Memoirs of a Bitch (2 page)

“I'm thirsty,” I murmured into the folds of the cape. Hearing me, the man pressed his water bottle to my lips at full gallop. The water filled my mouth and spilled on to the cloak, sodden wool sticking to my chest as my tired head fell against his leather breastplate. The world rocked beyond my exhausted eyes. And my exhausted ears sank into sleep to the shrill laughter of my brothers.

When my mother came home, she found me in the garden. Alone and silent as always, on the hillside among the olive trees. I was sitting on the ground without any toy or ball. Nothing. Well combed, well dressed, a child who no longer wanted to break anything. Then she understood. Perhaps for a moment, a unique moment, she was with me. She spread her dress on the grass and sat down beside me. Something she had never done before, and would never do again.

“Helen, Helen …” she murmured, even taking me in her arms. I was still a child, and she pressed my head against her breast and held me close. But I didn't cry. I hadn't cried for some time.

“It won't happen again,” she went on slowly. “Never again. We'll protect you. We'll find a way. Don't be afraid, Helen.”

I nodded slowly against that breast veiled in purple linen. Her jewels tinkled over my head. I believed her. Children always believe their mothers.

My father redoubled the guards. Visiting strangers were not allowed to see me. “Just us and only us,” he instructed my mother.

She laughed and ruffled my hair. “Beauty's not so dangerous.”

“But blood is. She's descended from kings. Never forget that, Leda.”

My mother's eyes narrowed. Clytemnestra's eyes. “I won't, don't you worry,” she said, and without touching me again, she left us.

I turned to my father who was sitting on his throne. His chin propped on his hand, he ignored me. That evening the flames in his hair seemed to have gone out. He was smothered in invisible ash.

“Go to bed, Helen,” he said in a slow monotonous voice, like a peasant or a merchant. Not the voice of a king. A common voice suitable for running a family as ordinary as any other. I obeyed, got up and went away.

There was a sentry on guard outside my room. They changed the guard four times a day, soldiers armed ready for combat. Unsleeping, defending my door. I was still having nightmares about Theseus. But I had no one to
discuss them with; the sentry outside my door had no authority over the unraveled territory of my dreams. I lay down between the sheets to wait for sleep. It was summer, and a light breeze from the river reached me from the windows. The curtains were billowing like sails. Sleep was singing in the corners of my eyes, but I had to struggle to keep them closed. The wicked leer of Theseus was keeping me awake. If I'd cried out, if I'd shouted for her, Etra would have come to sleep with me. A sentry to guard me from my dreams. But I would not call out. I'm made of stone.

Sleep came, bringing Theseus. The same sky, the same sea. Pirithous falling into space, blood streaming through the air. And no one to stop Theseus unclasping his belt. Closing my eyes was the same as keeping them open. I woke screaming. A noise at my door, and the guard was in the room. Spear raised, dagger unsheathed. A fierce face under his crested helm.

“An intruder, princess?”

I shook my head. “Just a bad dream.”

An almost inaudible sigh of relief filled the air. He put his dagger away, propped his spear against the wall. Took off his helm: “Thanks to the gods, princess.” His smile was white in the darkness; his face young and strong.

“You're the man who gave me a drink.”

“It was an honor, princess.” He thumped his chest, picked up his weapons and went back to the door. I was twelve years old. I needed nothing more.

Agamemnon was a greedy man. You didn't notice at first, only later when he thought no one was looking, you would see his beady roving eyes stopping on a painted amphora, a jewel or a particular person. That's what he was like, Agamemnon; he helped himself to whatever he wanted. And he wanted everything. He was ruling Mycenae without a queen, so he came all the way to Sparta to find one.

“I've come on the wings of rumor, Tyndareus,” he announced, planting himself in the middle of the throne room.

For once I'd been allowed to leave my rooms and be seen. But Agamemnon's eyes went past me. Ignored for the first time in my life, I saw them fasten on Clytemnestra like the eyes of a cat. Seeing herself noticed, she smiled. She had pointed triangular canines, my sister; the smile of a wolf. Agamemnon said it was her fame that had brought him all the way to Sparta. The fame of the wolf princess who liked to run through the olive groves in the middle of the night and dive naked into the icy waters of the Eurotas. That was what Clytemnestra was like: relentless. I wasn't. I loved gardens and the
warm baths Etra prepared for me. And mirrors. Yes, I was beautiful, but that wasn't enough.

“It's not enough, little sister. Not for a real man. Not enough to appeal to a king. You're insipid, Helen.”

Clytemnestra was changing her clothes in her room. I watched from the bed, enchanted. She let the white peplos she'd been wearing that evening fall to the floor and admired her body with satisfaction in the bronze mirror. She had a lovely figure. The strong physique of an athlete. I was the only woman in Sparta who had never run in the stadium. I had never exercised naked in the mud and dust with boys and girls of my own age. I was delicate; too delicate, Leda said. I thought if her as “Leda,” not as “my mother.” It was hard to think of calling her that.

Clytemnestra threw down the elegant peplos carelessly and kicked aside the gold pins. Rummaging in the wooden chest, she chose a short tunic, one of those she sometimes used for running.

“You're so beautiful,” she told herself in the mirror, smiling. Clytemnestra brilliant as the moon. I loved her so much. But she didn't know that. She could only imagine ferocious passions, and for me the time for learning about ferocious passions would not come till much later. Perhaps too much later.

She looked over her right shoulder at me: “Go to bed, go to your own room, brat.”

I tightened my lips.

“Go to bed,” she repeated.

I had no intention of moving. I wanted her to know I was made of stone. She blew out the lamp without giving me another look. From the corners of the room rose a darkness slashed by the rays of the moon.

“I don't want to find you here when I come back.”

Nor did she. I had no need to follow her to know where she was going. I had no need to slip through the shadows of the olive grove to know that Agamemnon was waiting for her. I picked up the white peplos, the universal symbol of virginity, from the floor and took it with me. I kept it rolled in a ball under my pillow until she left. In any case, Clytemnestra never wore a white peplos again. She had no further use for them.

The wedding was six days later. A banquet that went on till dawn. Bride and groom smiling by torchlight under garlands of jasmine. Lips drawn tight over sharp teeth. The usual wolfish leer. Agamemnon's hand a claw around Clytemnestra's shoulder. Asserting ownership. He had placed a gold neckband around her neck. A collar. A beautiful collar for the princess of the wolves, for the athlete who liked diving into the icy Eurotas. For my sister who had always hated jewels. She was smiling, unaware that he intended to tame her.

But Clytemnestra won't let herself be tamed, I thought, almost prayed, as I sat at that over-long table; she'll never let herself be extinguished. She will burst into flame, Clytemnestra will. She will tear other people to pieces. That's her nature; she can't help it. I was formulating prophecies about the happy bride facing me. I knew her character, but I didn't know my own. If I looked into myself, all I saw was pools of water. They reflected the sun, but there was more to them than that. At least, I thought there was. I've always had some understanding of myself, and I did even then. Perhaps then more than ever. I got up and left the rowdy banquet. I'm made of stone.

I went out into the darkness, among the low branches of the olive grove. I walked right around the palace, where the doors had all been left open and everyone, even the humblest slave, had a chance to enjoy a little relaxation and some good food. The lazy rays of the moon gradually grew longer across the polished stone floors. The throne room, through which the breeze was murmuring soft songs, seemed abandoned. I climbed the steps to the throne and placed my hand on its stone seat. A seat like many others, perhaps less comfortable than most. The empty vessel of a useless power. I hurried back down the steps, suddenly afraid because I was alone. Yet the idea of going back through the garden to my place at that long table sickened me. They had bought my sister for a mass of gold and were taking her away. Just as they
would have done if it had been me. No, I refused to smile to please them.

I left the palace and headed for the stables. The horses, left by themselves, were whickering peacefully in the jasmine-scented gloom, their eyes black pearls in the darkness. I lifted my clothes to keep them clear of the dirty straw and held out my hand as I approached the wooden bars of the enclosure that contained an elegant white horse with a long muzzle: Leda's mare. The mare let me stroke her muzzle, and dilated her nostrils. Her nose was wet, and I could just see the pink skin under her white coat. Her breath warmed my bare flesh. Then, suddenly alarmed, she shook her head. I listened, and heard hooves speeding toward the stables. Theseus, shouted a terrified voice in my head; there was nowhere, absolutely nowhere I could hide. With no thought for my beautiful white dress I knelt in the straw and crept under the bars of the enclosure between the mare's feet, causing her to neigh in alarm. Better crushed by her hooves than in the power of Theseus, I thought. Much better. I crept into the darkest corner and hid under the heaped-up hay, waiting with my hands over my head, my skin burning hot and the blood crying out in my veins.

The galloping horse stopped in front of the main gate. Someone dismounted with a soft thud. A heavy man. I
could hear a jingle of harness. But the tender voice that calmed the animal was not that of Theseus. I cautiously moved on my knees to the wooden bars and peered out. In the white moonlight I could see a horse and rider. When the man tied up his steed by the bridle at the entrance to the stall, I recognized him as the guard who had given me a drink. Unaware of my presence, he took off his sweat-soaked tunic. The horse had already bent his neck to the stone trough, where the man filled a pail with water for himself. He took a long drink, his neck swelling in the moonlight, streams of water running down. The tensed muscles of his shoulders and arms made him look like a god. Afraid he would see me, I moved back out of sight. My mother's mare took fright and neighed again. I crawled between her feet, held my breath and huddled on the ground.

“Who's there?” The soldier's voice. His steps came nearer. “What's going on?” I was aware of his hand caressing the mare's muzzle, just as I had done myself. Then silence. I lifted my eyes from the straw and met his.

“Who are you? Come out from there.” In the darkness he hadn't recognized me. But there was no sense in staying where I was. I got up with difficulty, not even trying to shake off the dirt. He gave me a puzzled look and opened the wooden door of the enclosure. I came
out with my head high, summoning up the little dignity available to a young girl wearing clothes filthy with dung.

“I was afraid,” I said quietly.

“I'll take you back to the palace, princess.” A firm voice, almost as if giving a command. Outside the stable he put on his sweaty tunic again and waited patiently for me in the open space bathed in moonlight, then together we covered the short distance to the back yard of the palace. “Shall I come with you to your rooms?”

I shook my head. “I'm fine.”

He looked me in the eyes. “The Athenian won't come back.”

“But he won't go away either,” I answered in a small voice.

He said nothing more. There was nothing more he could have said. You can't comfort princesses of the blood when you're just an ordinary soldier. He had been dismissed, and turned and went into the barracks.

The winter after Clytemnestra left was the longest and coldest anyone could remember. The water froze in the horse troughs and ducks no longer swam on the Eurotas, transformed by ice into a white mirror. A fierce wind swept Sparta for forty days, and with it came a black fever that brought death into every house. Castor was the first to fall ill, one morning after drinking too much, and he died within three days without ever recovering from his delirium. I remember the eyes of Pollux when they told him the terrible news; I saw real grief on his face for the first time. They had only ever loved each other, my brothers, so the bond that held them together had been total. “A part of me,” murmured Pollux, “a part of me.” Then he left the room where my mother had already started to tear her hair in accordance with
convention. Some hours later, they found him hanged in his room. I never saw his body. They had shut me up in my apartments to protect me from contagion. Only Etra came, bringing me food and water, and even she was under strict orders from my father not to come too close. In the dead of night I would slip through the windows into the icy garden where no one walked anymore. I had no fear of the fever. By now I was sleeping free of dreams. Theseus had faded in the boredom of week after week of sameness, faded like my brothers for whom I could not bring myself to weep, and like my parents of whom I heard nothing for some time.

I didn't fall ill. The guard continued to change regularly outside my barred door. I would lean my head against it, trying to distinguish any noise or voice that might help me to understand who was there. For me, only one face had not faded in those days of wind and cold, the only one I wanted to see again. I would come in secretly from the garden by unusual routes. Slipping silently through the shadows, down corridors left deserted by other women, each shut in her own room, I spied on the comings and goings of the sentries. Till finally one night at the changing of the guard a step I remembered well came marching from the far end of the corridor. With my heart drumming in my chest, I waited for the relieved sentry to go after exchanging a few unimportant words
with his comrade. Then I emerged nervously from the shadows and approached him.