A Thousand Ships(33)
‘I look beautiful,’ Iphigenia said. She could not quite bring herself to phrase it as a question.
‘You do. The most beautiful bride these men will have ever seen, no matter which part of Greece they have travelled from,’ her mother said. ‘Here.’ She produced a small pot of thickly perfumed oil, and Iphigenia smoothed the scent of crushed flowers onto her hands and then into her glistening hair. ‘Perfect,’ her mother said. ‘You will make me proud today. My first daughter, married to the greatest warrior among all the Greeks.’
They heard the sound of heavy footsteps outside, and a small, low cry. The soldiers were here to accompany her to the altar on the shore. Orestes was still asleep and Clytemnestra vacillated for a moment about waking him to accompany her, so the prince of Mycenae would see its princess become queen of the Myrmidons. But the thought of a fractious infant was more than she could bear, and she left him behind with the slaves. They opened the flap of the tent to see a motley assortment of soldiers waiting for them.
‘This is hardly the honour guard we might have expected,’ Clytemnestra said. ‘Do you not have more respect for Agamemnon and his family?’
The men mumbled their apologies but there was no sincerity in their voices. They were waiting to go to war, Iphigenia thought. They had not the least inclination to attend a wedding between a man most of them had never seen fight, and the daughter of the man who commanded them, but not yet in battle. It was too soon for pride and honour. Her mother could not see it.
The soldiers waited for her to adjust her sandal so the strap didn’t rub, and then began the short walk towards the sea. She walked beside Clytemnestra in silence, imagining how she must look in profile with her perfectly straight neck. For just a moment, she wished her father was there to tell her everything would be alright. But he had not returned to their tent after she had missed him the previous day. Still, as they came around the high dunes near the shore, she could see him ahead of her, standing by a makeshift altar.
There were so many men lined up in front of the water, so many tall ships drawn up behind them. The city of Troy would never withstand such a force. Iphigenia felt a brief spasm of sadness, that her husband would be unable to distinguish himself in such a short-lived conflict. Perhaps there would be other wars. She continued to walk towards her father, so grand in his ritual garments, standing beside an ornately dressed priest. And as she felt the sand scratching the skin between her toes, she realized something was wrong.
The sails of the ships were completely still. It was too early to be hot, but there was a solidity to the air which stifled her. She had thought the same yesterday, when she was watching her brother play in the rock pools, but she had dismissed the oddity: they were in a sheltered part of the shore. But here were all these men, all these ships, and yet nothing was rippling in the breeze: every sail lay limp. The air was never so still this close to water. Was it an omen? She felt her breathing quicken. Were the gods warning her off this marriage? Or was it the opposite: they had calmed the winds in honour of the ceremony? She wished that she could ask her mother, but Clytemnestra had not noticed anything unusual. She marched forward as though walking to her own wedding. She seemed almost surprised when the soldiers placed themselves between her and her daughter, several of them leading Clytemnestra off to the side while four men continued towards the altar with Iphigenia.
It wasn’t just the windless sky which was worrying Iphigenia now. There was something else. She knew men were not perhaps so interested in weddings as their wives and sisters might have been. But the atmosphere was not at all celebratory, and she thought the prospect of a few wineskins later on would have been enough to provoke a little joy. Instead of which, the men seemed closed off, from each other as well as her. They frowned as she passed them, staring at the ground rather than revelling in her beauty. For a terrible moment, she thought she must have done something wrong: worn an ugly dress or applied her make-up inappropriately. But her mother’s slaves had been unanimous in their praise of her. She was correctly attired for a wedding.
And then she saw the glint of her father’s knife in the morning sun and she understood everything in a rush, as though a god had put the words into her mind. The treacherous stillness in the air was divinely sent. Artemis had been affronted by something her father had done, and now she demanded a sacrifice or the ships would not sail. So there would be no marriage, no husband for Iphigenia. Not today and not ever. She had perfect clarity of thought, even as her senses became blurred. She heard her mother’s cry of rage, but distantly, as though it were echoing off the walls of a cave. The men stopped at the foot of the altar, and she climbed its three rickety steps towards her father. He looked like someone she had never met.
She knelt in silence before Agamemnon. Tears streamed into his beard, but he held the knife just the same. Her uncle stood behind him, his red hair glowing in the morning sun. She sensed his hand reach out to her father, offering strength for the ordeal he was about to undergo. She looked out across a sea of leather armour and wondered which of them was Achilles. On Iphigenia’s right she could see her mother, mouth gaping in a savage scream, but a buzzing sound had filled her ears, so she could not hear the words. She saw Clytemnestra was being restrained by five men, one of whom eventually forced his arm around her throat. Still her mother did not fall limply into their arms. She continued shouting and flailing, long after she could have had air left in her lungs.