Electra (29 page)

I hoped so too.

'Is Apollo - has Phoebus spoken to you, Orestes?' I asked cautiously.

'He says I will be cleansed if I come to his temple,' my son replied.

I wondered if he would come alive to that temple.

Two nights later we were riding the narrow road between two steep mountains when we saw a shrine and rode up to investigate. It was a small, poor building, with a hearthstone and a wooden image so worn as to be almost unrecognisable. By the hearth, with its carefully tended fire, we assumed it to be a temple of Hera and Hestia, Goddesses of the home and of marriage.

Orestes reeled in a vine of flowers from the hedge and wound it into two garlands. He placed one on my head and one on Pylades'. We came into the shrine and poured a little milk and the last of our wine on the hearth.

Orestes took my hand and gave it into Pylades', saying 'I, Orestes, son and brother, give Electra, mother and sister, to Pylades our cousin for his wife. I trust in his honour and courage, to guard her and keep her until he dies.'

'I, Pylades of Phocis, accept the Lady Electra, my cousin, as my wife, and I will guard her and keep her until I die.'

We omitted the customary prayers for fertility. I knelt at the altar and threw a handful of dried gorse on the fire. It flared up and was ash in an instant, and the sacred flame burned hot beneath it. The country people say that this is a good omen.

No one else witnessed this wedding, so simple and strange. But Pylades did not release my hand until we had made the prayers to Hymen and to the Mother.

Then we rode on.

We tended Orestes together, hiding each night in some forest or under the thick woody heath on the mountainsides. One night a bear blundered into our camp. It had been gathering berries and was juice-stained and replete, but bears are very dangerous. One blow of their great taloned paws can unseam a man from throat to navel. Orestes grabbed Racer and held her muzzle, lest she should attack it and provoke death in return.

But the bear just looked at us, blinked at our fire, dropped to all fours and padded unhurriedly away, back into the thickets of sloe and whin-fruit.

We were so close to being beasts that the beasts themselves accepted us.

Racer hunted every morning, slipping out before dawn to catch rabbits, and once a hare. First she caught one and ate it herself, then she brought another for her puppy, Orestes. She would lay it down at his feet and nudge him with her nose, demanding that he eat it while it was nice and fresh. She could never understand why he insisted on skinning and cooking it. We had a bundle of rabbit skins by the time we came to the cleft in the mountains and down towards Corinth.

By then we were ragged and filthy and Orestes was desperate. He no longer talked about them, but the Erinyes came every night and with increasing violence. The baying of the bitch could not keep them away. I was as guilty as he - I had struck the first blow and drawn my mother's blood - but they did not touch me. Not a hiss sounded or a fang gleamed in my sleep and, for the first time since I was a child, I had no dreams.

'You are stronger, wife, than I would have expected,' said Pylades.

'Stronger, husband?'

He smiled at me. 'You are gently bred, Lady, and I know that you had never walked more than five paces in your life before the strangers brought you from Mycenae with the Princess Cassandra. Now you can walk and ride all day. Your skin is golden, not chalky like the pale maidens of Mycenae. Your hands are deft and tanned by the wind and the sun. Your courage inspires me.'

'I have no house of yours to keep, my Lord,' I said, surprised at this unmerited praise.

'You find wood every day, you carry water, you tend us and the beasts. Orestes is alive because of your care. No woman keeping her man's house could do more.'

I had not noticed. Of course I made the fire and carried the water, cooked the food and groomed the horses. That was my task, the common female work.

'You guard us, comfort us, guide us through the mountains,' I said in return. 'We would be dead and our bones would have bleached in some wilderness, if it had not been for your care, my… My Lord.'

To this he made no reply, but he leaned forward and kissed me, very lightly and fleetingly, on the cheek. I did not draw away, and I almost wished that the caress had lasted longer.

I was becoming used to intimacy. I had slept with women all my life, and never with men. They were rougher, stronger, more animal than women, when they slept. Their breathing was deeper. Orestes screamed and cried for mercy under the invisible blows, and Pylades talked.

I woke once, in deep darkness, to hear him carrying on a sensible conversation with someone I could not see. When I crawled to the fire and blew on the ember, I saw in the little red glow that he was still possessed by Morpheus.

'She is heartless and cold,' he argued. Then he replied, 'She is injured. You must wait. You have been patient for four years. Be patient another year.'

Then he answered himself, 'I burn, I burn!' and woke to find me looking at him across the point of light. I did not tell him what he had said, and he did not remember in the morning.

Corinth was awake when we came in. Pylades was carrying Orestes across his horse, and Banthos and I followed, leading Hunter. The market drew away from us, perceiving that we were under some curse or blight. We were ragged and filthy yet rode good horses and had good saddles and once-fine clothes. Therefore we were either successful bandits seeking purification for robbery and murder or penitents under a vow. In either case it would have been very unlucky to meddle with us, and we rode into the courtyard of the Temple of Pythian Apollo in good time. The boy who had led us there ran off without stopping for a reward.

I got down and took Orestes from Pylades. No woman can enter Apollo's temple who is not a virgin, but it took two of us to carry him and I assumed that Apollo knew all about me.

The attendants led the horses and Racer away and we went up the marble steps, between the white pillars, into the antechamber of the shrine. There we laid our son and brother down and a priest knelt beside him.

I looked at Orestes in the daylight and my heart quailed, so that Pylades hurried to my side in case I should faint. Orestes had never been stout, and now he was bone-thin. The brown eyes had sunk in their sockets. His fingernails were broken from scrabbling against stones, trying to escape. His lips were bitten. Dried blood crusted his teeth. He was clay-pale where he was not black with bruises. Apart from the rise and fall of his chest, he looked like a ten-day corpse.

'Erinyes,' screamed the Pythia from inside the shrine. 'Pursued until almost dead, Furies! Away, hags! Here I will cleanse him!'

The priest brought a bowl of cold water, and anointed Orestes' feet and his hands. As soon as the water touched him, it reddened as if with blood.

'Apollo cleanses you of your crime,' intoned the priest, an old man with white hair under his veil. 'Henceforward you shall be white of heart, clear of all offence, absolved.'

He tipped the dish and water fell on Orestes' face, so that he blinked and opened his bloodshot eyes.

Oh my beautiful, beautiful son, my heart cried. Oh, Orestes, my love.

'Lift his head,' instructed the priest. Pylades and I knelt on either side and raised Orestes so that he could see into the shrine.

The curtain flicked aside as in a gust of wind. Both Pylades and I shut our eyes, and a white fire flashed on our closed lids. Orestes gave a little sigh, as of a thirsty child who has been given milk, and his body grew heavier with sleep.

Two young priests came and carried him away.

'Three days, Lord,' said the old man, 'for purification. Come back on the third day.'

'Can't I speak to him?' I asked, and he totally ignored me, for Apollo's priests do not speak to women, except for the Pythia.

'We will come back then,' said Pylades.

We left the temple and retrieved the horses and Racer, who was worried. I stroked her ears as Orestes did and told her, 'Three days and we shall have him again.' She accepted this, although she was not happy.

The waterfront taverns were dirty and lousy. I led Pylades through the market again to the house of Taphis the Corinthian, where I could claim some friendship, perhaps. The Lady Gythia herself came to the door.

'It is market day, all the slaves are busy. Lady Electra!' she said, seeming pleased.

'Lady Gythia, my cousin, Pylades of Phocis.'

'Come in,' she invited, taking Banthos' rein.

She settled Pylades on a marble bench while her own maidens prepared a bath for him. I led the horses to the stable and began to groom and feed them, while she watched me with some amusement.

'You are Electra, Lady, are you not? Laodice, daughter of Agamemnon?'

'I am. I have left my brother Orestes in the temple of Apollo for ritual cleansing. We are under a curse - Apollo has cursed us,' I answered truthfully, wondering if she was going to forbid us her household, as she had every right to do.

'Why did Apollo curse you?' she asked, heaving the saddle off Hunter's back and laying it over a beam. The horses liked her. She had authority.

'Because we have killed Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. The Furies pursued my brother. We are in blood-debt to them for matricide. Shall we leave?'

She did not even blink, so I assumed that she had known the tale before she spoke. Word spreads fast in the land of Pelops. 'If Taphis has not a good account with Apollo by now, after all the medicines he has sent to Epidavros, then the Gods know no justice,' she said, laughing. 'You will not leave, Lady! You are my guests. Are you married?'

'Indeed, to Pylades, Prince of Phocis.'

'You have changed, Lady, and if you will forgive me saying so, I thought a sworn virgin and destined only to spin for the rest of your life. He looks like a fine man. I hope you will bear many sons,' she said formally. 'Now, having made the horses comfortable, we will see what we can do for the humans. You will wish to attend your husband at his bath. It should be ready by now.'

I had not thought of that. It was the wife's duty to wash and anoint her husband. Somehow I could not explain my equivocal position to the Lady Gythia, so brisk and self-assured. I followed her to the room she had allotted us - the best in her house, which was kind - and she pointed out a pithos full of hot water and a dipper.

'Pour the waste water into the drain,' she said, 'There is meal and lychnis in those little bags to remove the grime. It has been a long journey, Lady?'

'Long and horrible,' I agreed. Coming back into a civilised place, where there were stone-built houses and well-cooked food, wine, clean clothes and hot water had made me realise how dirty I was, how unkempt. She patted my cheek and smiled at me, a liberty she would not have taken once with Princess Electra. I liked her touch.

Pylades was escorted in and a slave woman removed his outer robes and then his tunic, taking them away to wash.

It was the second time I had seen him naked. He was the only unrelated naked man I had ever seen. Dead Aegisthus had always arrived and left in the dark.

Pylades stood easily, bearing my scrutiny. He was slim, with long thighs, a flat belly, big hands and feet. His hair was torn and matted with mud and leaves. I did not know what to say to him. He seemed beautiful to me, well made, like a kouros, the statue of the youth seen in Apollo's temples.

'Will you tend me, wife?' he asked.

'Lord,' I assented.

I helped him into the bath and began to wash him, soaking his hair and combing out the burrs and leaves. Water ran in different patterns over a male body, I noticed, straight down the chest and over the shoulders. I liked the way his body felt, padded and muscular, bony and strong. When I had scoured off the mud and filth of travel, I helped him up and sat him on a bath-sheet while I emptied the bath and refilled it.

I was taking up a towel and an oil flask, to complete my duty, when he removed them from my hands and put them on a bench. He smiled at me, a sweet smile. Then he unpinned my chiton.

It fell to my feet. I stood still. I did not know if it was fear that made me catch my breath. The tunic came off over my head, snaring in my tangled hair. I was naked. He did not stare at me or try to caress me.

He took my hand and led me to the bath.

Then he washed me, patiently teasing out the tangles in my long hair, sitting behind me on the floor. The scented water lapped my chin - the bath was big enough for a tall man, so I could float in it - and his touch was deft and soothing.

I closed my eyes, hearing him chanting a litany, 'Beautiful Electra, golden-eyed lady, my lovely one, my golden one, my dear, my love.'

Finally he could draw the comb right through the wet strands. My hair floated in the bath, clean for the first time in a month.

The slippery lychnis linen pad slid across my shoulders, under my arms, to the ends of my fingers, then across my breasts, very gently and carefully. Something seemed to uncoil inside me, like a leather hinge that had been under tension slackening in the rain. The water was warm, and the soapy cloth was teasing, never staying where it felt good. My feet were lifted, one at a time, and cleansed and laid down, then the cloth slicked up to scrub my knees, moved along my thighs, touched for an instant where something made me gasp, then slipped again to rest on my hip, along the inside of my arms, to my hands again.

There was an itch that grew, demanding attention. The cloth, no, it was fingers now, the palm of a hand, sliding to a nipple and pinching lightly, then slipping down over my belly to linger not quite long enough before it moved away again, to touch the nipple in passing and cup my cheek.

The itch was burning. The fingers returned to find the place unerringly, and a mouth closed on my nipple, sucking, and I grabbed wet hair to bring it closer, closer.

Then a tremor ran through me, an earthquake shock, and I opened my eyes as they filled with tears. Lovely, lovely! I had never felt anything so strong, so sweet.

The mouth moved away, the fingers withdrew. Pylades said, 'Hymen favours you, Lady.'