Electra

by Henry Treece

  But after Agamemnon went away, the merchants plied their trade in the outland, mixing with the Phoenicians, and taking trade away from Hellas. As for the peasants, they became unruly, and often got too drunk and rebellious to sow the corn, or milk the beasts.

  Aegisthus put a stop to this. He issued a command which made every man a soldier for half the week, and a merchant or a peasant for the other half. They did not like this new law, but after a while it gave them a pride they had never known before. Aegisthus, who was never much of a soldier himself, and was lame into the bargain, made only one rule about the manner of warfare; he commanded that it should be conducted not in the Mycenaean manner, with chariots and swords, but in the ancient Cretan way, on foot, with the spear and the bow. All farmers could learn to use such weapons, though few of them had the skill to manage swords and shields. And I have never yet met a peasant who could manage a chariot properly. A farm-cart, yes, but not a light-wheeled chariot.

  In any case, most of the peasants and the merchants came from the old stock of the first folk, the Cretan, and they preferred, if they must fight, to do so with the weapons their ancient fathers had used. So there was sense in what Aegisthus made them do. If he had tried to put them in chariots and teach them sword-play and so on, they would always have felt he was trying to make them into Hellenes, and he would have been defeated before he had started.

  Instead, by the time I was eighteen, the New Army of Mycenae, of part-time soldiers, was thriving. I will not say that the men looked as fine as the warriors I had seen in the old days, when the High King was gathering his host; after all, the peasant army wore no metal, but only horse-hide tunics and helmets. But they were not hampered by the weight, either, and most of them, used to running up hills after sheep, or dragging hard on the ploughing-stick, were hardy and strong, and as active as wild cats, in their thin-muscled way.

  I think these soldiers had a soft spot for the Elect of Electra, though we went about the country, dressed Hellene-style. Perhaps it was because they had the traditional respect of peasants for their Achaean overlords. Once, when the New Army was having a great parade outside the palace, with half the countryside gathered to watch them, their farmer-general, who was called Phanus, and was as dark skinned, as a Libyan, asked me if I would lead my Elect at the head of his army, and so show Mycenae that at last freedom had come to the land, that the children of the ruling House were one with the men who worked on the soil.

  We rode before them, and later that night, among the tents they had set up about the city, we lounged about the fires and ate and drank with them, pushing our fingers into the mutton-dish as they did, sharing all, then passing the horn wine-cup round the ring, not caring if it was clean, not caring whose mouth it had come from last.

  I do not think that Aegisthus liked this, but my mother patted him on the arm and said, ‘Let be, sir! They are safe enough—and suppose the girls were tampered with, out among the tents, they are old enough now. They would take no great harm from it,’

  I overheard this, and thought: Little do you know, mother! We are as safe from that as Olympus is of falling down in a thunderstorm! I love only Rarus, who can get no children; Hermione only loves Orestes, in whom the man-seed has not risen; Chrysothemis only loves the Mother, who, strong as her magic is, cannot beget offspring!

  You are smiling, doctor. Is that because I sound simple? Well, you should know by now that we are all simple. Even you, with your scrolls and medicines and instruments, and so on, are simple.

  Man is simple; he is nothing but arms and legs and bead and stomach. Oh yes, he thinks he is crafty, like old Theseus, or old Jason, but in the end he is just a simple animal who dreams he is a god.

  I tell you, put a knife into a man, and where is the god in him then? Just red on the floor, and the man lying white and still, for all his courage and poetry. We make too much of things, doctor. We call our dreams by all sorts of strange words, and think that this makes them more important. But in the end it is all a word that started it, and the word dies when the man who speaks it dies. That is why I never did like the poets, the singers. They sit on their backsides and breathe out words and words and words—but do nothing. Think of all the lies they told of Jason. They made him out to be a great hero; yet he was only a simple horse-herder who got himself into adventures on a ship he couldn’t manage. Any young fellow could have done what Jason did, if the luck was with him.

  Sometimes, as I have got older, I think that nothing much really happens in a man’s life; it is only the red wine that makes it seem something. And I count poetry as little more than the drunkenness of red wine.

  Consider what I have told you so far; it is straight out of my head, and for all you or I know, it may all be lies. I may be like the poets, just saying words and words and words.

  That is the great trouble with us Hellenes, my friend. We will talk. In our great distant days, when our forefathers came down from the grasslands in their wagons, there was never all this talk. If there was, then it has been forgotten, for most of us know nothing about our past other than that we are descended from Zeus, or Hera, or Poseidon. And that is almost like saying ‘God knows who our fathers were!’ Don’t frown so much, doctor, if I am being insolent to the god, whoever he is, then it will be I who have to suffer the punishment, not you! It is all my affair, and I am willing for that to be so.

  Very well, stamp away if you please; but send your apprentice to me; it is time for my evening draught. I cannot sleep without it.

  22

  Did I tell you that life was like a constant season of summer? Yes, that was it. All Hellas seemed to flower, all men smiled, as though freedom had come again, as though the Golden Age might be round the corner. And Agamemnon and his hordes had gone from our memory as though they had never been. Hellas was the Land of the Common-folk now, and the stern and angry kings were like the demons of the night, cast away at dawn, like Furies whose wings had been clipped and their teeth drawn.

  Men and women sang in the streets. Peasants walked in the fields with their heads held high. The sun shone on everyone. The crops almost leaped from the rich soil, as though crying to be harvested. Cattle bore their calves as though they wished to cover the earth with them. There was so much milk that no one drank water. The olive groves burgeoned with their fruit. The apple-trees almost broke down beneath the weight of their laden boughs. Bees hummed in the blue air loud enough to smother thunder. God, it was rich; it was full; it was fertile!

  And the folk looked on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus as the Rainmakers, the Spring Queen and the Corn King. With these two in the palace at Mycenae, who needed gold? Men laughed at the memory of scowling Agamemnon, wasting a thousand lives for a few scraps of yellow metal, when in Hellas we now had all the abundance of the earth to enjoy.

  They made a song that they sang about the streets. If I can recall it, it went like this:

  Into the dark belly of the year Rain shot his darts;

  Apollo warmed the rain, to raise Barley and oats;

  In all the crevices of earth,

  Spring the green Shoots of corn, swift growth As from King in Queen!

  They were a merry, sloe-eyed folk. I do not think I had ever noticed this before, in my father’s time; then they were just the field-folk, as we called them, hardly human creatures at all.

  But now I had to notice them, for they wouldn’t take no for an answer, at their Corn-sowing and Wine-treading festivals. They would come, red-mouthed and tipsy with wine, right into the megaron of the palace, and drag us out, the young women, crying, ‘Queens, Queens, out with you to bless the feasting!’

  Hermione and I were both taken, a number of times, by these laughing farmers with their long black eyelashes and their waists pulled in by thong-belts till they looked like harvest-dolls themselves. Both my cousin and I had the cup pressed many times at our lips and, lying in hay, let the warm wine run in. Perhaps, at first, I wondered if it was as pleasant as the songs made out; perhaps I wondered if old
Nestor’s play had not been better. But after a festival or two, I fell into the way of it gladly, and no harm came of it.

  Though, I must confess, to see poor Rarus standing at the stable-door, waiting for the thing to be over, troubled me. Especially as he was always so kind afterwards, and wiped my lips with his own garment if the wine had spilled about me too freely.

  My mother got to hear of it, and took me aside. ‘Daughter,’ she said, ‘we women all know that this must happen at the feastings, but do not talk of it freely among the men. Aegisthus, for instance, would not like to hear of it.’

  I was sleepy with dancing and wine when she said this, and did not pay the heed to my answer that I should. I said, ‘It strikes me that Aegisthus tells us too much of what we should do, and what we should not.’

  My mother frowned and answered, ‘That may be. Whatever the case, all will come right at the end. There is a pattern for Aegisthus, just as there is for all others. All I say is, do not let him know that you have been with the wine-dancers. He thinks you are with Rarus at these times.’

  I must have been drunk, for I answered, ‘Of course I go with Rarus! He stands and waits for me. And no one could have more patience, for I am not a fast drinker, mother!’

  Clytemnestra smiled and nodded, and then bent and slapped me quite hard on the backside. ‘You are like me, and like your Aunt Helen,’ she said. ‘We hold the cup to our lips so long that our cup bearer grows weary and faint. But if the wine is to be enjoyed, then why gulp it down? When the thirst is quenched it is long enough before one can face the next cup, especially in a three-day festival, when the drinking stretches out before one like eternity,’

  Then she became solemn again. ‘But remember my words. Aegisthus is such a one as likes to sow the seed himself, and reap the harvest. You will be safe from his wrath as long as he thinks you travel with Rarus, who carries the seed-bag but not the grain. Is that understood?’

  I nodded and said, ‘Aegisthus is afraid that some other king might rise, is he not, mother? I have seen him look longways at my brother, Orestes, when the lad has called himself by my father’s name.’

  The queen stroked her silk bodice flat against her, carefully, and said, ‘Try to teach Orestes not to use that name. Aegisthus has a temper as unsure as that of a wild dog at some times. That is why I sent your brother away to nurse, when he was small. But if we keep a watch on him, you and I, it should not be impossible to ward the danger off,’

  She brooded, dark-faced, for a while, running her long thumbnail the carved length of a clothes-chest that stood by my bed. Then she half-looked up at me under her lowered lids and whispered, ‘And if the worst comes through the door, between us, you and I have power among the peasant-folk now. More so, now that they have known your company. They would follow you as the dog-fox follows the vixen and will not harm her. You are their Wine-princess now, daughter, and that counts for a great deal. So, if ever we needed their aid, there might be a festival when all dangers could be got rid of.’

  I smiled and said, ‘You make me think of the Feast of Dionysus, mother. You make me think of the Maenads, the flower-decked maidens, with the purple on their mouths, hurrying the Chosen King to his fierce glory. Is that what you mean, mother?’

  Clytemnestra smiled back at me and said, ‘You spoke the words, not I, daughter. But it may not come to that, if Aegisthus remembers his place in this house. It is one feast I did not want to bring back to

  Mycenae, because it can be so uncertain, its choice so painful at times. It goes well enough in the islands, where they have hardly yet heard that Minos is dead—but here, in Hellas, we have put it away because it wastes young men so needlessly.’

  She paused by the door and said over her shoulder, ‘But if need be, I will not let Hellas stand in the way. I will bring back the ancient world so entirely that a man would think he had slept for ten generations, and had wakened on the day Pasiphac first doted on the bull.’

  So it was that I got to know what lay in my mother’s heart. Now I loved her above all others, and thought that I was growth of her seed alone, flesh of her flesh, and closer to her than anyone alive.

  23

  The god must have thrown back his head and laughed till the skies shook, at my presumption. For, quite suddenly, Clytemnestra was brought to bed with a child, a baby girl. I do not know why, when I thought I was most near to my mother, I had not noticed her condition. Though it may have been that, in those days, she wore many-folded and heavily-flounced skirts. Also, the baby was a very small one; though, the god knows, it caused her enough trouble to be rid of, for she was past the age for child-bearing.

  I saw it all happen. Aegisthus dragged me from my bed to be a witness. ‘Come, come,’ he grunted, spilling wine from his cup over my face, ‘one of the House of Atreus shall be there to vouch for the new dynasty!’

  He dragged me along the passage-ways and stood me close to her couch, nest to the old nurse, Geilissa, who had brought both

  Orestes and myself into the world. But this night, Aegisthus had called in his own doctor to effect the birth, not trusting any servant who had worked at the palace in Agamemnon’s time. Geilissa was weeping, not smiling now, and well she might. My mother’s agony was dreadful to observe.

  Again and again, as the pains came on her, she tore at her tangled hair and howled. Her lips were all bitten and raw, and her great eyes, staring without sight up at the rafters, as though she saw the Erinnyes perched there, rubbing their leather wings.

  I almost went out of my mind, seeing the sweat stream down her thin white face, the cords of her neck tautened as though about to break, the savage jerking of her frail body, the poor pathetic markings on her thighs where the tattoo-man’s needle had been in her youth.

  With every moan and every screech, I thought she would surely die, and I tried to go to her: but Aegisthus, drunk and staggering as he was, held me back, half-smothering me in his evil-smelling embrace.

  ‘Ah, be still, be still, my dove!’ he laughed. ‘This is as it was decreed. The Mother will look after her own!’

  Even as I struggled with him and as the palace guard clustered, curious, about the chamber doors, whispering their wagers whether it would be boy or girl, my mother gave a great gasp and then, immediately, a harsh dry shout that stopped deep in her throat, such as a hard-pressed spearman makes with his final despairing thrust. Then the blue tattoo-marks over her thighs were suddenly covered with another colour, and the incubus had burst from her into the torchlight.

  Aegisthus laughed hoarsely and almost broke my teeth, trying to make me drink from his wine-cup; the watching soldiers cheered and beat their swords against their bronze bucklers; old Geilissa fell on her knees, sobbing, by the bedside, while the doctor dragged at the baby as though he was a rough-handed farmer delivering a calf.

  My mother’s pale face seemed to shrivel to half its size and all about her closed eyes the flesh was hollow and blue. Her head fell to one side and her arms, flung out in a gesture of despair, now dangled loosely on each side of that narrow birth-bed.

  I struggled in Aegisthus’ grasp, but he would not let me go to her. ‘Mother! Are you alive?’ I called.

  Her pale lips moved and she said, ‘If it is a girl and lives, call her name Helen, after my poor sister.’

  Then she fainted away while they were washing her twisted body.

  And Aegisthus, now almost out of his mind with wine and delight, bundled me from the room with him. ‘See, see,’ he stammered, ‘I have got a child! A child on Agamemnon’s woman! The Mother is with me, after all, to let me take so sweet a vengeance on the House of Atreus!’

  I was so stunned by what I had seen, I could not even protest— though, at that moment, if I could have made Poseidon the Thunderer hear me, I would have caused the ground to open and smother him, even if I had had to go down into the sulphurous blackness with him to see that vengeance was carried out.

  Then I think my wits left me, for the next I remember I lay in my own
bed, with Aegisthus leaning hard on me in the darkness, my flesh wet from his, his sour wine-laden breath in my nostrils.

  He was gabbling, ‘Now, now, Electra, be kind, he still! Am I not of your kin now? Has a kinsman no rights in your family? Do you deny me my triumph when, by right, the red wreath should be placed about my neck?’

  Struggling, I prayed: ‘Mother Via! Mother Via! You who watch over women, show me your mercy and I will follow you all my life, I swear. I am with you against the men!’

  Then the walls of the palace shuddered and the caverns below it rumbled. Dust fell out of the darkness on the bed and on my face. Aegisthus rolled away, groaning and saying, ‘Is this my triumph? Am I to be treated thus? There is a pain in my stomach, daughter. Have you stabbed me?’

  I lay still in the shivering dark and heard him crawl, across the tiled floor, from the room. I slept no more that night for the chattering of my teeth and the shaking of my limbs.

  The new day came up, hot and sunny, with the blue sky smiling and the white birds sailing in from the sea as though the Golden Age had come again. But the Golden Age was not in my heart: there, all was smouldering darkness, as on an altar underneath the stifling thatch.

  I went early to my mother’s room, but the two men outside her door crossed their javelins and would not let me pass. When I commanded them, they smiled and shook their heads, and said that Aegisthus the king wished no one to enter. They professed not to know whether my mother was well, or even alive.

  I went down to the kitchen, where old Geilissa cuddled me to her, calling me her lamb and her kitten and trying to make me break my fast with fresh milk and honey-cakes. But the thought of them made me want to heave and I went away outside, into the clean air.

  My cousin, Hermione, was waiting for me with the Elect, sitting on their white ponies, all looking very grave and silent. They were dressed in their play-armour, but that morning I was in no mood for such game, yet there was something in me that called for me to get away from the palace and its dark memories.