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.“Left on the mountaintop for the wolves and crows.”Helen screamed and tore her hair.The two of us wept uncontrollably, huddled together at the hearth, until long after the sun went down and the chill of night filled the bedchamber.Menalaos did not come to her that night.Nor the next.When at last he did Helen stood by their bed fully dressed as I hid behind the halfshut door to her dressing closet with a dagger in my hand, ready to kill her husband if he struck her.“Where is my daughter?” Helen demanded of Menalaos.“She was sickly,” he said, avoiding her eyes.“Too weak to live.”“Where is my daughter?” she repeated.“I want a son.”“Then go make a bastard with one of your serving wenches,” she said coldly.She seemed to be a statue of ice, showing no fear, no emotion what ever except hatred as hard as stone.Go ahead and strike me, she challenged him wordlessly.Beat me senseless.It makes no difference.Menalaos raised his hand and took half a step toward her, then stopped.I gripped my dagger hard and held it at the ready.Then his shoulders slumped.Saying nothing, Menalaos turned about and left the bedchamber.I stepped into the room, the dagger still in my hand.“Put that away,” Helen commanded me.“It won’t be needed.”So she lived as a dutiful wife while Menalaos spent most of his days hunting with his companions and most of his evenings drinking with them.He visited Helen’s bedchamber a few times; each time she rebuffed him.Often the dog raised his hand to hit her, but she stood before him without flinching.“I am not a helpless infant,” she said.“If you strike me I will return to my father and his brothers.”He glowered at her.“You will remain here in Sparta! You are my wife.”“Yes,” she said.“And the mother of your daughter.”He fled from her room.As the months dragged on the servants gossiped about the slaves he slept with instead of his wife.Helen cared not.Her life was ruined, what did it matter what her husband did or how the servants prattled? There were rumors of bastard babies; always daughters.I told Helen that Hathor and mighty Isis had put a curse on Menalaos for murdering her baby.“He will never have a son,” I whispered to her, my eyes burning like coals.“How can you be sure?” she asked me.“I have invoked the power of the goddess,” I told her.“He will never father a son.”“Perhaps,” she said.“But if he does, he will want to marry the mother and make his son a legitimate prince.”I shook my head.“ To do that he will have to kill you.”“Yes,” she answered, and I realized the truth of it as she spoke.My eyes went wide.Helen understood the fate that lay in store for her better than I did.For the first time in my life I felt fear for my sweet one, like a chill wave of sickness rising within me.“If ever Menalaos has a son,” she said to me numbly, “our days are numbered.”“Your father.”“My father will never know,” she said, seeing the reality of it.“Menalaos will tell him that I died of a fever, or some such.”“I will slay the dog first,” I growled.Helen put her hand on my shoulder.“No, Apet.No.This life is not so lovely that I would cling to it.”I felt shocked.“Don’t speak like that, my nursling! Don’t dwell on death!”“Why not? What have I to live for?”“The gods will protect you,” I promised.“The old goddess, she who shaped the world even before your Hera and Aphrodite came to be.”“But what of Athene?” Helen asked in a low, sad voice.“She is the one goddess that Menalaos honors, the warrior goddess who had been jealous of me since my birth.She would be glad to see me dead and in Hades.”So with ever-mounting dread we lived the cold days and long, empty nights in dismal, gloomy Sparta, waiting for the inevitable day when Menalaos came to Helen with a son and a new wife and a sword thrust for her throat.Then came a visitor to her husband’s court: Alexandros, known as Paris, a prince of mighty Troy, come to collect the annual tribute that all the Achaian kingdoms paid to Priam, the Trojan king.3Helen would never have met Paris, would not even have seen him, had not her husband been called away to Crete to attend the funeral of Catreos, his grandfather.Even so, she was kept well away from the visitor.Her husband’s kinsmen guarded her closely.But I made it my business to see this Trojan prince with my own eyes.No one paid any attention to another serving woman in the great hall where the men took their meals.I slipped in with the other servants and took a good look at this prince of Troy.He was young, with a dazzling smile and eyes that gleamed like stars in the sky.I rushed to tell Helen of him.“He looks like a godling, my precious: as handsome as Apollo, by the gods.”The maidservants chattered of little else except Paris’ splendid appearance, his flashing smile and ready wit.Every serving girl in the palace dreamed of sharing his bed, and several of them claimed that they did.“You must meet this royal visitor,” I told Helen.“How can I?” she asked, gazing out the window of her chamber into the dung-dotted courtyard below.“I am a prisoner in this citadel of stone.”“You are the queen, and your husband is away,” said I.“Your husband’s kinsmen are duty-bound to obey you.”She turned and stared at me.“Do you think I could?” she wondered aloud.“Would it be possible?”“You are the queen, are you not? Use your power, my lamb.Use your beauty to dazzle this prince of Troy.”“What are you saying, Apet?”I smiled at my lovely one.“Troy is a fine, noble city.And it is far from Sparta.”It was a fantasy, a dream.We both knew that.Yet the idea of leaving Sparta, leaving this hopeless dismal life, seemed to lift the misery that had engulfed Helen, filled her with eager expectation
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