Aegisthus’ subtle words, thrown like seeds, only where he thought the ground was ready for them, had their effect. To desolation, hunger and bereavement, Aegisthus added discontent.
Pandion, my Cretan steward, was now beginning to understand much, and suspect more. His almond eyes expressed that knowledge, although of course he dared say nothing. He was involved, his life now in danger. If Agamemnon, when he returned, found out all that had been going on, Pandion, who must have known, would die. Yet, he would be wondering, had I a plan? And would it be of any advantage to him?
He had followed the messenger into my chamber, finding me with the unexamined scarf in my lap. He listened as the messenger told of the earlier defeat of the Greeks, the flight to Tenedos, the return to Troy, the entry through the tunnel, of victory and the looting and burning of the city. Paris, Troilus, Deiphobus, all the king’s sons, he said, were dead. Agamemnon had killed Priam in the temple. What remained of his family were captive, chained on the shore at Troy, slaves waiting for passage to Greece.
I knew my husband would have raped Cassandra, the prophetess. I pitied the girl.
Electra stood beside me, as the news was given, sobbing with joy. The Cretan smiled, congratulated me. ‘Queen of Troy,’ declared the messenger, from his knees, ‘I have brought much booty with me from your husband – the treasures of Priam he seized on the night of victory. The scarf is from the palace storehouse. He particularly wished me to give it to you. Inside are the earrings Queen Hecuba always wore.’
I opened it with the tips of my fingers. There lay long, elaborately-worked golden earrings, fresh, I supposed, from the ears of the poor queen. How could I not pity her? All her sons were dead, she and her daughters would die in captivity.
I was obliged to send messengers throughout Argos, to declare a victory. One messenger, on the fastest horse we had, I sent to Aegisthus.
‘Cousin Aegisthus will be returning to his own lands now, Mother, will he not?’ asked Electra.
‘Most certainly,’ I told her. ‘He has been a loyal friend.’
That night, I sat at my loom, the fine cloak almost finished, weaving my deep spells into every thread. I had had the loom taken to the great hall and sat in its vast darkness, one torch burning. On the floor lay the first instalment of the booty from Troy – silver and gold jugs and cups, jewellery, headdresses, some coins. A great black oval stone the size of a three-year-old child and streaked with dried blood, lay on its side amid the gleaming loot Was that Priam’s blood? Had he clutched at this ancient god, even as he died?
Electra came again quietly in the darkness. ‘I cannot sleep. When will Father return? Will our cousin go back to his own land when he hears the news? Have you sent to tell him to return? Will he come back here? When will Father come? Shall we go to Troy? Have you sent for Orestes now? When will our family be reunited?’
Never, I thought of saying in answer to her last question. Never, because your sister is dead, sacrificed to get the army to Troy, so that this triumph which so delights you could be achieved. I wanted to imprison Electra far away, chained against a wall where I would not have to hear that insistent, unnaturally childish voice. I did not want my concentration disturbed as I finished the cloak. Aegisthus must be coming. And I had much to think of.
I said, ‘Go to bed. Everything is attended to. I must finish this cloak for your father. The cloak of victory.’
‘I can’t sleep, after this joyful news. I have lain awake, night after night, fearing the next message would be of Father’s death.’
And all the time, I knew none of this girlish talk was sincere. I knew she hated me. I knew if she could get Agamemnon’s ear she would betray me. I said again, ‘Go to bed. I need to finish the cloak. I am too tired to talk tonight This war has exhausted us all. You do not quite understand – you are a child.’
‘Not a child,’ she exclaimed. ‘I am a woman now.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. ‘We must soon think of your marriage, now this is all over.’
That jolted her. She wanted no marriage. Perhaps she thought to get rid of me, and herself marry her father. It’s not unheard of, in aristocratic families, desiring to retain their power. Dowries remain inside the family, no hostages are given to rival clans. Was this what she had in mind? I think so.
So, ‘Not yet,’ she cried. ‘Not yet.’
‘Of course not yet Now, go to bed. It may be days before the fleet arrives. You cannot spend the next two or three nights awake.’
All this calmed her somewhat I sent a servant to follow her with a draught of wine in which I put a drug to make sure she slept. I knew Aegisthus would be back within hours, and I needed no eavesdroppers on our discussion.
Interrupted, I left the loom and called the Cretan. There was no help for it – I had to secure his cooperation. I could kill him, but his death, only days before my husband’s return, would be incriminating. If he helped me, he could have what he liked. We owned Troy and the cities and land around it now. But I had two potential betrayers near me – my daughter who might not be believed, and the Cretan Pandion, who could be bought, as well I knew, and whose evidence might be damning. The servant I sent to fetch him brought good news. Pandion had gone, stolen a horse, had been seen riding fast from the palace with a bundle in front of him – some of Agamemnon’s booty, no doubt. He had intelligently solved my problem and saved his own life.
Near dawn, Aegisthus burst in. My worst fears were confirmed by his expression as he came. That handsome face was disintegrating with panic, melting like wax. ‘Disaster,’ he said. ‘Both Agamemnon and his brother triumphant – and alive. The countryfolk are already coming here to give him welcome.’ He was dusty, paced the room, attempting to summon a kind of male energy he certainly did not command at that moment.
‘Pray he arrives soon, then,’ I said. ‘Sit down.’ I gave him wine. ‘Are you planning flight? Do you want to return to your stone hutch? Do you want to live there in exile with some cast-off Trojan slave forever? Do you want to rear children with her, little better than slaves themselves?’
‘Agamemnon would reward me for my loyalty while he was away,’ he told me.
I laughed aloud. He gazed at me fearfully.
‘He would,’ he claimed. ‘He would give me Trojan lands.’
‘He would put a spear through your throat,’ I said. ‘Do you think he’s stupid? He knows you for his next enemy. If he didn’t, Electra will make sure he does.’
‘The child?’ he exclaimed. He was incredulous.
‘She is fourteen years old. Her eyes have been everywhere for a year. So have the eyes of many others.’
‘The Cretan!’ he exclaimed again.
‘The Cretan is gone,’ I said, ‘but there are others – servants, slaves, stablemen, my own women – how long do you think it would be before someone, for gain, confirmed Agamemnon’s suspicions? Do you think the world is blind? I am Helen’s sister – do you think my husband trusts me?’
He put his head in his hands. I guessed his thoughts. ‘Egypt?’ I suggested. ‘Babylon? Hattusas, even, high in the mountains at Hattusas, in perpetual snow where no one could find you? Is that what you are thinking? Do you believe that a man shortly about to proclaim himself a Great King cannot, if he wants, lever you out of any crack in the rocks where you might hide? That he wouldn’t send men out to ride for a year and a day, if necessary, until they found you and killed you? Did you not think of all this? Were you simply counting on Agamemnon’s death in war? When we talked and planned what we’d do if he returned triumphant, were we just telling each other stories at night?’
He ignored me, saying, ‘If I were far enough away, he would not bother about me.’
‘So – beg on the streets of Memphis,’ I said. ‘Freeze in the snow outside the palace at Hattusas. Agamemnon is powerful. No one will take you in.’
But I needed him. I went to him, smoothed his sweating brow. Closer to him, I was more alarmed. His face was chalky. He trembled. His hand, whe
n I took it, was cold.
He had been bold enough in my husband’s absence. Bold enough in the bedroom, firm enough also to keep the country under some kind of control. He was not, I knew, a coward. His terrors came from the past. His father had been destroyed by Agamemnon’s father. Aegisthus had secretly taken on his father’s battle, planned to avenge him. But now he feared the same defeat and humiliation his father had endured. ‘Do you want no revenge for what happened to your father?’ I said gently. ‘He is crying out to you now to take back what was his, and is yours by right. I love you. We are one. Help me kill Agamemnon, if not for your sake or mine, for your father’s. Your parents are calling to you now. Can you not hear them? Look what we have, look what we have done. Do not draw back from the last step.’
And so I calmed him, so I persuaded him, so I took him to bed, and soothed him. He was steady now. All we had to do was wait for Agamemnon’s return.
Thirty-Five
Thessaly
We had closed the gate and posted men, such as we had. We went inside to wait for the unexpected visitors to the farm. We were preparing food – there was no more we could do. Helen said, ‘My sister pitied you.’
‘Pitied me?’ I echoed.
‘When she knew you were in the hands of her husband,’ Helen told me. Her thoughts were disjointed. These unexpected visitors had frightened her. She was a woman with many fears. She went on, ‘We sat like this before – expecting attack. Do you remember?’ She paused. ‘It cannot be Menelaus, come to kill me.’
But I knew she was still uncertain. ‘You haven’t told him who I am? Assure me of that,’ I asked.
‘I have told you more than once, until I found Helenus I didn’t know you were alive.’
‘You could have sent a messenger secretly from here to Mycenae or Sparta,’ I persisted.
‘I did not.’ She gazed at me speculatively. ‘You haven’t told me of one of your children – the oldest.’
‘What do you know of my son?’
‘Your brother said you had a boy, Diomed, at Pharaoh’s court. You haven’t told me of him, only of the others. I wonder why?’
‘What reason would I have? I forgot He is so far away. It is many years since I saw him,’ I answered, and was relieved when a cry went up outside. Better an attack from these coming strangers than this question from Helen, I thought Anything was better than that
Helen and I went out into the yard, I running, Helen moving more slowly on her damaged feet I could see them winding uphill now. I drew in my breath in horror. A chariot of foreign make, pulling hard, surrounded by a galloping guard of soldiers – Egyptian soldiers, easily seen to be such by their weaponry and headdresses.
The visitor could be nobody but my oldest son, Diomed, now twenty. I had not seen him for seven years. I attempted to conceal my alarm from Helen. Why, I asked myself, had that person I most longed to see, who had been a thousand miles away at Memphis at the court of the Pharaoh for so long – why should he come now, at this most unfortunate time? There was nothing I could do to stop his unlucky arrival. A tall figure waved at me. I saw his face again, the same – older, changed – the same. ‘Pull back the gates,’ I said. And to Helen, ‘It is my son.’
‘I am happy for you,’ she responded mechanically. ‘I will go inside so that you can first greet him privately. Then, I long to see him, Cassandra.’
Naomi took me by the shoulder, hissing, ‘Go out – tell him to turn back.’
But he was already running up the track towards me as I stood by the gate.
‘Too late,’ I told her and ran from the gate to embrace him. ‘Diomed,’ I said, ‘there is a woman within who must not see you.’
I could tell from his face he knew what I had kept from him for so long. Someone had told him. ‘Who is she?’ he asked.
‘The Queen of Sparta – Helen.’
I gazed at him helplessly. I was at fault. I had not told him what he should know and my omission was largely to protect myself, not him. But someone had told the truth and I was not sure, knowing it, how he saw me, or indeed himself.
‘My aunt,’ he said. His face showed understanding.
‘She is. She could betray us all.’
‘I’ve come to take you back with me, Mother. She can harm neither of us in Egypt.’
I was very confused. He knew his own secret; he had considered it, absorbed it He had come to conclusions and made a plan. Egypt? A departure for Egypt? Bewildered, I could only say, urgently, ‘She is leaving. Hide until she goes. Go into the hills.’
I had lived for twenty years with this fear.
‘Mother,’ he said patiently, ‘this is an old tale. They cannot touch you now. I’m a captain in Pharaoh’s army. I can protect you from old history, these bloodthirsty quarrelling princelings. In any case, you must leave. That’s why I’m here. There’s another danger.’
‘I know it,’ I told him. But I pleaded, ‘Do not go into the house until Helen leaves.’
But it was too late. She came out and moved across the snow-sprinkled yard, a courtly smile of welcome on her face. But as she approached, the smile turned into an expression of horror. Within ten paces of Diomed she stopped, her damaged hand flew to her face. Head thrown a little back she stared and stared at Diomed, who stepped forward and said, ‘Welcome, Aunt.’
My son, tall, very blond, long-nosed, even at twenty a little hollow-cheeked was, in nearly every respect – face, colouring, stature, even his stance – the very image of his father, Agamemnon.
Thirty-Six
Troy
We had been chained in groups near the shore for a day without food or water or shelter from the sun. I was with the Trojan women – my mother, Andromache, Creusa and many others. The Greek leaders, determined to inflict as much humiliation as possible, had made no provision for separating the royal women from the others, as might have been expected. There were few men among us, none of our family. We had seen Paris’ body and had to believe the rest were also dead. All around us women wailed and children cried, mourning the past, dreading the future, anxious about those they had not been able to find. There were perhaps a hundred of us. We suffered physical misery, of course, but, worse, hopes and fears chased each other in our benumbed brains. Someone missing might still be alive, we thought, or, what kind of death might another have met? For ourselves we feared slavery, the punishment of the Greeks and death. Some hoped for rescue or ransom.
Night came, as my mother continued to try to comfort Polyxena, or rather, bring her to the stage where comfort was possible, for she sat like a stone, while Andromache chafed her hands. Creusa spoke, too often, of that moment when the figure of Aeneas, fully armoured, had appeared through the smoke and seized her boy from her arms, then disappeared before the eyes of her astonished guard. Were either of them alive now, she wondered? Would they appear and bargain for us, rescue us? Andromache, always with the image of her own husband dead and of her son’s lifeless body, torn from her arms by soldiers as we were dragged from the city, could not respond and found it hard to listen to Creusa’s babble. All the time our eyes were drawn towards Troy, where flames leaped up in the darkness. Around us men stampeded to and fro, carrying loot, shouting. Horses whinnied, chariot wheels crashed. Creusa ceased to speak at dawn. My mother stopped trying to rally Polyxena. ‘The coming day will be worse than this,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it is better if she feels nothing.’
Next day soldiers were still carrying the wealth of Troy to their ships. Behind, under a clear blue sky, the city still burned, a funeral pyre for husbands, sons, brothers.
The sun grew hotter and beat down on us. At midday, when it was at its height, Agamemnon came. None of us looked at him. I saw his big feet and strong, golden-haired legs planted in the sand. He looked down at my mother. ‘I shall have your daughter,’ he told her. She clasped Polyxena closer. ‘Not that one – or not yet.’ My mother’s glance went to Creusa, then to me. ‘Yes, I’ll take the mad one first,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a man will bring her t
o her senses.’
I knew. I had always known. He had been in my nightmares for many years. Does knowing a thing is to happen make it any better? I doubt it – the reality is always different; the experience is what it is. You cannot prepare for it.
I looked up at his face. There was the beak of a nose and the hollow cheeks, the straggling, sweat-stained blond hair. And suddenly I saw death in that face, but not my death – his own. I could not credit this at first. When a man or woman’s death is beginning, it manifests itself at first as a bruise on the countenance. Few can see it. I could. There, like the first tiny bruise on an apple, lay death on Agamemnon’s face. He flinched from my gaze. ‘Smile,’ he said. ‘Smile at your bridegroom.’ It was not hard to smile, now I knew he would die.
‘I dislike these strong looks, Hecuba,’ he said. ‘Do your women not plead, or moan, or ask for any mercy even for each other?’
She said nothing, but later, after he had gone, she asked, ‘Cassandra, why did you smile? You seemed almost joyful. Can you welcome this?’
I cast my eyes to the sand. The gift of foretelling had been a source of pain between us for too long.
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