Elektra(13)

She was born as dawn broke across the city, as though Eos herself proclaimed my daughter’s existence to the world. I had thought a new baby would be such a fragile, breakable thing, but her soft solidity felt more like an anchor, as though it was she who held me safe in the world, instead of the other way around.

Agamemnon deferred to me for the naming of her, and I knew it at once. ‘Strong-born,’ I said to him, in those precious first hours of her life. ‘That’s what it means.’ He was pleased, thinking I meant that she was a healthy child, pink and full of vitality from the start. But it was the strength I derived from her that I was thinking of when I gave her the name.

He had been proud, benevolent. ‘What is the name?’

I drew in my breath, sore and exhausted but bathed in contentment, so commonplace and magical all at once, and I spoke her name aloud for the first time.

‘Iphigenia.’



At first, Agamemnon was a generous, joyful ruler of Mycenae, his project of uniting all the Greeks a long-held ambition that he was grateful to be realising. But, slowly, a peevishness began to settle over him and I saw him fretting from time to time. His imperious dismissal of what the slaves might think had been bluster. He couldn’t help but let slip his worries that perhaps he had not stamped out all lingering loyalty to Thyestes in his kingdom. Further afield, the Greeks were scattered across their islands, each with their own king and their own laws. Agamemnon worried that, even with the strength of Sparta and Mycenae together, the other lesser kings of Greece did not always recognise his superiority.

‘Do they think of Odysseus as the wisest?’ he would say. ‘Or Ajax the strongest? Who will they follow if it comes to a choice?’

I wondered what would be enough for him, what would soothe the broken boy within who had been chased from his home as his father’s blood spread across the marble floors of his own palace.

I had my own concerns. From the moment my baby daughter was born, the world seemed an altogether more alarming place, full of dangers I had never noticed before. This was love, I realised, looking at her tiny face, and with it came a swarming cloud of brand-new fears. An upturned pot of scalding water, a startled snake rearing from the grass, the rattling breath of disease – there seemed at once such a host of threats to her plump, perfect flesh. And it suddenly struck me as careless, arrogant even, to bring a defenceless infant into a place so haunted by grief and violence and the condemnation of the gods themselves. I could not ignore the fragments of the story that I knew any longer.

I sought out the slave-woman again. She had known Thyestes; what else could she tell me about the family that I had borne my little girl into?

‘You want to know about Atreus?’ She sounded disbelieving.

I wondered what she thought of me. Why had I not sought to find out more before I even married him? ‘I have heard some stories,’ I began guardedly. ‘But . . . I know there are other stories, too. Older stories.’

The slave-woman sucked in her breath. ‘No one in Mycenae would tell those stories,’ she said. ‘No one who valued their own skin.’

I paused. The fire burning at the hearth was the only light. Through the window, an oblong of starless sky was visible, flat and dark and empty. ‘Only the Queen of Mycenae listens to you here,’ I said. ‘There is no danger in any story you tell.’

Her eyes flickered to the sleeping Iphigenia in my arms. ‘The King of Mycenae might disagree.’

‘He doesn’t need to know.’

She smiled without mirth.

‘Please trust me,’ I said. ‘I want to know anything that might threaten my daughter. Any way that I can keep her safe.’ Speaking it aloud made me feel foolish. In Sparta, I could laugh this off. But here, it felt different.

She gave me a long, measuring look. I wondered what I was asking of her, if telling me the secrets of Mycenae might really put her at risk. I thought she wasn’t going to answer at all, but she glanced around at the closed door and, reassured that we were alone, she spoke. ‘It began with Tantalus,’ she said. ‘He was the first. Do you know what he did?’

‘He offended the gods.’ I shuddered, thinking of it. ‘He tried to trick them – he invited them to a banquet and . . .’ I swallowed. Motherhood was still new and raw to me. I couldn’t treat this as I had before, as a sensational tale consigned to a darker, more savage past. I was here, in the very palace where it had happened, where it felt as though the grisly spectres could reach out across the years, as though they could claw through the earth itself to clutch at me. At my daughter.

The slave-woman nodded. ‘He was a powerful, wealthy man, and the gods had favoured him with their friendship.’ Her words began to gather pace; although she had told me that no one would speak of this in Mycenae, now that she had my permission, the story flowed like one well practised. I wondered how many times these legends had been passed on here. ‘Despite the nobility of his blood, he was betrayed by the wretchedness of his nature. His cruelty and ambition tormented him, buzzing in his brain like a trapped mosquito, never giving him respite. He yearned for glory beyond the reaches of any mortal. He longed to see the gods humbled, to be the one to humiliate them. He imagined the sting of their shame and it warmed him better than the fire burning in his hearth. He could taste its rich sweetness like ambrosia flooding his mouth.’

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her.