Electra (19 page)

I heard a gasp behind me and a flurry as Eumides and Menon caught the bard under the arms and bore him along, despite his telling them that he could walk on his own; and cursing them in a croaking whisper by a remarkable number of Gods including the blue testicles of Hades, a religious concept new to me.

We came into a large courtyard lit with torches. It was set about with benches of white marble and planted with three ancient apple trees. On two sides were houses and in the middle was the pillared entrance to a temple, gleaming in the flickering light. Inside I could glimpse a golden and ivory statue. 'That must be Asclepius, a mortal beloved of Apollo,' I said to Eumides, who was bearing up under the bard's vituperations and his weight.

'Oh? What made him a God, then?' asked the sailor.

'Apollo murdered him,' gasped Arion. 'You know how Apollo treats his lovers, Lady.'

This was the first time he had spoken of my own past, and I wondered how much he knew about me. He was a wise man and very acute. He was also very ill and needed a bed and some more honey and lungleaf linctus.

At that moment, a tall man issued forth from the right side of the courtyard. He was thin, with long white hair and a flowing beard, and he moved so fast that his scarlet healer's gown billowed behind him.

'Bring him in,' he ordered briskly, 'Come in, please, most welcome travellers. Arion, you old scoundrel, you have been drinking again. Chryse, my son, my dear son, come in. The night strikes a chill; it is still early spring.'

He ushered us inside a fine house. The walls and the floor were of white marble, unpainted, though we had no time to inspect it as we were swept through the hall into the master's own apartments.

It was a large room, floored with plaited rush mats. There was a fire burning on the raised hearth in the middle, where a chimney pierced the wooden roof. Only a few lamps were alight. I smelled wine and old wood, a soothing combination. Eumides and Menon deposited the bard on a low couch and I rummaged in the saddle bags, brought by a boy, for the linctus.

I found it and sat down with my sailor on the padded floor, next to the old man. I gave him the bottle and bade him drink, and he must have been feeling very unwell, for he drank without complaint. Presently the coughing eased and he began to breathe more freely. Under my fingers his pulse fluttered, and when I listened at his chest I heard a scratching, like the noise of an insect trapped in glass.

Arion lifted one hand and stroked my hair, then the side of my face. His hands were hard but his touch was deft and affectionate.

'Tell me, Princess,' he murmured. 'Is it bad?'

'Not too bad,' I replied. He smiled his crooked grin and I felt my own mouth curve in response.

'I have come home,' he said, releasing me. I kissed his cheek before returning to the hearth. Eumides, uncomfortable, pointed towards Glaucus and our Chryse, standing in the middle of the floor.

'Sweet son,' said Glaucus, holding Chryse close. 'Son of my heart, my dear Chryse, I have been waiting for you, worrying for you, for a weary while. Agamemnon returned months ago - where have you been?'

'I returned with that king,' said Chryse, leaning his forehead on the old man's shoulder. 'I saw him die.'

'You saw him die? How then are you alive?'

'I was not worth killing.' Chryse closed his eyes and was embraced by strong arms. Glaucus looked down at him, intensely concerned, then patted his cheek.

'We will speak more of this,' said Master Glaucus. 'Now, introduce me to your companions. Arion I know too well, and Menon his faithful apprentice, but who is the lady?'

Chryse said unsmilingly, looking at us with empty eyes, 'This is the Princess the Lady Cassandra, daughter of Priam, Priestess of Apollo, and this is Eumides the sailor of Troy, my friends and rescuers. I would not be here, Master, if it were not for their care.' Chryse sounded unutterably tired. We stood and bowed to the master, and he scanned us, briefly but closely. I felt that he could look straight through me, bones and all. He seemed satisfied, however, after a very long moment, and clapped his hands, summoning slaves.

Within the first night-watch we had eaten figs, olives, excellent bread, green herbs of the meadows and a soup of chicken, barley and onions; all most delicious. The fire flickered in the hearth and blurred before my eyes. I was suddenly very sleepy. I licked my lips. Had I tasted poppy in that broth?

'Do you think he will leave us?' whispered Eumides.

'What?' I blurred up out of what I was convince was a drugged sleep.

'Chryse. He has come home. What will he want with a couple of Trojan wanderers, bereft of city and lordship? He will stay here, and where will we go?'

'If he leaves us,' I leaned into his arms, resting my increasingly heavy head on his shoulder, 'we will build your boat at Kenchraei, sailor, and go home ourselves. To Troas, daughter of Troy. But I don't think he will,' I said with as much conviction as my stumbling tongue could manage.

It was not a great deal and Eumides was not comforted.

'You heard what the bard said,' I spoke directly into his ear. His curly hair was all that was anchoring my floating spirit. Indeed, I may not have spoken. I might have been dreaming. 'We fill the hollow inside him. Only we can complete him. By the Mother, Eumides, I am so drowsy that I must lie down soon or sleep where I sit, disgracing hospitality.'

The master had also noticed this, or perhaps planned for it. He spoke to me over Chryse's bent head.

'Princess, we have no fit place to lodge you.'

'I will lie with Chryse and Eumides,' I said, relaxing into the Trojan's embrace. I was not so somnolent that I did not catch the lightning glance which passed between Arion and the master. The bard nodded ponderously.

'We will talk in the morning,' said Glaucus soothingly. 'Now you should rest.' Eumides rose and dragged me to my feet. The master came behind with Chryse, who was walking purely by habit.

'This way,' said Glaucus. 'There are sheepskins to lie on, Chryse, and you are home.' He led us into a guest room. Our saddle-bags were already there, and some prescient slave had made a bed for three out of fleeces and fine-woven blankets. I lay down on the left side and Eumides on the right and the master lowered Chryse to lie between us. I think he was asleep before his head hit the bolster, and Eumides was certainly embracing him in a dream.

'Has he told you, Princess?' the old man asked me.

I forced my eyes open. 'No,' I stammered. 'Not all. There is something more, which he will not tell.'

'We will speak again,' said Master Glaucus. 'Sleep well.' In a sweep of scarlet robes he went away, taking the oil lamp with him. The last thing I heard was the door closing.

I dreamed. Little pictures, not alarming in themselves. Not related to me, it seemed. Waves breaking over a smashed trading dock. A woman in the robes of Isis' priestess examining a handful of shells. A child climbing the hill to the shrine at Delphi. A white farmhouse, and the smell of charcoal fires and the sound of someone singing to the clack of a loom. Then I saw something which was close to my heart.

I saw a red-headed man on a white shore, escorting a bent woman veiled in black. It was my mother, Hecabe. I heard waves crash and birds crying, and the curses she flung at him, calling him pirate and murderer.

There was no expression on the mobile face. She might have been trying to provoke him to kill her, but he did not react. He seemed to be waiting.

Roughly-clad fishermen came down to the beach, curious about the ship and the mariners. The red-headed one opened one man's hand and dropped coins into it, making some kind of bargain. The fisherman nodded and spat. Three shell-crowned women came walking through the dunes and took my mother by the hands, leading her away out of my sight, still scolding and weeping from a scoured throat.

'Remember,' said the red-headed captain. 'If anyone asks, she was transformed into Hecate's avatar Scylla, the black bitch with glowing red eyes, and she ran away howling into the hills.'

The fishermen nodded solemnly, his fist closed fast over the coins.

Then I was inside Eumides, my sailor, and he was dreaming of the past. In his little boat,
Farseer
, he was sailing into the Bay of Troy. The city rose, stone on stone, a great block, as the little boat wriggled through the breakwater turbulence and came to the dock. There stood a tall man, golden hair and bushy golden beard. He was calling for news of Africa, and the grey cat Stathi sat composedly on his shoulder, grey eyes and green considering the world with interested good humour.

'Hector!' cried Eumides, leaping ashore. Then the city crumbled. Hector, my brother, fell to bones and then to ash -with Stathi and the dock workers and the women gathering seaweed - and there was a smell of bitter smoke over the fires still burning in the ruins of Troy.

I wept as Eumides wept for the loss and the pain. Our grief was greater than worlds.

Then we were in Chryse's dream, and he was dreaming of a golden woman smiling up at him, as he came into a little house and dropped a shell-shaped stone into her cupped hands.

'You smell of the mountain,' she sniffed delightedly. 'Of thyme and orchis. Come and lie with me,' she invited, lying back. Just as he knelt to lean into her arms the picture shattered and there was pain, a fire lit in back and belly, and the golden woman clutched his shoulders and wept aloud.

We heard Chryse telling stories, singing ballads, to the accompaniment of moaning. A woman's voice in agony, striving not to be heard. Our lips were bitten, our fists thrust into an abdomen whose burden strove to be free. We were Chryseis and Chryse, Eumides and Cassandra, writhing in pain.

Then something snapped, and we lay together in the dark under the ground, screaming with agony and loss, trying to die. The vision encompassed us all. We were walking along a dark path. The cold tunnel led to the Argive rivers, Acheron which leads down to Hades' realm, coming to Styx where an old man held out a calloused rower's palm for money.

Eumides-Cassandra-Chryse-Chryseis paid him and sat down in the boat, looking down at our hands, which were transparent, feeling our humanity leech away into the misty water, hearing the barking of a three-headed dog just ahead and no other sound but the dipping splash of the oars.

We stepped ashore onto paved stones, walking without awareness of our body, until we came to another stream, Lethe, the water of forgetfulness, and knelt to dip up a handful. We were offered release from memory, from unbearable recollection, from living and from the pain that is living. We were offered final dissolution of all that was us.

But as we bent our head to drink, we heard a great cry from one male throat, vibrant and rich. '
Evoe! Evoe! Evoe!
' the triple invocation of Dionysos. Lethe water spilled from our hands and vines grew, cracking through the stony path; the ivy of the Lord of Madness and Wine, strong as a hawser, green as life.

Then we remembered the smell of crushed grapes, and drifted away into other unremembered dreams.

We sailed free, driven before a west wind, the rowers shipping their oars. We were being driven in exactly the wrong direction. A little boat was wrecked beside us, and we took a drenched and shivering survivor aboard.

'Odysseus of Ithaca!' he cried when he recognised me. 'You are long away.'

'I am, from no choice of mine,' I said. 'The anger of Poseidon is implacable. If we ever strike land again, you may go ashore.'

'Lord, you must go home,' said the man, as he clutched a cloak around his shuddering body. 'The dark-haired ones, Dorians from the north, ring your palace and besiege your wife, saying that you are dead, and that she must marry one of them.'

'Penelope will not believe it,' I said.

'No, Lord, she does not, but they need her to become lord of Ithaca, and thus to Zerkynthos and the mainland. She will not be persuaded, but she may be taken by force.'

Poseidon, Earth-Shaker, is it your will that strangers should conquer Achaea? They know no Gods, Blue-Haired. It will be your own fault if you are forgotten.

I woke abruptly the next morning, starting out of sleep. I did not know where I was. I considered my surroundings. I was lying in a soft bed and the sun was coming in through a series of small windows in the eastern wall of a well-made house. The reflected glare from the uncovered whitewash had fallen on my face and woken me. An old woman clucked over a wooden floor, her bare feet making slapping sounds, saying 'It is all right, Mistress. We are here, Lysane is here. See, you are safe in the house of your own cousin Pylades of Phocis, and it is morning. The cook is making you some wheaten bread and you shall have honey.'

She sounded so like my own nurse, Neptha, that tears came to my eyes. She helped me sit up on her old arm and went on, 'And the Lord Pylades and your brother are already up and are out inspecting the vines. Here is a chiton, Lady. Alceste has washed your other clothes and they are out bleaching on the grass.'

'Whence came this one, then?' I asked, sitting up and allowing her to remove my sleeping tunic and dress me in a delicately made, rose-coloured robe.

'My Lord Pylades ordered me to buy some chitons for you, Lady, and I have cloth for more. He was worried for you, child, not knowing how soon you might be fit to weave or spin. He is most concerned for your well-being, Mistress, and that is unusual in a man. Though it might be common among princes. I have never met a prince before. Come along now.'

She led me towards a saddle-backed chair by the window. 'Cook is a Thracian, and you know how touchy they are. It's his own method of making bread, some Thracian secret. Now.' She laid a tray across my knees. On it was a cup of some infusion which smelt of mint, a terracotta plate with hot bread and honey, and a winter-stored lump of dried fruit. 'And here is your friend,' she said, putting my doll, Pallas, into the chair beside me. 'If you look out of the window, Lady, you will be able to see the men returning.'

I tasted the bread, which was excellent, and drank the infusion, while surveying Pylades' land.