I’d never been in Menelaus’s compound before, so I had no idea which door to knock on. After looking around for some time, I noticed a young girl sitting on the steps of one of the huts, grinding corn. She was skinny, with dark shadows under her eyes and an open sore at the corner of her mouth—only too clearly one of the women who scratched a miserable living round the cooking fires. When I asked for directions, she pointed at one of the huts. “You want to see Helen?” she said. And then she spat to clean her mouth after saying the name.
I climbed the steps, waited a few moments—wishing I hadn’t come—and then knocked. My hand was still raised, my mouth open to ask the maid if I could see her mistress, when I saw there was no need. Because there she was. I detected no change in her, none at all. She looked my age—even a little younger, perhaps—though she had a daughter old enough for marriage. Her hair was unbound and so tousled I thought she must just have tumbled out of bed.
“I’m sorry to get you up.”
“You didn’t. I was working.”
I noticed there was a loom in the far corner, with lamps lit all around it. Helen and her weaving. I remembered a cruel story I’d heard when I was a girl. People believed—or at least affected to believe—that whenever she cut a thread in her wool, a man died on the battlefield. I wondered, now, if she’d known that’s what people were saying—and, if so, whether it had frightened her as much as it ought to have done. Every death in the war laid at Helen’s door.
She was staring at me, not stepping aside to allow me into the room. I realized she didn’t recognize me, so I pushed my veil away from my face. “Briseis.”
Instant delight. “Well, look at you!” She caught my hands. “You’re as tall as I am.” She sketched the air between our heads. “And so beautiful. I knew you would be.”
“Then you were the only one. Everybody keeps telling me what an ugly duckling I was.”
She shook her head. “Eyes, cheekbones—you don’t need anything else.”
Said the woman who had everything else. She pulled me towards a chair and sat opposite me. There were two pink spots on her cheeks; she was warm, friendly, excited. There was no doubting the sincerity of her welcome.
“You haven’t changed.”
I meant it as a compliment, I suppose, or a simple observation. Nobody ever really complimented Helen on her looks—what would have been the point? But the words lingered on the air, sounding slightly accusatory. And yes, I did feel that some sign of grief or regret, some external mark, would have been welcome—a few faint lines around the eyes and mouth, perhaps? Would that have been too much to ask? But no, there was nothing.
If there was an edge to my voice, Helen didn’t appear to notice. She was busy mixing wine and pouring it into cups. As she handed one to me, she said, “Pregnancy suits you. Achilles’s child?”
I nodded.
“A great, great man. Menelaus always speaks well of him.”
I didn’t know how to answer that. Obviously, the past had been wiped clean. Helen was Greek again, no longer Helen of Troy—that was over, finished. She’d gone back to being Helen of Argos. Queen of Argos. So many thousands…
I cut the thought off. “I was wondering whether you know what happened to my sister?”
Immediately, Helen’s expression changed. “I saw her that day—she came to the house, we had a cup of wine sitting out in the courtyard, in the shade. She was happy, I think—or as happy as she ever was. And then there was this great outcry, shouting in the streets, I couldn’t think what was going on—the slaves were all running around gabbling something about a horse, so we went outside to see. I knew it was a trap. I know it’s easy to be wise after the event, but I really did know. I felt there was something living inside it, and that could only be men. And Cassandra was there, of course, screaming her head off: Don’t let them in! Until Priam told her to shut up and go home. After it was dark, I went back. I walked all the way round it, singing Greek songs.”
Love songs. I’d been told about this, though there was something strange about the story. Some of the men hadn’t heard her singing at all—Automedon hadn’t; Pyrrhus hadn’t—and even those who did remember her singing could never agree on the song. It was as if every man had heard the song that meant most to him.
“Why?”
“Why did I sing? Oh, I don’t know, I suppose it was a way of…reaching out?”
“You weren’t trying to get them to reveal themselves?”
“No.” She was shaking her head so vigorously she might have been trying to dislodge a wasp that had got caught in her hair. “I wanted to go home.” Her voice broke on the word. Raising her hand, she dabbed the corner of one perfect eye.
“Helen—you could have left at any time.”
“Could I? You’ve no idea how difficult it was.”
Somehow my sister had disappeared from the conversation, but that was Helen all over. I saw something at that moment that I’d never been aware of before. You couldn’t imagine a more feminine woman than Helen nor a more virile man than Achilles, and yet in every way that mattered, they were alike. It was always about them.
“Ianthe,” I said, firmly.
“Oh, yes. I was told—I don’t know if it’s true—she threw herself down a well. Apparently, a lot of women did. There was a whole group of them who used to meet in the temple of Artemis—widows, you know…She did become very religious after her husband was killed. No children, I suppose, nothing to hang on to…A bit of a temple mouse, I’m afraid…” Helen looked at me. “As I say, I don’t know for sure.”
“Well. Better than the slave market, I suppose.”
Because that was the only other possibility. My sister was much older than me, and women nearing the end of their child-bearing years are routinely sent to the slave market—and in many ways it’s a worse fate. Older women can be picked up cheap and worked to death. Why not? You can always buy another. I made my mind up at that moment to believe that Ianthe was dead.
The business of my visit was over, and yet I lingered. We stayed silent for a while, though not awkwardly. Rather to my surprise, something of the old intimacy had returned.
“You were such an odd little thing,” she said.
“I wasn’t very happy.”
“No, I could see that.”
There had been genuine affection between us. Poor woman, she’d had to find her friendships where she could. Her real friends were Priam and Hector, who’d always treated her kindly, but in the nature of things she’d seen very little of them. Like all women, she lived her life largely separate from men—and every woman in Troy (except my sister) hated her. And she them. Oh, in public she was always respectful, but in private it was a different story. Andromache was “the child bride,” Cassandra “the mad woman,” and Hecuba…What had she said about Hecuba? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps Hecuba had been spared. I could imagine that inside the walls of the women’s quarters Hecuba would be a formidable opponent, too intimidating even for Helen to take on. We lapsed into silence again and let the tides of memory wash over us.