Electra

by Henry Treece

  ‘It is that, or we starve, Electra. Look, we will hide the goddess-dress away and keep it safe, and you shall put on an old shift, as though you are a street-beggar, a girl left behind by the Phoenicians.

  No one will know you for the princess of Mycenae. With dust on you, and your hair tied in a knob at the back, no one will know.’ ‘Yes, that much is good, Rarus, but I shall know. I shall see them coming, shall know what manner of man it is. I shall see and know.’ ‘But, sister, there is a way out. Look, I will tie a black cloth over your eyes and tell them all that you have lost your sight in the white sandy-places of Libya. I will collect the fees for you and will stand over you with a staff and see that no one outstays his time. They will not see your face, nor will you see theirs. It will be a blind bargain for both sides, and I will hold the money-bags and keep the accounts. All you must do is be obedient to the customer—and then forget, in time for the next. Is that a good plan, Electra?’

  ‘Yes, Rarus, I suppose so. It is that—or die. And, at the worst, I shall not be as badly off as Aegisthus, with what the black bull did to him that afternoon.’

  I tell you, doctor, it was that or death. And always I hoped that the next visit to the grotto would bring me word. The tipsy old woman there must have known what I was at; her spies, no doubt, had been out to the cross-roads, just as my landlord’s had, and between them they fleeced me. That made it hard work, through the hot summer and into the first chill of the autumn. But if he failed me in one way, the god looked over me in another; he let nothing come of it. It was as though he had rolled a stone over the sacred place, to let none defile it.

  Then, at the next spring, all changed. Sitting with the black cloth over my eyes, dusty once more, beside the flat altar stone where the trade was carried on. And Rarus suddenly saying, ‘Hold up straight, dear, and raise the shift a little more. You are not doing yourself justice, my pigeon.’

  I heard the clattering of hooves and said, ‘Why, who is it?’

  ‘A troop of young men on white horses, led by two wearing great crested helmets. The sort with masks on the front. They are only youths, but they wear swords. The others carry long javelins! Aiee! It is like a porcupine! It is like the old days when the men got ready to sail to Troy!’

  I did as he said, perhaps more too, and I heard the horses halting. Then a muffled voice calling down from above. ‘Hey, Cretan! Has your sister got a permit to work here, at the entrance to the sacred town?’

  I was frightened by this and thought the police from Thebes had come inspecting. It was the crafty sort of thing they did. But I put on a good face, and, taking my chance, said, ‘Here is my licence, sir. Would you like to inspect it?’

  I heard a great deal of laughing and for a moment I was ashamed of myself. Then Rarus pulled at my arm and whispered, ‘It is all right, pigeon, the two leaders are dismounting to come to you. Look, I will lead you into the grove as usual, and since they are obviously men of some authority, perhaps, this time, we will not insist on a fee. Perhaps that would be wise, for if they are police, then we can say we were not gaining by it. Do you agree, sister?’

  I nodded and stumbled to the grassy place by the little stream, which was our frequent place of work. Rarus and I called it Dreamland, because of how it was there, usually, unless you had a wild Thracian to deal with; and then it was more like a fierce battlefield. But most pilgrims were quiet fellows enough, having come so far and being so weary from the mountains.

  I rested, waiting, among the asphodel and the tall rushes, hoping that the police would be swift and away, and that the whole troop would not expect to be entertained too lavishly,

  I heard the rushes beside me breaking and felt the warmth of another at my side. Then, as I began to do what was required, I heard a high voice cry out, ‘Why, by the little god, this must be Electra! She is the only one I know with the snake on her in red and blue!’

  My heart thumped so wildly, I tore away my black bandage and saw that the youth in the rushes was Orestes, Orestes with his great helmet off, and his golden hair flying wild. And already he had the fringe of beard growing thick at his chin, and the great bronze bracelets on his arms, nestling among the little curly golden hairs there.

  I flung my arms about him and said, ‘Brother, oh brother! The god has brought you here to save me!’

  Orestes smiled broadly and said, It’s Via you should thank, not old man Zeus! But for her little snake, we might have been in some sort of trouble, you and I!’

  I clung to him, weeping with joy, relishing the feel of the harsh hot armour on me, just as I did when I was a little one and Agamemnon picked me up in his war-dress. ‘Take me away, Orestes,’ I said. ‘I have found you at last, without the help of that old bitch of a pythoness. This is the god’s answer after three years!’

  Orestes stroked my face to quieten me. I was ten years older than he, but now he seemed quite grown-up and capable. I felt that I could leave all my affairs to him. I think that I had become so dispirited by my stay at Delphi that I would have leaned on any man, however young.

  ‘Look up, sister,’ he said at last, ‘and greet my blood-brother, Pylades. He and I are forming an army to drive the Dorian away. We mean to bring back the old Hellas once again, and all its glory, too.’

  I said, ‘Pylades! That means, “The Gates of Hades”. Yet I see no fire and smoke about him! How did he get his name?’

  I spoke to Orestes because I was too ashamed at that moment to address myself to Pylades himself, being still half-shiftless in the grass. Besides, this Pylades was the most handsome man I had ever seen. He was a few years older than my brother, and very tall. His hair was a reddish-gold, with many lights in it, and he wore it in the Laconian style, chopped off straight at the shoulder-line, and tied with red ribbons just behind his head. His face was long and smiling, with deep lines from nose to mouth, and a pointed chin with a thick stubble of reddish beard on it. He wore no gold at throat or wrist, but band after band of soft bright iron. Even his belt, that pulled his waist in until it looked like a wasp’s, was of broad iron, all moulded and carved with stags and bulls and twining snakes. His kilt was of thick linen, with little iron bars set side by side on it, running downwards, and rattling at every move he made. I had never seen so much iron in my life before; it made him seem like a god, wearing the god’s own sacred metal so.

  Orestes rose and put his arm about Pylades’ waist, and they stood above me, together, in the sunlight that shone through the new green leaves in that grove. Together, they looked so comely, I could have eaten them! No, doctor, I did not mean to say that, it slipped out. Forget those words; I meant that I could have loved them to madness. I thought that they were second only to dear Hermione in her light armour and her play-helmet, lying among the crushed lavender in the breathless heat of the evening.

  I think Orestes knew what was in my mind, because he said, ‘In our kingdom, beyond Mount Oeta, where we have set up our camp-place, Hermione still talks of you, sister. We have heard of nothing but you each day since we first came there from Mycenae.’ I arranged myself and ran to him. ‘Tell me,’ I begged, ‘do you think she still loves me, Orestes!?’

  It was Pylades who answered. He said, with a strange twitch of the mouth, ‘I can answer that! She loves you so much that she has refused to wed your brother. She says that she will marry no one unless you are there, too. Is that answer enough for you, lady?’

  I held his hand then and began to weep for joy. Orestes took me by the shoulders and said gently to me, ‘This is the moment we have all waited for, Electra. Do not go back to Mycenae, at least not yet. Come with us, beyond Mount Oeta, and see Hermione again. Then she will marry me, and perhaps the god will speak inside you and persuade you to marry my brother, Pylades. For it is in my heart that this was intended by the god, that we should all be joined together, to bring glory back to Hellas.’

  I looked up at Pylades, and saw him smiling with the dappled shadows on his long face. And, for an instant, in the greenness
of that place, with the magic water rustling about us and the breeze sighing in the tall reeds, I seemed to see Hermione standing just behind him, holding out her arms to me, her laughing head flung back, her hair wafted in the wind, her play-armour cast aside so that I might see what she looked like with the amber sunlight playing over her, too.

  I said, ‘I will marry Pylades, if he will have me.’

  He fell at my feet and kissed my dusty legs. ‘Lady,’ he whispered, ‘it is all I want from life, to marry the kin of my brother, Orestes.’

  To fill the silence then, I asked if my sister, Chrysothemis, was well. Orestes laughed and said, ‘She is, for all we know, Electra. She went off with a band of Dorian, and they seemed pleased enough to have her.’

  So, there, near the cross-roads at Delphi, I got my answers, and my life took yet another course. I recall little else of that meeting, except that when I went back with the two warriors, the horsemen all bowed their great crested heads, and reined in their mounts until they were as still as images. It was as though a great queen had come among them, even though I was dressed in rags, and my limbs were caked with dust and sweat.

  One more thing I recall, but with shame, now. As Pylades was helping me to mount the white horse they brought for me, I turned suddenly and shouted, ‘Rarus, you will walk! Among great ones, you must keep your place, fellow.’

  I do not know what made me say that. I was ashamed of my words the moment they had been uttered. But Rarus did not seem to notice anything. He only bowed his dark bead in obedience, and then went to take my bridle-rein and lead me forward among the other riders, on the road out of Delphi.

  31

  The deep gorge where my brother and Pylades lived was not green and pretty, as so many other valleys were, but it was secure. No one travelled into it, for there were few sheep and cattle to buy or steal, and hardly enough water to satisfy a herd of horses.

  The small dark folk who lived there called it the Iron Valley; and they called Pylades the Iron King. They were descendants of the old Chalybians who had followed Jason back when he returned from Colchis, twenty generations before, to trade their iron in Hellas, where so little of it was ever seen.

  They prayed to a goddess called Ay-mari, after the manner of other folk from the land of the rising sun. Some of them believed that she came from the sea, and that her father was the Great Fish. I used to ask them what his name was, but they always smiled behind their hands and drew away without telling me. They were a shy, courteous folk in all things, and never spoke to me unless they were first addressed. The family of Pylades had been their overlords from the earliest day of their settlement beyond Mount Oeta, and had come to be accepted as their priest-kings.

  Hermione, who was regarded by them almost as a goddess, could not wait to take me up on the hillside to watch the fires burning down below in the valley after dark.

  It was as though the night was full of winking red eyes. Smoke rose from the valley and covered it with a black pall. Hermione laughed with glee to tell me how the other peoples from kingdoms round about steered clear of this place after night-fall. ‘They think magic goes on here,’ she said.

  Then she saw the look in my eyes and stopped talking about that sort of magic. We had a charm of our own to be at, this first time together after so long.

  When we came down the hill again, Pylades was stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat. His face and arms were black with soot. His teeth shone white against the darkness of his features. His fine hair was done up in a tight ring on top of his head, to be out of the way.

  He laughed at us, our arms about each other, a great hammer in one hand, and a giant pair of pincers in the other. ‘What, you two love-birds back so soon again!’ be called. ‘I thought we’d have the new smelting out of the furnaces before you came down the hill.’

  Hermione told him to stop his teasing and to let us see how the iron was made; but he shook his head and pretended to drive us away with the great hammer.

  Later he said, ‘One day, soon, you shall both see it, now that we are all together as the god wished. But before that there is a thing that must be done. It is the custom of my people which they brought from their own land lifetimes past.’

  I understand what he meant; it was much the same as what the god at Jericho commanded. But among the Chalybians, it was from all alike. Small enough price to pay, I thought, to become a queen, and to have both Pylades and Hermione beside me again.

  On the day before the double wedding, the dark folk of the valley built what they called their Great Fish. It was a dark tunnel of brushwood, shaped roughly like a fish, and a hundred paces long. The four of us had to go in through the mouth and out through the tail-end, and, while in the belly of the fish, make our offering. Since Pylades and Orestes had followed the custom of this folk on reaching warrior-hood, we got through all the faster. And since Pylades was the priest as well as the king, he saw to it that Hermione and I were dealt with as kindly as possible. We had both drunk the heavy resinous wine of Oeta before we went into the belly of the fish, and so we made little enough of it all at the time. Though, I must admit that later, when we were alone, we had an indignant word or two to say about Ay-mari and the Fish God; though we said it all laughing, and with fingers crossed, so that whoever was listening would know that we meant no harm.

  The next stage in our wedding came at the sword-thrusting. When I heard of this, I was frightened for a moment; but Hermione had seen it done before, and told me there was nothing to fear. All that happened was that the bride held her thumb and finger like a ring while the groom pushed an ancient iron sword through the hole, into a tree. I asked if anyone ever got cut by the sword, but she said there was more chance of that on the wedding-night, when the weapon had to lie between bride and groom until dawn.

  We were all so careful at our wedding, though, that not a drop of blood was spilled. Unless it was when a rough young man from the lower valley put his arm round Rarus, in game, and got a punch on the nose for his trouble. I had never seen Rarus so upset as he was on my wedding-night. Poor fool, he had been with me so long that be thought he owned me. If I had not driven him away with a whip, he would have spent that night at the foot of my bed, as he had always done before.

  In the morning, I had to take him aside and tell him that those days were over now; that Pylades, the king, would not like him there. He sulked a little and said, ‘But Orestes and Hermione sleep in the same room with you two. What does one more matter?’

  It was hard to explain to him that there was a difference; but he came to understand after a while, and left me alone, only tending me when the others were away, and when I called for his company. This I was forced to do because, as yet, I could understand little of what the Chalybians said, and I needed someone to talk to at times. Being alone and silent drives a woman mad a little.

  Once, when we were all at the feast-board in the long house where the iron-men ate together, Orestes opened the talk by saying, ‘It will not be so long before we go to Mycenae again, sister. Then our iron swords will do the talking, not us! I will lay a red ribbon on my father’s tomb, one that you wove for me long ago—so, he too will know that I have come for vengeance.’

  I said, ‘Brother, there is one thing you must swear, over the bread and the salt.’

  Orestes was swaying with wine and he said, ‘Why, what should I swear, sweet heart?’ He was slobbering, much like Aegisthus now, which angered me.

  I said, ‘Whatever you may do with Aegisthus, our mother who bore us must never be harmed. Clytemnestra must not be hurt. Do you swear?’

  He made a great show of shaking his head in fury. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘she killed my father, didn’t she?’

  I answered, ‘That has nothing to do with the matter, Orestes. This is something different. I have given my word that I will tend her all her days, and if you do not swear likewise, then what am I to do— put a knife into you? Otherwise, I shall be foresworn, you see.’

  Pylades began
to laugh then, and slapped Orestes on the shoulder like a big brother. ‘Come, Prince,’ he said, ‘do as my wife wishes, or no iron from this valley shall go to Mycenae, I warn you.’

  So Orestes swore, on bread and salt, that, when the time came for Mycenae to fall, he would not hurt our mother. After he had sworn, Pylades got into a merry mood and took Hermione and me out to see the iron being made.

  It was when I first saw the row of great furnaces, under the rocky hillside, that I knew why he was named Pylades, and all his fathers before him. ‘The Mouth of Hades’ was the opening in the long tubular clay furnace, with the hole at its base, through which the glowing charcoal could be seen, glimmering at every punch of the goatskin bellows which were set at the top of the furnace and worked by young boys, in relays, hour after hour.

  Pylades let me pour in a bucket of sand that came from a special seam on the hillside, and told me that if the bellows-boys only blew hard enough, this sand, on the hot charcoal, would change into specks of iron, and that when the clay furnaces were cracked open, in a day or two, these pieces of iron would have set hard together.

  I did not believe him; but he spoke the truth. When he broke open the hollow column of clay, I saw that there was a long ingot of rough iron, mixed with charcoal and the scum of the sand.

  Together we chipped away the red iron and then it was put into a cauldron and heated over charcoal until it was all white-hot. Pylades stirred it with a green twig, which, he said, caused the scum to rise, and the pure iron to set, as water sets to become ice in winter.

  Shortly after this, he poured the iron out into moulds of stone, and there it lay, hardening and growing dull, in the shape of rude swords.

  Pylades wiped his sooty hand over his sweating brow and said,’ A few more hundreds of these, my love, and we shall be ready to take Mycenae.’