Menelaus’s face would have been in no hurry to complete his work had he seen how quickly the king had leapt from his bed afterwards, stealthily gone down to the stables and had his fastest chariot prepared for him. His head covered by a hood, he stepped aboard alongside the charioteer and nodded for him to lash the horses.
Three days later they passed the Peloponnesian isthmus at night, so as not to be seen, and continued for a week until they reached Boeotia and the shores of Lake Copais. On an island at its centre rose the impregnable fortress of Arne. The armed sentinels standing guard were astonished to see a tawny-haired warrior descend from the boat; the herald announced him as Menelaus the Atreid, king of Sparta, shepherd of peoples. Soon thereafter Queen Anaxibia was awakened in the deep of night and accompanied to the throne room. The king stood still as a statue in the centre of the room, his long red hair tied at the nape of his neck with a leather string; he spun around at the sound of her steps. They fell into each other’s arms and wept without saying a word in the middle of that large deserted room. They shed bitter tears, thinking of the childhood they had spent together, of the adolescent dreams of love they had confided in each other, of the memories of happy times and of their long separation, of the never-ending years of the Trojan war.
When they had given vent to their feelings, Menelaus looked at her as if he could not believe his eyes. ‘Beloved sister,’ he said, running the tip of his finger over a tear on her cheek. ‘Only you remain in this hostile land. I have come to ask for your help.’ A sudden gust of wind swept the hall from the windows open on to the courtyard. Menelaus’s black cloak swelled for a moment and fell again, swaying, to his ankles.
‘No,’ said Anaxibia. ‘I’m not the only one left. Sit down. Wait,’ and she motioned to a handmaiden who had risen from her bed to do her queen’s bidding. The woman moved off.
‘What is your plan? You surely know of the death of our brother. .’ The woman was back already, standing at the threshold of the door. With her was a youth of perhaps seventeen. He wore naught but a sheet around his bare shoulders. A golden down covered his cheeks and a cascade of blond hair lit up his face. His hair was so blond it seemed nearly white but his eyes were pitch black. Queen Anaxibia held out her hands to him, and kissed him on the forehead and eyes, then, indicating the guest, said: ‘This is your uncle Menelaus. We thought he was dead, but he has returned. He has just arrived from Sparta.’