Electra (30 page)

I reached out my arms, but he was already standing, clothed in a clean tunic. He took my hands and stood me up, then gave me a towel. I dried myself and put on a chiton, as I did not mean to go out. It was not yet noon. I felt oddly disappointed and physically disconcerted, as though I had been climbing stairs and had missed a step.

'What gift did you give me, husband?' I asked, still feeling the earth-shocks along my thighs.

'The blessing of Hymen, Lady. I learned the skill from a Trojan woman. She called it the Goddess's gift. Did it please you?'

'I never felt anything like it,' I said with perfect truth.

'I will not lie with you unless you consent,' he reminded me. 'I said that you pleased me, and you do.'

'How can I please you in return?' I asked, sitting down on the bed. I was unsteady on my feet, probably from the hot water.

'I will show you,' he said, sitting down beside me. 'But I would not affront your virtue, Electra. I have waited a long time, I can wait longer.'

'Show me,' I insisted.

He removed the tunic, lying down beside me, and I touched him. The phallus was warm and dry, strong and plant-like. I stroked the stem, as he instructed me, as though I was plaiting hemp. I had never voluntarily touched Aegisthus, though he had ordered me to do various acts which disgusted me, and I had obeyed.

Here I could stop, if I wanted. I could turn my face away, let my hands fall, and Pylades would say no word. No other Argive Lord, I am convinced, could have coaxed me from my terror.

I pulled off the chiton and lay beside him, and he ran both hands down my sides, caressing my breasts, my hips, curving inward to the Goddess's place, which was wet. The plant shuddered and seeded on my belly and I smelt wormwood.

The smell was different. Sour had Aegisthus' semen been, rank and offensive. My husband sighed deeply and gathered me into his arms, my head on his breast, and I fell asleep to the sound of his heart beating.

Timing took us through the Clashing Rocks, timing and sacrifice. Some died. Most lived.

When we came to Thrinacie, the Sun-God's Isle, while I slept, the crew massacred several of the Sun-God's beasts, having solemnly promised that they would not touch them.

I don't know why I thought that wouldn't happen. No mariner was as cursed as I, with a crew so bone-headed, greedy and idle, never missing a chance to try to get us killed, or even more cursed than I already am. My life is blighted, or fate cruel. I should never have made that League of Suitors, but I was trying to prevent a war.

Some God must have made me sleep, some God who wanted me to offend Apollo as well. He was, of course, duly offended.

We were at sea, replete with the Sun-God's beef, when lightning struck the steersman and clove him in two. The ship broke her back under a mountain of water and spewed me to the surface. Nine days I have been drifting in the ruin of the ship. All the others are dead.

What voracious sea-beast is going to dine on Odysseus, son of Laertes? I give him indigestion. May he break a tooth on the mail coat which is dragging me down.

Iolkos was busy, but Eumides had old friends there. 'This is where Jason set out,' he said cheerfully as we came into the harbour among a cloud of shrieking gulls. 'May we have a successful voyage!'

'He sailed from here, we ride,' said Chryse indulgently.

'He was lucky.' He jumped ashore and I threw him the hawser.
Waverider's
crew shipped oars and lashed the gear fast, then climbed to the jetty and began stretching and groaning. We had rowed most of the way from Skiathos in an adverse wind and they were pleased to be on dry land, where no one would expect them to row. They were natives of Iolkos, volunteers who needed to get home. They had certainly earned their passage.

'Are you coming with me to Laodamos' house?' asked Eumides. 'I need to arrange with him to bring the boat into the Ionian Sea when the season comes, in two months. That should give us time to cross the width of Epirus and do what we have to do there, whatever that is.'

No one is as blithe about the future as Eumides - it is one of his most irritating qualities. I had taxed him with it once, and he had said, 'I was a slave and I was freed. After that, I will never despair again.'

I needed a home, and so did Chryse. We had not found any place where both of us could happily live. Not amongst his people or amongst mine, and not in any of the strange countries which we had seen. Egypt was priest-ridden and stratified, Libya rich in fruit and gold and poor in manners. The islands were narrow-minded and dirty, with many hands reaching for coins. The Lemnian women did not like male settlers, and the women of Lesbos rejected them outright, sacrificing shipwrecked sailors to the Lady of Battles, Hecate. The island of Andros would tolerate no female creature, not even a female goat or a cow, much less a human. Cos and Cnidus, the physician's schools, both refused to allow that women had minds, much less medical skill.

'The world,' I said, exasperated, 'is divided into male and female and there is a mountain wall between!'

'True, Lady,' sighed Chryse. 'Where will we find rest?'

'You can find rest if you leave me and go back to Epidavros. You can take Eumides with you,' I snapped.

A year ago he would have replied, 'I will not leave you, Lady.' Now he said wearily, 'Are you sending us away?'

I thought about it. 'We will make this journey,' I said, taking his hand. 'If we cannot find a place which will take us, then I will send myself away.'

And I thought how desolate I would be without them. I pondered the long nights in which we had talked and played board games and drunk wine and made love. I wondered where else in the world I would find such delicacy, such tenderness, such passion. I wondered who in all of the earth would be able to make me laugh as they did, the grave physician and the exuberant sailor. Where again, I wondered sadly as we paced the narrow streets of Iolkos, would I watch men making love, so ferocious, mouth locked to mouth, bone clashing against bone. And when my next lover turned to me, oh, then, where would be the extra hands, the extra mouth, the touch that brought me ecstasy? And where would I find the comrade as learned and reliable, as compassionate and skilled as Chryse, my golden Diomenes, or as clever and fearless a sailor as Eumides of the curly hair? I could not lose trios. I would think about it after we had found Eleni.

There must be somewhere for us to live.

When we had concluded our business with cross-eyed Laodamos, we lay down together in his house and made love with passion and desperation, as though we knew that we would part. I looked up into Eumides' eyes, felt Chryse's teeth on my nipple, and dragged someone between my thighs, the papyrus-root piercing me to the heart. As the climax struck me, hard enough to hurt, I bit into Eumides' neck as though it was a fruit.

Then we collapsed in an exhausted heap and wept ourselves to sleep.

The next day we purchased horses - only a moderate bargain, according to Eumides, which meant that it was good but not indecent. I was pleased, because I had never liked starting a journey pursued by an outraged merchant who has discovered that his trading silver is actually trading tin. Iolkos' market faded behind us. Ahead was a flattish plain sown with early barley, greening into spring.

'We must follow the road to Kerassia, then north again to Kalamaki,' said Chryse. 'That road goes to Platikambos, where we turn inland for Larissa, thence to Trikka, the birthplace of Asclepius. After that I am not sure and we'll have to get a guide from village to village.'

'That's enough to go on with,' grumbled Eumides. We were being tender of each other, careful. I did not like it. It felt like an inevitable parting.

'We shall not part,' I said firmly. 'Not if we have to gather some disaffected Argives and go and establish a new colony.'

'An interesting thought,' said Eumides, brightening.

It was interesting, though scarcely feasible. But it cheered us, and rose into the flowers which had grown on the path while winter had laid it fallow.

What happened when we lay two nights later in Kalamaki was unusual.

The Gods returned to me.

I was alone in our house. Eumides and Chryse had joined a drinking game with the old men and I was preparing for sleep, lying down in the middle of the cloaks as always. When I felt like solitude, I signalled this by taking my mantle to a corner. The others did the same. But I was expecting to lie with one body on either side of me as usual and had just closed my eyes when I heard a footstep.

I said sleepily, 'Chryse?' before I realised that I had not heard a latch, and sat up, pulling the mantle around me.

Tall and bronzed and utterly perfect, the God Apollo was standing in the little hut. His head touched the roof and he burned with a golden light which smelt of honey. I knew that face, that scent. I would not play that game again.

'Lord, you have released me,' I said firmly. 'Your oracle said so.'

'Cassandra, I have released you,' he affirmed.

I felt instantly better. 'Lord, what is your pleasure with me?'

'Cassandra my own, my golden Princess, I know what you want,' he said in that God's voice which shivers mortal cells.

'Lord?'

'A place,' he said softly. 'A home for your heart and those of your two lovers.'

I knew that an immortal bargain was about to be struck, and I also knew that whatever its nature, I wasn't going to like it. Apollo does not stoop to bargain with mortals unless he is asking a steep price. Our lives, perhaps. We could presumably rest comfortably with the dead.

'Will you tell me, Lord?'

'I will tell another,' he said. Typical of male Gods, in fact typical of all Gods whatsoever. I don't know if it is their divine point of view or just ordinary malice, but you can never get a straight answer out of a God.

Unless, I remembered, he is trying to tear out your throat with his teeth, as this God had done to me the last time I had offended him. The golden mane shadowed my face again, the rank breath enveloped me, a clawed paw pierced my breast.

I shook back my hair, gulped, and prompted, 'Phoebus Apollo?'

'You will find your sweet place, Princess. If you undertake a task for me.'

'Lord, I am at your command,' I said meekly, recalling the teeth.

'When you come to Platikambos, wait there a week.'

'Lord? Why?'

His face grew dark, and he said in a voice which shook the hut and rattled my teeth. 'Do you question me, mortal?'

'No, Lord.' The reverberations were hurting my ears and my eyes filled. I wiped them and he was gone.

When the others came in, more than slightly merry and breathing wine fumes all over me, Chryse said, 'I smell honey.'

'Apollo came,' I said.

The look of patient resignation which he always adopted when I spoke of the Gods spread over his face. He pulled off his cloak and rolled it into a pillow, throwing it down. Eumides asked, 'What did the God say? Surely he has released you, Princess.'

He only called me Princess when he was angry or worried.

'He has released me. But he wants us to stop at Platikambos for a week.'

'Why?'

'He didn't say.'

Chryse rolled over and grabbed Eumides' ankle, so that he fell on us with a cry and a flurry of tunic and elbows.

'I am sick of this talk of Gods. There are no Gods,' he said, half-angrily. 'This is a long enough journey, and now we must interrupt it on a divine whim.'

'He offered to tell me of a home for us,' I said firmly, smothering his protests with my mouth. I kissed him hard, once, twice. 'And if there is a chance that he knows of one, Chryse Diomenes, Asclepius-Priest of Epidavros - which I might point out, is a temple of that same Apollo - then I am staying at Platikambos for the week. It's probably a nice town, anyway.' I kissed him again, and Eumides joined me. Chryse spoke no more blasphemy that night.

I found my despairing Eleni, and told him that I was coming but the God had delayed me. And I heard his voice cursing all Gods wherever they were, and agreed with every word.

Three days of purification, and they gave Orestes back to us. Each night I had lain beside my husband and stroked and smoothed him, feeling his heat beneath my fingers, and he had evoked the Goddess' gift in me, leaving me sweating and laughing. But the test had not come. I did not know if I could accept him into my body, even Pylades, my dear husband. He seemed unconcerned, saying that there were many ways of making love, none to be preferred above another, and that mating like a beast was not for a son of the royal house of Phocis.

I didn't believe it. The conjunction I had observed with disgust when the Trojan woman and her lovers mated in the goatherd's hut now seemed explicable, even excusable. I remembered seeing her lie splayed on that dirty floor in a ruin of mantles and tunics, and her cry of delight as the phallus slid inside the willing sheath. Her lover, the golden priest, had mingled his hair with hers as their mouths met, and she had wrapped her legs around his waist.

I was nervous. If I could not accept him I could not conceive.

And the opportunity would not arise, at least for a time. I had to get used to this new feeling, this closeness. All my life I had been alone. Now I was one-half of a person, and the other half was my husband.

Orestes came from the temple, walking, with bowed head. He seemed tranced. The priests hovered behind him.

'It is too grave a matter for us,' they said, making propitiatory gestures. 'He is purified as the Lord Apollo commanded. But the Erinyes still pursue him. You must go to Delphi. There they will be able to talk more directly to the God.'

We left a suitable offering and found a ship. The journey was rough. It was early in the year for sailing. But no pirates attacked us, and we came into Kirrha seasick but in possession of our horses and our valuables.

Orestes had not spoken. He ate when we placed food in his mouth, and drank when a wine-cup was held to his lips. When I looked into his eyes the pupils were almost invisible, the iris wide and coloured like honey. Golden-eyed Orestes, my son.