Iphigenia accepted the branch. “When Artemis saved me from Agamemnon’s knife, she wrapped me in a cloud and carried me to Tauris,” she began. “She made me the chief priestess of her shrine, responsible for the sacred image. It was my duty to prepare for sacrifice any princely stranger who came to Tauris unaware. I always obeyed Artemis’s wishes, though the idea of human sacrifice was repugnant to me.
“One day two strangers arrived at Tauris, left their oarsmen to guard the ship, and hid in a cave. But they were discovered by herdsmen, who delivered them to the temple to be sacrificed on a white marble altar stained red with human blood. I didn’t recognize Orestes—my own brother!—until he spoke to me in our language, and I promised to help him and his friend. When the king of the Taurians demanded to know why I didn’t immediately sacrifice these two, I explained that one was a matricide and the other his accomplice, unfit for sacrifice until they’d been purified. ‘They have tainted the sacred image,’ I told the king, and persuaded him that I must escort the prisoners down to the sea to cleanse them, and to carry the sacred image there as well. Then I instructed the king to remain inside with his head covered in order to keep from becoming tainted too.”
“And the fool believed her!” Pylades cried.
Iphigenia’s obvious trickery made us laugh, the king and queen, having no love for the king of the Taurians, laughing hardest of all. For the first time, Orestes smiled faintly, but when I tried to catch his eye, he looked away.
Iphigenia went on, “It was very dark, a moonless night, and I called for torchbearers to light our way. This made us uneasy, but there was no way around it. We reached the sea and hurried aboard the ship, but the torchbearers sensed treachery and attacked us. In the struggle Pylades’ injured leg was severely wounded again, but we escaped with our lives. Then a strong wind drove the ship back toward the rocks, and all would have been lost if the goddess Athena hadn’t asked Poseidon to calm the wind and waves. We knew that Athena and Poseidon had been rivals for the honor of being chosen patron of this great city, and we were not sure Poseidon would do as she asked. But he relented.
“The storm drove us off course, but eventually we reached Brauron and left the sacred image at the shrine of Artemis, as she ordered. At long last the Furies abandoned their torment of Orestes.”
“Ahhhhhh!” sighed the group, delighted by Iphigenia’s story and its happy outcome.
“And now I have a surprise for you!” the king said, and signaled for the doors of the megaron to open.
A smiling Astynome stood waiting with gap-toothed Leucus. They’d arrived from Sminthos after visiting her father. After a flurry of greetings and welcomes, Astynome presented her little son, Chryses, and revealed to the king and his guests what some of us already knew: Agamemnon had been the father of her child; therefore, Chryses was the half brother of Orestes, Iphigenia, and Electra. Little Chryses gazed around him, wide-eyed, and ran to Leucus, who picked him up. The child shyly buried his face in Leucus’s shoulder.
It was a joyous scene that couldn’t fail to touch one’s heart. I stole another look at Orestes, but his mind was far away.
32
The Man I Loved Before
NOW THAT EVERYONE HAD arrived safely, nearly all gave themselves to enjoying the hospitality of King Menestheus and Queen Clymene. Throughout the pleasant days of summer Menestheus arranged games and contests in his stadium. The young men wrestled and ran races and threw spears long distances. There were archery contests at which Orestes excelled. Asius challenged the men to wrestle, even offering to tie one hand behind his back, but no one wanted to accept his challenge. None could best him at throwing the discus. The giant was in a class by himself. There were boxing matches and sword fights that sometimes drew blood but never ended in serious injury or death.
The women were enthusiastic spectators at these games and contests, heaping praise on the winners and consolation on the losers, and after the contests they danced and sang. There were nightly feasts, and bards plucked their lyres and recited poetry.
Through it all I remained sick at heart. I watched Orestes, convinced that, if I watched carefully enough, I could find a way to reach him and to bring back all he had lost. We would start over, as though we were meeting for the first time. I would strike up conversations with him and draw him out, little by little. We would become friends, as we had once been, long ago, before we became lovers.
I looked for opportunities to be near him, chances to exchange a few words. At first he was wary of me, skittish as a deer. No doubt he’d been told that we’d been lovers, that we’d promised to marry. I had to be careful not to move too quickly, to let him come to me naturally, on his own terms, as I had trained a bird to perch on my finger when I was a child.
Slowly he seemed to become more comfortable around me, smiling when he saw me, even calling me by my name. Sometimes he chose to sit beside me, and on two occasions he walked with me in the orchards near the palace.
Sometimes I stayed away from him for a day or two, to let him discover that he missed me.
Electra, now blissfully reunited with Pylades, encouraged me. “Orestes is making great progress,” she told me. “He’s much better now that the Furies have left him alone. He doesn’t wake up screaming in a night terror, as he used to, and,” she added mischievously, “I’ve even heard that he is growing quite fond of you. He calls you ‘my friend Hermione.’”
But in a way, that was nearly as painful as his failure to recognize me had been. Orestes liked me, but he didn’t love me.
After he’d grown to enjoy walking and talking with me, I began to speak about the days we’d spent in the encampments outside Troy. One day we were sitting under a shade tree on the banks of the Eridanos, a favorite spot to rest before we began the long climb back up to the Acropolis. “Do you remember Andromache?” I asked.
“Hector’s wife. Yes, I remember her. Pyrrhus took her as his concubine after he killed her infant son. But before that there was the fuss with Astynome and Hippodameia, wasn’t there? Achilles and Agamemnon, furious at each other, each refusing to give in, and Achilles refusing to fight unless he got the girl he wanted!”
“And do you remember when you and I had to persuade Achilles to give Hippodameia to Agamemnon, so that Agamemnon would agree to return Astynome to her father?”
“Did we do that? Tell me about it! I’ve forgotten.”
Patiently, I described the scene. “Magnificent Apollo was furious, and our men were dying by the hundreds until Astynome was returned to Apollo’s priest. I went with you to Achilles’ camp, and we were both so nervous, wondering how Achilles would respond.”
I remembered every detail, because that was the day I realized I loved Orestes and that I’d loved him for a very long time.
“And how did he respond?”
“Furiously!”
We both laughed, though at the time it hadn’t been a laughing matter. Now we both fell silent, and I wondered—again—what Orestes was thinking. Did he remember nothing of what we once were to each other?
Suddenly Orestes leaned close and kissed me. “Hermione,” he said, and lowered me carefully to the soft carpet of green beneath that tree. There were other people by the river—couples, mostly—but they were not interested in us. He kissed me again, more passionately, and I closed my eyes and returned his kisses, just as I used to. It was almost like it had once been, our bodies close, yearning to be even closer.
Except that it wasn’t the same. This was a different Orestes. I knew I shouldn’t weep, but I did.
Orestes pulled away. “I’m sorry, Hermione. I’ve offended you.”
I protested, “No! No, you haven’t offended me.” To prove it, I moved closer to him and wove my fingers through his thick curls. “You’ve been away so long, and I’ve missed you so much, Orestes, and longed for you so many nights.” Again I kissed his soft lips, even though it still wasn’t the same.
Orestes must have felt that too. He rose and pulled me to my fee
t, and we began the long climb back up to the Acropolis, saying little, not touching.
NOW THAT ELECTRA WAS neglecting her loom in order to spend more time with Pylades, Astynome often came with little Chryses and sat with me as I wove. It had been hard to be back on the island of Sminthos, she told me; her father had grown old and feeble, and while she was there he had gone on to an afterlife in the Elysian Fields.
“Leucus and I married before my father died,” she said, and I saw the special glow that told me she was probably expecting another child.
She didn’t ask if Orestes and I planned to marry. I felt sure everyone was speculating, and just as sure they’d observed that something fundamental had changed between us.
I decided to bring up the subject myself. “I’m happy for you, Astynome,” I said. “Leucus loves you, and he’s a good man. I know you’ll have a long and happy life together. But I don’t know what the future holds for Orestes and me. He’s rid of the Furies, but they took away his memory. He doesn’t remember me as the girl he loved, and this Orestes, the one I see now, is not the man I loved before.”
“But haven’t you noticed, Hermione? This Orestes is falling in love with you! Doesn’t this bring you happiness?”
I shook my head.
“Has it occurred to you,” Astynome lectured, wagging a finger, “that you aren’t the same Hermione he once loved? Since he last saw you, you’ve been forced into marriage to a man you despised, escaped from that brutal husband, and made a long and treacherous journey in search of the one you do love. You haven’t been sitting with your spindle and your loom all this time! All of this has changed you. You’re different too.”
I knew she was right. But that didn’t change how I felt.
Orestes and I continued to walk together, talk together, and sometimes simply sit quietly sharing the silence. I began to realize that I was not seeking him—he was seeking me. I think we were both aware that our friends were watching us, waiting to see what would happen.
And then one day something did happen that changed everything.
THE ACROPOLIS WAS ALWAYS a busy place, but on that day many were absent. The king and queen, along with Iphigenia, Electra, and Pylades, were attending a summer festival in the harbor at Piraeus. I had declined to join their party. Asius had driven them to the port in the royal chariot the day before, to meet the royal barge, on which Leucus now served as captain. They would return that day at sunset.
On that particular day, Orestes and Zethus were going over the plans for the construction of the queen’s new megaron. Zethus had taken charge of the project and set up his workshop on the terrace, and slaves were carrying out their orders.
The main source of water for the Acropolis was a cistern, a deep pool collected from several underground springs. The cistern was at the bottom of a long shaft reached by five flights of slippery rock and wooden stairs leading down through the shaft to a platform built over a large catch basin. No daylight reached the bottom of the shaft, but torches burned near the platform, giving a dull, flickering light. Slave women descended the steps, lowered their empty amphoras into the basin, and then climbed up again with the full amphoras on their shoulders. They did this all day, every day.
I was at my loom with several other women when we heard screams coming from the shaft. We dropped our shuttles and rushed out to investigate. A slave ran shrieking across the terrace, and two more slaves emerged from the shaft, gesturing wildly, crying, “The boy! The boy!”
What boy did they mean? Where was Chryses? He and Astynome had been with us earlier, but she’d gone to see to Ardeste, who had been complaining of labor pains. Hadn’t he gone with his mother? I remembered seeing him with his ball on the terrace. He’d taken to following Orestes around, which amused Orestes as much as it did Astynome.
None of us had noticed when Chryses’ ball rolled away from him and into the shaft, bouncing down the steps. No one saw little Chryses go looking for his ball and venture into that ominous place.
I grabbed a slave running from the entrance. “What boy?” I demanded. “Who is it?”
“Astynome’s!”
I ran for Orestes and Zethus, who were coming to see what had happened. “It’s Chryses!” I shouted. “In the shaft!”
Orestes plunged down the steep, slippery steps, fighting to keep his footing, with Zethus close behind. Then Orestes made a desperate decision and dived into the unknowable darkness. Zethus leaped after him.
They found the boy beneath the surface and shouted for help, their voices echoing. They struggled to hold the boy’s head above water, unable to tell if he was alive or dead, waiting for someone to bring a rope, something, anything!
Astynome reached the entrance to the shaft, Ardeste following slowly, clutching at her belly as a pain swept over her. We huddled at the top, frantic, urging the slaves to do what we could not—race down into the blackness. After a long, agonizing time, the limp body of little Chryses was carried up. Astynome screamed when she saw him. “He’s dead! He’s dead!” she wailed.
But the boy expelled water, opened his eyes, and looked around, frightened by the crowd surrounding him and his mother’s screams, and he began to cry.
Next the men brought up Orestes and laid him down. I crouched over him as he hovered in that place between life and death. I lay down on top of him, my body over his body, my mouth against his mouth, and breathed for him, stopping now and then to speak his name. I don’t know how long I did this. Even when I had lost hope I’d continued, until at last his eyelids fluttered and he coughed and gasped, and I wept with relief and gratitude.
It was much later when they brought up Zethus. Ardeste was on her knees, wailing, when they placed his inert body on the ground. She must have known at once that he was dead when she clumsily embraced his body, whispering into his deaf ears.
Orestes, sobbing, told us what had happened. “Zethus struck his head when he dived into the black pool. He was badly hurt, but still he struggled to keep the boy from going under. The men took Chryses, and I tried to keep Zethus up, but I couldn’t support him, couldn’t keep his head up—he was unconscious. He slipped away from me, beneath the surface of the dark water.” Orestes shook his head, gasping. “I dove down, over and over, but I couldn’t reach him. And then I went under too, and I remember thinking, This is what it’s like to drown; this is what dying is like. They must have brought me up next, I don’t remember, but they couldn’t find Zethus. It was so dark! And then it was too late.”
Orestes wept, and I did too. Zethus had once told me he would gladly give his life for mine, and I believed that was, in fact, what he had done.
Ardeste leaned heavily on me as I helped her back to her room, and I stayed with her through her labor and the delivery a short time later of a fine baby boy. She gave him his father’s name.
Those who had been absent all day returned to find the palace in turmoil, a new baby born, and his father’s body being prepared for a funeral. Little Chryses was robust as always, unaffected by his plunge into the black waters.
That evening Orestes and I sat together, side by side, silent, fingers interlaced. I noticed again that one of his fingers was missing—the one he’d bitten off to atone for his mother’s murder. Zethus’s death affected me like a missing finger. Our emotions overwhelmed us both. I knew that Orestes was in some way different, though I could not quite see just how. Into our silence came Pylades and Electra. Pylades had brought an object wrapped in a cloth that I remembered weaving long ago. He handed the object to Orestes, saying, “You once gave this to me for safekeeping, but the time has come to return it to you.”
Orestes took the object with a puzzled expression and unwrapped it carefully. I drew a sharp breath. It was the other half of the golden wedding goblet.
I recognized it immediately, of course, but more important, so did Orestes. Holding the goblet, he gazed at me tenderly. “Hermione,” he said. “You are my own Hermione, and I am your own Orestes.”
33
WE MOURNED THE DEATH of our dear Zethus, we celebrated the birth of his son, and we planned two weddings—mine to Orestes, and Electra’s to Pylades. It was also to have been Ardeste’s wedding to Zethus, and that it was not continued to be a sorrow to us all. Ardeste bravely insisted that we must not postpone it on her account and that she would rejoice for our good fortune while she grieved for her own misfortune.
King Menestheus and Queen Clymene sent out messengers to every part of Greece, inviting them to the festivities to be held at the time of the harvest.
The preparations began. Electra and I wove wedding veils, and the king’s daughters and daughters-in-law stitched and embroidered gowns of glistening linen. Sheep and cattle were fattened. Grapes were pressed, and the new wine collected in jars. Fruit was gathered and preserved in honey.
Guests arrived from every part of Greece. Menestheus kept us informed of whom he expected. “I wanted to invite Odysseus,” he said, “but he’s nowhere to be found. The oracle told him that he would not return to his home for ten years after the end of the war, and from what I hear, he has not yet reached Ithaca.”
Chrysothemis had declined the king’s invitation to the wedding. Orestes was relieved when he learned that his other sister would not make the journey from Mycenae. “The Furies were terrible, but I think my sister Chrysothemis was nearly as bad. She despises me. She was always closest to my mother.” Electra was not only relieved but pleased. And when Asius heard, he said, “Chrysothemis would surely punish me severely for helping you both escape.”
Iphigenia, though delighted that Orestes and I would marry, announced that she would soon leave Athens. “I’m returning to Brauron, to the shrine to Artemis,” she explained. “I will spend the rest of my days there as her virginal priestess. I promised I’d dedicate my life to Artemis if she spared me for a second time. I owe her that much. I’ve persuaded our magnificent charioteer, Asius, to accompany me and to stay in Brauron and attend me, if our good king Menestheus will agree.”
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