Through hollows in her breasts protruded the sharp, rapacious curve of vultures’ beaks.
Quailing, Clytaemnestra delivered herself over to an archaic power that was both the creator and the immolator of everything that dared to live. Her own face became a face of stone. Her tongue shrivelled to a stone. Her heart was stone and her ribs had turned to a cage of stone about it. She was the Queen of Stone in a place of stone. She could hear the hiss of snakes writhing about her feet. Her breasts had grown sharp as vulture’s beaks.
By the time Clytaemnestra was released from confinement in Aulis, the contrary wind had turned, and the King of Men was sailing back to Troy with the blood of his daughter on his hands. His wife had not seen him since. Nor had she received any letters except those bringing instructions for the administration of the state he had left in her charge. She was secretly informed by her spy Talthybius that his master was drinking heavily and had a costive stomach; he was also short-tempered and slept badly. Otherwise the Lion of Mycenae was getting on with his war.
But as far as Agamemnon’s dealings with his wife were concerned, the death of Iphigenaia was buried in a silence so deep the child might never have existed.
In the months since that vision had come to Clytaemnestra not a day passed without her renewing the cold strength that she derived from it. She drew on that strength as she placed the tablet on her desk and turned to confront the visitor who entered her chamber with a respectful bow of his gaunt head. King Nauplius of Euboea was more welcome in Mycenae than he could have guessed.
‘It was good of your majesty to grant me a private audience so quickly,’ he said. ‘I know that the demands of state press heavily in the absence of your lord.’
‘They do indeed,’ she answered dryly, sitting at a large desk on which many papyrus scrolls and inscribed tablets were piled, ‘so I beg you not to waste words preparing the ground, as I am quite sure you did with Penelope in Ithaca, and at the court of Diomedes in Tiryns, and in the House of the Axe on Crete.’
For some time before his arrival in Mycenae, Nauplius had been worrying about what course this encounter might take. Though his confrontation with Penelope had turned out badly, he had found Agialeia, the credulous young wife of Diomedes, entirely pliant to his will, and Queen Meda of Crete was already so voracious in her appetites that she had needed no encouragement to cuckold her absent husband Idomeneus. But Clytaemnestra was a more dangerous quarry. All Argos knew how much of Agamemnon’s authority she had arrogated to herself. It would take a rash man to risk causing her offence and Nauplius had never been rash. But he was old and furious with grief and weary of life, and his single interest was in avenging the death of his son, for which satisfaction he was prepared to take whatever risks might be required.
Even so, as his litter was carried past the kingdom’s great ancestral tombs, beneath the huge stone-built bastions, and on through the Lion Gate into the citadel, the shadows of Mycenae had closed down round him. Not having visited the city for many years, Nauplius had been impressed by its mighty show of power and wealth. The ramparts were formidable, of course, but the porphyry friezes and richly painted porticoes bespoke a vision of which that dull boor Agamemnon was surely incapable, and which must therefore be attributed to the ambition, taste and intelligence of his queen.
To come into her presence he had passed through a busy antechamber filled with ministers, legates and supplicants, all of whom were impatient to secure her attention once this audience was over, and then on through a warren of sentried passages. And those documents on her desk were not for show. Nauplius knew that her correspondence reached from Posidonia in the far west to the eastern kingdom of Mesopotamia, by way of the mighty Hittite Empire and Pharaonic Egypt. And it was this woman whom he sought to make the instrument of his will.
Finding himself already outflanked in the first exchange, he masked his surprise with a wry smile. ‘I see your majesty is well-informed. Does the mistress of the Lion House keep spies in place across all Argos?’
Clytaemnestra motioned for the old man to sit. ‘Why should I need spies?’ she shrugged. ‘Your mission has been aimed at the wives of my husband’s captains, and wives have a way of sharing secrets, especially where their husbands’ misdemeanours are concerned.’
‘Misdemeanours?’ Still smiling, though with diminished confidence, Nauplius fingered the curls of his beard. ‘You think of them so lightly.’
But Clytaemnestra merely appraised her visitor with faintly disdainful hauteur. ‘I did not require my husband to swear a vow of celibacy when he took ship for war. He has his appetites. I expected him to sate them.’ Having noted the unhealthy shadows round his eyes, she had already decided that there was not much time left in which to make use of this dying man.
Nauplius watched her reach for a wax tablet and glance at it as though already bored by this conversation. Having studied her negligent air for a moment, he said quietly, ‘And did you also expect him to bring home an oriental concubine and make her his queen in Mycenae?’
Clytaemnestra lifted her gaze. ‘I presume you can put a name to this rival for my throne?’
‘Chryseis,’ Nauplius answered at once.
‘Chryseis?’
‘A Trojan captive taken in the raid on Thebe, She is daughter to a priest of Apollo. Very beautiful, I understand. And also young.’
Clytaemnestra shook her head. ‘But your news is old, Nauplius. Haven’t you heard that Chryseis was returned to her father many weeks ago?’ She uttered a further dismissive sigh and glanced back at the tablet, reading as she spoke. ‘Not for the first time my husband offended a god. He was forced to surrender her in recompense. But I assure you he planned nothing more for the girl than a place among the many harlots who warm his bed.’ Her painted eyes shifted back to the discountenanced King of Euboea. ‘In some matters my husband is a fool, I acknowledge it freely; but women are of small importance to him. No, Nauplius. Your unsavoury gossip may have troubled the wives of Diomedes and Idomeneus, but I’m as little impressed by your lies as was my cousin Penelope.’
The corners of the old man’s mouth drooped in an offended moue. Putting his weight on his staff, he made a show of getting to his feet. ‘I came here in good faith. But if the Queen does not care to hear what I have to say …’
‘Sit down,’ Clytaemnestra interrupted him. ‘You are not yet dismissed our presence.’ She put the tablet down. ‘You came here to make mischief. We both understand that. Let us not pretend otherwise.’
Nauplius narrowed his eyes. He might have overestimated this woman’s readiness to hear him but he did not underestimate her power. His position was now fraught with danger. The palace was difficult to enter: it might prove far more difficult to leave, for this was Mycenae, a city as dark as it was golden, and there were guards at every door. Yet he thought he had detected something almost reassuringly conspiratorial in her last remark.
Thinking quickly, he said, ‘I have a just grievance against your husband.’
‘I have many,’ she answered, ‘though I find it wisest to keep them to myself.’
‘I am speaking of the death of my son.’
‘Palamedes was a traitor.’
‘No more than I am myself,’ Nauplius protested.
Clytaemnestra uttered a humourless, scoffing laugh. ‘And this is loyalty?’
Nauplius clenched his fist at his knee. ‘Agamemnon forfeited my allegiance when he commanded the wrongful death of my son.’
‘If it was indeed wrongful.’
‘My son was the innocent victim of slander and envy.’
‘No one is innocent, Nauplius. In any case, it makes no difference.’
For a moment he thought everything lost. He too was about to be charged with treason. He too must brace himself to meet a traitor’s death. But her eyes softened a little. A frown passed across her face like the outward sign of pain. ‘Though there is no more grievous hurt,’ she conceded, ‘than the loss of a child.’
And quite
suddenly he saw what this devious woman was about.
‘Iphigenaia!’ he whispered.
‘Yes,’ she hissed, ‘Iphigenaia.’
‘Then your majesty will understand the fury of my grief.’
‘Oh I do, Nauplius. I understand it very well.’
‘And wasn’t there another child killed before her?’ he risked. ‘Long ago when you were queen in Elis.’
The green and gold paint around Clytaemnestra’s eyes glittered in the light. When she looked up at him the hollows at her cheekbones seemed more deeply drawn. ‘He was not yet six weeks old.’ Her voice was almost without expression as she added, ‘He too is among the many ghosts that haunt this place.’
By now Nauplius was contemplating possibilities that had been far from his mind when he set out for Mycenae. How absurd that he should have been worried about stirring up this woman’s feelings against her husband when for so many years she had been cultivating her own patient hatred of the man.
As though complete understanding had now been established between them, he nodded in a show of sympathy. ‘We have a common interest, it seems.’
But his presumption had been too eager. Her grief felt contaminated by proximity to his.
For what felt like a very long time Clytaemnestra studied the old king with distaste. In other circumstances, she might have been pleased to put a speedy end to his deceitful and vindictive life. But she had need of him now. Mistaking the gist of her appraisal, a-dreadful thought struck root in his mind. Surely she did not intend to appoint him as the immediate instrument of her vengeance? He was an old man, and sick. He was not the stuff of which assassins were made.
She let him sweat a moment longer before saying, ‘You came here today with the intention of persuading me to betray my husband with some other man. Is that not so?’ And when he glanced uncertainly away, ‘That was your strategy with Penelope. You offered the same temptation to Queen Meda and Agialeia. Am I to understand you had a less attractive proposition to put to me?’
Uncertain of his ground once more, Nauplius replied evasively. ‘Would you not agree that such humiliation is no less than a disloyal husband deserves?’
‘And you would have been content with that? It would have satisfied you merely to see me cuckold the man you hold responsible for the death of your son? You disappoint me, Nauplius. I credited you with larger ambition.’
He was aware of her eyes taunting him to think the thoughts that she had put into his mind. But his breath was fetched short with anxiety and his face was grey. How to be sure she wasn’t inciting him to condemn himself out of his own mouth? If she were to arraign him as a traitor, she would certainly be believed, as he would not should he seek to accuse her of complicity.
Again, without humour, she smiled. ‘Are you afraid of me, Nauplius?’
‘A man would be a fool,’ he said, ‘not to hold you in great respect.’
‘Good,’ she answered.‘ Then we understand one another.’ With a brisk, light touch, her fingers tapped the edge of the desk. Then she surprised him again with a change of direction. ‘You know the whereabouts of Aegisthus, do you not?’
Nauplius looked up at her in amazement. Aegisthus had been on the run ever since his father, the usurper Thyestes, was toppled from the throne of Mycenae by Agamemnon’s army many years ago. It was Aegisthus who, while still a small boy, had murdered Atreus, the rightful king. Since Agamemnon had regained the Lion Throne, every attempt to find and kill his father’s murderer, and thus put an end to a gruesome cycle of vengeance, had failed. How could Clytaemnestra know that Nauplius had made contact with him? What were her intentions now?
Irritated by the mute gape of the old man’s mouth, Clytaemnestra tapped the desk with greater impatience.
Hoarsely, thinking quickly, Nauplius said, ‘And if I did?’
‘Then you might speak to him on my behalf.’
‘And what would your majesty have me say?’
‘Perhaps that the Queen of Mycenae does not look upon him with the same inveterate hatred as its king.’
Nauplius swallowed. ‘I feel sure the heart of Aegisthus would be gladdened to hear this news.’ His eyes shifted with his thoughts. ‘But he has good cause to be wary,’ he risked. ‘How can he be sure of its truth?’
‘Do you take me for a liar, Nauplius?’
‘By no means. Yet Aegisthus will surely remember how his father Thyestes was once invited to return to Mycenae in what seemed a gesture of reconciliation … with what truly terrible consequences your majesty will certainly recall.’
Clytaemnestra’s lips narrowed. The old man had dared to refer to an event that had been so horrifying in its impact on the imagination that no one in Mycenae had spoken of it for years. Yet even that silence seemed to taint the city’s air.
Sharply Clytaemnestra said, ‘That was in another time.’
Nauplius shrugged. ‘But the shadows remain.’
‘And will, as long as the House of Atreus rules in Mycenae.’
The implications of her statement astounded him. He knew he must be very careful now. In a voice as low as hers, for who could tell if these walls were recording every word, King Nauplius hissed, ‘Does the Queen foresee a time when it may not?’
‘Nothing lasts for ever.’
‘Least of all a man’s life.’
‘Exactly so.’
‘And for that reason Aegisthus will not put his own at risk unless he is given very strong assurances.’
Aware how momentous the step she was about to take, Clytaemnestra drew in her breath. ‘Then let us be plain with one another. You may tell Aegisthus that if he has the stomach for it, I, and only I, can help him to regain what was once his father’s throne here in Mycenae.’
Nauplius could feel his heart knocking at his ribs, but he merely nodded as though she had made no more than a further gambit in haggling over the price of some desirable commodity.
For the moment she offered nothing further, so his throat was dry as he said. ‘If I were Aegisthus, might I not be wise to ask how I could be certain this was not some ruse devised by the High King’s wife to lure her husband’s most inveterate enemy out of hiding?’
Clytaemnestra nodded. ‘Would an assurance sealed in blood satisfy him?’
‘I would think,’ Nauplius answered with a bleak smile, ‘that would entirely depend on whose blood was shed.’
Having already anticipated every development of this wary conversation, Clytaemnestra nodded calmly. ‘Even before my husband sailed to Troy, many of those in positions of power and influence in this court owed their good fortune entirely to my favour. There were others, of course, retainers of the House of Atreus from before my time, men to whom the High King feels a certain loyalty. Men he would not replace even though I urged him to do so. But ten years are a long time.’ She lifted her eyes. ‘There have been deaths, you understand.’
‘As is only natural.’
‘Yes. As is only natural. So there has been a need for new appointments.’
Nauplius recalled the intense young ministers and secretaries he had seen conferring in quick, low voices in the ante-room outside, every one of them no doubt loyal only to the formidable woman to whom they owed their preferment. ‘However,’ Clytaemnestra continued, ‘a few remain who are not entirely under my control. There is one in particular. I am thinking of the court bard, Pelagon.’
‘I know his reputation of old,’ Nauplius said. ‘I hear he is the greatest of singers.’
‘So they say. The question is, for whom does he sing and on what theme?’
‘You have found reason not to trust the bard?’
‘He is Agamemnon’s spy, left here in the court to keep me under surveillance. There are limits, you see, to the trust the High King places in his queen. It will not be long, therefore, before Agamemnon is informed of your visit to Mycenae. For that reason I shall, of course, inform him of it myself. Today, as soon as you are gone. I will write to him explaining why it was only because of
your status as a royal guest of the house that I let you depart with your life.’
Nauplius held her dry stare for a time, thinking quickly ahead. ‘But were your husband to learn that you were in communication with Aegisthus … ?’
‘Precisely. Which is why he must never learn of it.’
‘Then Pelagon must sing no more.’
‘Neither must Agamemnon suspect his sudden silence.’
Nauplius considered this for a time. ‘Does the bard ever leave Mycenae?’
‘Pelagon is an old man with little interest in travel. But he is also vain and has a secret weakness for beautiful young men.’
‘Then he might he be lured from the city by reports of such a person willing to grant him favours?’
‘I think it more than possible.’
‘Then I will speak with Aegisthus. Perhaps such a person could be found.’
Clytaemnestra narrowed her eyes. ‘No shadow of suspicion can attend this matter. Whatever becomes of Pelagon, it must appear no more than an unhappy accident — though it would be well, I think, if it were to happen soon.’
‘Aegisthus is a man of considerable resource.’
‘I expected no less.’
‘Indeed, I believe your majesty will find him an excellent match for her own wisdom and discretion.’
Disdaining his flattery, Clytaemnestra said, ‘I wish to hear nothing more of this until I receive the distressing news of my bard’s departure from this life. After that it will be time for you and I to speak together again. By then I will have decided whether the time is ripe for Aegisthus to return to Mycenae. Is that understood?’
‘Perfectly.’ Nauplius hesitated. ‘But I was thinking …’
‘There is some difficulty?’
‘Aegisthus will be risking a great deal in this matter.’
‘Nothing great is achieved without risk.’
‘Quite so! But as things stand he will have only my word for this.’
‘He knows you for his friend, does he not?’
‘Yet he may ask for more. Is there not perhaps some token you might send to him as an earnest of your interest in his future welfare?’
The Return From Troy Page 9