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Some shepherds who did not know who we were offered us black bread and hard cheese. It was lovely to watch Diomedes talking with those old men gnarled like olive trees, and biting with hesitant teeth into the impenetrable crust of their humble bread. I crowned a lamb with a brushwood garland. It stumbled over its own thin legs trying to reach the dangling twigs with its toothless mouth. And when the long shadow of the Peloponnese tinted the sheep’s woolen coats with violet and dogs ran about rounding up the animals with wolfish barks, Diomedespressed his lips against my neck and offered me his hand to lead me away.
    â€œWait,” I said. A last hazy crown of red fire was still for a moment framing the jagged silhouette of the mountains before it vanished completely. The sheep were gone. Slender wisps of smoke from the cooking of humble suppers climbed from distant hovels in the valley. All was silent and deserted. Only that sparse, hesitant smoke told us we were not the last survivors on the face of the earth. I began to get up.
    He was so much taller than me. To help me to my feet he needed to bend like a willow in a storm.
    We decided to walk hand in hand to the palace, and ask my father for a consent I did not think we would need.
    The sentries at the gate came to attention in a formal salute, ignoring our tousled hair and disordered clothes. There were fragments of hay in Diomedes’ black locks like precocious strands of gray. I smiled and gently brushed them away.
    The king’s chief counselor came to meet us: “King of Argos, we have been waiting for you.” Diomedes sighed. He had kept his white fillet around his wrist all day. Now he abruptly unwrapped it.
    I stood on tiptoe to arrange it on his dark curls while he bowed his head as if I were crowning him. The smilenever left his lips. He squeezed my hand: “I will see you later.”
    Then for a brief instant, before all hopes were dashed, I felt certain he and I would grow old together, and die together, in a palace not much different from this one. The thread of my life would be woven and cut together with his. I did not realize Leda was behind me until I heard her gracious tones. I turned. She was old, and wrinkles seemed to have appeared at the corners of her eyes in a single evening.
    â€œI’m happy for you,” she murmured in a tired voice.
    I considered her, looking into her lovely blue eyes; she had denied me that refuge as a child, but now I dived in, on this evening when the air consisted of glass too thick to allow the passage of any lies. I said nothing, but took a step forward and embraced her. At first she stood as rigid as wood, but gradually let herself go. I could feel her soft skin against my body, the folds of her dress, the great gold brooches that held her clothes together. Her skin was fragrant with rose. Then she let go of me, stroked my face for a brief moment, and went away. I did not wait to watch her disappear at the far end of the corridor.

9
    Diomedes started back for Argos the following morning, with a promise from my father and his consent to our marriage. He left on horseback, his regal fillet wrapped as always around his strong dark wrist. My parents stood stiffly at the top of the steps. My mother had already stooped smiling. I shuddered as I remembered how Castor and Pollux had seen Theseus off from the same place when he left with me wrapped in his cloak. I ran down the steps. The horses were pawing the ground, held back with difficulty by their riders. The men of the escort smiled when Diomedes, already in his saddle, grabbed me by the waist, pulled me up and placed me in front of himself on his horse’s back. He gave me a long passionate kiss as if no one else were there. As always he gazed into my eyes while he stroked my hair; his eyeslaughing: “What’s wrong, Helen? I’ll be back in no time, then you’ll have all the time in the world to get tired of