Electra

by Henry Treece

  Clytemnestra nodded to him, but did not speak. Her hand was at her side, as though she was in pain. Her breathing among the dust set up by feet and hooves and wagon-wheels was harsh and grating.

  I longed to be beside her, to hold her hand and comfort her. But there was no time for that. A herald standing a little way along the rocky road that led to the Lion Gate suddenly shouted out, ‘He comes! The High King of Achaea comes! Make way for Agamemnon!

  It had been ten years since I last saw my father, and I do not know now what I expected to see that day—a rich prince? A god? Or a man raised from the dead?

  I think it must have been the last, for, as in a dream, I saw this man standing on a broken cart and knew him at once, though he was like no king that the world had ever seen before. The hair had gone from his brown and wrinkled head; his beard, that had once been his lion’s pride, was but a few thin hairs that blew about in the wind on our upland rocks; his nose had shrunk until it looked a bird’s beak, above which his filmed grey eyes gazed, like those of a timeless mariner who must search for some lost coast-line to eternity, blinding himself.

  I saw his shoulder-bones almost poking up through his salt-caked hide; the grizzled mat of grey hairs that shrouded his body from throat to waist; the palsied twitching of his great hands on the reins —and I thought: Is this the man I hate? Is this the man who has brought fear and agony to Hellas, to my family?

  As the late sun struck down between two pillars on to him, I saw Agamemnon clearly for the first time in my life. He was nothing hut a blind old man, a dreamer who had lost his dream, a warrior no longer strong enough to shake a sword. This was the High King of Achaea.

  And I looked at my mother, and she was an old woman; no longer beautiful, noble only in name, a gasping creature leaning on a grey stone wall and trying to remember the fire, the rage of youth.

  Put the two of them together, out on the road to Delphi, and any peasant would throw an offering of bread to them; no farmer with two acres to his name would stand aside to let them pass….

  Then all at once I heard my mother call, ‘There she is, the Trojan’s daughter. There is his woman and her children!’

  Sitting behind Agamemnon in the cart was a girl about my own age, a soiled grey cloth over her black hair, like a head-dress, and a tom robe of wool bound roughly round her body with hide thongs. At her thin breast she suckled one baby; at her side stood a pale, grey-eyed boy, his slack mouth open and the moisture dribbling from it on to his torn shirt.

  Aegisthus had time to sneer and say, ‘So, this is Cassandra, who foretells the future—if only she could get anyone to listen to her!

  In truth, King Priam must have been a crofter-king, some jumped-up peasant, to father such kin!’

  Then King Agamemnon came within hearing distance, and all the folk looked to us to give him the proper greeting. I glanced at my brother in his armour, and saw the tears welling in his eyes that this old scarecrow should be his father. Hermione put her arms about him and tried to console him, but he shook her away rudely.

  Then Clytemnestra went forward with difficulty, leaning on her handmaids, and stopped in front of the two oxen that dragged the High King’s cart.

  Somehow she found strength to call in a high, clear voice, Greetings, Lion of Hellas! “We of your House come out to meet you. How went the war in Troy, my lord?’

  Agamemnon bent his head, as though it was painful for him to move his neck, and stared like a man trying to see through a heavy mist. His blank grey eyes wavered for a while, then seemed to find my mother. He held out his hands widely, in the ritual gesture, and said, ‘Some died on either side, my wife. But in the end the god gave us the victory and the honour. We return with tribute and in peace.’

  Neither of them made reference to Cassandra or to Aegisthus; but Clytemnestra took the head-band of the ox nearest to her and made the motion of leading the cart up towards the palace. As she went, each step a penance, her handmaids close behind her lest she fell, Orestes and I walked at the tail of the cart in silence. Our father half-turned and saw us, his mouth twitching and his brows moving up and down, like a very old man who is beating his brains to remember, but cannot.

  I saw that he had forgotten who we were, and this gave me no pain at all. I only wished that Agamemnon had died in the outland, under the Trojan walls—then we could have hated him as much as we chose, but we should have been forced to remember him with respect. Now, he was nothing, a man more valued in death than in this poor life he dragged about on his bent back.

  As we went, a great hush fell on the crowd; then, when we were some distance away, a deep, rumbling laughter rose, as though all the poor folk now saw that they were the great ones, not Agamemnon, that they were free at last, and he a broken prisoner to a dream.

  Then, up the hill came the Thebans, with the Ithacan contingent who had lost their king and were singing the most lewd and disrespectful ballads about him. The crowd turned away from us, and I was glad.

  When we reached the palace steps, Clytemnestra held out her hand to help Agamemnon down, as was her wifely duty; but he had great trouble in making his legs do what he wished, and in the end he almost tumbled from the cart into the dust. The line of Cretan guards upon the steps began to smile at this, at first behind their hands, then quite openly. But my father did not seem to hear them. He turned towards Cassandra and said, ‘There is that to do, inside, my dear. Soon they will bid you to the feast. They will treat you well, have no fear.’

  As he spoke, the girl buried her face in her hands and began to moan, the baby at her breast forgotten. The boy beside her in the cart moved forward and took the child gently in his own thin hands.

  I was standing beside my mother when this happened. Her face was like an ivory mask of tragedy, so wide were her eyes, so twisted down the corners of her gaping mouth. It was as though she tried to weep, but no tears would come.

  She whispered to me, as Agamemnon mounted the long flight of steps, ‘Oh god, Electra, I cannot do it now that the time has come. He has paid already, daughter. I cannot do it, I tell you. It rests with you now!’

  Then Agamemnon stopped, his hand over his heart, breathing heavily and waving his head about, seeking my mother. ‘Where is the Amber Princess?’ he asked, in his dry old voice. ‘Where is my little girl-thing then? I thought she would be the first to greet me when I came back to my house.’

  I wanted to turn and race down the long stairway. I was ashamed of myself, of him, of the very world itself. But I dared not run away, and I dared not go to him now.

  Clytemnestra stood beside him and said, ‘She is resting, Great One. She will soon come to see you, to show you her new corn doll.’

  She spoke to him as though he was a simpleton, and he nodded and smiled towards her. ‘I thank you, lady,’ he said. ‘These little girls must have their rest, and their dolls, if they are to grow up in healthy contentment. A child of eleven needs her rest. Sleep puts roses in the cheeks and starlight in the eyes. One day, my Amber girl shall marry a great…’

  He broke off then and sat down on a carved stone lion that stood against the balustrade, sighing and trying to get his breath.

  ‘I had a son. Oh, years ago. He must be dead and in the tomb now. Orestes, they called him. By the god, but time flies! I can only picture him as a baby…. A baby, tottering from stool to stool, with the milk round his mouth. It is all most strange. Surely, he was a great warrior?’

  He pursed his lips and then began to cough. A small patch of red showed suddenly on his cheekbones and a vein throbbed under the parchment skin of his forehead.

  He ran his knotted fingers over the carved mane of the stone lion and said all at once, ‘On one of the islands we called at—I forget— Cassandra would tell you—close by Leros, I think, or just south of Doles—one of those places—’

  His voice faded away, and he began to look round to find the stone lion’s tail. Clytemnestra stood over him and said gently, ‘What was this you saw, on the island, High K
ing?’

  Agamemnon looked up at her with a blank face, as though he had never seen her in his life before. He answered slowly, ‘Why, a tortoise, lady. Bigger than a hull, and older than Zeus, they said on the island. I saw three men sit on his shell and go riding. The sound of his eating at midday was like lightning crackling. No, not lightning. Like a herd of wild cows rushing through brushwood. No, not like that either. Like.

  He got up and said, ‘Why do you keep me with such foolish talk, woman? Where is the bath-house in this place? Hey, where is the bath-house? I am weary from my journey. Lead me there, I command you.’

  The queen, my mother, nodded to old Geilissa to take Agamemnon where he had said. He went with her quietly, not raising his voice again. And, as they entered into the great hall, my mother turned to me and said, ‘Well, Electra, now there is no other way. You heard him ask for the bath-house? That is as the omens have foretold—he has asked his way to his death-place. What can we do now but let his pattern, run on to the end?’

  She spoke so quietly, almost with tenderness, that there, in the sun on the high steps of the palace, I could see no other way, though I tried my hardest to find one, I swear.

  I said, ‘But I cannot do it, mother. Now that he asks for it, I cannot do it. Yesterday, last month, any other time, and I would have gloried in it—but now all that has gone.’

  She leaned against the stone lion and nodded. ‘I am the same, my love,’ she whispered. ‘Yet it must be done. You see he is the husk of a man, he is as good as dead already. Tomorrow, or the next day, another will put an end to him—or worse, will drag him off as a hostage to some place where we shall never find him. Better to put him out of his misery now; then we shall know his end.’

  I said, ‘Very well; what am I to do?’ There was nothing else to say. Clytemnestra answered in a still, dead voice, ‘Go into the bathhouse when he is ready and wrap the towel round him, as though you are a servant-girl sent to dry him. But, I beg you, see that the doth goes round his arms, not under them. This must be done quickly, with no fuss. I do not think I could carry out the task if he broke away and tried to save himself. Take one of the strong new towels, not the old threadbare ones.’

  I shook the tears from my eyes. ‘I will do as you say, mother,’ I told her. ‘But first there is one other thing I must see to.’

  She began to hobble on up the stairs, her hand at her breast as though her milk pained her. ‘Hurry, Electra,’ she called back, ‘I feel that we have not much time before us.’

  As I ran down the steps to where Agamemnon’s cart still waited, I knew what I must do; I must try to get the poor creature, Cassandra, away from our palace. Otherwise, with Agamemnon, her protector, gone, she and her defenceless children would become prey to any soldier roaming wild with a knife.

  She was kneeling in the cart, cradling the baby, and singing to it in a wordless crooning chant. The thin-faced boy stood watching beside her, as simple as a young calf, his great eyes wide and thoughtless.

  I had to call to her three times before she turned and heard me. ‘Go away, woman,’ I said. ‘Lash your oxen away from here. Go with the Laconians, they will care for you.’

  She smiled down on me as though I had gone mad. ‘But I must be with my husband, the king,’ she said. ‘Do you not know, I have come all the way from Troy to be here with him at his triumph.’

  I shook her by the arm. ‘Go,’ I cried again. ‘He is not your husband, and there will be no triumph.’ Then, shocked by her empty gaze and the trembling of her lips, I said, ‘If you will not go, then follow - me inside this palace. There is a room I can hide you in, that few know about.’

  But now she began to tear her hair and beat at her thin breast, wailing for all to hear. ‘No! No! I will not come inside that house of death, that tall tomb! I smell blood within it—blood on the walls, blood on the rafters, blood across the floor! I cannot enter!’

  So she fell from the cart, the froth at her lips, her arms and legs flailing, her back arching like that of a woman in a birth-spasm. The boy on the cart took up the crying baby and held it to his bare chest, as though he had food for it.

  ‘Go away,’ he said to me, ‘you have made my mother weep. That is not a kind greeting! We are of a kingly house and deserve better.’ I almost struck the poor wretch across the face. I began to call him a fool and his mother a mad-woman—until I realised that this was just what they were. Then, helpless and ashamed, I swung away from them and ran back up the stairway to be in time for what I had to do.

  25

  the bards have lied, singing of a huge king, lion-wrathful, clenching his great fist at fate, roaring his death-defiance as the bloody water lapped about his legs, shaking the walls with his bellowing, Great Bull, Brother to Poseidon, Zeus’ Twin, Earth Rattler, the Mighty, Most Heinous in Battle, the Flamer, the Mountain Master!

  They have sung that foxes ran to their burrows at the dread din; that wolves rolled in the dust to stop their ears; that eagles flew from the howling so high that the sun left them only a cloud of charred feathers in the evening sky.

  They have sung that the strings of every lyre in Hellas snapped as the blow was struck; that all the mothers’ milk lay curdled in the breast and the babes unfed for days; that tombs blew open and bones were scattered half-way to Hyperborea; that the moon pulled a cloth across her face, and let fall tears of silver.

  But it was not like that when I was in the bath-house.

  Steam made the air heavy, and the serving-women moved through it like ghosts, pouring in water and more water from wooden buckets. When I sent them away, they bowed and did not speak. They saw the thick towel in my hands and knew what I had come for. That towel was of the sacred fleece, the Kin-sign of all the House of Atrcus,

  It was a while before I saw him, lolling in the deep bath, swishing the water between his thighs like a little boy. He could not see me bending over him for the steam, or for his half-blind eyes, I know not which.

  I said softly, ‘Rise, High King. I have come to put the cloth about you.’

  Agamemnon stared down at the water and said, ‘I am not such a fool that I do not know why you have come, Electra.’

  Then, as I stood, shocked, he smiled at me and whispered. ‘I shall give you no trouble, my dear. I know the rite; I rise, I place one foot on dry land, one in water, and so I stand until the axe falls. Is it still the axe in Mycenae, Electra? So many other things seem to have changed.’

  I nodded down at him and said, ‘It is still the axe, sir.’

  He splashed the water with his hands a little while, then he said, ‘You have not mentioned Iphigenia, my dear. I thought you would speak of her at this time.’

  When he said this, so simply, I knew that I wished him dead again, although I had felt such pity for him on the palace steps in the sunlight.

  I said shortly, ‘Rise, sir, I am waiting,’

  My heart was smacking at my ribs. I was listening for Clytemnestra to come along the passage-way so that all might be done according to the custom. Agamemnon was listening, too. As he rose, with some difficulty, he said, ‘She is keeping us waiting, Amber! It was always her way. But she does not look so well, does she, daughter? Is she sick?’

  I was angry and afraid, the thick mist of steam in the bath-house half-choked me. My shift was sodden and clung to me, chilling my body, though my face burned as if I stood before a furnace.

  I almost shouted, ‘Will you come out, or must I fetch you, sir?’

  Agamemnon looked at me with wrinkled eyelids, and even smiled. ‘It is strange,’ he said, as though to himself, ‘but I have stood where arrows hailed and spears thudded, where horses reared and swords crashed down, for ten long years—yet I do not recall ever being so afraid as I am now, my daughter. Perhaps it is true what Achilles once said, that I have the face of a hound, but the heart of a deer!’

  It was as he was saying this, and clambering out from the deep bath, that dark shapes moved in the steam. I heard Agamemnon give a little intake of t
he breath, as though he was about to sneeze, then, as I wrapped the woollen cloth about him, I saw it grow suddenly bright with blood. He slipped a little way into my arms, so that I had to support his weight, sitting on the lip of the bath.

  Yet it was small weight enough; he was as light as a child, for all his great frame and the grizzled pelt of his body.

  He coughed twice, then turned his head up sideways and fixed me with his flinty grey eye. ‘It was not my doing—Iphigenia,’ he said. ‘It was the priest Calchas, and goatherd Aegisthus. They shed her blood.’

  As he spoke, the red kept coming from him, down on to my lap and over my breast, in great spurts. Now there were two dark shapes in the steamy chamber. I could scarcely breathe for the water and the blood. I was glad, at last, when I saw my mother come out of the mist and strike down twice with the stone axe we kept above the Hearth Shrine.

  Then we were left together, weeping, and the king limp between us, and the door wide open with the steam gushing out into the sunlit corridor.

  I remember saying, ‘Let us lay him down and catch the one who has escaped. It is he who is our quarry now.’

  We ran, weak as we both were now, like hounds. There was uproar about the palace rooms, but we paid it no heed. Once, as we passed the long window above the high stairs, I glanced down and saw three soldiers haggling with their swords at Cassandra as she lay on the ground helpless. The thin boy was still clutching the baby to him, though a javelin-point stood out from him. Before he had gone from view, I saw him kneel down and lie across his mother, as though protecting her.

  But at that moment I saw the edge of Aegisthus’ tattered robe disappearing through the small door that led up to the battlements. We howled again, the queen and I, then went on after him like Furies.

  He was too spent to reach the higher platform, but sat on the dark narrow steps, holding his head in his hands. The murder knife with the copper blade and the ivory handle lay at his feet.

  ‘See,’ he called down to us, ‘I have laid down the knife, which proves I mean you no harm, my dears! And I do not try to escape from you, you understand. I sit and wait for you, because I adore you both, my wife and my daughter. See?’