The wind changed at dawn the next day and the fleet left almost before she would have been cold, but they burnt her body on the shore that night, the smoke from the pyre being the prayer they made. For a wind.
Agamemnon took the rights of a father over his children where the rights of a mother should have prevailed. When he slew my daughter he killed half of me. I shall never forgive him. I shall take revenge. It is my right, my duty, and it will be my final consolation.
Although I have pretended to accept this, I shall kill Agamemnon when he comes back to Greece, if he does not die first in Troy, as I hope and daily pray he will.
This is why I await the messengers so keenly. They may bring me the news I crave, that of Agamemnon’s death. In the meanwhile I weave my web – that fine, brave cloak I shall give him if he returns. That done, I shall kill him.
Sixteen
Mycenae
Helen told me more about events in Mycenae during that first summer of the war. Her sister was queen, Agamemnon at war. Clytemnestra had taken a lover, her husband’s cousin, Aegisthus.
A messenger from Troy came to Mycenae in autumn. Finding the queen presiding over the autumn sacrifice in one of the barley fields below the fortified palace, he sat down by a wall in the field to wait.
There were hundreds of people, some of whom had come long distances to the palace. At noon, as the sun hit its height the messenger saw Clytemnestra, in a purple gown and cloak, bring the bronze knife down on the white ox as it lay in the barley stubble of the sun-drenched field, held down by six strong men. It bellowed and thrashed in terror as she bent over it and with a firm hand slit its throat, pushing the knife in deep, drawing it along, using both hands effortfully across the broad, white-furred throat. The blood leaped up into the queen’s face like a fountain, the animal’s coat was spattered as she continued the stroke, bending over, showing some grace even in the difficult feat of despatching the animal as speedily as possible. A botch, a half-slain creature, would be a bad sign. Then she straightened, before the ox was completely dead, raising both arms to the sky, one hand still holding the bloody knife and, as the animal twitched its last, the watchers gasped, then groaned, then turned aside to weep. Children cried. Clytemnestra then seized a handful of her brown hair on one side of her head and sawed through it with the knife. Then she did the same on the other side. She flung her hair, wettened with blood, on to the fire men were lighting beside the carcass, where it made a little, bright flame. Pipe music began. Around the field stalls had been set up, wine was ladled from large jars. Mixed with borage, it was a potent brew, bringing waking dreams and making everyone a little mad.
The king’s cousin, Prince Aegisthus, lord only of a patch of grass and stones, two horses and a house little better than a hovel in Messenia, joined the queen, who stood now, the knife lowered, still looking at the sky. He was a tall, very handsome man, raven-haired, clean-shaven with the same long face and dominant nose as his cousin. The pair began a solemn, high-stepping dance in the field and slowly the women joined in, making a circle, moving with linked hands round the dancing couple. Others began to dance, the music grew louder, pipes and drums joining in. The music grew faster and still louder. The circle round the two dancers moved more quickly – after some time the music stopped and the prince ran from the circle, breaking it The queen followed, with her bloody knife. Where they went after that no one knew. Later they returned to the celebration.
After dark, to the sounds of the music, cries and shouts from all directions, the queen and the prince again left the festival hand-in-hand and walked up the hill to the palace. They moved proudly, heads erect, followed by others – courtiers, warriors, palace servants – and the messenger. Clytemnestra’s face was still streaked with the blood of the sacrifice, her lips fatty with the slivers of the beast she had consumed, her gown stiffened with blood and fat, though the colour concealed the stains.
The ceremony, as all knew, had been more strained, more nervous, less full-blooded than it sometimes was before the men went to war. The great figure of Agamemnon, hair flowing to his shoulders, was missing, so were many other men, including the most powerful and influential. The quality of the ceremony had not been, as it usually was, like a full flood of water, roaring downriver, raking away banks, carrying with it branches and debris swept up in its flight It had been a narrow, fast-moving stream, full of bitter water. All sensed this. On such occasions the celebrants thought and felt as one. All knew the festival had begun in fear and anxiety. The mourning had been for the earth bereft of its grains and fruits but also, in anticipation, for the absence of men in war, for their deaths and coming deaths, and for the steady diminishment of the lives of those at home. And hovering over the ceremonies had been the figure of the queen, husbandless, and the ambiguous figure of her consort.
When the ceremonies were over and the goddess consoled and appeased, people also knew that, if the army decided to winter in Troy, they would be faced with maintaining the nation without the help of the ablest. The tasks of pruning, mending walls and farm equipment and slaughtering the beasts which could not be kept through the winter would all have to be done by the old, the women and children. Then they would have to manage spring planting and lambing alone. If the war was won, the prizes would be great, but until it was there would be hard work and grief of many kinds for all.
At dawn the queen sent for the messenger, a young man she did not know from the Epirus. He was small and dark, in his twenties, but looked tired and his face bore lines the queen thought had probably not been there when his wife sent him off with the troops to Troy. His eyes had already taken on the shadows of war. He might have fought before, but not in such a long and bitter campaign. Often, the queen reflected, it is the length of time spent away which makes the real change to a warrior. And from his expression as he entered the room she deduced the army would not be returning for the winter. This young man, Dionos, hadn’t the air of a man who had come to deliver a message, then return home. He was prepared to be back in the lines in a few weeks, facing a campaign with no foreseeable ending.
Dionos began with respectful salutations from Agamemnon. His message was that victory was not far away. The Trojans were suffering privations inside Troy and their troops were weakening. The messenger would tell her of a battle – the Trojans had not come off badly, but each battle, thought Agamemnon, further weakened and reduced their strength.
It had been a cloudy dawn, Dionos told her, and the Greeks had been in their camp near the sea just starting to rise, in a mist which made it hard to see – so much so that the coming of dawn had been hardly noted or felt And when it came, the Trojans had fallen on them in strength in a surprise attack. They were desperate, probably, Dionos said. Spring had turned to summer, summer to autumn and still their enemies were there. The farmers within a range of fifteen miles of Troy had harvested grain and fruits under constant fear of attack. Often the results had been seized almost before their sickles had gone through the sheaf. The army had also been raiding the farms for meat. They faced starvation. Clearly they felt they must rid themselves of the enemy army before winter began.
So some five hundred Trojans – who could have thought they could rally so many friends from along the coast? – in a long line, filling the plain between the two rivers, advanced through the mist, which kept them hidden, and muffled to some extent the sound of their approach. They knew their own terrain better, too, Dionos reported, and thus it was that they were only three hundred yards from the Greek camp and coming up over the treacherous little rise just before the descent to the sea, when they were first spotted. Shouts went up. The dogs began to bark.
The desolate business of soldiers rising, uncomfortable, surrounded by other men, the anticipation of another day of numbing boredom or a crucial battle which might turn the war, suddenly turned into a terrifying emergency. They put on armour rapidly, then, stumblingly, mustered and formed a rough line to face the oncoming Trojans. They came over the hummock in the
ground in what the soldiers called the ‘Trojan leap’, a mighty bound from the back foot, made with shield extended and sword raised, which brought a man who seemed to be out of range of a spear-thrust in an instant too close – too close, almost, for a sword-thrust. They were on the Greeks in an instant, while some were still donning their armour by the ships. Half the line consisted of men who had run out wearing no armour at all. Mighty Ajax was in only a tunic, even his feet bare. Agamemnon had a helmet and spear but no shield. And, the messenger said, the thin faces of the Trojans under their helmets were grim. They were men bent on murder, each desperate to finish the war before winter set in, starvation in the city became famine, sickness struck.
They broke through the Greek line and only seconds later were fighting desperately by the ships. The casualties were severe – forty Greeks killed or badly wounded. Agamemnon and five others found themselves struggling in shallow water, backed up against a beached ship, while ten Trojans, including the redoubtable Hector, rained blows on them. The only Greek to survive unwounded had been Agamemnon.
Achilles and his men, all armourless for they were bivouacked away from the main camp and had to come faster to the emergency, found themselves on the plain to the rear of the fighting, cut off by the mass of the Trojan army. Achilles lost five men, cut down by swords, in five minutes. They had been beaten back to the banks of the river Simois, then, just as, pale and red-eyed, Paris was about to bring his sword down on Achilles’ head he, Paris, had suddenly smiled. ‘Not today, Achilles,’ he’d said and rapidly run, followed by the others, to the help of his brother Hector further down the beach. Achilles then stopped his men from going after them, said the messenger, though they had a good chance of catching and killing Paris. There had been a fierce argument between Menelaus and Achilles about this that night. ‘He spared me,’ Achilles had said. ‘What was I to do – plant a spear in his back?’ Menelaus had remained furious. Achilles, seated by the fire, had simply turned his face to the stars and said, as if to himself, ‘Strange thoughts and feelings come over a man in battle.’ That silenced Menelaus, though it did not reduce his anger.
Meanwhile, Achilles and his men could find no way of getting back to the main body of Greeks without being cut to pieces by the Trojans between them and their allies. Lacking Achilles and his Thessalians, the Greek army took more punishment, for the Trojans, with the air of men who scarcely cared for their lives, pressed on, unbeatably. Someone cut the tethers of the Greek horses and opened the gate of the compound in which the others were kept. Then finally, as if they sensed their collective strength suddenly ebbing, the Trojans turned, seemingly without a word of command, rapidly stripped what they could of the dead Greeks’ armour and raced back to the city, Though not, reported Dionos, before firing some of the Greek huts and burning them to the ground. They could have burnt the fleet, he said, but left the ships alone, no doubt in the hope that the Greek army, after this defeat, would give up the campaign, embark, and go home.
The condition of the Greeks after this battle was dreadful, the messenger said. There were deaths, there were injuries which would end in death, more than half the escaped horses could not be found. The troops were demoralised. The death of companions is terrible; the knowledge that the Trojans could raise so many allies and fight like tigers was frightening and discouraging. There had been a strong party – the influential King Nestor and Diomedes, Prince of Argos, among them – for returning home and remounting the expedition the next spring. Agamemnon had pointed out that this was precisely what the Trojan attack was intended to make them do and that the chances of mounting such a powerful expedition again, after the first had failed, were slight. He said the enemy had made its bid and, if the expeditionary force turned tail and fled, that bid would have been successful. They had used up their strength, he said. He advocated determination, standing firm and acting like men, holding on and continuing the attacks until the siege and its consequences took their toll.
This was the messenger’s account. ‘Men fight better when they are defending their homes,’ Clytemnestra said to him. ‘Though, again, they may collapse rapidly when they hear too many women crying for the dead and see too many dying of starvation.’
The young messenger was disconcerted by the queen. She had heard his account without any expression of dismay and had remained unmoved even when her own husband was mentioned. Her remark was delivered in a neutral tone, neither triumphant nor even pitying. She had hardened her heart to endure the pain of war and the loss of her husband, Dionos concluded. He continued to the next part of his message.
‘Since the arguments of Agamemnon won the day, though narrowly, he now requires you to send half the barley, half the vintage when the wine is made –’
She broke in, ‘You must tell all this to my steward. Whatever my husband requires will be sent.’
He had to say more: ‘He requires Pholkos the blacksmith and his brother.’
Clytemnestra nodded.
‘Also, thirty horses.’
She nodded again. ‘I will send my steward to note all this.’ She left the room and woke Pandion, the Cretan, who was lying with a girl in his room. They had been roaming the countryside with the others at night, she assumed, making love, dancing and laughing in hills and fields, hedges and ditches. Though a little stupefied, Pandion was on his feet almost as soon as she called to him. He was naked and streaked with mud.
‘I regret coming to you so early this morning,’ said the queen, ‘but the messenger from the camp in Troy is here. He was stopped from delivering his message yesterday by the ceremonies and now he tells me he must go on and deliver his news and requests to many others. He has instructions concerning sending much of the harvest and other supplies including horses to my lord in Troy so you must record them. After you have done that, come to me. We shall have to send to Egypt for grain. And we shall need thirty horses quickly.’ The Cretan nodded. ‘And the city will need to find blacksmiths – you must tell me who there is among your people, if there is anyone.’ The Cretan nodded again and, picking up his robe from the floor, put it on. The girl was now staring up, frightened, from under her rugs. She had probably not known where she had arrived the night before, or very much about her lover. Now she was trying to piece together what was happening.
Still befuddled with wine, Pandion’s head was clearing. Plainly Agamemnon’s demands for supplies were large. Grain would have to be brought from abroad, horses – how many? – would have to be found. Plainly there had been a defeat. He asked, ‘Does this mean that the army is not coming home this winter?’
‘I have not been told,’ she replied and left the room.
‘Was that the queen?’ asked the girl after she had gone.
‘It was,’ he told her.
‘Where are her children?’
‘One dead – a daughter – one sent away – the boy – to stay in safety with a foreign king. The other, Electra, only fourteen and a hater of her mother.’
The girl shuddered. ‘She frightens me.’ She was from a farm and no more than fifteen years old.
‘She’s the queen, not your mother,’ responded Pandion. ‘Now – go back to sleep or get up and go out. I’ll have no time to amuse you today.’
The girl rolled up on her side and muttered, ‘She frightens me,’ but she then went back to sleep.
Seventeen
Thessaly/Mycenae
Helen, having related all this, said now, ‘And here is a tale you will not have heard in the ballads – which are for men. This is the tale of a woman betraying a woman, a sister’s treachery to a sister.’
Like a woman in a trance, she took on her sister’s voice once more, that deep, expressive voice, the voice of Clytemnestra.
Aegisthus, my husband’s cousin, Regent while he was absent (though Agamemnon did not like it) and my lover (though Agamemnon did not know it), was concerned about the demand for a large proportion of the harvest of Mycenae, as well as the huge number of horses. Late one night he lay
on my bed. He was anxious.
‘Plainly they’ve decided to winter in Troy,’ he said. ‘But if so, will even these supplies last? I doubt it. There’ll be requests for more. I believe he’s securing the loyalty of the other nobles by feeding their men and giving them horses.’
I agreed with him. We had known for months the expedition was short of food. There were a thousand men to feed and they’d been there for half a year. They’d planned, when supplies ran short, to live off the land, but a thousand extra mouths to feed is a burden no countryside can support for long. In addition the farmers for miles round Troy were withholding supplies, even putting up armed resistance to Greek foraging parties. Roving bands of Trojan troops, after the same supplies, were often there to assist them. A sheep was expensive when it cost the life of a man – sometimes it wasn’t worth fighting for. The farmers frequently refused the high prices Greeks offered for supplies, preferring to give or trade at much lower prices to the Trojan bands, for the city. The countryside was always full of foragers from both sides, often fighting each other for the contents of a waggon of hay, a couple of hens and a sack of barley. It was not war, it was not noble, but there was no choice. The farmers fought to protect their granaries. They hid their supplies, digging and camouflaging grain-pits in the forests, driving off their flocks if they thought a raiding party was on the way. Convoys of food, though, managed to make their way to Troy, prolonging the siege. It was infuriating, but there was no way of dealing with it. To have punished the farmers would have been like goading an already angry bull and what army needs an entire countryside turned against it, every child with a dagger in his robe, every path concealing a pit a horse can drop into? The Trojans’ neighbours, from Lydia to the east to Lycia to the west, right down the coast, also refused to sell supplies to the Greeks or, if they did, charged insupportable prices. The burden of supplying the army therefore fell on the Greek states themselves, and the major part of that burden on us, in Mycenae.
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