Electra

by Henry Treece

  The Court was empty of folk now. There was no one to mock at our tears, no one to scorn us as, at last, we searched ourselves to know what injuries we had suffered.

  So, later, like poor old folk, we rose and went with our arms about each other from the Court and the palace, stumbling like cripples full of pain, the pride and the anger all gone from us.

  There was loud singing and rough shouting everywhere in the palace gardens, and torches flaring everywhere, making small islands of red in the purple darkness. It was a pretty sight, with the silver stars speckling the dark-blue sky like the feathers on a pheasant’s breast: but it brought no cries of joy from us. We walked in a broken world together, towards any place that took us away from this last terror.

  At the gates of the courtyard, freed slaves sat in the dust, singing and drinking from goatskin bags. A fat dairy-woman saw me in the torchlight and pushed forward, laughing immodestly, towards me, her own marked body bared for all to see.

  ‘Look! Look!’ she said, touching me with callused fingers, ‘she is one of us now. At last the fine princess has found her level. See, these great ones bleed like anybody else. The Dorian are right—all men are equal!’

  I was too weary to push her away, too spent to cover myself from their eyes. A gaunt-faced peasant limped to us and pushed a greasy wine-skin under our noses. ‘Come on, now,’ he said, ‘since we are all brothers and sisters, join us in a drink!’

  Pylades took the skin and we shared this last indignity, while the slaves cackled round us. Then, at last, we made our way from the swarming mad city, and staggered into the quieter hills.

  Once, as we rested against a rock before forcing our protesting bodies higher up the slope, we turned and looked back on Mycenae, where Agamemnon had once been the Lion of Glory. The blurred torch-glow had changed into spiked and leaping flames, as though someone had put a light to the resinous pines about the palace.

  I leaned against Pylades and said bitterly, ‘I hope to the god they burn it all down—the palace, everything! It has no longer a place in the world, any more than we have.’

  44

  There is a limit to what the god will let us bear. Like a stern master, he sometimes loads our cart so heavily, and goads us along so sharply, that we accuse him of having no love for us. Yet, consider; we most often find, at the hinder-part of the journey, that we did draw that load, and that our bodies were able to withstand the goad-pricks.

  Those who cannot, die, and find peace from all burdens, and so come as well out of the world as those who stay in it. In the dream time of their death, they sit beside the god and, laughing now, wonder why they wept so much, before, at what is, after all, only a great jest.

  Ask yourself, doctor; do we not set too great a store on our aches and pains, our dreams and our sickness after strange foods? Does not a boy with a cut finger howl more than a warrior with a javelin in his breast? Is there not more blood after a joyful birth than after a death-stab to the heart? You see, there is no rule, no sense, in life— and so it is, as I say, a great jest. Who tries to find more than that in it will go down to the tomb with a wrinkled brow, unsatisfied. Better to sip the good wine, to smell the autumn crocus, to laugh in the dust and the sun, as the chance permits; wine, flowers, dust and sun will pass. Perhaps they will come again, or perhaps they will not; but one thing is assured, tears will not make them stay a heartbeat longer. Joy and pain both pass; that is the one thing we learn before the god takes us, doctor.

  When Pylades and I walked away from Mycenae, we had not quite learned this lesson, and our eyes were full of tears at our fall, and the fall of the royal House, and the fall of Hellas. But as the journey unwound, our scars mended themselves, and there were no more tears left to shed.

  Sometimes, in the night, lying below a bill or behind a rock, away from the wind, I thought of Agamemnon and my mother, of my sisters and of poor Rarus. And always, by day or by night Orestes was in my head; I saw him running with his mouth open and his hands outstretched, mindless as a stone, searching for death - he who had once lain so tender in my arms, who had been as pretty as a bird.

  But in the end, even Orestes let me be, to live my own life and laugh again. That is the way; you can hack at the boughs, the bark, the roots of a tree, and yet it may live on for another lifetime and spring fresh leaves, and provide fresh shelter, though it was left for dead by the clumsy woodcutter.

  In a narrow green valley, where the river Ladon rises from the rock, my husband and I built our house. It was a rough thing, of pine trunks and mud, with a roof of reeds from the river-bed. As we built, we could see on the one hand, Mount Acetylene; and on the other, Mount Pholoe, and far beyond its ridge, high Erymanthus with the white cap of snow at its crest.

  With the few bits of gold we had, on wrist and at throat—small things like ear-drops, bracelets and neck-rings—we stocked our little place; a ram and three young ewes first; then a half-dead milch-cow we found over beyond the valley, worn out with seeking water. She was only a bag of bones, with hardly any udder, when we came across her, with the carrion birds standing by her, waiting for her to stop breathing. But we drove them away with sticks and I sat with her while my husband fetched water to her in a wooden bucket. Poor Pylades, we laughed at the memory of it many times, later; he staggering in the hot night, his shuffling feet crushing the oven-dry wild lavender in this desert spot, sending up a trail of bitter-sweetness behind him as he came to feed the sick cow; while I turned my head in every direction, afraid at the long-beaked birds that would not go away and leave their prey.

  Such things bind a man and woman together, simple homely things. It does not have to be flaming love to hold them to each other; simple things like rescuing a cow will do it. We called her Glauce when we got her home, for she had such great mournful eyes, like that princess in the old tale, the stupid daughter of the King of Thebes, the girl who fell in love with that old pirate, Jason.

  I say that we sold our bracelets to buy sheep—and there is another tale about that. We went together, like a peasant and his woman, in grey wool tunics, down to the little market of Thelpusa. Neither Pylades nor I had ever done any bargaining in our lives; coming of noble blood, such things were not in our training.

  The sheep-market at Thelpusa was a small one, and the word soon spread that two strangers were there. The brown-faced dealers stared at us, as we walked uncertainly among the hurdle-pens looking at the wiry hill-sheep, and called out to us that theirs were the best animals in Achaea. Even I could see that some of them were lame with foot-rot, or blind in one eye, or crippled with a dropped back. When I mentioned these faults to the dealers openly, as we used to speak in Mycenae, they set up such an angry cackling that I felt ashamed, with their blunt dirty fingers pointing at us, and their rough voices telling all the village that we were too big for our boots, that we were jumped-up peasants who had robbed a noble house and now thought we, too, were noble ones. Pylades, unused to being so insulted by common folk, flushed and took such a grip on his staff I thought he would go among the dealers like a warrior and strike them down.

  Someone else saw this, too; a crop-haired Dorian, who leaned on his own sheep-pen, wearing a war-shirt and a broad sword. His big face was wrinkled with amusement to see Pylades so worried by the teasing sheep-men. And when, harried on all sides, we stopped and set our faces as though this was the last straw, the Dorian shouted out above the crowd, ‘Hey, you two, come to me!’

  We went, I do not know why; perhaps we were really frightened by the crowd—though if there had been twice as many warriors, on the battlefield, we should not have turned a hair. But we were caught out of our element, like fishes twitched on to dry land by the Hue.

  The Dorian screwed his eyes and gazed at us, looking us up and down, while his thin lips turned themselves in over his teeth. He said, ‘A soldier and his woman buying sheep in this god-forsaken pig-sty of a place! What does this mean?’

  We were grateful to him for standing on our side against the peasant s
heep-dealers, so, though his question would have angered us at other, more fortunate times, now we took it with tolerance and told him that we were tired of town living, and wished to set up in the peaceful countryside as small farmers.

  He strode over to me heavily and, without hurry, pulled open the fold of my robe. I heard Pylades gritting his teeth as the Dorian ran his finger across the king’s mark on my flesh, but I signalled him to keep his temper and let things go as best they might.

  The Dorian covered me again, with respect, it seemed to me, then said, ‘So, my people have put their hand on you. It is distressing at the time, lady, but it is worth suffering. You are one of us, now, and woe to any of these cattle who lay a finger on you, for we will come upon them and burn the thatch of their houses and put the spear through their children.’

  He turned from us then and bawled at the top of his voice to the staring dealers, ‘These two are of my folk. If they chose, they could take all of your miserable beasts without paying more than a curse; yet they have come, gently among you, to bargain. And you have treated them as though they were of the same poor clay as yourselves, taunting them and daring to point your filthy fingers in their direction. What do you say to that?’

  A wizened old dealer, whose dark eyes were crossed, called, out, ‘I know who they are, sir. They are no more Dorian than I am.’

  Our friend made a step towards him, and the old fellow drew back behind the hurdles, his hands shaking. The Dorian spat at him and said, ‘If I say they are of my folk, will you deny me, fellow? Will you call me a liar, then?’

  The old man bowed his head and mumbled that he had meant no offence. When the Dorian was satisfied that he had cowed the folk, he turned to us and said quietly, ‘I know well enough that you are Electra and Pylades. It was my own half-brother who put the sign on you in the Great Court. But what of that! Times are changing and great ones have become small ones; and low ones, high ones. Change is in the nature of things. Leaves change, water changes to ice, good meat becomes carrion. What of it! Now you are two Dorian, not Electra and Pylades. So what is there to argue about?’

  He led us to a tavern where the awning kept the sun from our heads, and there, on the bench outside, we drank raw red wine with him. Always he kept his sword across his knees, so as to he ready, but this did not stop him from being merry. He was the sort of man who would be just as dangerous drunk as sober.

  He said, ‘You see, King Thoas puts one of us in every village he takes, just to keep order. One of us is enough, for we are the only folk allowed to carry a sword now, the conquered folk have only staves. Sometimes they rise and kill the guardian—but their joy lasts only a day or two. The king sends others to burn the place down and chop off the hands of the killers. You will see, soon there will be such order in Hellas as was known only in Agamemnon’s greatest days.’ He glanced at me shrewdly as he spoke my father’s name. I said, ‘So you think Agamemnon was a great ruler, sir?’

  He nodded. ‘That king might have ruled the whole wide world,’ he said, ‘if he had not made mistakes.’

  I said, ‘You speak of the nature of things; well, is it not the nature of things for men to make mistakes? Does not the god lay these traps for men, so as to show them how small they are after all?’ The Dorian took a pull at his wine, spat in the dust at his feet, then said, ‘All that is old-fashioned nonsense, lady. You ancient folk are too full of the god; you lay all at his door because that relieves you of responsibility. You let the god make those decisions for you that you should make yourselves; and when your lives go wrong, you shrug it off by saying that the god ordered this or that—whereas, if you had used your common sense, things would have been different. Look at us Dorian, lady; we make up our own minds, then get on with the job. We don’t wait for dreams and sacrifices and so on. We go through folk like you as a knife goes through a cut of cheese. We are practical folk, you understand. We do not stand on ceremony. That is why we are masters in Hellas now.’

  Pylades smiled and said, ‘What will you leave behind you, you Dorian? Are you not destroyers? Our poets say you are.’

  The Dorian called into the tavern for another wine-flask, then wiping his mouth on his hand, said, ‘When a man dies and goes into the ground, does it profit him to leave behind him great palaces and pretty pictures? Did it profit old King Minos on Crete? To be back alive again, drinking good wine and eating good beef, would he not exchange all his palaces and pictures? All his blind stone images? I tell you, Pylades, this flask of wine is worth all your pictures; better to be breathing and drinking, than dead in glory. As for the poets who call us destroyers, do they not breathe out foul air and call it a song? Only foul air from a blind fellow with a lyre. Air he has already used. Such silly fellows sing of a world that never was, and never will be. They are the destroyers—for they destroy truth. They make a world of dreams. I would like to be among them when they call us the destroyers. After this sword had been at work, there would be no more lying songs, I can tell you.’

  Pylades smiled at him, then said, ‘You have made it all very clear to us, sir. Now we will do what we came here for, buy a few sheep, and be on our way back to the hills,’

  The Dorian said, ‘What will you pay with, Pylades?’

  And when we had shown him the gold we had, he held out his hand for it and said, ‘That is exactly the price of my own beasts—a little more or less, counting in the wine we have drunk, and so on.’ In all truth, for that gold we might have bought a farm-house and a herd of cattle. I felt that the man was cheating us, in spite of his friendly words, and I said, ‘Are you sure, sir, that you have judged the amount of gold rightly?’

  This Dorian was an intelligent fellow, despite his rough speech and hairy face. He smiled and said, ‘You are thinking I ask a high price for a ram and three young ewes, hey? Well, perhaps I do; but remember that dagger-brand. It is an insurance, is it not? It makes you a free Dorian, does it not? And so with the price you pay for your sheep. No one will ever take them from you; no one will ever as much as set foot in your valley, for we shall see that it is a protected spot during your lifetime and the lifetime of your children. Is that not a good bargain, my lady?’

  Though he spoke mockingly, I felt that he meant all he said. I nodded and the bargain was sealed.

  We went from the market-place of Thelpusa with all the peasant-dealers bowing before us, as though we were the Kin of Thoas himself, which, indeed, by his marriage to my sister, we were. And, as the Dorian soldier had said, from that time on, we were not molested in our little valley. The word must have gone round, for the Dorian kept no written records, and we were left alone.

  Many times we saw troops of them, riding hunch-back and weary on their sheepskin saddles, passing over the top at the valley’s head, but they never came down on us, though the smoke from our chimney was visible for a mile and more. Only once did a Dorian soldier walk to the door, and then he greeted us with great respect, putting his rude copper sword at my feet. He only wanted to know the way to Tiryns; and when I had told him, he left behind a handful of Egyptian blue clay beads.

  ‘These are for your daughter, lady,’ he said, before he took up his sword and went back to his waiting horse. Though I had no daughter, I accepted his offering, for Dorian, though they had a great name for meanness and crafty dealing, when they gave, gave freely and were insulted if their gifts were turned back.

  Three months after this man came to our door, I did have a child, but a boy, not a girl. His name was Medon, and he was as much like my brother, Orestes, as one pine cone is like another. A year after this, there was another boy, Strophius; and he resembled poor Rarus. Though this might only have been a trick of the light, for Rarus could never have a son, as you will understand.

  So, we lived quietly, the four of us. Our flocks multiplied and our fields grew heavy crops of corn. Even in the bad times, we had enough to see us through. We seldom left the valley, doctor, and when we did, it was only to ride to Thelpusa for such things as we did not make
or grow ourselves—good wine, or thick woollen cloth for robes and tunics. I was never much of a hand at the loom —though I did my share in the fields and the dairy, once I had got into the run of these occupations. Indeed, it was working in the fields, holding down the ploughing stick while Pylades drove the oxen, that I had my miscarriage of my third child. It would have been a girl, and I was grieved at the loss. It reminded me of that time in the Iron Valley.

  After that, there were no more children for us. At first this was a bitter blow, but we grew used to it, as one becomes used to almost anything. At first, Pylades said, ‘Do you think if we started to pray to the god again we might be allowed a daughter?’

  I was feeling sick at the time, and laughed in scorn, hurting him but not meaning to, in the manner of women. I said, ‘After all we have done, all the blood we have spilled, do you think the god would turn his ear towards us? You know, as well as I do, that we are cast out from the god. We are like creatures who live neither on earth nor in heaven. Is that not clear to you? Why else all our suffering? Why else the fall of our family? If the god is pleased with us, why has he taken our little one? And where is Orestes, my brother?

  Where even is stupid Chrysothemis? No, husband, the god is blind and dumb to us.’

  As I said this, I seemed to feel a little shivering of the floor-tiles beneath my feet, as though the earth’s crust was shifting. My head was swimming with my sickness, and I sank to the floor. Pylades kneeled by me, his eyes wide with alarm at my words. I stroked his cheek and said, ‘Do not be a fool, Pylades; the god has not thrown me down. All women have these dizzy spells when they reach certain years. It will pass.’

  As I said this, I saw for the first time that Pylades also was no longer a young man. The backs of his hands were wrinkled and his finger-nails horny. His hair was white above the cars, and had fallen out from the front of his head. Warts had started to grow here and there on his face. As I sat on the floor that morning, I understood for the first time that he and I were growing old, that we had been a generation away from the High Town of Mycenae.