Nobody's Prize (23 page)

I followed him to the goddess’s temple, where we both made a sacrifice of wine and honey cakes. I prayed for Milo’s safety, for success in his new life, and for someone to share his heart. When I finished, one of the priests tried to sell me a pair of doves as an additional sacrifice, but I couldn’t bear the thought of shedding their innocent blood. Instead I took them from his hands and tossed them into the sky. I imagined them flying to the heights of Olympus, bearing my prayers in a whir of wings to the foot of Aphrodite’s throne. I hoped with all my heart that the goddess would stretch out her white hands and welcome them home.

EPILOGUE

A year passed before I saw Milo again. He arrived in the company of the young merchant I’d last seen in Mykenae. They were brought into my father’s presence because of the richness of the goods they had to offer, things too beautiful and costly to be acquired without the king’s own say-so. Mother and I were there when the trading party was escorted into the great hall. We came as soon as we heard that Father was receiving men who’d traveled far before they reached Sparta.

We were always avid for the news that merchants carried along with their wares. After all, a band of tradesmen brought us word that my brothers were alive and well when the
Argo
finally returned to Iolkos and the crew went their separate ways. The merchants also carried dark and bloody tales of the Argonauts’ escape from Colchis, all involving Medea. Had she really contrived her own brother’s murder to distract the king from pursuing Jason and the Fleece from Ares’ shrine? I wouldn’t have put it past her, and I was glad Castor and Polydeuces were safe after a voyage in
that
company. I only wished the quest for the Fleece hadn’t given them such a taste for heroism. Once they left the
Argo,
they’d promptly set out on fresh adventures. The gods alone knew when they’d come home, but their exploits were often on the tongues of traders.

There was another good reason for my attendance in the great hall. Ever since my return home, Father had insisted that I be present whenever he gave anyone a royal audience. He said it was best I started learning how to govern Sparta sooner rather than later, even if he wasn’t about to hop aboard Charon’s ferry tomorrow.

I nearly didn’t recognize Milo. I saw a tall, strong-limbed young man with long, gleaming curls and a neatly trimmed beard. His bright blue and green tunic was banded with rich red and gold, a far cry from the cast-off garments he’d been forced to dress in before. He was hard at work, spreading out all manner of glittering wares at Father’s feet, when he looked up at me, and all at once I knew him again. I couldn’t help uttering a cry of delight. If he hadn’t been holding an especially fine vase in his hands just then, I think I would have rushed into his arms.

“Well, well,” Father remarked fondly. “I think our daughter has seen something she likes.”

Milo’s presence transformed the trading party from merchants to guests. As Mother said, it was the least we could do for the people who’d helped me in one way or another ever since I struck out on my own. That night, over dinner, the younger merchant told us the fate of his absent partner, my persistent suitor.

“He died on the way back from Corinth. He thought he knew how to tell good mushrooms from bad. He was wrong. That was when
this
one proved himself.” He clapped Milo on the back. “It was just the two of them on that first journey, because my partner wanted to test the lad. When there are tasks to do and only one extra set of hands to do them, you learn soon enough whether you’ve taken on a worker or a drone. So there Milo was, left all alone with a load of valuable goods. He could have vanished into the hills with it all. Instead he came straight back to Mykenae, handed me my late partner’s tally sticks, and apologized because he’d had to trade off part of our profits in order to give the poor man a decent burial. I’ve trusted him utterly ever since. He’ll be ready to undertake his own trading journeys before you know it. And I think we all know the first thing he’s going to do when I let him go out on his own.”

“I’m afraid we don’t,” my mother replied pleasantly.

“Why, marry his sweetheart, of course!” The merchant grinned. “She’s a nice little thing, just a fisherman’s daughter he met when we sailed to Delphi, but there’s something about the way she carries herself that almost makes you think she’s a princess in disguise.”

Father looked at me closely. I don’t know what he was expecting to see.

That night, when I was already undressed for bed, someone scratched at my door. It was Ione, my former nursemaid. Even though all of us royal children were grown up, my parents had kept her on. Just the sight of her face called up comforting memories of childhood, before my sister left to become a queen and my brothers set out to win the fame of heroes.

“I’ve a message for you,” she said. “From him. That boy you bought.” Like my parents, Ione knew the full tale of my adventures, including how Milo got his freedom.

“That
boy
is going to be rich enough to buy all of Sparta someday,” I replied lightly. “What’s the message?”

“He wants you to meet him somewhere…private. He says he’s got something to tell you. News from an old friend.” She bit off the words sharply, just to let me know that she didn’t believe them for a moment.

I asked her to send him to the rooftop shrine my parents had dedicated to Aphrodite. She trudged off so slowly that I wondered whether she’d obey me or conveniently “forget” all about it. But by the time I’d put my clothes on again and climbed the stairs to the sanctuary, Milo was waiting for me in front of the painted image of the goddess.

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Helen,” he said. “I’m sorry I left Mykenae without—”

“No need for that,” I said, smiling. “It’s past and pardoned. I’m just glad to learn everything’s going well for you. So you’re marrying a fisherman’s daughter.
That
fisherman’s daughter?”

“Alkyone.” Milo pronounced her name so fondly that I didn’t need to ask if he’d found true love and happiness. I was delighted for him. “She did a very good job of pretending to be you. Too good. She told me that when your father’s messenger arrived at Delphi to announce you were back in Sparta, half the priests and servants at Apollo’s temple refused to believe it. The Pythia herself had to swear an oath with one hand on the holy tripod before they’d accept it. Of course, then they wanted to punish Alkyone for fooling them. Eunike stepped in again and said that Alkyone would become her personal servant in order to make up for what she’d done.”

“Eunike’s servant?” I laughed. “A very hard job, I’m sure.” We both knew that the Pythia had asked very little of the girl.

“Almost as hard as pretending to be a princess. It’s a good thing I’m going to be so wealthy. My Alkyone’s got a taste for the finer things in life. But she’s worth all of them to me.” His gaze drifted to the statue of Aphrodite. “I should make a generous offering to the goddess for such a blessing.”

I studied the clay image. She looked much smaller than I remembered, and her paint was no longer bright, but I knew that Aphrodite’s true power came from something greater and more enduring than what mortal eyes could see.

“I’d be honored if you’d bring your offering here,” I told him.

“The honor would be—” Milo stopped short, then slapped his forehead. “It’s so good to be able to talk to you again, Helen, that I forgot the reason we’re here. I have a message for you.”

“News from an old friend.” I mimicked Ione’s disapproving tone. “Who?”

“The Pythia.”

“Eunike!” I exclaimed happily. “Oh, I do miss her. Maybe I can convince Father to let me travel to Delphi again. I could say I wanted to hear what the future holds for—”

“It wasn’t Eunike who sent me, Helen,” Milo said solemnly. “When she sees the future, there is no Eunike, only the holy Pythia.”

I felt the hairs at the nape of my neck prickle. “She saw my future, didn’t she? What did she see, Milo?”

“This.” He stepped to one side. It was only then that I saw the cloth-wrapped bundle on the ground behind him. He stooped to pick it up and handed it to me. I drew back the swaddlings and found myself staring into the shining depths of a mirror. At first I thought it was the same one that the younger merchant had tried to give me, the gift that roused so much anger in Prince Menelaus. But that mirror was made of polished bronze. This one was silver. I turned it over slowly and saw the breathtaking artistry of a master craftsman.

Frozen in glimmering metal, sheep wandered un-tended over the forested slopes of a great mountain. Their shepherd had a more urgent task at hand. His face was hidden from me, but not the faces of the three goddesses before him. They towered above the trees, their streaming hair becoming a part of the clouds. Their faces were as flawless as their bodies, but there was a dreadful intensity in their gaze. All three stared greedily at a single dot of gold, the perfect apple shining in the palm of the shepherd’s hand. What was so special about that tiny golden apple? Why could I almost feel the mirror vibrate with the intensity of the goddesses’ desire and the fateful, breathless
waiting
that hovered over that unknown shepherd in the moment before he made his choice?

“How can a contest among three goddesses have anything to do with me?” I asked, looking up. “And why did Eunike—why did the Pythia send me her message like
this
?” I held out the mirror to Milo.

He took it from me calmly. “She didn’t. She only summoned me into her presence, described her vision, and ordered me to take her words to you. Bringing her prophecy to you like this”—he turned the mirror over and forced it back into my hands—“was my doing. I owe you everything, Helen. I want you to be as happy as I am now. Most of all, I never want you to be afraid. No matter what the Pythia saw in your future, I never want you to forget—”

“—that it’s
my
future.” I held the mirror by its long, elegant handle as if it were a sword and looked steadily into its smooth silver face. There were no goddesses there, was no golden apple and no shepherd. There was only me.

My future,
I thought.
May the choices that create it all be mine!

“SHE CAN’T DO THAT TO MYTHS!”

One of my all-time favorite movies is
Jason and the Argonauts.
It showcased some fabulous pre-CGI special effects done by the master of the art, Ray Harryhausen, who also co-produced the film. The effect that impressed me the most (by which I mean it scared the daylights out of me) happened after Jason slew the Hydra and took the Golden Fleece. Infuriated, King Aetes of Colchis planted the Hydra’s teeth in the earth and intoned, “Rise up, all you dead, slain of the Hydra! Rise up out of your graves to avenge us!”

After so many years, I don’t know whether those were King Aetes’ exact words, but whatever he said, it worked. A skeleton army of the Hydra’s previous victims slowly and creepily emerged from the ground, bearing swords and shields. They formed ranks and did a grim, inexorable, step-by-step advance on Jason and his men. Then, with a bloodcurdling shriek, the dead
attacked
! Harryhausen didn’t just give us the sheer horror of living, moving, armed-and-dangerous skeletons (with the added fear factor of
How can you defend yourself against an enemy who’s already dead?
Some of the skeletons kept on fighting even after their heads were knocked off!). He took the trouble to make those skeletons look angry, vicious, and bloodthirsty. They went after Jason and his men with a vengeance. I didn’t sleep well for
weeks
afterward.

It was wonderful.

In the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, Jason
doesn’t
slay the Hydra. The Hydra belongs to one of the myths about Herakles. Jason
does
have to overcome the dragon that guards the Golden Fleece, but he never gets the chance. Medea sings the dragon to sleep so Jason can take the Fleece from the branches of the tree that the dragon is guarding.

Before this, however, Jason
does
have to deal with an army of men who spring up out of the ground, but it’s nothing like the movie version. When he asks King Aetes for the Fleece, the king tells him he must first yoke two fire-breathing bulls to a plow, till a field, and plant the furrows with dragon’s teeth. Sowing the teeth
does
cause a host of armed men to leap out of the earth, spoiling for a fight, but they’re not skeletons and they don’t get into a scary, thrilling battle with Jason and his men. Instead, heeding Medea’s advice, Jason throws a big stone into the midst of the dragon’s-teeth men as soon as they emerge from the ground. This makes them turn on one another, fighting among themselves until all are dead.

Was Harryhausen’s
Jason and the Argonauts
true to the myth? Not entirely. Did that matter to me and all the other people who were entertained by the movie over the years? No. And why should it? Sticking to the facts is important in many aspects of our lives, but myths aren’t facts. If truth be told—and it should be—wildly differing variations on the same story do exist in Greek mythology. There are at least three separate versions of Jason’s story, all of which disagree about who was and wasn’t a member of the
Argo
’s crew.

Helen’s own story isn’t immune to this. The best-known version has her carried off to Troy by Paris. Her husband, Menelaus, seeks help from his brother, Agamemnon of Mykenae, in getting her back. A huge Greek army is raised, but contrary winds prevent it from setting sail for Troy. To appease the angry god who sent the wind, Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter, Iphigenia. The Greeks reach Troy and fight a war that lasts ten years. In the end they are triumphant and Helen is carried back to Sparta.

But that’s not the only way the story goes. Some versions have Helen running away with Paris voluntarily. Some say that Iphigenia, who died in order to buy the Greeks a favorable wind, was not the daughter of Agamemnon and Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra, but was actually the child of Theseus and Helen herself, born while Helen was his captive in Athens. As for Iphigenia herself, in one version of her story, she dies on the altar, but in another, the goddess Artemis replaces her with a deer and whisks her away to serve as her priestess in the far northern land of the Taurean tribe. Some accounts of Helen’s adventures report that she never even reached Troy. When Paris’s ship landed in Egypt, the Pharaoh found out that the Trojan prince had abducted another king’s wife. He did
not
approve and forced Paris to leave Helen behind to await the eventual arrival of her husband. Unfortunately, no one got the message to Menelaus, and the Trojan War went on with a phantom Helen, sent by the gods, as the prize.

So perhaps my story of Helen’s life before Troy doesn’t recount the myths exactly as we know them, but at least I’m in good company. And who’s to say it couldn’t have happened this way? Remember, myths aren’t history, and even the “truth” of history depends on who’s telling the story.