Sparta

A wealthy hall on the mainland where Menelaus rules with Helen at his side again, ten years after he sailed across the sea to burn Troy and bring her back. Crystal and gold and cedar, oil-lamps burning bright enough to read by, musicians in one corner, dancers in another, tables overflowing. The war is over and it shows in every surface. Helen comes down the stairs and the room goes silent. Menelaus sits like a man wearing a crown of lead, telling the long story of who did not come home. It is here that Telemachus hears, for the first time, that his father is alive. Trapped on Calypso’s island. Weeping every day, facing the water, unable to leave. The boy weeps himself and cannot stop. Sparta is the place where hope is finally real, and the place where it is most painful, because the man who tells him is the man who got his wife back.