Elektra(2)

Prologue


Elektra

Mycenae is silent, but I can’t sleep tonight. Down the corridor, I know that my brother will have kicked away his blankets. Every morning when I go in to rouse him, he has them in a wild tangle about his legs as though he has been running a race in his sleep. Maybe he runs after our father, the man he has never met.

When I was born, it was our father who named me. He named me for the sun: fiery and incandescent. He’d told me that when I was a little girl: that I was the light of our family. ‘Your aunt’s beauty is famed, but you’re far more radiant than her already. You’ll bring more glory to the House of Atreus, my daughter.’ And then he’d kiss me on my forehead before he set me down. I didn’t mind the tickle of his beard. I believed what he said.

Now, I don’t care about the lack of suitors clamouring in our throne room for me. I’ve heard the stories about my aunt Helen, and have never felt envy. Look at where her beauty led her. All the way to a foreign city that has held our men for ten years. Ten years that I have lived without my father, clinging to every victory related to us by messengers who pass through Mycenae. News of each triumph gives me a surge of pride, of elation, that it is my father, Agamemnon, who has fought for so long, and who rallies his men to fight on until the towering walls of Troy crumble into rubble beneath their conquering feet.

I see it all the time, in my mind’s eye. How he will storm the gates of the city; how they will fall cowering at his feet at last. And after it all, he will come home to me. His loyal daughter, waiting here for him as year after year passes.

I know that some people will say he never loved his children, that he couldn’t have done, given what he did. But I remember the feel of his arms around me and the steady beat of his heart against my ear, and I know there will never be a safer place in this world for me than that.

I have always wanted to grow up to be the woman he thought I would become, the woman I could have been, if only he had been able to stay. To live up to the name he gave me.

More than anything else, I want to make him proud.

Somewhere in this palace, I have no doubt that my mother will be wandering, staring out into the distant dark. She is always noiseless, her soft feet cushioned in delicate sandals, her hair bound back with crimson ribbons, scented with crushed petals and perfumed oils, her polished skin gleaming in the moonlight. I won’t leave my chamber and risk encountering her. Instead, I rise and walk towards the narrow window cut into the stone. I expect to see nothing when I rest my elbows on the sill and lean out: nothing, except perhaps a smattering of stars. But as I watch, I see a beacon leap into flame up on a distant mountain top, and, in answer, another light, and then another, in a chain of fire that leaps towards Mycenae. My heart pounds in my chest. Someone out there is sending us a signal. And there is only one thing that all of us are united in waiting to hear.

A flutter of orange sparks spirals into the sky as another beacon lights, closer still. Tears start in my eyes. As I watch the beacons in disbelief, I feel a spark ignite within me, the dazzling realisation of what this means.

Troy has fallen.

My father is coming home.





Part I





1


Clytemnestra

The House of Atreus carried a curse. A particularly gruesome one, even by the standards of divine torment. The history of the family was full of brutal murder, adultery, monstrous ambition and rather more cannibalism than one would expect. Everyone knew of it, but when the Atreidae, Agamemnon and Menelaus, stood before me and my twin sister in Sparta a lifetime ago, well, the silly stories of infants cooked and served up to their parents seemed to shimmer and crumble like dust motes in sunlight.

The two brothers were full of vitality and vigour – not handsome exactly, but compelling, nonetheless. Menelaus’ beard glinted with a reddish tint, whilst Agamemnon’s was dark, like the curls that clustered tightly around his head. Far more handsome suitors stood before my sister – indeed, the great hall in which they gathered seemed to swell and groan with the sheer volume of sculpted cheekbones and fine shoulders, jutting jawbones and flashing eyes. She had her pick of the finest men in Greece, but Helen had eyes only for the awkward Menelaus, who shifted his powerful bulk uncomfortably and stared mutely back at her.

Daughter of Zeus, that’s what the stories said of Helen. Whilst I was born red-faced and squalling from the commonplace indignity of childbirth, my sister supposedly tapped her way delicately through a pure white eggshell and hatched whole and beautiful. The legend was adorned with fanciful details – it was well known that Zeus could adopt many forms, and on this particular occasion he had appeared to our mother feathered and snowy white, gliding down the river towards her with unmistakable purpose.

To be blessed by Zeus in such a way was a thing of glory. That’s what everyone said. If Leda, our mother, had been deemed lovely enough by the ruler of the gods himself, it was a great honour to our family. It was not a disgrace to our father to raise the product of such a union himself.

And Helen’s beauty was legendary indeed.

They had gathered at our home in their dozens, these suitors of Helen. How they jostled one another, surging forward, peering at her fluttering veil, eager for a glimpse of the woman named the most beautiful in the world. As the mood shifted, became restive, I noticed how their hands hovered closer to the swords at their hips. Helen noticed it too and turned to me briefly, just long enough for our eyes to meet and a moment of concern to dart between us.