Elektra(21)

She knelt down beside me, cupping my chin. ‘Don’t worry about your father,’ she said. ‘He will come home safe.’ She smiled at me, her eyes warm and sparkling, her hair shining in the sunlight. Everyone said how beautiful her sister was, but I couldn’t imagine there was anyone prettier than my mother in the world. ‘Come on, I’ll go with you,’ she told me, and I slipped my hand into hers.

When the day came that we had to wave my father off to Aulis, my sisters cried, but I was determined that I wouldn’t. He kissed them, then he stooped to kiss my forehead. ‘Here,’ he whispered, and under the folds of his cloak, where no one could see what he was doing, he passed me the lion dagger. ‘You can keep it, but make sure it stays hidden.’

I gripped it tightly at my side, anxious in case my mother saw it and took it away. I knew she’d think it was dangerous, that she’d never let me keep it. She didn’t look at me, though; her eyes were fixed on him at the head of the procession, her face strangely tight and cold. Methepon whined as my father walked away, but I stroked the thick fur of his neck and he pressed his nose against my arm, as though he knew I needed the comfort, too.

I remembered what my father had told me about my name, that I was the light of our family, and so I tried to shine as brightly as I could for him. I hoped that my face would be the memory he would take with him to war, and that it would draw him home as soon as possible.





9


Clytemnestra

‘Mother?’

Her voice was hesitant, uncertain. I looked up, squinting in the sun, thinking for a moment that it was Elektra who spoke, but it was Iphigenia, standing framed between two pillars. The childlike ring to her voice sounded more like it came from her small sister than herself. One hand was twisting at the fine golden chain of her necklace; the other clutched at the smooth stone beside her as though she needed help to stand upright.

‘Come to me,’ I said, patting the cushion of the low couch on which I sat in the courtyard. I had been looking out to the distant sea on the horizon, not such a calming pastime recently. Everything had been thrown into tumult. I did not like to think of the way that Agamemnon had sailed away; of the words between us before he left.

Iphigenia didn’t move. I was seized for a moment by the wonder that still made my breath stick in my throat. That glorious, maternal sweep of pride and delight that was almost painful in its intensity. I had three daughters now, and another baby kicking in my womb, but motherhood could still swell my heart in these simple moments: my daughter, fourteen years old, standing in the sunshine. Sometimes I saw the woman she so nearly was. The plump little cheeks of childhood, which I had so loved to kiss just to feel their inexpressible softness, had given way to fine cheekbones, and there was a new thoughtfulness in her eyes that replaced the incessant curiosity that had inspired a thousand questions when she was younger. But at other times, when I saw her shriek with laughter alongside her younger sisters, the elegance she tried to assume nowadays shrugged off and forgotten for a moment, I could see the little girl she had been, the infant I had been cradling in my arms when I first felt that fierce, sweet rush of a mother’s love.

She seemed just then poised between the two states. There was a keen edge of excitement burning a flush across her face, but I could see a desperation in her eyes as well, a note of fear and confusion, and a longing for my help.

‘What is it?’ I asked, sitting straighter.

‘A herald comes,’ she answered. She sounded distracted and her fingers knotted her necklace even tighter as she spoke. ‘You need to come to the throne room to receive him.’

‘News of your father?’ I stood, concern snaking up my spine. I wondered if this was the message to tell us that he had sailed at last. His army was assembled, all the warriors of Greece gathered at Aulis, ready. It had taken weeks to rout them all out – Odysseus in particular had given them some trouble, I knew – but the most recent proclamation had told us they waited only for a fine wind, one that would carry their fleet to Troy. I couldn’t imagine it: such a number of ships as had been gathered. More than a thousand, we’d heard: a thousand ships with tall, curved prows, each one crammed with eager young men, armour and weapons.

So many ships, to carry back my sister. Helen, somewhere across that ocean, behind walls we had never seen. I tried to shake the thought from my head; I could not imagine her there. All of our lives she had been in Sparta, and I had known what she ate, whom she talked to, what she wore and where she was, but now I had no idea what surrounded her, or how she felt.

‘I thought that too,’ Iphigenia said. ‘That it would be news that they had sailed, and so I said I would come to fetch you myself – I thought you would want me with you.’ She was always kind, my daughter, and she knew how I had dreaded this moment. I had seen Menelaus when he arrived at Mycenae; the despair that hunched his shoulders, the tears falling loosely down his cheeks. The story spilled out, his chest hitching and sobs gulping in his throat as he told us how the Trojan prince had gone, and Helen was nowhere to be found. His grief embarrassed me. I hated to see a man so shattered, and the words of comfort that I sought wouldn’t come. It was my sister who had done this to him, and the memory of her shimmered back to the surface for a moment: her satisfied smile at her own reflection when she wondered aloud what grand destiny the gods might have in store for her. Did she think that she had found it in this Paris?