Read Online Helen of Troy by Margaret George - Free Book Online Page B

the town, and some people saw me and got excited . . .” Mother was breathing heavily but kept silent, so I continued. “And on the way I played in the fields, and by the riverbanks . . .” I shouldn’t say it, I had promised Clytemnestra I would keep the secret, but suddenly I knew this was the only way to force Mother to betray her own, much greater secret. “A huge swan was there, and he chased Clytemnestra and attacked her, and I beat him off, and then he looked at me, and he—he kissed me.” I glanced at her innocently. “He seemed to be fond of me, for some reason. Mother, it was as if he recognized me!”
    She gave a little choking cry. “Oh, how could you . . . how could he?”
    “It was as if he wanted to tell me something.”
    She drew herself up, as if she were issuing a command to her body. “Tomorrow morning, Helen, come to my chamber. After you have fulfilled your punishment.”

    Clytemnestra was taken to the whipping place, where youths were initiated into manhood and punished with rods. I was sent to my room and given nothing to eat, and made to sleep on the stone floor rather than my bed. I also had to sleep in the dark. The oil lamps were taken away. I spent a cold and frightening night, and I kept seeing the swan and his black eyes, and the eyes of the townspeople when they converged on me. I was frightened not by what had already happened, but in dread of what I would hear tomorrow from Mother. For I would not leave her chamber ignorant of my true self. I was determined now to know the truth.
    The sun was barely up when I wrapped myself in a wool mantle and sought my mother’s chambers. Her quarters were not far from the huge throne hall with its open hearth, situated so the queen could discreetly retire when a formal evening went on too long, which happened all too often.
    She was just arising, and a servant was draping a soft cloak the color of old ashes around her shoulders as I came into her room. I could see that her rising was only for show. She, also, had not slept.
    The new-risen sun was spilling its early light between the pillars of her room, reaching across the floor like thin arms.
    “My dear child,” she said. “Here, eat something with me.” She indicated a tray holding a honeycomb and some bread. But she did not eat, and neither did I.
    “Helen, I am sick with worry about you,” she said. “You knew you were not to leave the palace grounds. Certainly your sister knew that. She has become unmanageable, and it is time we find a husband to govern her. But something dreadful could have happened—something dreadful almost did happen.” She gave a little shudder.
    No more evasions. The truth must be stabbed, dragged out into the open. “But Mother, what truly could have happened? Those people are your subjects, and they would not have harmed their princess. Perhaps if I were to see them more often—”
    “No!” She clapped her hands together to silence me. “No.”
    “It is that prophecy,” I said. I knew that somehow the Sibyl was part of the reason I was kept locked up. That and the swan. Begin with the Sibyl. “Long ago . . . when we went to Delphi . . . there was that witch, that prophetess, I don’t know really what she was, but she made a prediction about me . . . something about being the ruin of Asia, the ruin of Europe, the death of Greeks. Are you trying to prevent it by holding me prisoner?”
    I expected her to deny it, but she nodded. “Yes. We hoped to trick the fates.”
    In my lessons I had heard the legends: how Perseus’s grandfather had known his daughter’s son would kill him so he sent them away, to no avail—the son killed him anyway; how Oedipus had been told he would kill his father and marry his mother, so he had taken himself off to Thebes, and on the way had killed his father unknowingly and as a reward was given his mother to wife, again unknowingly. It was futile to try to avoid what was foreordained.
    I remembered Father’s words: To