Beauty's Daughter: The Story of Hermione and Helen of Troy by Carolyn Meyer

Author:Carolyn Meyer [Meyer, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ancient Greece, Historical Fiction
ISBN: 978-0544108622
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2014-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

HELEN WAS WAITING FOR me at Father’s ship, and she was displeased.

“You stupid girl!” she said sharply. “This is your wedding day, and you disappear! We have to find a decent peplos for you to wear, and a proper veil. Why is your hair looking so bedraggled?” She glanced at Astynome and Hippodameia and frowned. “Who are these girls you’ve brought with you, Hermione?”

“I’m her friend,” Astynome said.

“As am I,” said Hippodameia.

“They’ll be with me at the wedding,” I explained to my mother. “If you insist upon forcing me to marry Pyrrhus.”

Helen sighed. Her delicately arched eyebrows rose. “Hermione, do you understand nothing? Women do as men command—that’s the way of the world. We really have very little choice of whom we marry. Isn’t that true?” She looked from one to the other of my friends.

“It’s true,” admitted Hippodameia, and Astynome nodded.

“My father chose Menelaus from among all my suitors and married me to him. The choice wasn’t mine—I scarcely knew him!” Helen said.

“You chose to leave him and to run away with Paris,” I could not resist reminding her.

“It was the work of Aphrodite,” she said. “I’m not sure it was my choice. And it was certainly not my choice to marry Deiphobus after Paris was killed—Priam insisted, and Deiphobus forced himself upon me.”

“Now he is dead too—and by your own hand!”

“Did I kill him?” Helen frowned. “First he was there, threatening me, and then he lay dead on the floor and I was holding a bloody knife. But did I choose to kill him? I’m not certain I did,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t remember. Perhaps the gods intervened.”

“But it was your choice to return to Father?”

“Oh, yes.” My mother smiled. “This time it is. I’m happy that he still wants me as his wife after all that has happened.”

I wondered if she was telling the truth.

“Then why are you forcing me to marry Pyrrhus? I was promised to Orestes by your father. I love him, Mother, and Orestes loves me! Surely you can understand that.”

“I understand it, but I can do nothing about it, and neither can you. It doesn’t matter what your grandfather promised—he’s long dead. Your father pledged you to the son of Achilles even before the ships sailed from Greece for Troy.”

Had he really done that? Was this true? And if it was, as my mother claimed, why had he not said anything to me in all this time?

“Menelaus owes it to the memory of the great warrior to honor that pledge,” Helen was saying, though I scarcely listened. “Breaking that promise would only lead to more violence, and there’s surely been enough of that. Now bring your friends, Hermione, and we’ll prepare for your wedding. Who knows—you may even come to care for Pyrrhus. Stranger things have happened.”

I gazed into her eyes of hyacinth blue and gave up. “I will obey, Mother, and do as you and Father command. But I will never care for that brute.”

Glumly, I went with my mother, my two friends trailing along silently behind us.

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