A Prince of Troy by Lindsay Clarke

Author:Lindsay Clarke [Clarke, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-09-30T17:00:00+00:00

The Supplicant

Within the year Tyndareus was found dead in his chamber. Already ruler in all but name, Menelaus ascended to the Lacadaemonian throne of Sparta, and shortly afterwards his beloved wife gave birth to a daughter. Helen’s labour was so long and hard that there was a time when Aethra feared that the struggle might kill her, yet the infant Hermione emerged from those birth-pangs with so much of her mother’s exquisite beauty that Menelaus felt more than ever blessed in the marriage he had made.

Helen too was strengthened by the marriage. With the long ordeal of being the object of every man’s desire now over, her confidence returned. She took a new purchase on life, responding well to the pleasures and challenges of being a wife, a mother and a queen. In dealing with the affairs of a kingdom whose customs she knew and understood far better than he did, Menelaus often sought her counsel. This was the first time that anyone had ever valued her judgement, and she thrived on it, discovering a larger interest in public life. They drew up new plans for their palace together, extending both the state rooms and their private apartments, and making skilful use at her suggestion of the finely mottled porphyry from local quarries. The results so impressed her sister that Clytaemnestra ordered large quantities of Spartan stone for the refurbishment of her own gloomy palace in Mycenae. Helen also took delight in redesigning the gardens around their home so that the tranquil hours that she and her adoring husband spent together with their child might be filled with fragrance and colour and the sound of water.

At such times they could look down from their palace beneath the Bronze House of Athena across a broad fertile plain ringed by its steep defending hills, on to a future in which their contentment seemed assured. For if there was little passion in their life together there was a great deal of affection, and Sparta was prospering around them. Already plans were laid for the day when Hermione would marry her cousin Orestes, the first-born child of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, thus uniting the thrones of Sparta and Mycenae for ever. The gods, it seemed, were kind.

Almost four years after the birth of Hermione, Menelaus received an urgent message from his brother. Agamemnon required his presence at the court of King Telamon on Salamis, where their joint show of strength would offer support to the king in the latest round of a long-standing wrangle with Troy.

Dismayed by the prospect of this first separation from her husband, Helen demanded to know why such a mission should be necessary.

‘It’s an old quarrel,’ Menelaus explained. ‘Telamon and Heracles captured Troy about thirty years ago and as part of his share in the spoils Telamon was given the Trojan King’s daughter Hesione. She’s been kept on Salamis against her will ever since and wants nothing more than to go home. When Priam first succeeded to his father’s throne he was too weak to help his sister.

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