“Leave me alone.” Clytemnestra jerked away from me. “I don’t want anything from you.” She swallowed her tears and dashed back up to the altar, my cast-off incense clenched in her fist. She dropped it into the smoldering flames quickly, then turned her scraped, triumphant face to Mother and the priestess and waited to be praised.
“What have you done?” The old priestess’s squawk of outrage shocked my sister back to the brink of tears.
“I…I only…,” she began, trembling. “Helen dropped the offering, so I—”
“Clytemnestra, what were you thinking?” Mother stepped between my sister and the fuming priestess, her voice unnaturally shrill. “I taught you girls the proper way to serve Artemis! Weren’t you listening? Didn’t you know that if an offering touches the ground, it’s no longer fit for the goddess?”
“I’m not the one who dropped it!” Clytemnestra protested, tears streaming down her face. “Helen did that! Why aren’t you yelling at her?”
“Because Helen isn’t behaving like an infant!” Mother was so rattled by the scene we were making in front of the priestess, the maidens, the other women, and Artemis herself that she continued to scold my sister even when her words made no sense.
“But she did!” Clytemnestra stamped her foot. “She threw the offering away on purpose! She—”
“Not another word out of you, Clytemnestra,” Mother decreed. “Not one.” She called for Ione and commanded her to take my shamed and sobbing sister away. Sometimes even the best parents can be as closed-minded and unreasonable as the gods.
Afterward, as we were returning to the palace citadel, Clytemnestra turned her red-eyed, runny-nosed face to me and said, “It’s not fair! You do something wrong and Mama yells at me! Just because you’re pretty, you get away with everything. I hate you!” Then she tried to slap me, so I pulled her hair, and poor Ione had to get four other servants to pull us apart and cart us off to separate rooms.
They put me in a storeroom where my father’s tallymen kept the bales of sheepskins that were part of the tax payments from our people. I climbed onto a thick pile of fleeces, lay down in comfort, and stared at the ceiling, thinking about what had happened. No matter what else I thought of my sister, she was right: I had done something bad at the temple, but I hadn’t been punished for it. And even when I did earn punishment for fighting with Clytemnestra, how bad was it? I was more comfortable on those fleeces than in my own bed. Was I just lucky, or was Clytemnestra right? Did things go more easily for me because I was pretty?
I’d never thought about it before, even though I’d heard many people say, What a pretty girl! when they saw me. It happened whenever guests came to the palace. As soon as our parents presented the four of us to their visitors, the newcomers would praise how big and strong and handsome my brothers were. That made me giggle. Couldn’t they see that Castor was a little cross-eyed and that Polydeuces never took his finger out of his nose except to eat? As for my sister, our guests called her things like charming, or sweet, or delightful, but I—
I was pretty. It never failed. One man even said that I was beautiful, until his fellow envoy was very quick to say that no one could be beautiful in the palace of Tyndareus except his queen.
Pretty. What did that mean, really? And was I? I had no way of knowing. I’d caught sight of my reflection in pools of water from time to time, but the image was dark and unclear. I wanted better. My mother owned a mirror that had come all the way from Egypt, but up until that moment I’d never understood why she spent so much time looking into it. I decided that as soon as my punishment was over, I’d sneak into my parents’ sleeping chamber and see what pretty looked like.
The sun was halfway down the western sky by the time one of our house slaves let me out of the storeroom. She was a grouchy old thing who didn’t like to waste time talking. When I asked her where my nurse was, she snapped, “How would I know?” before gathering up an armful of fleeces and waddling off.
I was thrilled! If Ione was busy elsewhere, it meant I had the chance to run to my parents’ room and satisfy my curiosity right away. I stole through the corridors of the palace as fast as I could go without drawing attention. Silently I prayed: O Aphrodite, please let me find Mama’s mirror, and see what I want to see, and get away before anyone catches me! Who better than the goddess of beauty to help me find out exactly what pretty meant?
Aphrodite heard my prayers. I didn’t run into anyone on my way to my parents’ room, the room itself was deserted, and Mother’s mirror was lying out in plain sight on a little table, just waiting for me to snatch it up and stare at my reflection. I was still muttering a hasty thank you to the goddess when I heard, “Helen! What do you think you’re doing?” It was my mother. She’d come into the room and stolen up behind me so silently that the unexpected sound of her voice made me jump half out of my skin. I gave a little yip of shock and dropped the mirror. The loud clang it made when it hit the painted tiles shook my bones.
“Oh dear.” Mother bent to pick up the mirror while I stood there shamefaced. “It’s all scratched and dented. I’m going to look like I’ve caught the pox. I suppose it’s partly my fault for creeping up on you like that. I was a skilled huntress when I was a girl back in Calydon. You have to walk like a shadow when you’re tracking deer.” She shook her head over the damaged mirror, but she was smiling. “Sweet one, why are you meddling with my things?”
I clasped my hands behind my back and looked away. “I—I wanted to see what I look like.”
“That much I could figure out,” she said dryly. “But why now? Seven is much too young to start worrying about if you’re pretty enough to attract a good husband.”