Electra (26 page)

And it was nothing. Slaves have no virtue to lose, and she pleased him. Men have desires and will fulfil them. It was nothing to me. Alceste told Lysane that he was a good lover, passionate and strong, but I was not interested in the love of men, skilled or unskilled.

I enjoyed the evenings. I walked down the stairs, attended by Alceste and Lysane, who carried my basket, my distaff and my spindle. Then we sat down in the main room of the house, near the fire as always, and talked with Pylades and Orestes.

My Lord Cousin had been to many places and seen strange things. He talked well and quickly. His face was mobile, reflecting the changing circumstances of the story, and his deft hands moved as he talked, sketching mountains and sails, explaining marvels and monsters, threading the labyrinth below the city of Minos. We listened to him for hours at a time as the fire burned low, and laughed or cried as the story required. Sometimes he spoke of heroes, of Jason and Theseus. But he told no tales of the war against Troy, and I wondered why.

Orestes was well. The God Apollo, he said, spoke to him occasionally, reminding him of his duty of revenge, but the God seemed content to let him grow until he was strong enough. I asked him if there was anything he lacked, and he told me that he had left one person he loved in Mycenae. Her name was Hermione, daughter of Menelaus, fostered with us because she was to marry Orestes when he was old enough.

I remembered her. A small, confident child with hair like ebony and very alert black eyes. She was often to be seen speeding down the steps and across the courtyard, playing some intricate game with my brother, her betrothed. One of them had involved setting up a whole house and kitchen in the corner of the gateway. The guards were so amused by her chattering, that they had let her stay there. I had laughed at the sight of full-armed soldiers, helmets and breastplates gleaming, accepting imaginary honeycakes from her leaf plates and thanking her gravely.

Usually Orestes was with her, giving her orders to mix his wine and bake his bread, which she carried out obediently unless he became too tyrannical, whereupon she would scold him like a fishwife, using words which she must have learned in her burrowings through the market. Her nurse was always issuing forth in a flurry of veils to fetch her from some trader's booth, where she would be found sitting on a table being fed delicacies and talking all the time in her high, clear voice to a fascinated audience.

Ten-year-old Hermione, a pretty child. I had envied her immense confidence. Everyone loved her, no one had betrayed her and she fitted into her world as though it had been woven especially for her. I wondered if she would miss Orestes, and what had happened to her in mother's city.

Orestes did not speak of her again, but he found no women in Delphi who attracted him. On his weekly visits to the market, Pylades looked for pretty ones to point out to my brother, but he did not even glance at them. Hermione, perhaps, had his heart; or maybe it was revenge. Or maybe it was Pylades. Orestes clung to our cousin, living close to him. When they had been hunting they sometimes slept in the same bed, wet and exhausted. They ate together and rode together and grew in close affection, so that I sometimes wondered… But Pylades had Alceste.

Sometimes there was music, when a wandering singer asked for lodging. One told us that Chrysothemis, my only remaining sister, had been married to a prince of the Paeans and had been sent weeping to her husband, ten weeks' journey away.

Once we had dancers, who had been benighted in a storm on the Delphi road.

I lodged twelve people in that little house, with bedding for all made by my own household, and fed them in the morning. To thank my Lord Pylades for his care, they had danced for us before the fire, young men and maidens, stepping in a circle which grew faster and faster, until veils flew and tunics slipped and their dark hair, bright eyes and white teeth gleamed and blurred in the red light.

Bards came with tales, too. Once Tydeus of the Lyre, a famous Orphean, came and performed the
Fall of the House of Atreus
for us. I saw my brother, now as tall as Pylades, lean forward, listening intently.

Where is the revenger,

Orestes the child,

Far wandering and hidden?

Let him know this:

The wicked Queen rules in Mycenae,

Glorying in murder.

We had lived in peace for four years. The coming of Tydeus of the Lyre was the end of it. There had been so many endings.

'I am going to Mycenae,' said Orestes in the stableyard as we set out for our morning ride.

'No,' I said instantly.

'Sister, I am strong now.' He was, too. He was tall and slim, but now his wrists were corded, his eye steady. Eumides' ring fitted snugly on his finger. I had seen him sword-fighting with Pylades every day, and from being too little to hold up the foil for more than ten minutes, he could now fence with a heavy blade for hours, so that Pylades panted and begged for mercy. His eyes, however, were still the eyes of my little Orestes, who had lain in my arms when he was small and wept for my pain.

'The deed is mine,' I said coldly.

He shook his head. 'It is as I said once, long ago, sister Electra. I cannot care for you if you take this dreadful sin upon you. You suffer still, Lady. You still send Lysane to Delphi to the healer for lethos and valerian. But you can care for me, you and my Lord Pylades. And she must die. My mother and Aegisthus must die. For what they did to our father - and to you and me.'

'Wait until we come to the mountain,' I said. 'We must talk.'

We rode up the slope and stopped on the ridge. There was nothing between us and the Gulf of Corinth and the air tasted of salt and last night's rain. I spoke because I had to take the burden on myself. Otherwise no torture would have dragged the tale from my lips - not burning irons, not flogging.

'He came for me when I was eleven,' I said. I could not look at Orestes or Pylades. 'He wept and said that he loved me. He hurt me, though he said he would not. When my mother reproved him and insulted him, he came for me.'

'He came to me also, when I was ten,' Orestes said.

Pylades came forward and helped me down from Banthos, for I was faint.

'You also, little brother?' I gasped.

'I, also.'

'Why didn't you tell me?' I cried. His handsome face was as white as linen and his hands were shaking.

'What could you have done, Electra? I knew what he was doing to you. I saw the way you trembled, heard you cry for mercy in your dreams. If you could not prevent him, sister, how could I?'

'Aie! Aie!' I wailed to the cold wind and the seagulls. 'Ah, my grief! Oh, my Orestes, oh, my son, my son!'

They carried me into the house and tucked me into the chimney corner, wrapped in woollen blankets. They gave me wine and mistletoe. When I had drunk, Orestes sat down on the floor and took my frozen feet in his warm hands.

'Tell me, Electra,' he urged. 'We cannot leave this unsaid.'

'He came when our father Agamemnon was away raiding the coasts of Phrygia at the beginning of the war. Father came home every now and again, when the weather prevented sailing. But the moment he left she let him into her bed. Aegisthus, the destroyer, revenge-child, bred for the destruction of Atreus' House. I saw him come into the city. If I had only snatched a spear from the guard and impaled him, I would have earned immortality.'

Orestes and Pylades were watching me, one horrified, one pale with memory.

'Yes, he came into the city and the Queen accepted him as her lover. What then?'

'She exhausted him with her lust and treated him like a slave. I was sorry for him, though I never said anything. He gave me presents, gifts suitable for a woman, not a girl. Chiton pins, milk-stones. Then one night I heard the latch click, and he was with me. I was eleven. I had never been so close to a man. He said he loved me, needed me, he wept on my breast. Then he hurt me, so there was blood. And he told me that no one would ever believe me if I complained. He said that the Queen would banish me, sell me to a farmer as a dishonoured woman.

'Then he came - not every night - but often. He wept still, dropping tears onto my face. I never grew used to him, as the slaves say they grow used to violation. My body clenched against him and it hurt - it always hurt. I never spoke. He said that this was how love between men and women was. Pain and compulsion.

'Then I began to swell. Learned physicians spoke of dropsy and gave me strong potions, but Neptha knew what it was. I was pregnant and Aegisthus was the father. She gave me other medicines, metallic draughts that made me retch until I swooned, but they did not work.

'The Queen came when I was six months in fruit and beat me cruelly, demanding the name of my lover. She flogged me with a vine until I thought I might die, so I told her. My shame could not now be hidden. I was dishonoured, a whore, and she could cast me out of the city. She knew. She knew.

'And as he had said, she did not believe me. She beat me more for lying. Then she said it was Lapharnes, the slave who sang me love songs, who looked at me from the city and, bleeding and desperate, I said yes.

'They executed him that night. To cover my shame, my mother kept me imprisoned in complete seclusion for the rest of the time, giving out that she was herself pregnant. My father visited often enough so that this was credible. She told me that she would save my reputation, that many women took lovers, that I was like her!

'I bore you, my brother and son, with only Neptha and Clytemnestra to tend me, and I was in agony for almost a day and a night. But I did not care, for I hoped that I would die.'

Orestes bent until his forehead was on my bare feet. No tears fell from his eyes. He quivered with tension and pain, and I could not see his face.

'Then she stole you when you were born. She ordered me stripped, washed and put aside, then donned my bloody tunic and lay down in my bed, smearing her loins with birth blood, taking you in her arms, laying you to her dry breast. She summoned the maidens to attend her, to find a wet nurse for Agamemnon's son, though my breasts were bursting with milk which I could not give you. So short a time I had you, Orestes. Just long enough to hold you in my arms and watch your eyes open on the world.'

'But she cared for me,' he said. 'When I was ill, she was always there.'

'She stole you from me,' I said bitterly. 'She stole from me the nursing of you, Orestes, the care and the loving. I was allowed to play with you, call you brother, but never could I call you son, never hear you say "Mother". She stole you. She has stolen everything from me, everything. I died when Aegisthus came into my bed. And she knew. I told her.'

'After I was born… he came again?' asked Orestes.

'Sometimes, when she had humiliated him before the court. But he was careful not to lie with me as man lies with woman, in case I should conceive. When… when did he-'

'I was ten,' said Orestes. 'He told me the same things, Mother.'

On a deep, ingusting breath , he began to cry freely, like a child, and I wept with him. I had never cried openly over my wrongs before, never told a word of my pain, though I knew that the Trojan woman and the healer Diomenes had suspected some of it. Pylades did not speak, but left us in our embrace in the warm corner of his house, and considerately went away.

That night my son Orestes lay in my arms, his head on my shoulder, and we slept without dreams.

The next morning we set out for Mycenae.

The journey was easier this time. We knew the way and the countryside was at peace. Orestes rode his own favourite, Hunter. I rode Banthos, my old friend. We were well supplied, well mounted, and it was spring, the season for setting forth.

As we rode out onto the Delphi road, down from the Shining Cliffs toward the port of Kirrha, we saw a caravan climbing the hill and stopped to let it pass.

There were ten soldiers in familiar battledress. They were escorting a curtained litter slung between two horses. In such confinement do Argive women of high station travel. I noticed that the curtains were of fine embroidered wool and the poles of silver. They were conducting a royal woman. Two slave women rode on either side. There were banners which flapped to reveal the ram's head, Perseus' seal. They were from Mycenae.

We stayed, but Pylades went forward in case my mother was escaping to the God. In that case we would have to try to kill her here, on this road, and we would die in the attempt.

'Hail, men of Mycenae,' he said easily, removing his hood so that they could see his face. 'Pylades of Phocis greets you, long away from the Golden Walls. Where are you going, and with whom?'

'Greetings, Lord Pylades,' said the captain, raising one hand to his shoulder in salute. 'We are taking Hermione, daughter of Menelaus, to her wedding with Neoptelemus, son of Achilles.'

The curtains were pulled back and a veiled head was thrust out.

'Where are we?' asked a voice, clear and humorous.

Orestes jumped down and ran in amongst the slaves, calling, 'Hermione!'

'By all the Gods!' she swore, and took his hand.

'Do you go by your own will?' he asked, as the cavalcade started again and he was shoved aside.

'Of course not, but I will manage,' she said crossly. 'You know I love you, Orestes. All right, all right, we shall go directly, Captain,' she said to the guard. 'Try and live, Orestes,' she said, and was carried away, the slave women clucking and pulling the curtain closed.

Orestes watched them until they were out of sight. Then he opened his fist to show an embroidered handkerchief. Hermione had not forgotten him, and Hermione usually got what she wanted.

Not, however, in this case. I hoped that Neoptelemus had inherited some of Achilles' strength, for he was going to need all of it to subdue Hermione and teach her her duty.

Since I had acknowledged Orestes as my son and he had recognised me as his mother, I had not dreamt of Aegisthus. I could even say his name without wanting to scream. I slept well and ate well and I was strong. Even on a rough passage of the Gulf of Corinth, I was not sick.