Ithaca (13 page)

“She has a chest in her room,” he says. “Treasures from Troy. Everything she misses.”

His voice is thickening. He's drunk. I'm wondering if this bitter little scene is played out every night, in the luxurious palace that's turned into their private hell.

“I don't know about anyone else,” Helen says, ignoring her husband. “I'm starving.” She goes over to Polycaste and takes her by both hands. “I
so
hope we're going to be friends. I
love
your dress, by the way.”

“It isn't mine,” Polycaste says coldly. “I found it in my room.”

“You wear it so well. Come on,
do
let's eat.”

She leads Polycaste through to the great hall. After a moment's hesitation I follow them. Menelaus stays out on the terrace. A table's been laid, groaning with luxuries, and to add to them, servants bring gold dishes of food I've only ever heard about in stories: stuffed snails in their shells, piles of tiny roast birds, a whole suckling pig surrounded by mushrooms. Music plays from a gallery overhead: a flute, harp, and tambourine.

“My husband's been through a lot,” Helen says, looking at each of us in turn and talking in a hushed, confidential voice. “You have to understand, it was hard for him . . .
so
hard.” Suddenly she grips both of our wrists. Her fingers are warm and surprisingly strong. “You
do
understand, don't you? And for me. Paris was violent . . .” Still holding our wrists, she looks down at her plate laden with delicacies. “Horribly violent . . . He forced me to go up to the horse. Thank the gods I'd worked it out with Odysseus beforehand.” She squeezes my hand. “Your dear father. I said, ‘They'll make me say things. Don't answer.' Thank the gods, not one of them spoke . . .”

“Has she told you her version?” Menelaus is standing in the doorway, holding his empty cup. He comes over and sits down heavily at the end of the table. “She always has a version. So. Memory plays tricks. She hated Paris. She hated Troy. She longed to come home again. Eight years.”

“Perhaps he could have stopped me leaving in the first place.”

“Perhaps she could have restrained herself.”

“Perhaps there was nothing to stay for!”

They pretend they're talking to us, but they might as well have been alone together. For a long moment silence hangs in the great hall, the music playing behind it as if nothing's wrong. Slowly we feel the violence wash away through the echoing room. No one speaks. Then Helen turns her beautiful head to look at Polycaste.

“What lovely earrings,” she says.

The rest of the evening goes the same way. Menelaus drinks, occasionally rousing himself to boast about the treasures on the walls around us. Helen talks like we're young children. After a time she gets bored and goes to bed early. Polycaste takes that as an excuse to follow her. For a while I sit on with Menelaus. It's the wrong time to ask questions about my father, though. At last, when he seems to have fallen asleep, I leave.

I can't sleep. Maybe it's the heavy scent of flowers hanging in the room, or the heat of the plains that stifles the whole palace. When I do fall asleep at last, I wake up sweating, my mouth dry. I need water. There isn't any in the room, so I make my way out into the corridor, hoping to find the kitchen, or a cool jar of water in the courtyard downstairs. There's silver moonlight on the floor. Suddenly I hear voices coming from the corridor to my right. Moving as quietly as I can, I make my way toward them, keeping one hand on the wall. There's a crack of light under a door at the end of the corridor. From behind it comes
the rumble of a man's voice, then Helen's, shouting something in reply. I'm sure it's Helen, but she doesn't sound anything like the languid hostess who greeted us this afternoon. Her voice breaks off in a wail—“I'd rather one night with Paris than a lifetime with you . . .”

The words are shrieked rather than spoken, like the howl of an animal in pain, or the moaning laments you hear from women at funerals—a sound that comes not from the mind but from a deeper instinct of hatred or fear. There's nothing I can do. I feel my way back to my room, and at last I fall asleep.

I wake up early. The palace is silent, but I find Polycaste, already dressed, leaning over the balustrade of the courtyard.

“Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Anywhere but here. I can't stand another moment.”

We make our way to a balcony with steps leading down into a garden. In it we find a doorway, unlocked, with a stair that looks like it will lead to the town but ends in a walled courtyard. We've been wondering about a rhythmic sound, a sucking sound like an octopus being slapped against the harbor wall to soften it. When we reach the courtyard, we find out what it is.

They're flogging a man. His tunic's been stripped from his back and he's tied to a post, with a leather strap between his teeth to stop him from screaming. A soldier, sweating in the early-morning heat, is whipping him with a flail. Blood showers the sand around our feet.

“It's him!” Polycaste runs forward just as I recognize the sandy beard of the officer who escorted us to Sparta the day before. “Stop! What are you doing?”

The man with the whip pauses only for a moment. Still tensed for the blow, he eyes Polycaste's furious face, then swings his arm forward, lashing it across his victim's back.
The officer whimpers through his leather gag. Blood spatters sickeningly over the sand and on the hem of Polycaste's dress.

“Stop!”

“Orders.” The man's voice is flat. His eyes are weird. Glazed. Unfocused. Clumsily he pushes Polycaste aside to take another blow.

“We didn't say he'd been rude. We didn't ask for him to be punished. It's a mistake!”

“Orders.” The man lashes again, and again the officer moans, his body convulsing against the post.

I tug Polycaste by the arm. “Come on.”

“I won't. He's got to stop.”

“He won't stop. He's been ordered. We'll only make things worse.”

Polycaste gives a strangled sob but lets me pull her back across the deserted courtyard. We go to the garden and find a bench under a eucalyptus tree. Neither of us speaks until the slapping noise has stopped.

Then Polycaste draws a deep breath. “I can't stand this. This place is awful. What's wrong with him?” We both know she means Menelaus.

“He's angry.”

“With that soldier? He didn't do anything.”

“Not just with him. With everybody.” For some reason I'm picturing not Menelaus but Antinous's small, mean eyes, shining with malice when he's invented some torment for a new arrival—or for me. “He's angry about Helen . . . about everything. And he has the power to make everyone else suffer.”

“They're all mad.” She says it in a near whisper. “
All
of them who went to the war. It hasn't made them happy, has it? Fighters . . . they're all
damaged
. Odysseus missing, Agamemnon dead. Menelaus trapped with a woman who
hates him. What did they do it for? You hear the storytellers: ‘Glorious Menelaus won the war . . .' It isn't like that, it's a nightmare. And it's
us
, isn't it, who have to pick up the pieces, get on with life, while they live in this hell.” She breathes more slowly, eyes closed, one hand on her chest. “And it was all for her. That's the worst thing of all. She's so empty, so
false
. Why would anyone fight a war over
her
?”

“Menelaus loves her.”

“
Love
?” Polycaste stares at me. “What are you talking about? She's a trophy. ‘The most beautiful woman on earth.' What man wouldn't love her?” She shrugs. “Isn't that what men are like?”

“And she loved Paris. I think she really did.”

“You think she's capable of
love
?
Her
? Look at her. The war was vanity, too. ‘Thousands died for me.' Do you think she cares about any of them? She's proud of it. She's
empty
.”

“No. Even if she's hard, and vain, she's still . . . a
person
. . .” I know I'm not finding the right words, but somewhere in my mind I've got an image of a younger Helen who might not have been thinking about war or consequences. Who was just swept away by a feeling she hadn't known before. I don't like her. But for that younger, foolish Helen I can only feel pity.

Polycaste says, “You're nicer than me.” She's looking at me with an odd expression, half affectionate, half angry. “You think more.”

“No.”

“If I hate someone, I just hate them. I'm simple. And I hate her. She's false.”

“You're not simple.”

“You don't think so?” She stands up, shaking back her hair.

“Nobody is.”

At the doorway to the palace a servant is waiting for us. He leads us to the town square, where a chariot with gilt wheels is standing under the shade of the plane trees, harnessed to two
lively black horses with their manes braided in gold thread. One servant holds their bridles while another stands by with a tray of steaming silver cups and fresh rolls.

Menelaus, dressed in a leather coat and carrying a whip, drains his cup and puts it back on the tray. He looks as if he hasn't slept.

“Breakfast,” he says, gesturing to the tray. He sounds grim. There's no sign of the expansive host of the day before. “Then we leave.”

We take cups and sip at a warm infusion of herbs. The rolls are flavored with honey and sweet spices. Menelaus, tapping the handle of his whip against the rail of the chariot, waits impatiently while we eat and drink. There's no sign of bodyguards. As soon as we climb up next to him, he flicks the servant away and we set off with a lurch, the horses pawing at the square's baked earth. As soon as we're clear of the town, he lashes the horses with his whip and they break into a wild gallop, dragging the chariot along at a pace I've never experienced before. The chariot's platform bucks and rears. I look down and see the ground whipping past just a hand's breadth below. Gripping the rail, hands and legs shaking, I'm thinking,
Surely it can't take the strain
. The dust blinds me. A hot reek of horse fills my nostrils. Beside me, Menelaus is cracking the whip over the horses' heads, urging them to a still-crazier pace.

Only when the road begins to travel upward, passing olive groves, then pine trees, does he haul on the reins, slowing the chariot, then bringing it to a halt at the side of the road.

He looks at me. “You were scared,” he says. His face is masked with dust. He draws a sweaty hand through it, leaving it streaked like war paint.

I step down onto the warm grass. My legs feel so weak from the pounding of the road that I can barely stand. I have to
keep clinging to the rail of the chariot, but I manage to shake my head.

Menelaus gives a snort of disbelief. “Now we walk.”

“Where are we going?”

“Follow me.”

“Are we going to see my father?”

He doesn't answer. He leads us up a mountain path. We have to scramble over rocks and press through thick, clinging thorns, but eventually the way grows clearer, winding in loops up the side of a bare mountain. Halfway up, we can see far across the dusty plain of Sparta, past the roofs of the palace and town, past square, flat fields to the distant sea. The sun, burning through a cloudless sky, grows hotter. Lizards flick their way into crevices. I can feel sweat pooling in the small of my back.

“Stop.” Menelaus pulls a leather water bottle from his belt and passes it to each of us in turn. Polycaste throws back her head and sprinkles water over her face and neck.

“I brought the horses from Troy,” Menelaus says. “The fastest in the world.” But his heart doesn't seem to be in boasting today. He looks up at the mountain. Two eagles are wheeling above its summit. “Do you know where we are?”

“Of course not.” Polycaste looks mutinous. “How could we?”

Menelaus only glances at her. “Mount Aroania. Up there.” Menelaus points to a cleft between two peaks. “The source of the river Styx.” He looks down at us. “That's where we're going.”

He won't say any more. We reach it two hours later, sweating and exhausted from a climb over bare, unshaded rock and burning stones that skitter away underfoot. A last twist of the path brings us to the lip of a crater. Below is a round, black pool of water.

A wooden shack stands to one side. A tall, elderly man dressed in black appears, stooping, at the doorway. His robe is
embroidered with rich gold thread, but the sleeves are stained with oil. Gold thread braids his dirty white hair. He bows to Menelaus, who begins to scramble down the side of the crater. From above we watch him draw something from the chest of his leather coat, kiss it in his balled fist, then hurl it high above the pool. It flashes once as it's caught by the sun then falls into the water without a splash. We watch the ripples widen outward and die against the pool's rocky banks.

Menelaus clambers back up the crater and stops just below its rim, looking up at us.

“When we left Troy,” he says, “the gods were against us. They hated us for destroying the city. They hated us for burning their temples. You know how they punished my brother. I too have suffered . . .” He pauses, wiping one hand across his mouth and red beard. “At Cape Malea the gods sent a storm. It drove us far south, to Egypt. I met a man there, a priest who could see things . . . he read them in the smoke of incense. I asked him which of us had perished since leaving Troy, and who was still alive. He told me the names of the dead. Agamemnon, my brother, was among them. I didn't know my brother was dead. They killed him, Aegisthus and that whore, his wife. I didn't know that, then, but the priest told the truth. I brought him back here to Sparta.”

“Have you seen my father?” I try to keep my voice steady. “Do you know where he is?”