Electra

by Henry Treece

  I struggled with him, but he was very strong and I could not break his grip. At last I said, ‘Let me go and I will not tell the king. Let me go, with this young boy, and I will say no more.’

  Then he said slowly, as he loosed my hand, ‘Tell the hills, tell the streams, tell the birds! Tell the king, and tell the king’s god, Zeus— it is all the same to me. I am of the Mother, and they cannot touch me. Look!’

  Suddenly he pulled open the folds of the tunic that hung about him and in the torchlight I saw the snake tattooed across his broad chest, its folds running into the thick black mat. He laughed as I drew away and said, ‘So, you see, princess, you are not talking to a straw-haired Hellene now. You are talking to one who can tell you something.’

  I put on my best face and said, ‘And what can the likes of you tell me?’

  He said, almost whispering now, ‘I can tell you that the House of Atreus is finished. I can tell you that once the ships have sailed away, that will be that! Then the House of Thyestes will come again, never fear, and Mycenae will know the old ways once more.’

  I said, ‘You are a fool, man. There is my father and my brother,

  Orestes. And there is my uncle, Menelaus… all of the House of Atreus. How can it fall? And who of the House of Thyestes still lives?’ The moon-faced man who had brought me to this place pushed in then and took my hand in his damp palm.’ There, there,’ he said, ‘you ask too much. Perhaps you would not like it if you got the answers! Come, this young boy in the hay is all you should be thinking of, not great Houses and their fall.’

  The boy had risen from the floor now and was standing, shivering in every limb, his mouth open as though he wanted to cry out but didn’t dare. His black hair hung, uncut, over his shoulders. A lock of it came down the side of his face as low as his jaw. He was very thin, and very dusty. From the leather collar round his neck, he looked to be a slave.

  He said to me, in his thick dialect, ‘Lady, do not let them hurt me. They said they would, and I am afraid of knives.’

  He was perhaps two years older than I was, and quite a big boy. I did not like to see the tears running down his face, making runnels in the dust. It made me want to weep, too, so I slapped him hard on the cheek.

  The moon-faced man laughed at this and said, ‘Well done, Electra! That is how a wife should treat a cowardly husband!’

  I turned on him and he backed away, pretending to be afraid of me. ‘He is not my husband,’ I said. ‘He is only a boy, and I am too young to marry.’

  The man with the knife growled and said, ‘He is only a boy, but one day he will be a man. You are too young to marry, but before long you will be old enough. And he is not your husband, yet before a man could run to the High Town and back, you will be wed.’

  I began to cry out and struggle, but they held me, laughing. The moon-faced man said, ‘The choice is yours, Electra. Do as we say and no one will be harmed; or run home to your father if you wish, and tomorrow this boy’s heart will be thrown through your window. So choose now, and choose wisely.’

  I would still have run away from this frightening place, but the boy began to weep so piteously, on his knees, holding my skirts about him, that I gave in and let them do what was in their minds.

  In the darkest corner of the byre the men set us face to face, the boy and me, standing so closely together that our breaths mingled and his long coarse hair touched my shoulder and made me shudder. I thought for a while that they would make us do something awful to each other and was glad when this did not happen. The boy was relieved also, I heard his breathing close to my ear, almost a quick gasping which stilled itself when the danger seemed to have passed.

  All at once the moon-faced man in the goat-skins came between us and pushed something into my hand, something thin and alive, covered with cloth. ‘Take this firmly,’ he said, ‘and do not lessen your grasp. It is a dangerous thing, so hold it well.’

  He seemed to be laughing as he spoke, but underneath the laughter there was a darkness, a threat. I did as he said, feeling the thing twisting in my fingers. Then 1 heard him whisper something to the boy who stood before me.

  All was quiet for a time, except for the twitching of what I held. Then suddenly the red-faced fat man who had spoken slightingly of my father came near us, a long-bladed knife in his hand. ‘Are you ready?’ he said; then before we could answer, he brought the knife down between us, hissing as he struck. What I held in the cloth gave a violent jerk and I almost dropped it into the hay at my feet. Then it was still and limp in my hand.

  A man held the torch over me now and said, ‘It is done. Now see what you hold.’

  At first I dared not look; the boy in the torchlight seemed pale-faced and agonised. His black eyes were staring, glazed, in the glow. Then I saw that he too held something in his hand, and I found the courage to unfold the linen wrapper.

  In it lay the head and half the length of a shiny black snake, the last life still throbbing in it faintly. I saw that the boy held the tail part, staring down at it with his mouth open and his lips shining in the torchlight.

  Aegisthus, the moon-face, put his hands on our shoulders and said, ‘So! Now each has a half of the Mother’s sign. The snake binds you together and you may take no other mates until the Mother gives her permission.’

  He took the snake’s head from me, and the tail from the boy. ‘I will guard the signs,’ he said, ‘in case either of you needs to be reminded that you belong to each other.’

  I drew away and said, ‘When my father hears of this, he will come with the barons and punish you.’

  The red-faced man laughed again and answered, ‘Your father has other things to hold his mind, Electra. He is more concerned with the winds that will take him to Troy than with you. Besides, if he tried to find us, it would be like trying to find where the eagle nests on Olympus. This place is a dream, no more; and who can find a dream?’

  I was going to say something angry, but a man came behind me and held his arm across my chest and throat, ‘Drink this,’ he said, and pushed a clay vessel between my lips, tilting my head back at the same time. I had to drink the bitter draught, or I should have choked. The last thing I heard was the boy’s voice, crying out again, pleading. Then I felt myself dropping as though into a deep, dark valley of sleep.

  I woke with the moonlight on my face and the bare rocks about me, outside the palace walls. Aegisthus sat beside me, smiling and nodding and fingering a small reed flute. He blew a note or two on it before he spoke to me. Then he said, ‘Go straight to your bed and speak to no one about this. Think of it only as a dream, until the time comes for it to be put on flesh and become reality.’

  ‘Where is the boy?’ I asked.

  Aegisthus shook his head and said, ‘He is well. No great harm has come to him, nor will it come to him if you are silent about what has happened. His life is in your hands; do not destroy it. One day you will see him again, if you let him live. That is your destiny now. Go home and do not meddle with what lies beyond your understanding.’ I went back through the gates without seeing anyone. I was shuddering with a strange fear, but I looked once and saw Aegisthus on a rock, still watching me, and nodding in the moonlight.

  7

  The nightmare of the frightened boy, and Aegisthus, and the snake in the wrapping stayed with me for weeks; but I dared tell no one, not: even my dear sister, Iphigenia. Perhaps I might have told my father, but as the time went on, and he grew more irritable preparing tor war, he seemed less and less near to me, more like a god whose temper rested always at a point just below outright fury. So I kept it all locked inside me, and cried at night in my bed, under the covering so that none should hear me.

  My mother must have noticed something, because once as I hung about her door I heard her say to Agamemnon, ‘She is growing fast. Would you like to betroth her to one of the princes before you sail? It might keep her from doing something foolish while you are away.

  But Agamemnon shook his great mane and scratched his
furry chest and yawned, throwing the covers off him. They had just given him the title of Lion King, the princes, because of his courage and because of the great gates he had had set up, with lions carved on the post. Seeing him that bright morning, his head and body all hairy, I thought how much like a lion he really was—all but the eyes, which were a bluish-grey and not yellow, like a lion’s.

  He only said to my mother, ‘I have all the world’s problems on my back. There are thousands to be fed, princes to be pacified, barons to be paid, footmen to be whipped into obedience. Is that not enough for me?’

  My mother rolled over in bed and almost saw me—but I drew back just in time. She said, ‘She is your daughter. Is she not worth a father’s thought?’

  My father was stumbling round the room, rubbing his body with oil and still yawning. He said, ‘She is close to my heart, but she is still only a young girl. I am concerned with the fate of the world— and it seems that I have the god himself to contend with now. He must be angry with me, this Poseidon, for he will not give me a wind to drive our ships towards Troy.’

  My mother said quietly, ‘If you were ruled by me, you would say your prayers to another—not to him. Then the wind might change and let you go.’

  Agamemnon sat on the bed to clean his feet. He laughed sleepily and answered, ‘I will not change now, woman. The House of Atreus, my own folk, have always offered to Zeus and Poseidon. Ours is the man-god; we could not change and beg favours from the bitch-goddess now. She is well enough for women and slaves, and some of the old outworn families who held this land before my people took it from them—but not for us. We have set our hands to this task in the god’s name, and so it shall remain. If we fail, we fail: but there shall be no weeping,’

  Clytemnestra was silent a while. At last she said, ‘Men are only boys grown bigger. They rush on like stupid boars into the net, all because of their pride. They die for pride, when by a little thought, a little feeling, a little surrender, they might live.’

  Agamemnon began to put on his wool shirt and leather tunic. He smoothed his hair and beard, then laughed.

  ‘You women twist words to suit yourself. This surrender you speak of is nothing. What you mean is that a woman lies still while her mate covers her. But that is only to make a consummation possible. It is not true surrender. It is her way of working at the game. For a man, surrender means something else: it means placing your neck beneath another man’s foot, it means running at his command, it means sacrifice—and no twisting and turning in a bed can be called that!’

  My mother smiled bitterly then and said, ‘I sometimes wonder if men know what sacrifice means. I think men are blinded to the meaning of words by the blind poets themselves. They sing of the gay maidens who gain a joyous freedom by love—but none of these poets has known the joy of being liberated by such frenzied bulls as men are! They sing that a woman in labour feels her time coming like the surges of waves on the seashore, and at last opens like a pretty flower-bud to let a new life into the daylight. But they should suffer it themselves before they sing; they should feel what it is like to be wrenched apart, to be torn, to bleed from the very heart— and all for a life that may well be one too much to feed after all. A life that may well end on the hill the next day. Is it joy to be tortured to provide a meal for the wolf, to wander about half-mad with breasts that howl, with milk no one will suck?’

  My father was strapping on his sword. He was whistling and looking out through the window-hole to see what sort of day it was going to be. He said, ‘There is one consolation. The pythoness at Delphi has forecast that Troy will fall and that King Priam’s House will fall with it. And there is even better news: the Trojan priest, Calchas, who is friendly with our dear Achilles, said only yesterday that if I will give him leave to make an offering the wind will change. He swears it.’

  Clytemnestra said, ‘You are not listening to me after all. Very well, let Calchas make an offering. Let Priam’s House fall. Let the world itself crumble, for all I care. I have been a wife to you, since you took me by force from poor Tantalus. I have borne and suckled your children. And little good have I got from it all my life. Men call you the Lion: but I tell you that once you have led them to where the gold lies, even the mangiest jackal of them all will bare his fangs against you. And at last you will come back home, as old Jason did, your sting drawn, asking only for a quiet place by the hearth and a bowl of gruel in your hand. We shall see the end of the Lion, Agamemnon. We shall hear what roaring he makes then.’

  My father’s brows puckered. He did not understand why the queen should speak so. Nor did I. He went away, clanking from the room to see to the men. I watched a while longer and saw my mother stagger to the runnel beside the wall and groan above it. She looked so small now, kneeling with her back to me, only like a girl. Even the blue tattooing over her legs and back, which had frightened me before, seemed nothing.

  I went to her and placed my hand on her bare shoulder. She started and looked round at me, then smiled and wiped her mouth.

  Before I could speak, she said gently, ‘All is well, little one. I am not poisoned. It is a new baby in me that causes this. It will pass in time.’

  I said, ‘Will the king be pleased, mother?’

  She looked away and said, ‘Does it matter? He is going away, I shall not tell him. It is not his baby, it comes from another. This must be a secret between you and me, to bind us close together, as mother and daughter should be. I tell you this to bind you.’

  Then she smoothed my hair out of my eyes and held me to her. I had never known her so gentle and warm and for a moment I forgot my father and even envied the baby within her. I wanted to be as close to her as that.

  I whispered, ‘Mother, did the god put this baby inside you then, if it is not the king’s?’

  Clytemnestra nodded. ‘You can say that,’ she said. ‘It is as true as anything else.’

  So, though I had always loved and feared my father, this was a secret I kept from him. A month before I would have run after him and told him all I knew: but something was happening to me now that made me want to share secrets with my mother. It had begun that evening in the quarry and it had been finally sealed, this difference, the night when Aegisthus had taken me to that strange dark place of wine and had put me, flesh to flesh, with the poor frightened boy. I was never the same again in my heart. Even my dreams began to change after that, and when I looked at the buds on the trees, or the birds in their nests, I began to wonder where they came from, how they started, what it felt like to have a baby inside one’s body, close to the very heart.

  8

  But I did not think of these things every moment of the day. There were other things in life as well. One morning a man galloped into the city, half-dead with riding, and yelled out that the prince of Troy himself was coming to Mycenae.

  All the dark folk ran out and began shouting at once, some saying that High Town would fall, some that we should hack off his head and set it on the Lion Gate, others that the war was now over and we should all feast with wine and bring back Hyacinth.

  None of these was true. Prince Paris came up to Mycenae about midday, dressed like any gentleman riding to consult the oracle at Delphi, without armour, and with only a dozen horsemen behind him. He was only half the size of my father, and quite thin. But I liked his yellow hair and the tinkling gold and silver ornaments that hung at his neck and his wrists. He laughed a great deal and spoke our Achaean language with a lisp that interested all the girls. Some of us stood very close to him, so that we could finger the gold fringe on his tunic. He noticed this, and turned his smile upon us, showing his even white teeth. He even leaned towards us so that we could reach the fringe.

  His face was shaven smooth, in the old Cretan manner, and his hands were well-kept and their nails trimmed. One of our barons made a comment on this, and on the musky scent that Paris used. But the prince took it all in good part and joined in the laughter of the rough soldiers, so that they had nothing to laugh abo
ut then.

  Aunt Helen was presented to him and almost fainted when he touched her breast in homage after the Trojan fashion. I saw a shudder run through her. Her eyes went wide open and her lips fell apart as she gasped.

  My mother, the queen, whispered to me, ‘She’d go to him here, in full view of the people! It’s a good thing that your Uncle Menelaus is away in Crete!’

  I did not answer, because I had seen my uncle only two days before, dressed in thick country clothes, supping in one of the villages. He was not in Crete, whatever my mother said. He was not more than an hour’s ride away.

  Hermione, my cousin, the daughter of Helen, muttered to me, ‘I would like the barons to kill this Trojan, then all would be happy again.’

  I couldn’t understand it, either: that my father and all his warriors should have been getting ready to make war on Troy for so long, and now, when the very prince of Troy stood in their midst, no one put a spear into him.

  I learned, years later, that Paris had come to Mycenae at the invitation of the Achaean League. He had come as the ambassador of his father, King Priam, who thought that this might be one way of preventing war between the peoples. Yet I understood well enough, later, that he had been fetched to Mycenae so that he would see, and desire, Aunt Helen. His visit would start the very war which Troy had hoped to avoid. That was what all our kings wanted, in their hearts.

  But, out there on the tall steps of our palace, in full sight of the folk, it was all laughter and courtesy that day. Agamemnon conducted the prince from one noble family to another, explaining who everyone was. The women all kneeled before him and let him raise them again. I heard him whisper to at least three of the girls, and saw them blush. But when he came to me, he only smiled and ran his fingers lightly through my hair, behind the ears. His touch was like little mice and a strange shiver ran tight down me into the deepest part. He said, ‘Amber Princess! Yes, you are rightly called. How I wish you were old enough to come back with me to Troy. You would love the High Town there, and the people would love such a princess. Well, well, so be it. We cannot have everything.’