Elektra(11)

The burning light dissipated and there was only him, standing before me. The air was as fresh as a summer meadow, as warm as sunshine. ‘Cassandra,’ he said, and his voice was like the soft plucking of mellow strings, humming with poetry; nothing like a human voice.

I’d imagined that he would come to me in a dream, that he’d send me a message to interpret, something vague and cryptic. I had never thought he would come like this. I couldn’t find my voice to speak. But then, why would I need to? He could see into my soul. He knew what I longed for; I’d prayed to his statue a hundred times.

He stepped closer. I was fixed in the centre of his gaze, held fast as he moved, sinuous and snake-like, towards me. I shrank back, afraid that his touch would sear my skin, that he would turn my bones to ashes with the brush of his fingertips. He smiled. And then he seized my face between his hands and pressed his immortal lips to mine.

A chaos of images and a roar of indistinguishable sounds tumbled through my head, too fast, too loud to make sense. I couldn’t stand, only his hands held me upright, but then he released his grip on me, and I staggered away, falling against the wall.

‘You have it. My gift to you.’

The stone was solid against my back; I clung to it, nauseated by the dizzying rush inside my mind. Faces, distorted and unrecognisable, pleading and grimacing, begging for answers, for knowledge. Radiant flashes flickering over them: a baby squinting in the sunlight; oars splashing in moonlit waters; flames leaping into the sky. I felt that my skull would shatter, that it would rain down in fragments. He had breathed it into me; a gift I was sure I would not survive. Prophecy, the prize my mother had warned me never to ask for.

And then his face was against mine again and I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t make a sound. His fingers moved to unfasten the ribbons that held my hair, to slide down the bare skin of my arms, to the bronze clasp at my shoulder that held my robes, the sacred robes of Apollo’s virgin priestess. His gift was not free. I realised the price he wanted to take.

I was frozen, confused and terrified. Only one thought was coherent in my mind. That in becoming a priestess of his temple, I had given myself, pure and untouched. I knew what would happen to me if I broke the oath of virginity, even if it was to lie with Apollo himself. I would be cast out from the temple, the only place in my city that felt like home.

Frantically, I jerked my head, side to side, searching for escape. ‘No,’ I croaked. ‘Please, no.’

His great brows drew together, his golden eyes darkening. His hands tightened like iron bracelets around my arms; his face was so close to mine I could feel the impossible softness of his perfect skin and the sweetness of his breath in my mouth. I thought he would force me down, but he did not kiss me.

I heard the hiss of it, felt the droplets in my throat as he spat. The burn of his saliva in my mouth; the ragged traces of it dripping down my tongue, seeming to writhe and twist as he clamped my lips together with his hand. The heat of his eyes driving into mine; the inflexible power of his divine will.

I swallowed. It was like molten fire. And then he was gone, as suddenly as he had appeared.

I sank to the floor, my legs as useless as the seaweed I had seen rippling in the foamy water when I had walked the shore that morning, a whole lifetime ago. I knew he was truly gone; the air felt empty around me. I did not know why he had left me unhurt.

It wasn’t until the other priestesses came that I realised. I told them the truth, and, when they didn’t believe me, I told them everything I could see, the visions coming in a flurry. Their lives, their hopes, their fates all opened up to me, and I clutched at their arms, at their robes identical to mine, and I told them all of it in my frenzy.

Apollo had blessed me with his gift, and the truth of the world belonged to me. But the other girls, who loved him just as ardently as I did, did not recognise the words I spoke. Their eyes slid across me, met each other’s doubtful stares; they shook their heads almost imperceptibly, and when I saw what he had done, I howled and howled, and I tore at my own flesh until others came and stronger hands restrained me, carried me to my chamber and locked the door on my screams.

I truly had the gift of prophecy, breathed into my mouth by Apollo himself. But no one would ever believe another word I said.





5


Clytemnestra

My farewell to Sparta was emblazoned on my memory; an image burned against the darkness when I shut my eyes. I built it over and over in my head through the first nights at Mycenae, conjuring the details I had not known I noticed at the time: the tang of salt in the air and the screeching of the gulls overhead; the way the sun struck against the surface of the water, making rainbows in the spray; the white of Menelaus’ knuckles as he clung so tightly to Helen’s arm, as though she might fall and be swept away by the ocean tides if he did not hold her fast.

My arrival at Mycenae, in contrast, was a tumultuous blur of sights and sounds and confusion. I remembered the huge blocks of stone built into a mighty wall around the palace, so vast they could not have been moved by mortal men. Cyclopes had built it, Agamemnon assured me: that brutal and half-wild race of one-eyed giants to whom the lifting of an enormous boulder was no more effort than shifting a sack of barley. He glowed with pride, clasping my hand tightly in his. Beneath his stern demeanour, I could see his delight. I thought it was for me; his joy in showing his newly won kingdom to his newly won bride.

In Sparta, we had lived in the valley with mountains rising to three sides, like friendly guardians overlooking us. Here, the palace was built on high ground, towering above the neighbouring hills, and it felt as though the whole world lay at our feet.