When Queen Clytemnestra learned that Helen had returned to Sparta together with her husband Menelaus at the end of a sultry summer, the news filled her with joy and at the same time with great anxiety. She was impatient to embrace the sister she had last seen when she was only twenty, and to learn from her many things about the long war that she still did not know; above all, she was impatient to know whether she would serve the cause of the great conspiracy. But she feared Menelaus.

The younger Atreid would immediately seek news of Agamemnon and it was not improbable that he would soon know the truth. Many witnesses to the massacre had been eliminated; only the most faithful had been spared. But how to establish who was faithful in a palace where the queen shared her bed with the accomplice who had helped her kill her legitimate husband, where son and daughter no longer trusted their own mother?

Her informers had told her that Menelaus had been greeted by a city astonished and troubled, but not hostile.

The mothers and fathers of the warriors who were returning after so many years had thronged along the road that led into the city from the south. They anxiously watched the ranks of foot soldiers, scanned the rumbling battle chariots as they paraded by with their gleaming decorations of silver and copper.

Some of them suddenly lit up, shouting out a name, and began to run along the column so as not to lose sight of the beloved face, not for a single instant. The man who answered to that name did not turn his head, remaining in the ranks, closed in his polished armour, but his gaze rested on those well-loved heads, on those faces so harshly lined by their long wait.

Others, after having watched the very last man parade by, dragged themselves back to the head of the line to have another look, or crossed to the other side, not willing to resign themselves to the despair of a loss, telling themselves that time and the war can make a son unrecognizable to the father who sired him, to the mother who bore him.

Still others, after having futilely called out the names of one or more of their sons, again and again, after having run up and down the ranks with their hearts in a flurry, and after having frantically searched the rows of warriors arrayed in front of the king’s palace waiting to be discharged, gave themselves up to despair. The women raised shrill cries and soiled their hair in the dust, the men, their cheeks streaked with tears, stared silently at the dull, lightless sky hanging over the city.

At nightfall several guards exited the palace with torches, accompanied by scribes who had inscribed the names of the fallen on fresh clay tablets. Then came the king in person, armed, flanked by his field adjutants. He had been responsible for the war and he was responsible for the fallen, for all the young men run through by merciless bronze, buried in a foreign land, in the fields of Asia or the swamps of Egypt. He had to answer to the grief-shattered parents.

The great courtyard of the palace was packed with a silent crowd, but soon someone began to shout: ‘Bring us back our sons! What have you done with them? You took the best of our young men and brought them to war. . over a woman!’

The king was pale, subdued. He wore his long red hair tied at the nape of his neck and was barefoot, like a beggar.

‘Even I mourn my dead!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Where is my brother Agamemnon? And where are his comrades? Where are my brother’s children, Prince Orestes and Princess Electra? Why haven’t they come to welcome me?’ He advanced towards the edge of the steps. ‘The responsibility for the war was mine,’ he said, ‘and I will pronounce the names of my comrades fallen in a strange land, buried far away from their homes, so that their parents can raise a mound to them, with a stone remembering their name, should they so wish.’

‘It’s your fault that they’re dead!’ shouted another voice. ‘Just so you could have Helen back in your bed! And you are alive!’

The king opened his robe and bared the scars on his chest. ‘It is only fate that has spared me,’ he shouted. ‘A thousand times I heard arrows whistling next to my temples, many times did the bronze cut my skin. I never hid myself. Strike this heart if you believe that I trembled with fear, that I used the lives of the comrades you entrusted me with as a shield.’ He lowered his head. ‘I wept over them. Bitterly. Each one. And I remember every one of them.’

The crowd’s shouts lowered to a diffused murmur. The king held his hand out to the scribe sitting on the ground near him, who handed him a tablet. He began to read the names of the fallen, one by one, with a firm, sharp voice, and the silence in the courtyard became so deep that the sputtering of the torches could be heard in the still air. Until late that night, the king pronounced the names of the fallen before their mothers and their fathers, before their tearful brides.

Among them he pronounced the name of Lamus, son of Onchestus, but the youth’s old father did not hear him. He lay dying in his bed, his heart full of grief because he would have to descend into the house of Hades without seeing his son, the only son that his wife had borne him. For years he had dreamed of seeing Lamus return one day, of seeing him enter the gate to the vineyard under the arbour, made a man by the war and its hardships, of seeing him toss his spear and his shield on the ground and run forward to embrace him. But now his hour had come; his wait had been futile.

When King Menelaus had pronounced the last name, the moon was disappearing behind Mount Taygetus and old Onchestus descended weeping into the shadows. The gods who see all and know all did not permit him to know that his beloved son was alive. Lamus was marching in that moment under an incessant rain on a path which climbed towards the woody heights of the Blue Mountains, in the remote Land of Evening. He was following the son of Tydeus, Diomedes, towards an obscure destiny.

Helen met with Queen Clytemnestra of Mycenae and Queen Aigialeia of Argos in the sanctuary of the Potinja, the ancient goddess and lady of the animals, near Nemea, at night, by the light of a lantern. She had requested this herself, so as not to be recognized or arouse suspicion in the men of her escort. And she had also requested that when they met in the temple, the priestess of the goddess be present as well to celebrate her rites.

‘You’ve changed,’ Queen Clytemnestra said to her.

‘So have you,’ replied Helen meekly.

‘We reign over Argos, Knossos and Mycenae,’ said Aigialeia. ‘We each have a man in the palace and in our beds, but he has no power. You must do away with Menelaus.’

‘Does he know how his brother died?’ asked Clytemnestra.

‘He knows that he is dead. That he has been for some time. And he is suffering.’

‘We’ve suffered as well,’ said Aigialeia. ‘Don’t let yourself be moved. Men are bearers of death and it is only right that they die. It is women who bear life, and our reign will bring happiness back to this world.’

‘He will soon know learn how Agamemnon died,’ said Helen, ‘if he hasn’t already found out. Yesterday friends from Mycenae announced a visit.’

‘Do you know who they are?’ asked Clytemnestra, and fear flashed through her eyes.

‘I don’t know,’ said Helen.

‘You must kill him before he has time to take any initiative. . or find allies.’

‘One of the kings might come to his aid. .’ said Helen.

‘Only Nestor remains,’ said Aigialeia. ‘The others are all dead or gone.’ She handed Helen a vial. ‘This is a potent poison. You must mix it with your perfume and spread it on your body where you know he will kiss you. He will die slowly, little by little, every time he makes love to you. When he is weakened by the poison he will no longer approach you, and it is then that you must entice him, provoke him, force him. He made war to have you back in his bed. And that is how he must die.’ Helen accepted the vial and hid it in the folds of her gown. ‘With Menelaus dead no one will be able to thwart our plan. Old Nestor will be completely alone; at his age, he won’t want to take up a war, and I doubt that his sons will either. Pisistratus, his firstborn, is a bull, but he has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Penelope already reigns in Ithaca, and Ulysses is surely dead. If he were alive he would have returned by now. In Crete, Idomeneus has been dethroned after he immolated his only male heir to the gods. There is no one left in the palace of Minos but the women. We have won!’ exulted Aigialeia.