A Thousand Ships(74)
She summoned her maidservants and had them plait her hair into neat braids. When she was with Aegisthus, she had grown into the habit of wearing it loose, to reflect his age rather than her own. But as matron-queen, welcoming her adventuring husband, she needed to present a different appearance. As she admired her own long neck (less swan-like than Helen’s, no doubt, but even so) she realized that she was looking forward to the day ahead. She had planned it for so long, and now she had the twin pleasures not just of enacting her revenge after such a long delay, but also of seeing her plan come to fruition.
*
Clytemnestra sensed him before she heard the stamp of men’s boots on hard rocks. She would have known – even without her watchmen and their beacons of rage – that Agamemnon was nearby. The birds still sang, the cicadas still buzzed, the breeze still moved the dry yellowing grasses around her palace. But she knew something had changed: she could feel the heat glowing inside her. She took a breath and held it, closed her eyes for a moment. She gave the word to her slaves, and they ran to do her rehearsed bidding. The tapestries came down off the walls, and were carried to the front gates of the palace. The slaves stood in fours, each holding a corner of the dark purple cloth which seemed to glisten in the unaccustomed sunlight.
The day was hot and dry, the breeze bringing none of the cool sea air up to her citadel. She could taste the dust, kicked up by the feet of soldiers who were marching from their ship to their home. The path curved up the hill from the shore, so they heard the men before they saw them. When they came around the final corner, she had her slaves perform obeisance and she herself bowed low. She held the pose for a moment before straightening her back to see her husband for the first time since their eyes met across the body of their daughter in Aulis, ten years earlier.
How small he seemed. Her memory had made him taller, she supposed. And if the years had made her leaner, they had made him greyer. And paunchy. She wondered how a man could get fat during a war. He was red-faced, sweating in his ludicrous regalia. What kind of man wore a bronze breastplate and a plumed helmet to return home? One who believed that his power was seated in his costume, she supposed. The red leather of his scabbard was very fine, studded with gold flecks. She did not recognize it, and realized this must be part of his share of the fabled wealth of Troy. To have killed her child for a decorated bit of animal skin. She could feel the contempt shaping her mouth into a sneer, and stopped herself. Now was not the time to lose control. That would come later.
The Argive men had not escaped the war without casualties. She tried to calculate how many men Agamemnon had lost: a quarter, a third? Some had died noble deaths on the battlefield, she knew. They had been interred by their comrades, their armour shared out among those to whom it could still do some good. Some had died of disease: a plague incurred by Agamemnon – of course – with his refusal to respect a priest of Apollo. She had laughed when she heard about the plague, laughed until her face hurt, in bed with Aegisthus, where laughter was safe. All her husband had to do to keep Apollo’s favour was not rape his priestesses or the daughters of his priests. It was laughable in the dark hours of the night, even as she sent messages of condolence by day to the Mycenaeans who wept to discover their son, their father, their brother had been culled by the Archer’s arrows. Agamemnon was so magnificently self-absorbed, he could not even see that the simplest abstinence would have kept his men safe. He was like a spoiled child, grabbing at things because he wanted them, with no thought for anyone else, not even a god. The arrogance was remarkable.
Some of the men nursed injuries from the Trojan battles: missing limbs, missing eyes. Livid purple scars spilled across arms and faces; sores and ulcers wept from wounds which would not heal. Clytemnestra found herself wondering if their wives would want these damaged creatures back. Would she have welcomed home a cripple? She thought for a moment, and decided she would not. But still she was sure that she would have preferred any one of these ruined men to her own husband.
And in the very centre of the group, just behind Agamemnon, surrounded by his men, she saw the priestess. It was all she could do not to laugh. Was this his trophy from the war, while his brother took Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda? She was barely more than a child, though she wore her priestess’s robes, the fillets around her hair waving as she walked. Her mouth moved all the time, Clytemnestra noticed, as though she were muttering words without pause. She was smaller, darker than Iphigenia had been at the same sort of age. Clytemnestra had done this every time she had seen a girl in the past ten years: was she taller or shorter than Iphigenia, with more or less beautiful eyes? Did she carry herself with the same poise that Iphigenia always had? Would her skin look as radiant in a saffron gown, would her hair flow as copiously down her shoulders, would her feet move as neatly as she danced, would . . .
She drove her fingernails into her palms to break the thought. Iphigenia would not rest uneasy for much longer.
The men came to a halt before her, and she bowed again.
‘Husband,’ she said. ‘Welcome home.’
‘Clytemnestra, get up,’ he said. ‘You behave as though I am your barbarian king.’
Nothing else. No apology, no affection, nothing. There was – Clytemnestra was honest enough to admit to herself – nothing he could have said or done that would have saved him. But it was lazy of him not to even try. As though he wanted to be killed. Or – she considered a second possibility – the gods wanted him to be killed. That was surely it.