Electra

by Henry Treece

  And I heard the tall hooded figure say, ‘It is good. The Bull has accepted what we offer. See, they take their libation from the wall where it has spouted. She has gone to the Bull!’

  Now my heart was full of terror and warning. I could scarcely breathe, and half-turned to push the crowd at my back away from me; but it was then that I found I was the only watcher, for the others had faded away like the morning mist. And as I saw this, and the great lonely fear came down on me like a mantle, I saw the bats turn like a well-drilled phalanx and sweep out once more through the cavern hole towards the sea. And in their place a bodiless deep voice boomed from the upper air.

  ‘The wind has changed! See, the wind has changed!’

  At first I could not tell whether it was a man’s voice, or the sea speaking, Poseidon speaking. But the hooded figures heard it too and seemed to turn their heads, listening. I heard one of them laugh as though with relief, and saw that he held a flat wooden dish, such as peasants carve from tree-boles. It was filled with wet clay and wood-ash and, mixed in with this, the grey breast feathers of sea-birds. He was stirring it with his right hand, up to the wrist.

  ‘Come.’ he said, ‘it is time to stop the hole, or the cask will empty itself. Enough is enough.’

  As they all bent, dabbling in the wooden dish and leaning across the log, all fear left me and I ran forward. ‘Let me see!’ I cried. ‘I have a right to see!’

  They seemed to know that I would say this, for they opened before me like a palace gate, when well-trained guards draw it back to let a queen enter.

  I saw the white body lying where it had been, the fingers still bedded deep in the rotten wood. Then I straddled the log to look down on the face of the girl; but there was no face, no head, only a plastered mess of ash and clay and soiled feathers where the head should have been. I swung round to ask what this meant, but the grey shapes had gone from the cave, and I was alone. Above me the bodiless voice was still booming, ‘The wind has changed. The wind has changed.’

  And, as I stood bewildered, the white fingers in the log began to twitch and move, as though a new life was stirring in them. It was more than I could bear. I leapt away and began to scream, and scream, until my high voice mingled with the deep booming of the one above me, making a terrible chorus in the salty darkness of the cave.

  Hands came about me, and suddenly I saw that I was sitting up in my bed in the palace chamber, with Clytemnestra’s face near to mine. She was saying, ‘There, my dove! There, my little one! All is well now. Do not cry any more. We are here and you are safe.’

  I do not think I had ever seen her looking so sad and so concerned. I heard her say to a serving-woman, ‘Fetch fresh clothes and bedding. She is wet through. Hurry, woman!’

  My father loomed darkly against the window-hole, but I could not see him clearly. I heard him say, ‘It is a trouble in the heart, as deep as a wound. This is the heritage of us all, the kin of Atreus. This is the price we must pay for our glory. We must each bear the load alone; no one can help the wounded lion, he must suffer, a lonely beast.’

  Then the palace doctor was bending over me, urging me to drink from a scallop-shell which he held to my lips. My mother nodded, smiling, so I drank, for now I trusted her like a baby.

  Then my father seemed to lead all the folk from my room, leaving only Clytemnestra beside me. I sank back on my bed, the bitter taste still in my mouth. I tried to reach up to stroke my mother’s hair, which hung damply in elf-locks beside her cheeks. She held my hand gently and whispered, ‘There, my pigeon. You have taken a fever and we have watched over you for three days. But now you are getting well again. Sleep, my queen, and do not dream.’

  I suddenly said to her, ‘Where is my sister, lady? Where is Iphigenia?’

  My mother the queen smiled down at me and rubbed her cold cheek against my hot one. ‘She is well, little one. She went away three days ago, laughing in her litter, to Aulis. That is where the ships lie, my sweet. She went merrily enough, to pray for a wind that would take your father to Troy. If she had known you were so sick, she would not have gone.’

  My dream was fading from me every moment, but its edges still trailed behind, as a robe does when its wearer has gone through a door.

  ‘Who sent her there?’ I asked, afraid.

  My mother the queen began to stroke my brow. ‘Your father and Calchas, the priest,’ she said. ‘And they did rightly, for by her prayers the wind has changed. Now the ships can sail away at last, and we can be happy once more in the palace. Our lives lie in greater hands than our own, so sleep gently, gently, my own.’

  I could feel myself falling back into a drugged sleep as she spoke. I tried to fight against it, to ask when my sister would return to us; but no sounds came from my lips. I saw my mother’s face above me for a while, smiling and nodding, and then even that went misty and far away, and I knew no more.

  13

  Whether I lay in bed two weeks or three, I cannot recall. The palace doctor was with me constantly, giving me potions from the scallop-shell, putting salves on my forehead, and blowing his breath up into my nostrils. I did not see my father, but Clytemnestra came In me many times and sang to me as the women changed my shift. Once she brought Chrysothemis to see me, but had to send her away from the room because she had brought a lame gull with her, and the sight of the feathers made me cry out with fear again.

  Then, one morning, I said, ‘Mother, I would like a bowl of thick bean-broth, with garlic and lamb meat in it.’

  My mother the queen clapped her hands and laughed. ‘At last you ask for food.’ she said. ‘This is the turning-point. You shall have anything your heart desires, I am so glad!’

  I said to her, ‘Then bring Iphigenia back to me, mother. She is what I most desire, even more than the broth and the lamb meat.’ Clytemnestra shook her head and the smile faded a little on her beautiful face. ‘Oh, my dove.’ she said, ‘that must wait a little longer. Your sister is enjoying her great honour now. Because her prayers have changed the wind, she has gone to the shrine of Upright Apollo, over the sea to Tauris, to help the poor folk there and to bring them good fortune. You would not deny her that honour, would you?’ I clutched the covering and pulled myself up in fright. ‘Taurus!’ I said. ‘Is that the Bull? Has the Bull taken her? Poseidon?’

  My mother laughed again and pushed me gently down. ‘Oh, you little mad thing.’ she said. ‘You never listen! The place is Tauris, not Taurus! One might think your ears were stopped with clay and wood-ash for all you hear!’

  I began to cry again when she said this, but at last she rocked me and quietened me. ‘If you do not lie quiet.’ she said, ‘you will not be well enough to go with us on to the wall and watch the soldiers march away. You would like that, wouldn’t you?’

  I said, ‘It is not the soldiers I want; it is my sister.’

  My mother put her hand over my mouth, almost harshly, and said, ‘Speak no more. Your words might bring them ill-fortune. Never forget, in sickness or health, that we of the House of Atreus are sacred. We sometimes speak with the voice of the greatest ones. I counsel you, little one, speak only of the things about you that your eyes can see—of wood and stone and barley-meal—not of the heart’s dreams. We of the Atreus Kin must guard our words as the merchants guard their profits. It is our duty to go up on to the wall, and to wish the soldiers and their ships, and their horses well. So rest now and forget all else. I will come for you when the first company goes out, with your new white woollen robe to keep you warm. Iphigenia’s wind blows across the land now, not the sea, so you will take no further chill if we are careful.’

  She went from my bedside gently, wriggling her fingers at me and smiling. I thought that she was the kindest mother in the world. But when she reached the doorway, where the servants might see her, she straightened her body and put on a mask-face. Her hands she crossed over her breast, as though she were an image. That is how the queens always walked in Mycenae, in those days; like images. It was how the simple fol
k thought of them, not as creatures like themselves, of flesh and blood and fear.

  14

  I remember little of the men going away. Only that it was a blustery day, with the damp grey clouds scudding almost past our eyes as we stood on a high platform above the wall at Mycenae. But, doctor, I am an old woman, you understand, and I may have Imagined those clouds. Perhaps they do not come so low; perhaps it was a sunny day, and the greyness and clouds in my mind, for I was young and sad and very sick. The poets have all sung differently of the leave-taking; I am no lover of poets and I cannot pretend to judge their merits or the truth of their words. I speak as I think I remember—and that may be as true as anything the poets say, for most of them were unborn when the men set out from Mycenae to drag Troy down to rubble.

  And I remember the flower-crowned girls running before the armies in two straggling lines, their dusty black skirts flapping at their brown legs in the wind, their unbound hair sweeping in black waves over their excited faces. They clapped their hard narrow hands together as they went, in a strange and fevered cross-beat to the marching-men, as though at the one time they both urged them forward and tried to throw them out of step.

  It was like a half-disguised game of love, with the girls pulling the men on to them, then pushing them away before fulfilment.

  All this hung heavy in the air and came to me, young and sick as I was, as plainly as if it were words said close to my ear. It was as though the black-robed girls, bidding the men farewell, with their white garlands, their thin faces, and their dark painted eyes, pictured both life and death, pain and pleasure, love and hatred. They seemed to he planted like seeds at the beginning of all things, at the deep heart of all things, in the dark belly of time, without knowing it. What they were doing, on the road below the palace, had been done since the first dawn.

  Even their high reed-fluting song, which went round and round like wheels turning or doves purring on the roof-tree in spring, was part of this magic. And their reddened lips, all set in a circle as though they never moved from saying ‘Oooo!’ , were like the ritual ivory masks worn by young women at the Dionysus-festival.

  I looked to my mother, to ask about these girls and why my heart should beat so at my ribs; but her own mouth was shaped like theirs, though silent, and her hard narrow hands were close to clapping as theirs did, though frozen, poised in the air, a hawk before it swoops.

  I could not bring myself to break her dream, and my question was never asked. Yet in the darkness that was already growing in my body, I suddenly seemed to know the answer, though I had not put the question.

  What do I recall? I was in my mother’s arms, and weeping. She was telling Geilissa how light I had become, how fragile since my illness. The woman said in return how sunk my eyes were, how much like wax my skin; she said it was her belief that I would not be long in High Town. I heard her say this and wondered where I would be, then, for the palace was the only place I knew to be in. My mother frowned at Geilissa and said something in the secret tongue that the women used in those days, something I did not understand. When I played with Hermione, we used to make up a secret tongue of our own, to be like our mothers, but though it teased the little boys, neither of us could understand it, and we longed for the day when we would be thirteen, grown up, and taken into the women’s quarters to learn the proper secret tongue.

  When Clytemnestra spoke the secret words, the nurse flushed and made a defiant answer. My mother the queen reached out her hand and struck her across the face. Geilissa fell down and began to kiss my mother’s feet, like a fawning dog. I thought at first that she was going to roll right off the tall parapet on to the road below. I wasn’t concerned for her, I recall, but just curious to see what she would look like, falling. I imagined her robes spreading out to be a bird’s wings, and keeping her afloat on the wind-currents, perhaps sailing her away, across the Isthmus to Pagae or Thebes…. I did not know anything about these places, except their names, but they always appealed to me; the shepherds from there sometimes came to our markets and were always bright-haired, gay fellows who sang in a high voice to the oaten pipes.

  But the woman didn’t fall after all. She kneeled, weeping on my mother’s buskins, and I lost interest in her, and looked down with sleepy eyes at the armies below.

  Never since the god made earth had so many men gathered together in one place; that much is certain. The fields were black with them, under the grey skies, for as far as eye could reach. Men, men, men… and then more men. For years we had had nothing but rumours of this war; all my life men had been coming into Mycenae and drilling outside our town, eating our food, drinking our wine, calling my father their lord. All my life I had heard only that, that ray father was High King, Lord of the Earth, the Lion of Mycenae, Master of Laconica, Baron of Peloponnesus, Right Hand of Poseidon, Ring-Giver of Crete, Wolf of the Epirus, Tyrant of Thessaly…. His titles and names would have filled a man’s memory to bursting, they were so many. There were even Libyans who came to our house who said that in their country he was known as the Elephant of Syrtis; but I never trusted Libyans, because of the way they rolled their eyes and licked their thick lips as they spoke. It seemed to me, even as a child, that they said what men expected them to say, not the truth. I had proof of this later, when I discussed my father’s Libyan title with a young Egyptian ambassador who came to do trade with Mycenae. He was thin and pale-faced, and had shaved all the hair from his body. Beside our house barons he looked like a delicate doll-thing; but his dress was so magnificent, and his weapons so beautiful, that none of our men taunted him with his lack of hair. This Egyptian told me, bowing his head and smiling to take away the hurt of his words, that my father was known in Africa, but was simply called ‘The Hellene’ or, at most, ‘Lion of Hellas’. I recall that young man especially because he had three slaves always beside him to scratch his back with ivory spatulas. He was so rich and so grand that he would not scratch his own back—yet I saw him hunting a ferocious boar one day and those frail hands that could not bring themselves to scratch pushed a javelin the whole length of the beast’s body, as it charged, in at his tusked mouth and out at his behind, so that the bronze point looked like another tail, under his real one. It takes a brave and strong man to do that, for our boars in those days were at least twice the size and weight of a man.

  So I always believed what that Egyptian said; and not what the Libyans told me. Yes, I am sorry, doctor, but I must be permitted these thoughts. I am an old woman, whose days are few now. Let me wander a little, and I will come back to the story in good time. … Where was I? Yes, the men who gathered in Mycenae.

  Can you picture it? All our lives the world had been centred on us, as though Mycenae was a wheel, and my father the axle. All the valleys seemed to lead down towards Mycenae; and all through every year folk crowded on down towards our city. I could go out into the market and walk all day without hearing a word I understood. And now, after a lifetime, they were going away to sack Troy…. And I, a sick child, was being held up on the high wall to watch them go, though I had a fever of the blood that made me rage with heat, despite the chill of the day.

  I shall never forget the rumbling of the war-carts and the hourly tramping of feet. The earth shook; our palace walls trembled; the men strode on through cornfields and over garden fences. All fell before them. Where they walked, though it had been green grass at dawn, was parched brown earth, by nightfall. Crops were laid low, to become wisps of dry straw when they had passed. Houses fell down and were trampled back to white clay. The cattle ran before them, as though they too were going down to the ships. Thick hordes of birds hovered above their heads, crying in fear, but unable to leave them.

  Even your own folk, the Hittites, doctor, were there, marching as though they were proud to be Hellenes, and yelling out, ‘Koiranos! Koiranos!’ whenever Agamemnon showed himself. They thought it no dishonour then, my friend.

  In truth, my father was master of the world, apart from Egypt, and the owner of every
grain of soil for a hundred miles around Mycenae. I have heard it said that, apart from himself and the Egyptian Pharaoh, the only other kings he recognised in all the world were Nestor of Pylus, Peleus of Phthia in Thessaly, and Odysseus of Ithaca in the Ionian Isles.

  No wonder that every man’s eyes were turned up at us, the kin of Agamemnon, as we stood on the walls, watching them go towards the distant sea. In spite of my sickness and the echoes of my ghastly dream, I thrilled at their attention, and shuddered at the glorious hubbub of their thousands of trumpets and drums and bone flutes. My mother was in such a trance that she almost dropped me over the wall a time or two; but my own ecstasy grew so great that I would not have minded. I think the fever and pride in me were so strong that I could have flown through the air like Daedalus of Crete if she had let me fall.

  Behind us stood Chrysothemis, with an olive staff in one hand and a tame snake curling about the wrist of the other. She was singing a little song about a milkmaid and paying no attention to the armies, though my mother had dressed her up for the occasion and had gilded her breasts and crimped her oiled black hair. Baby Orestes lay in the arms of his new Libyan nurse, his face buried in her robes, frightened by the noise. Where Iphigenia should have stood, was a space. Someone had stood her distaff there to represent her. I was sorry she was not on the wall to see the men go, and I tried to say this to my mother the queen. She did not even glance down at me as she replied,’ She is better where she is. Few young priestesses have the honour to be called to Tauris these days. Have no regrets. It is well with her.’

  All the first day we were there, in spite of the cold wind. Servants brought food up to us, and even put it into our mouths, for the custom forbade us to be seated when the armies went out of the city. By nightfall, we were all exhausted, but still the men moved past, their way lit with resinous torches now, so that the earth seemed on fire.