I looked out across the Eurotas, to where Peisistratus and Telemachus in the former’s chariot vanished behind a copse of trees. “That’s what it is to be mortal,” I observed.

  We left the walls, and headed out across the great court. “Are you going to compete again today?” Menelaus asked.

  “I’m no great archer.” Yesterday’s wrestling match had left me bruised and aching, so my skill with the bow would not have mattered. For that, I could thank Therapne’s local wrestling champion, an uncouth brute who had not grasped when to yield to his betters. Having the match declared a draw ruffled my dignity, as did having to share the winner’s honors with a commoner. Ctesippus had gone around drunk last night, boasting that he had beaten the king of Mycenae.

  As for my prize, a comely Euboean woman, Hermione would not tolerate the slut’s laziness and insolent manner, prompting me to make arrangements to send the woman home to be dealt with.

  My strutting and posturing during the wedding games did not impress my wife. Yesterday in the bath, Hermione had scolded me over the black and blue marks Ctesippus’s holds had left on me. I did not reprimand her, only seized her around the waist, pulled her fully dressed into the tub with me, and kissed and tickled her all over until she abandoned the subject.

  If Hermione did not coo and sigh like other women, she was intelligent and tactful, and had a refined sense of humor. As early as our second night together, I discovered that the most reliable method to set her at ease during lovemaking was through laughter; the love talk came later, when we curled up together in post-coital languor.

  “You object to my strutting and flexing,” I said, “though I have such a superb, mouthwatering physique, I hardly know why.”

  Hermione poked my ribs in mock-exasperation. “Has anyone told you how conceited you are?”

  “Well, then.” I tucked my arms behind my head to better display my firm pectorals. “When shall I have the honor of watching you compete with the other women?”

  My question surprised her so much that she drew away from me. “What do you mean?”

  Had I made a mistake? “Sparta has female athletes. I know you once trained, so...”

  Hermione’s bewilderment vanished, and she sank back down with a soft huff. “That was twenty years ago, Orestes. It’s only the young maidens who train, and then they only compete during the festival of Artemis.”

  “Well, no one told me that.” I stroked her hair, inhaling the scent of rosewater and the almond oil her women had rubbed into her skin. “Were you any good?”

  “Why, were you hoping to wrestle with me?” Hermione’s snort was a moist exhalation against my chest. “I was never a very good athlete. I don’t even drive a chariot.”

  “Would you like to learn how?” I inquired. “Elektra has her own chariot and team, and drives everywhere.”

  As I discovered, Hermione held no personal ambitions outside marriage and motherhood. She was content to manage the household and mind her women’s handiwork. I found her calm resignation disconcerting, until I recalled that her placidness, innate sweetness, and wisdom were the qualities that had attracted me to her in the first place. She would be a gracious and tactful consort, and a bountiful mother, not a headstrong woman bent on intrigue.

  Meanwhile, I could not keep my hands from her. I thought about making love with her every waking hour; my body recalled those midnight intimacies at the most inconvenient times. She might protest my competitive strutting and flaunting, but how else was a newlywed man such as myself to find relief from the constant bulge rising in his loincloth?

  We had not yet discussed our future together in Mycenae. I did not intend to broach the topic until after the week-long wedding celebrations ended, though long before that I sensed that she was not at all eager to contemplate leaving Sparta. In Mycenae, she would be queen, and the mother of my heirs, and in time, I intended to make her High Queen of Mycenae, Sparta, and Argos. To that end, I had completely refurbished the palace, especially the queen’s apartment—and after all that, it seemed, she did not want to go home with me.

  I was being a fool, letting my anxieties override my reason. In truth, I had renovated the megaron and palace to banish the malevolent ghosts haunting the citadel mount; the queen’s apartment had been last, and undertaken only when Phaidon had intimated that Menelaus might entertain a union between our two royal houses.

  Although I had to admit, had our circumstances been different, I could have remained content in the Eurotas river valley, and forgotten the world and all its troubles.

  *~*~*~*

  “To Orestes Agamemnonides, king of Mycenae, and esteemed kinsman and brother-in-law: greetings. The court rejoices to hear the happy news of your recent nuptials. You will find enclosed a message from Elektra, who wishes to know what Hermione might need or want when she arrives.”

  A scrap of papyrus nestled within a fold of the letter. I would peruse my sister’s message at my leisure, once I finished reading my regent’s report.

  “King Cyanippus has expressed his utmost displeasure at your leaving so suddenly for Sparta without first paying your respects as you swore to do.” As though that decrepit old fool owned me. I had not sworn any oath to meet him, or even set an exact date to meet with him or the Argive assembly, only agreed that it would be this spring—and only because Cylarabes, Argos’s Lord Ambassador to Mycenae, had maneuvered me into it. Pylades added, “I have sent word back that your business with King Menelaus was most urgent, and that you will surely see to the matter after your return.”

  At least he had not promised immediate action. I would see my way to Argos only after my wife and queen was properly welcomed and settled into her new establishment, and I certainly would not slink straightaway to the Argive court like a chastened youth.

  Pylades also revealed that Cyanippus had suffered a bout of pneumonia over the winter; the messenger, apparently a callow and talkative youth, had let the information slip. Lord Cylarabes, the king’s heir, had been in almost constant attendance on his kinsman during the late winter and early spring, thus explaining why he had not been in residence as warden of Tiryns when I had embarked for Sparta.

  An interesting development. Pylades drew no conclusions, as he would not commit such dangerous thoughts to writing, but instead switched the topic to more mundane matters. He included neat tallies for the spring lambing, the sowing of the fields, and records for the various disputes which he had judged in my absence.

  Mycenae was in good hands, leaving me free to extend my stay in Sparta, which was fortunate, as my father-in-law was anxious that I learn more about the land, the people, and their customs. I became a regular guest during sessions of the Spartan assembly, and observed while Menelaus received the morning petitioners. “Of course, it’s more than any man can do in six or seven weeks,” Menelaus conceded. “A man needs a lifetime to learn how to rule, and then, only then when he’s finally learned enough to put it all to good use...” With his fingers, he made a snipping gesture. “The Fates have an odd sense of humor.”

  Turning my attention to the scrap of papyrus, I uncurled in order to decipher Elektra’s clumsy hand. “I am so glad you married. Give Hermione our love. Come home soon.”

  Hermione knew that I spent the evenings poring over Mycenaean tallies and petitions, and the mornings listening to the Spartan assembly debate, yet she never inquired about my business. When I asked her why, she answered simply, “I wasn’t aware you wanted my opinion, Orestes.”

  Then it struck me how accustomed I had become to strong-willed women who refused to keep their own counsel. “I am asking now.”

  Hermione set down her needlework. “From what others tell me, it seems all Cyanippus and the Argive assembly want from you is a face-to-face meeting to gauge what manner of neighbor you are, yet here you gnash your teeth and talk about ousting them like enemies.”

  I brought an emphatic fist down on my armrest. “They are enemies. Argos has no right interfering in Mycenaean affairs as they did during the rule of the Perseidai. Atreus humored them when he seized the throne, so they would recognize his right to rule, but that was decades ago, and the Atreidai are now a legitimate dynasty.

  “As for neighbors, the Argives are useless.” I heard the escalating tirade in my voice, marked my wife’s tolerant expression. “What did the Argive assembly do when Aegisthus unlawfully drove Mycenaean nobles from their estates and installed his cronies? They claimed they had absolutely no jurisdiction to intervene. What support did they give me in my exile? Nothing, except to send a pair of silver-tongued ambassadors to flatter me while making no concessions.”

  Hermione regarded me calmly. “I know they’re do-nothings, Orestes. The Arcadian ambassador always used to complain to our grandfather about the unrest Aegisthus’s followers caused on the border.” I watched her smooth white hands, primly folded in her lap beside her embroidery hoop. “I also know that Argive territory sits between Mycenae and Sparta, and cuts your domain in two.”

  Her statement astonished me with its perception, for somehow I had assumed that she had little grasp of geography. “It does,” I admitted.

  “And you’re absolutely right that Argos has no business dictating to Mycenae,” she added, “but you’re not in a position right now to antagonize its king and his assembly. It’s only been seven months since you became king.”

  I found her counsel wise, and her consolatory demeanor even more appealing. “Am I strutting and posturing again?”

  A smile curved her mouth. “Like a snorting bull.”

  Her amicable manner invited humor, and after an evening reviewing the dullness that was the lambing tallies, I needed a moment in which to stop being king. Perhaps I could tickle her feet later in bed, and nuzzle her pink toes. “I have other business to attend to before I deal with Argos to my satisfaction,” I said. “It will be years, not months.”

  Satisfied, she resumed embroidering the band she was covering with scarlet and blue flowers. Flowers. I must send word home to make certain all the porticos throughout the palace were hung with potted narcissus and crocus and lilies such as the Spartan ladies delighted in.

  Distracted, I abandoned the tallies to review the record of the disputes Pylades had judged. A dispute over barley seed, another over a stolen sow, a third over an altercation between two shepherds where there were no witnesses. Again, I could not focus. Just having my bride in the same room fostered thoughts of sex. I preferred to tally her dimples and review her sensitive nipples, and leave the dull clerical business to the scribes.

  So I watched her instead: how placidly she worked the needle, how neat she was with her dyed thread, and how, when she was finished, she folded her linen and tucked it into her sewing basket. Elektra, by contrast, jumbled everything about, and then complained later about the mess.

  We retired together, relieved the maids, and undressed ourselves before dousing the light and climbing into bed.

  Tonight, Hermione surprised me, touching her lips against mine in the darkness before I could reach for her. Now there was a change! Either I had been doing something right in bed, or Aphrodite had sent Eros to prick my beloved with his love-darts and loosen her inhibitions, for on this night I found her slippery with a woman’s natural wetness, and more eager to give and receive pleasure than she had ever been.

  I observed my wife afterward, her supple limbs flowing under a woolen robe, as she lit a lamp and paid her devotions to the goddesses on her altar. Her eyes were downcast, and her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, as she returned to bed. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  I found her abashment amusing. “Whatever it was, may it come upon you many more times.” And strictly for my private pleasure. Mycenae’s queen could not appear before the people with that passionate color flushing her breasts, lest she enflame any man who saw her thus.

  I draped a protective arm around her waist, listened to the rise and fall of her breathing, and reveled in the scent of sex and perfumed sweat.

  On subsequent nights, when she felt I had lingered too long over the day’s business or some tiresome correspondence from home, Hermione eased the tablets from my hands to urge me toward her bedchamber. “Don’t deny me,” she said, “now that Aphrodite has begun answering my prayers.”

  I tangled my hands in her loose ringlets. “I had no idea you had asked for her guidance.”

  Hermione drew away from my kiss long enough to answer, “I asked her to lend me her divine essence, to become more eager and pleasing in bed.”

  I did not tell her that she sounded like a concubine saying that, because she went on to say that she had asked her patron goddesses to guard her against her old fears. So they were still with her, those recollections of rape and abduction; they were as strong for her as the memories of my father’s murder and my own madness were for me. I kissed her again, and held her close against me until she wanted me to love her.

  Later, as we lay spent and entwined in each other’s arms, she asked, “Do you keep any concubines?”

  “I have one.” No sense in lying to her, for she would discover the truth soon enough. “Pylades gave her to me a few months ago.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  I chuckled. “Are you jealous?” Was she? I could not imagine Hermione bothering with lowly concubines when her beauty and high birth made her the most desirable woman in the Peloponnese. “Chione works the loom, and minds her own business. Elektra makes certain my women cause no trouble.”

  “Elektra.” Hermione softly exhaled the syllables of her name. “I hope your sister doesn’t intend to rule the household.”

  Although we would leave Sparta in three or four more weeks, we still had not discussed Mycenae. Therefore, Hermione did not understand that Elektra very much wanted her to come to Mycenae as my queen, and that she would tolerate no other woman but the princess of Sparta having authority over her. Laughing, I planted a kiss atop Hermione’s head. “You’ll be mistress of the house, never fear.”

  *~*~*~*

  Helen interacted with me only when the occasion demanded it. I had insulted her, yes, by accusing her of abandoning her children, but the insult was mutual. She had called me a murderer, a matricide, a man who did not honor his mother and father.

  Not wanting to trouble her with it, I did not mention these tensions to Hermione. Whatever difficulties she and Helen had had regarding Paris and the latter’s years at Troy, their relationship was now amicable. Moreover, it was not appropriate to ask a wife to choose between her husband and mother.

  A month after the wedding, Menelaus asked me to ride out with him as far as Amyklai. “This isn’t official business,” he said. “Just you and me together, with our companions, enjoying a jaunt around the countryside.”

  We followed the southward road, which led along the left bank of the Eurotas. Women washed clothes in the shallows, and on the farther bank, gliding across the greenish water under overhanging trees, I glimpsed flashes of white that could only be Laconia’s famous swans. Mycenae lacked a broad waterway like the Eurotas, and thus, water birds of such exquisite beauty; Hermione already lamented having to leave them behind.

  Just as the encircling walls and whitewashed buildings of Amyklai appeared in the distance, Menelaus ordered his charioteer to turn onto the shoulder and stop. Ixion deftly brought my vehicle in alongside his, and reined in the team, allowing me to step out and join my father-in-law, who stood beside a green mound amid wild olives and plane trees.

  “This is where Helen’s suitors took the Horse Oath,” Menelaus said, indicating the mound. “Do you know the story?”

  Afraid that Helen’s numerous suitors would turn upon him and the man he selected for his daughter, my grandfather Tyndareus had consulted the wily Odysseus, who had no interest in marrying Helen. On Odysseus’s advice, Tyndareus had administered to the suitors a dreadful chthonic oath on the quartered carcass of a sacrificed horse: they must support Helen’s chosen husband against any man who violated his right to her and her dominions.

  “It was the finest stallion, white as foam,” Menelaus said. “Your grandfather struck the fatal blow right here, where the mound is piled up, and the grass grows greenest.”

  So in a sense, this verdant and quiet place was where the conflict at Troy had begun, for without the Horse Oath, most of those who had vied for Helen’s hand would never have answered Father’s call to arms.

  “Come,” Menelaus said, “walk with me.”

  In his tone, I sensed that he wanted to discuss some important matter. So we circumnavigated the mound, our companions maintaining a discreet distance, but in silence. I saw to my right the altar stone sanctifying the place, and a dusty footpath leading down to the walls of Amyklai. My imagination populated the grove with the heroes who had stood here in this spot thirty years ago, and taken the oath: Great Ajax, Patroklos, Diomedes, and Idomeneus. Father had been here, too, and had also sworn, although he had not been a suitor. Giants, whose deeds I had followed with reverence during my boyhood.

  Menelaus’s meaty hand on my shoulder returned me to the present. “You do Helen a great wrong.”

  Helen. “What do you mean?”

  “I understand that you and she exchanged unpleasant words the night you arrived.” So she had reported the incident to him. Why, then, had he waited a month to address it? “Helen had no right to judge you, but you—” Menelaus raised a finger to forestall any interruption. “You as a guest have no right to return the insult, especially when your accusation is nothing but slander. Helen did not go willingly to Troy.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I had heard the stories, I knew how Menelaus had raised his sword to kill his wayward wife, and lowered it only when he saw her naked breasts. Men mocked him behind his back for his sentimental foolishness.

  “I do.” Menelaus set his jaw. “You never met Paris—that is, Alaksandu of Wilusa. Do you honestly think me such a fool that I would leave my beautiful young wife alone with a man like the handsome peacock described in the songs? Alaksandu was ten years older than me, with graven lines in his face, and gray in his hair. Pointed shoes and striped robes in the Hittite style—he was every bit a foreigner, and a low, cunning bastard, too.”

 

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