A Darker God

by Barbara Cleverly

  Maud pulled her woolly cardigan more tightly around her shoulders, shivered, and muttered to herself: “For goodness’ sake! Still moaning on? What’s the matter with you, Geoffrey? Die, man! Supper’s in half an hour.”

  Offstage, the victim obliged. Geoffrey Melton, M.A. (Oxon.), attaché at the British Embassy, in his guise of Agamemnon, King of Mycaenae, fell silent at last, lying stabbed to death in his bathtub. Letty could envisage the mad scramble backstage to help Geoffrey out of his resplendent purple Agamemnon outfit and into the dark robes of his wife’s lover, Aegisthus, his next role, ready to storm onstage again and throw his weight about. But the audience demanded a sight of the corpse, then as now. Lined up to represent him in the bath was the tailor’s dummy Letty had worked on with such glee that afternoon.

  Acquired from a gents’ outfitters in Syntagma Square, the mannequin, once divested of its smart Parisian suiting, had proved a disappointment. Slender, smooth, and white-skinned, it was no stand-in for a leathery Mycaenean warrior just off wartime manoeuvres. Jokily, the stage manager had approached Laetitia with the suggestion that since she had a pleasing combination of artistic sensitivity, historical knowledge, and a capable hand, and seemed to have nothing better to do that afternoon, she might be just the right person to transform this waxen ephebe into the dead Agamemnon.

  He’d judged rightly. Letty was eager to please and delighted to be asked to make a contribution, however insignificant, to the amateur effort. She’d used all her imagination and energy. A thick black wig bought from the same obliging tailor had been stuck in place, a coat of the suntan brown appropriate for an ancient fighting man applied to the stiff limbs, and gouts of stage blood dribbled down the arms. After much argument, it had been agreed that the body should appear without a mask so that Letty could retain the glass eyes of an unnatural green, leaving them in place and open wide to glare back in the torchlight at the audience.

  Moments ago in the ancient Theatre of Dionysus, open to the late afternoon sky, Agamemnon, fresh from his conquest, had come sailing in, after an absence—they said—of ten years.

  Caked still with the blood, sweat, and soot of battle, the king was returning to the bosom of his family, to the House of Atreus, to his palace in Mycaenae, rich in gold. And his loving wife, Clytemnestra, warned in advance of his arrival, had produced the traditional comforts for the home-coming victor: a bath and a feast. In front of the palace, reaching for his hand, she offered a most royal welcome:

  “‘Come now, my darling. Step down from your chariot but—wait a moment! The feet that stamped the city of Troy to dust shall not be allowed to tread on the common earth again.’”

  And, clapping her hands to summon the servants: “‘Where are the staff? Ladies—do as you were instructed. Bring out the red carpet! Line the king’s path with tapestries!’”

  Agamemnon attempted a rejection of the notion. “‘What on earth do you take me for, wife? Some vain foreigner, peacocking about? It’s the gods who deserve stuffs dyed with Tyrian purple, not mortal kings,’” he’d protested. He made a token show of unwillingness to commit the act of hubris but, in the face of Clytemnestra’s blithe encouragement and flattery, he conceded. “‘Oh, well, go on, then … but at least let me take my boots off first!’” he grumbled.

  The women spread embroidered cloths, flowing in a bloodred stream beneath his feet towards the palace. The air was scented with Syrian myrrh, roasts were on the spit, wine was being poured. The stage was set.

  But all was not well in the House of Atreus. Loving the queen might be, but no Greek audience would be deceived by her soft words. They knew the story. They’d heard it countless times since they were infants. The queen’s affection was all for her husband’s cousin, Aegisthus, who had ignored the call to war and stayed behind in the palace working his mischief. The pair of lovers had determined that this bath of Agamemnon’s would be his last, and Clytemnestra, bursting with long-suppressed hatred and resentment of her husband, had insisted on delivering the death blow herself. What better moment? The servants dismissed, his armour set aside, the battle-ready watchfulness of ten years washing away, the king lolled offstage in the scented water, exposed. His dutiful wife, clucking sympathy, had gently rubbed oil into the silver tracery of scars etching his naked body.

  And now, his bath over, she approached, offering up a robe she had woven, like a good Greek wife, with her own hands. As Agamemnon stepped, one foot out of his bath, towards her, Clytemnestra threw the diaphanous yet strong fabric over his head, wrapped it netlike behind his body, trapping his arms by his sides, and plunged her two-edged bronze sword into his unprotected flesh. And plunged again. And a third time.

  It was over.

  Letty stretched her spine and eased her bottom from the unrelenting marble. The ghastly old story had lost none of its power to bewitch after three thousand years. Antique it might be, but this tale of hatred, betrayal, and revenge had been played out down the ages. The truth of it was undeniable and every succeeding war had thrown up its own similar horrors. Letty wondered if Agamemnon’s dying screams could have been much different from those of Sergeant Wilcox, who’d lived in her village near Cambridge. The local carpenter, Fred Wilcox, had come swinging home, unscathed, from the war ten years ago in the confident expectation of resuming his domestic situation. He’d been found, hours later, not in his hip bath still brimming with scummy water, coal-tar soap suds, and drowned fleas in front of the fire in the back kitchen, but in his garden workshop, hacked to pieces with his own adze. Mrs. Sergeant Wilcox, expressionless and silent, had held up bloodstained hands for the manacles. Letty smiled sadly at the memory of her father’s reaction. Lord of the Manor, Magistrate, and senior officer of the village, Sir Richard Talbot had stormed about ineffectually in much the same way as the leader of the chorus here onstage was now storming. Sir Richard chided himself likewise: surely he ought to have foreseen the tragedy … everyone in the village knew about Mrs. Wilcox’s fancy man, after all … But where did one’s loyalties lie? One ought not to forget that Wilcox was a notorious wife-beater …

  The two women fidgeted slightly on their marble seats and drew in breaths of thyme-scented air, cool off the hill. And immediately they stiffened with tension again. More faintly now, but carried towards them by the efficiency of the ancient acoustics, which, miraculously, were still capable of transmitting the merest murmur to the audience, Agamemnon—still clinging to life, apparently—gathered his pitiful strength to deliver one last exclamation.

  From the thicket of olive trees to the left of the stage the Little Owl of Athens heard him. She called out a mocking comment, and was joined by her mate on the right, hooting his derision.

  “The work is done!” proclaimed the grey-clad leader of the chorus with a detumescent gasp.

  Chapter 6

  Did you hear that, Maud? That wasn’t in the script, surely!” said Laetitia, running a finger down the page of the book she held open on her lap. “Drat! I can’t make it out. What did Agamemnon say? He sounded a bit surprised …”

  Maud Merriman took her time replying. The older woman seemed puzzled; her interest in the play suddenly sharpened. Her response, when it came, was slow and considered: “As you rightly observe, Letty, that was not in the script. I didn’t quite catch it either, I’m afraid. Greek? English? Not sure. A rasping squawk, I’d say.”

  “Those wretched birds! Did someone cast them as an extra chorus, I wonder? Were they birds, indeed? Eerily, they seemed to be repeating whatever it was Agamemnon was saying! Don’t you think? To-whit-to-whoo?” said Letty. “Or—coo-coo-vay?”

  “Well, whichever language he was using, I hardly think a bird call makes a dignified exit line! But that’s Geoffrey for you! A law unto himself, that young man! He may be a highly competent actor but he’s not someone you’d pick for your cricket team—I’ve heard the view expressed.” Maud sniffed her disapproval.

  “I expect the poor chap stubbed his toe as he was dashing round the bath, changing co
stume. ‘Ooh! Ooh!’ You know … something like that … Anyway, all will be revealed in a second … Here we go … the coup de théâtre. This is the bit I’ve been waiting for. I’m longing to see my corpse appear!”

  Maud smiled a slow indulgent smile and murmured, “Of course, my dear. We are all anticipation.”

  The chorus of old men whirled about the stage in a dance of despair, fluttering their robes, full of foreboding, shouting contradictory orders and advice to each other. Then, in a choreographed movement, they lit torches and dashed here and there like demented fireflies, holding off the moment of revelation and screwing tight the tension. Finally, beside himself with anxiety, the leader rushed to the central doors of the palace, the closed doors behind which the murder had just been perpetrated. He flung them open. The audience of two gasped in astonishment, carried away by the theatricality of the moment.

  “Oh, bravo!” breathed Maud.

  “That’s the stuff!” said Letty.

  The torches had settled into a line on either side of the doors, a last guard of honour forming up for the king. A silver bath, an old-fashioned Victorian hip bath painted to resemble a decorated metal cauldron, swept forward on silent runners into the circular orchestra space.

  Maud leaned close and whispered so as not to spoil the effect: “The ekkyklema! It’s worked! But so it ought—they’ve been tinkering with it for a week! I never can quite bring myself to trust in these mechanical devices and—truth be told—they’ve no idea how the ancients worked it, though they’ll never admit it! But some clever cove—come to think of it, it might have been that William Gunning of yours—borrowed a hospital trolley and stripped it down to its wheels. He got a chappie up from the street of coppersmiths and had him weld the bath onto it and hey presto! What a tableau!”

  Letty wished she could have been left, just for once, to absorb the scene without asides from Maud. It was certainly dramatic. Following on the shattering effect of the sounds of murder still ringing in their ears, it was enthralling. The bath, gleaming fitfully in the torchlight, contained a body. Slumped sideways, one bare brown arm trailing over the side, Agamemnon lay, shrouded in white fabric. The net wrapped around his head and torso was stained hideously with blood. Letty was proud of her contribution to the scene of slaughter, but this very minor rush of feeling was swept aside by other emotions. Her lips parted and her eyes flared, in astonishment and admiration for the stagecraft but also in pity for the character. Just as the playwright intended, she was contrasting the picture still in her mind’s eye, of the kingly figure of Agamemnon arriving, a warrior in the prime of his manhood, towering over his men and eagerly awaited by his subjects, with the presentation of this huddled creature before her. Within minutes the golden monarch of Mycaenae had been reduced to a side of dead flesh, netted and speared, a temple offering, bleeding into a bathtub.

  “Ox blood,” explained Maud. “They brought it here in a flask.”

  Clytemnestra entered, reddened sword in her right hand. She strode towards the distraught old men of the chorus ready to defy them, eager to challenge their judgement of her. The role of the queen was being played by a tall girl instead of the traditional male actor and was all the more terrifying for that, Letty thought. Men were never convincing squeaking away in an attempt at a woman’s voice. And this actress had a powerful contralto that Lady Macbeth would have been proud of, along with a stage presence that fitted the part. Though clad in heavily embroidered silk robes and wearing a tragic mask like the others, her every gesture spoke directly to the audience. She conveyed pride in her royal status but with a suggestion of her femininity. The audience didn’t doubt that under her rich robes she had breasts and a body that had given birth. But she was about to reveal also a heart of steel.

  “‘At last my hour came …’” Letty heard her gloat.

  “‘Here I stood firm. Here I struck the blow.

  There was no way he could escape or flee his fate.’”

  Letty hated and feared her.

  The queen flourished her sword and tugged at the knots restraining the limbs. She began to peel back the folds of cloth.

  “‘… So down he fell, and the lifeblood spurted out of him—

  In showers. And this deadly rain has dyed me black…’”

  Clytemnestra turned to the audience and, with a clatter of cascading golden bracelets, thrust up her arms. The wide sleeves of her robe fell back to her armpits, revealing shapely limbs stained black indeed in the twilight by gobbets of blood.

  “‘… and I? I revel in it!’” Her voice rose to an unholy shout, the white mask she wore directing the force of her triumph straight to the audience.

  Letty’s hatred deepened.

  Unrepentant, implacable. Surely some god or other would take offence and strike her down? Letty felt as one with the leader of the chorus of citizens when he bravely summoned up the spirit to chastise his queen. A worthy opponent. His baritone rang out, fearful yet determined, channelling, at the risk of his own life, the outrage of the classical audience:

  “‘Woman! Loathed abomination! Whatever possessed you to do this deed? You deserve to be banished from the city, forever cursed!’”

  Emotion had stripped away a layer of the actor’s smooth, upper-class English and Letty thought she detected something more raw, more musical, beneath. A Welshman perhaps? His heartfelt outpouring was scalding, and the perfect foil for the cold precision of the queen’s reply:

  “‘My heart is steel, you know that. You may praise me,

  Or blame me as you choose. It’s all the same to me.

  Here is Agamemnon, my husband, murdered

  By my right hand—a perfect piece of Justice.’”

  In pursuit of her flourish of “Justice,” Clytemnestra was distracted for the moment from her unwrapping of the corpse: a bit of business designed to prolong the suspense. The ancient writer himself, father of stagecraft, would have admired the device, Letty thought. The queen launched into a tirade against her husband, enumerating his many appalling sins against her. With each accusation she tugged at the cloth and, inch by inch, the guilty man was revealed.

  Well—fairness in all things. That was the Greek way. Balance. Hear both sides. Letty could not help but agree with the queen that she had much to complain about. Foremost of the charges was that Agamemnon had offered up as a human sacrifice their young daughter Iphigenia to placate the gods and ensure a following wind to take the Greek fleet to Troy. And all with the intention of chasing after his brother’s wife, the lovely Helen, who had eloped with a Trojan prince. In pursuit of a whore, Agamemnon had sacrificed a virgin. The audience sympathised with the queen. Clytemnestra objected to his long absence from the family hearth. Ten years. That amounted, surely, to desertion? And, most recent of his offences, and most bitterly resented—he had brought back, as his concubine from Troy, his spear prize, his share of the booty: the princess Cassandra. Agamemnon had fallen in love with the Trojan girl and had returned to Argos treating her with all honour, as his wife and the mother of his two small twin sons, rather than as his slave.

  And, here also, Clytemnestra has a devastating revelation to make to the citizens:

  “‘Here lies the man who dishonoured his wife.

  And there’”—the queen gestured offstage—“‘lies his slave,

  His fortune-telling concubine.

  Cassandra—this superfluous bride,

  This foul new interloper in our marriage bed,

  His lover—lies dead! And her whelps with her.’”

  She brandished her sword again.

  Cassandra and her children: three innocents dead by the queen’s hand.

  The chorus cringed and moaned at the cruelty. But the queen’s greatest sin in their eyes was the murder of Agamemnon. A king was inviolate, and a husband all-powerful. He might have concubines and bastard children by the hundred, he might have killed his own daughter: no matter. The moral law was clear. A woman guilty of the double sin of killing such a man was anathe
ma to the good citizens of Mycaenae. Or Athens.

  The chorus went on with its breast-beating while their leader remonstrated with her on their behalf, threatening dire consequences.

  “‘For this flood of slaughter

  The full price shall be paid.

  For sacrifice of children.

  Flesh for flesh, blood for blood,’” he warned.

  To no avail. The queen had an answer for everything. Obdurate and ruthless and a mistress of timing, she stood by her husband’s corpse, clutching the last fold of the cloth as though she would hold on to him forever, her trophy, the victim of her sword. Finally, judging her moment of revelation had come, she leaned in close to the body, a lowering Nemesis, and delivered over his head a mockery of a eulogy:

  “‘A wonderful swordsman, you thought yourself!

  Well, don’t think of showing off your skills in Hell,

  Now you’ve got what you deserved—

  By the sword you lived, and by the sword you died!’”

  With a practised flick of the wrist she snatched the remaining length of cloth from the corpse and, turning as she did so to the audience, she sought to involve them in her triumph as she revealed their dead master to the citizen chorus.

  Letty gasped, not in response to the queen’s gloating but in mortification that her so carefully applied wig had been wrenched loose from the dummy’s head by the gesture and, with an obscenely comical air, was now resting at a drunken angle over the upper part of the face. She could hardly bring herself to look.