Elektra(35)

‘The man that stormed this palace – who killed my father in front of my eyes whilst I screamed and begged for mercy – I could not believe that even such a beast as that could slaughter his own child for a fair wind,’ he said.

The tears started coursing down my face before he could finish his sentence. No one said such things. It was as though this young man had emerged from nowhere and begun to articulate the rage and pain that stormed inside me.

‘I do not wish to cause you more pain.’ He stumbled over his words. I shook my head, unable to wrench out any speech, but waving my hand in a way that I hoped conveyed to him that I wanted him to carry on, to please carry on. ‘Forgive me for speaking of her like this. But when I learned of how depraved this false king truly is . . .’ His face transformed from solicitous to seething in a blink. He swallowed hard again, his chest rising and falling as he sought control once more. ‘I wondered if there was someone else in the world with even more reason to hate him than me.’

He had seemed an unlikely villain, this ungainly, painfully anxious young man, but I understood. The force of his hatred had overcome his fear and brought him I did not know how far, across which ocean or from what place of safety, here to me in the place where his father had died before his helpless eyes; a place that might still cost him his own life. But I knew how easy a decision it must have been; how hatred crystallised the world, how it made everything so simple.

‘I don’t need your help,’ I told him.

‘But I need yours,’ he said. That seam of anguish in his voice, the one that threatened to crack and break him apart. I had felt myself a block of stone since I watched Iphigenia spiral into grey smoke. My living daughters had cried in my arms and my throat had closed around any words of comfort that I might have spoken. My baby was born and all I had known was indifference. But somehow, this stranger’s pain made me flinch. Perhaps it was that I could see through to the very centre of him, his beating heart exposed to me, mirroring mine. The shriek of agony in our souls, that could only be soothed by one thing. Revenge.

I stared at the quiver in his tender throat. I wanted to touch his skin. I could not bear for anyone else to come close to me. If my daughters flung their arms about my neck, I could only feel their skin cold and lifeless to my touch, could only see their eyes vacant and staring, could only think of their flesh melting on a funeral pyre. Aegisthus though, seemed like a man already dead. I knew it, because I was as well. What else could I be, when my soul was drifting down the dank and winding path to the Underworld, unable to break that tether between me and my lovely girl, as though the cord between us had never been split at all? Only my body was here, and it lingered for one purpose. Aegisthus and I might have been two ghosts standing there in the courtyard – and, if we were, then who could stand in judgement of us?

I felt the shock ripple through his body as I cupped my hands around his face and drew it close to mine. When I kissed him, he tasted sweet. It was not the sour tang of fear in his mouth or the dry, papery cracks of his lips. It was something else that made it so delicious. My husband’s cousin. Son of his rival. An enemy more hate-filled than any massing within the walls of Troy, and more surely set upon his blood than anyone living. Anyone, that is, except for me.





14


Elektra

Maybe in another life, a life in which my father didn’t have to go to war and so my family paid attention to what I was doing, maybe I would never have so much as spoken to the son of a farmer. But a deceitful prince of Troy sailed to Sparta and took my mother’s faithless sister away with him, and I did not live the life I was supposed to lead. So, I talked to him. No one else wanted anything to do with me, after all. They all thought I stayed inside all day, that I would never dare to sneak away. I held my secret wanderings close to my heart, something that belonged to me alone.

That first day, whilst I watched the men toiling beneath the scorching sun, the relentless repetitive rhythm of it hypnotising, I felt a poke on my upper arm and jumped. He had a shock of dark hair, skinny arms. He didn’t smile, and I didn’t either. Clearly the son of one of the farmers, he was ragged and dirty and not like anyone else I had ever spoken to. His name was Georgios and, quickly, he became my friend. If I didn’t steal down to visit him, I seemed to spend days sitting alone. Chrysothemis was always too busy, too distracted to talk to me. She fussed around the baby and looked anxiously after our mother, giving the slaves instructions to bring things to Clytemnestra – broth, wine, platters of fruit – to tempt the queen from her blank despair. I felt the weight of Iphigenia’s name unspoken between us. I knew that Chrysothemis wept for our lost sister, for the closeness they had shared. I suppose I was a poor replacement. So, hour piled up on top of hour, a great oppressive weight of time spent in solitude and tedium, with only the faithful Methepon at my side. In those endless days, with just my dog for company, I felt myself begin to grow inwards, lost in thoughts that built up inside my head like a twisting maze. I went to the fields, unnoticed by my family, waiting for Georgios to be able to slip away unseen. The vast stones of the fortification wall were warm from the sun, and I felt safe when I leaned against them, tracing the cracks between them with my fingers.

‘Cyclopes built these walls,’ I told Georgios.

His eyes widened, and he reached out to touch the stones, too. I looked at his hand, the black dirt under his nails and the grey layer of dust settled into the lines of his knuckles. ‘Did your father meet them?’ he asked.