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With his eyes closed, he can almost believe the warmth and weight beside him is Helen.
But it’s not.
“Leave me.”
He stays turned away from her, eyes squeezed shut as she stumbles off the bed and out the door. The quiet of the room, without even the disturbance of another person’s breath, is so overwhelming it forces a stilted sob from his throat as he curls in tighter around himself, arms wrapped tight around his chest, knees drawn up closer to his body. It’s not supposed to be like this, his brain tells him. It’s not supposed to feel like this.
Tears carve down his cheeks as the voice of his brother echoes around in his mind, voice warping and becoming distorted with the weight of memory. ‘Warm your bed with another,’ he’d said, as if it were nothing to think about. As if it didn’t laugh in the face of the most important oath he and Helen had promised each other on the day of their marriage. ‘Why should you deny yourself such simple comforts when your whore of a wife clearly isn’t denying herself?’
It had made sense, at the time. As the wave of anger crested over his head, he’d grabbed a slave by the wrist, one he’d brought with him from Sparta on the journey to visit Agamemnon in Mycenae, and dragged her away, stomping, to the guest quarters he’d been assigned. She was a slender thing, all dark hair and wide eyes that spilled over with tears as he brushed a stray lock away from her face and crowded her onto the bed.
He drew his hand back sharply as she flinched away from his touch. No. She wasn’t Helen. Helen, who had always been everything Menelaus needed, everything he could have ever wanted. Helen, with her gentle curves and light hair, whose green eyes would slip closed as he caressed her face. No. This girl in his bed was not Helen.
And still, he took her.
It was his right, he told himself. Their oath of fidelity had already been broken. He was no longer bound to Helen in the same way as before.
The chains of this thought were heavier than the vow he’d made to Helen.
With tears still streaming down his face, he heaves himself up off the bed and pours himself a cup of wine with a heavy hand. He gulps it down and pours another, as his chest constricts with another wave of sadness. With each long draught he takes, more details flood his mind’s eye. The feel of Helen’s lips on his cheek, the very day she left. The warmth of her body beside him in bed. The softness that she reserved only for him and Hermione.
He goes to refill his cup again, but only dredges remain in the amphora. His vision blurs, then whitens. What kind of hospitality is this, to leave guests without even enough wine to quench their sorrows? Shards of clay crash around him as the jar hits the wall and shatters into dozens of pieces.
Breath comes in short, sharp bursts as he strides out of his rooms and directly to his brother’s quarters. The door bangs against the wall, swinging open on its hinges. His eyes strain to adjust to the sudden darkness, thready light from the torches in the hallway casting faint shadows that jump and shudder on the floor as Menelaus stumbles blindly into Agamemnon’s rooms. His shins crash into the bed he hadn’t seen in the darkness and he reaches, feeling across the sheets and soft coverlets until his fingers grasp his brother’s ankle and he yanks until Agamemnon crashes out of bed. In an instant, hands grasp and prod at the soft skin behind his knees and he’s on the ground too, restrained by hands on his shoulders and a knee pressing into his stomach.
His head spins.
“Menelaus?” Agamemnon whispers, blinking hard in the dark, no doubt struggling to parse the limited information he’s been given. “What the fuck?”
”What kind of a host are you?” Menelaus hisses. “Are you really so stingy that you can’t bear to give your guests enough wine to last the night?”
”What?” Beside them, on the bed, Clytemnestra shifts and the two of them freeze. She’s never been known for being particularly genial after being awoken. “Come with me,” he says, pushing himself off the ground with a grunt and waiting for Menelaus to follow on unsteady legs out of the room before shutting the door gently behind them.
The world spins in Menelaus’ vision, but he cannot forget his mission. Which was… which was…
”You come to me, at this hour,” Agamemnon spins to face him, voice dangerously low. “To complain you don’t have enough wine?”
Wine. That’s it.
He burps.
”Gods,” Agamemnon whispers, turning his face away, nose wrinkled. “You reek.”
Menelaus sways on his feet, the hallway tilting suddenly. Agamemnon grips his shoulders, eyes wide. “Whoa,” he says, as a wave of nausea tears through Menelaus and he twists away and retches, ending up on his hands and knees, head throbbing violently.
Once there is nothing left in his stomach to expel, Agamemnon heaves him to his feet and leads him away from the mess, passing a skittering slave girl— the same one that shared his bed earlier in the evening, he realizes belatedly, carrying a bowl and linens slung over her arm.
Menelaus slumps into the first sofa he sees, unable to keep his feet under him any longer, the room still spinning too violently to focus on anything but staying semi-upright. There is a cup pressed into his hands and he raises it to his lips, nearly missing his mouth but prevailing at the last second. At the first sip, he wants to spit it out.
”’s not wine,” he slurs, eyeing the liquid in the cup, clear and cool.
Agamemnon glares at him. “You’ve had enough.”
”Who are you to tell me when I’ve had enough?” Menelaus hisses, spitting all of the pent up vitriol he can muster at his brother. “Why don’t you try telling me that when your wife has gone and left.” Tears prick behind his eyes again and he can’t even will them away this time, inhibitions too murky behind the sheen of alcohol.
”Come on, brother.” Agamemnon’s hand at his elbow urges him to raise the cup to his lips again. “I’m trying to help you.” Menelaus glares at him, but drinks anyway. “You never could hold your liquor.”
Menelaus doesn’t remember falling asleep, but at some point, he must have. He wakes with the sun, streaming bright and sharp through the slatted blinds over the window, feeling every drop of wine he drank the night before, all of it throbbing in his veins, getting stuck in his head, the pulse at his temples and behind his eyes.
Agamemnon wakes some time later, groaning as he stretches his neck side-to-side.
”Agamemnon,” Menelaus rasps, head pounding from the exertion of speaking. “I need her back.”
~
With time, he can almost forget that night ever happened. He doesn’t look at the slave girl he took to bed, and Agamemnon doesn’t suggest it again. All of their combined energy goes to gathering Helen’s suitors, the ones who took the oath of Tyndareus, as well as supplies for their journey to Troy, and reallocating ships from seaside cities who had a surplus for the amount of men they could bring to the armies from more landlocked cities. It was a massive undertaking, the largest combined military effort Achaea had ever seen. Menelaus woke thinking of strategy and he fell asleep dreaming of Helen.
The day before Menelaus was to leave Mycenae, he spent with Hermione. There was no telling how long they would spend on the shores of Troy, and he would be there even longer, going ahead of the whole of them on an embassy to the Trojan throne room. Perhaps, he could see Helen. Maybe even speak to her. Maybe enfold her in his arms and kiss her hair and take her home.
He shakes his head, clearing his mind. Today is about Hermione.
At only eleven years old, she is filled with questions, her young mind not comprehending all that had happened in the past year.
“How long will you be gone?” Her soft voice asks. Her eyes implore him, shining with tears he can tell she is trying so hard to not let fall. Gods. She looks so much like her mother at this age, it’s almost uncanny.
He takes a sip of diluted wine, stomach still not strong enough to handle more since the night he has tried so hard to purge from his mind. “I don’t know,” he admits, quietly, unsure how to comfort his daughter. Her lip wobbles and a tear finally spills over, before she quickly swats it away. “I am sorry.”
”I miss Mamma,” she says quietly, like she is afraid to say it aloud.
Menelaus’ heart breaks for the hundredth time, sadness yawning into something terrifying. “Me too.”
The goodbye is difficult, but Menelaus looks to the future. In months, he will be back here, on the journey home to Sparta, with both his girls in his arms. Before he knows it. Before Hermione even sees her next birthday. He is sure of it. No person in their right mind, not even a Trojan, would deny his request, not when the promise of a thousand war ships loomed on the horizon.
A soft knock echoes through his chambers just as he is about to extinguish the last remaining torch.
At the door stands the slave girl, the very one he had been avoiding for nearly three cycles of the moon. “Lord Menelaus,” she dips her head, never meeting his eyes. “I wanted to wish you a safe journey to Troy.”
He waits. Surely, this cannot be all she is bothering him with at this hour.
”And… I wanted to tell you…” she swallows, looking sick.
”What?” he spits.
“I am with child.”