by Henry Treece
At the farther end of the passage-way, we came on a tunnel newer than the rest, its stones still bearing the white marks of the mason’s chisel, its earth still carrying a little of the odour of the upper world. “When Aegisthus held his torch inside this place, I saw no golden cups and amber beads, no gilded stool and dead king lolling there against a spear. Instead, a small figure, wrapped about in rough wool, lying on its side, hunched up, like a child in bed.
Aegisthus said, ‘Do you know who this is, Electra?’
I shook my head, though, already, a chill hand was clenching round my heart.
‘Feel inside the tomb,’ said Aegisthus, ‘and see what your fingers find.’
As in a dream, I obeyed him. There was no gold mask where the face should have been, such as Atreus wore so proudly. Instead there was a rough ball of something like clay. Aegisthus put his hand upon my own to keep it there, and pushed his torch forward so that I should see all. This dead one had a mask of clay, rudely fashioned, but clear enough to the eye. I knew that my fingers were stroking the face of Iphigenia, my sister who had gone to Tauris. As I drew back in horror, Aegisthus coughed, and a small cloud of feathers rose in the air from that disturbance of the tomb, the breast-feathers of a sea-bird. One of them settled on my face and I tore madly at my flesh to be rid of it. It was all as I had seen in my dream.
I swung round at my mother and said,’ But she is in Tauris, is she not?’
Clytemnestra stared back at me with wild bright eyes. Her mouth was shaped as for weeping, but the voice that came out of her lips was as deadly cold and calm as would have been that of Atreus, had he spoken now.
She said, numb as a statue, ‘They sacrificed her at Aulis, to gain a wind for Troy!’
So, it was spoken at last. And with the speaking, the spell of darkness, of dumbness, was shattered in me. I ran howling back through the black passage-way, and up the steep stairs, falling, bruising my body, hitting my head against the lichened wall, wakening the bees with my noise, making them buzz above my head in their secret caverns behind the stones.
And at last I was up in the living world again, and still running away from the tombs, away from Rarus who started after me in fear for my reason.
I ran and ran, as light as the wind now, howling until my throat was afire and my tongue was silent, although the breath still came from me. I saw walls of houses, then rocks in open fields, and then rough pasture-grass. I was away from Mycenae, away from that doomed place of foulness and decay. And at length I was soaring over the land, leaping streams and boulders with no effort, my hands pressed to my ears to stop them from hearing what my tormented voice tried to shriek.
‘Death to Agamemnon! Death to the murderer! Curse on the Lion of Mycenae!’
Then the last I knew, in the moonlight, was that a black dog suddenly came out from a thicket as I stumbled on and dragged me down, slavering over me and growling at my throat.
20
They moved my bed into the great hall, so that I should always have company. They brought me the best doctor in Egypt, who put salves and oiled bandages on my head and throat, to heal the bites the wild dog had given me.
Clytemnestra often sat beside me, with her distaff, twisting the newly-shorn fleece into yarn that she would later put on her loom. I used to watch the carved ivory weight spinning round, and back again, as the length of wool grew longer from between her hard narrow hands.
It was like my own life, growing longer and stronger, though soiled in the making, as fleece becomes when it is handled.
I told my mother this one day. She answered, ‘It takes much handling to make a strand of wool, and by handling the wool is dirtied. Yet one day, when it is long enough, we trail it in the stream and make it clean again. Then we set up warp and woof on the great loom, and from what was once a piece of grey wool, we make a glorious white robe, or a gay picture to hang on the walls. One would never think it had ever been rough, and broken, and unclean. So it is with life. All things have helped you to grow, but, in helping you, have soiled you. Now, as you He recovering, the god is teasing you out into a long strand of wool, and you will rise from your bed at last, as the yam does from the stream—pure white and ready for the pattern you shall help to make, once you are dyed,’
One day, when I was feeling most weary of life, I said that I wished they had left me to the black dog—but she slapped me on the face in play and answered, ‘What! Poor Aegisthus got his arms all bitten before he knocked that savage beast on the head. And Rarus, who dragged you away from its jaws, will carry the fang-marks on his cheeks until he dies. Even I had my robe ripped from me. So you see, a price has been paid for you. You must not waste our suffering by making so little of your life,’
Aegisthus would also come and sit beside me, as the moons waxed and waned—for I was long enough in coming back to my true senses and strength. His face was usually set and thoughtful, and, though nothing would ever alter its fat and foolish shape, he had somehow taken on a sort of dignity, a kingliness, that I would never have believed before. He would hold my hand beneath the bedcover, often so warmly that I smiled bitterly inside myself and wondered what would happen if the queen saw him doing this. Once, when he felt me pulling away a little, he whispered, ‘But Electra, cannot a father hold his daughter’s hand, then?’
I looked him in the eye and said, ‘Yes—but it may be another thing if a stepfather does so.’
Aegisthus rubbed his flat nose and grinned sheepishly, like a boy being caught stealing plums. He said quietly, ‘Come, come, my pretty! You are a big girl now, sixteen years or so, surely? A girl chosen by the god as an instrument of his purpose. If you were a peasant girl, by now you would have a hut of your own, and would be preparing meals for a lusty husband, with three or four brats dragging at your skirts all the while, and maybe even one at the breast at the same time. You feel like a child still because you have lived all your life in the palace, where the girls are overmuch protected.’
I clenched my teeth and said to him, ‘Aegisthus, if I were asked to take a husband now, I would put a knife into myself. As I have lain here, coming back to the sunlight from the darkness, I have thought every day that I hate men. All my life I thought that men were the god’s image, and that my father, Agamemnon, was the greatest of them all. But now I see that men are brute savages, and Agamemnon the most brutish of men. It would please me well to make all men suffer for what the king did to poor Iphigenia.’
Aegisthus leaned down and held his chin in his hand for a while, his brow clouded. At last he turned to me and said. ‘This does not surprise me. Most young riders turn away from horses when they are thrown for the first time—but they come back to it again, when the memory has faded. So, when Agamemnon has died, you will come back to men again. Yet, in the meantime, what you say casts a poor light on me, daughter! Do you not think of me as a man, then?’
I answered, ‘Aegisthus, there is something about you that is different from the other men I have known. You seem more like a black shadow lurking in the corners of a room, or up above the rafters. I mean you no disrespect, but that is how you seem to me.’ He nodded, for he liked to think that he was different. He said, ‘That is because you know my strange story, how I was born, how I became the tool of Atreus, and so on. The pattern of my life has been different from other men’s. But what of young Rarus, your companion? You like him, do you not?’
I turned my head away bitterly. ‘You know as well as I, that Rarus is not a man,’ I said.
Aegisthus said quickly, ‘Then what of your brother, Orestes? He is six or seven now; surely you love him?’
I reached out and took a pear from the bowl. ‘My stepfather,’ I said, ‘six or seven is not a man. Orestes is still a child, a little boy. The man-seed has not yet come into him to make him savage. I have hardly seen my little brother since you came to High Town. I would dearly like to have him back, to play with, and go riding with. Why is he away?’
Aegisthus scratched his nose and said, ‘O
nce as he played with a wooden sword, he shouted out, “I am Agamemnon. ” This did not please me in the mood that clouded my mind then, and I persuaded your mother to put him out to nurse in the hills. He has been with honest peasant-folk, old Cretan stock; so his father’s Hellene pride may have gone from him by now. If you would like him back, I will ask the queen to send for him. Now that you have cursed your father, I feel more secure here. You will be able to persuade Orestes to hate Agamemnon for killing his sister, just as you do. So, with the queen beside us, we shall be a united House. Is that agreed?’
I nodded and said, ‘When a great storm blows down a village, men come out from the rocks again and begin to build another place to live in. I feel that I have suffered such a great tempest, and that now I must start to live again differently. Send for Orestes to be my companion and I will do as you say. He and Rarus shall be my playmates.’
At this time, my cousin Hermione, who had been away, also used to visit me, sitting sucking the ends of her auburn hair and making great eyes at the guards who kept the great doorway safe. I know that she hated Agamemnon, too, and also her father, Menelaus, because they had sold her mother to the Trojan prince. Often, Hermione brought my dull sister, Chrysothemis with her, all decked out in her sequinned bodice and tinkling flounced skirt. Chrysothemis, whose eyes were always painted blue, like an Egyptian’s, and her long finger-nails stained red like a leopard’s claws when he has been at the carcass of a sheep.
They both were with me, thinking as I did, that we women should keep together and wrest justice from the men for the sufferings they caused us.
All the same, I could not resist teasing Chrysothemis, when I got to feel a bit better. Though she looked like a grown woman, she had the heart of a child of nine. Every gesture she made had to be carried out as though she were conducting a ritual at the Mother shrine. When she turned her head to look at anything, her whole body went round with it, stiffly, as though she was an image; and even then, she affected to stare through a tiling, rather than look at it. With her decorated clothes and her painted face, and her crimped hair that hung like snakes down her back, Chrysothemis seemed more like a sacred doll than a living girl.
I always used to greet her by bowing, from my bed, and holding my hands, fingers together and straight, palms upwards, like a devotee about to pray. And I would say, ‘Greetings, goddess, your light casts away the darkness. What truth of the Mother do you bring today? ”
Usually she would stare through me and say in a thin, distant voice, ‘All who believe shall walk in light. The Mother sends her blessing and tells you that the truth shall one day be known to you. You must ask for no more this day.’
But one hot morning she almost ran into the megaron, scratching her middle under the flounced skirt, and streaming with summer dampness. She was looking very human this day—not at all like a sacred one—with the blue paint running down her cheeks and her snake-hair all tangled and unoiled.
She flung herself on my bed and said, ‘Electra, news has come! Things have not gone well at Troy. Agamemnon and Achilles have quarrelled over some woman, who was Achilles’ prize. Without Achilles’ army, the king cannot take Troy, himself. The messenger who brought the news has been a year coming, and he says that by this time Agamemnon may already be dead, for he thinks that Achilles will go over to Troy.’
I sucked in my breath and clutched at the covers.’ We may not see him again, then?’ I said.
Chrysothemis nodded. She said, ‘It is most unlikely, the man says. And Agamemnon has made yet another mistake; he has taken as his concubine a woman already dedicated to the Mother, a woman whose head is turned by the truth. Her name is Cassandra and she is of the royal blood, of King Priam’s blood. Agamemnon has got two children on her, and so must answer to the Mother for defiling a priestess.’
I said, ‘Has Clytemnestra heard this news?’
I could picture my mother’s fury at learning of her husband’s behaviour. Chrysothemis nodded and said, ‘Yes, and all she said was, “So, by little and little, he digs his own grave. ” She was no more angry than if she caught the cat stealing a piece of mutton from the table.’
I must confess that when my sister brought this news, I felt a still coldness creep through all my body, like a sign from the god. And as I sat stiffly in bed, I suddenly knew that my father, Agamemnon, was as good as dead. In a way, I hoped that the next messenger would bring word of the High King’s funeral pyre; for that would save much trouble. Though I hated him and had cursed him, when I thought of helping to put an end to him, my hands shook and my courage failed me.
Under the bedclothes, I whispered, ‘Let him die out there, in the outland; do not let him come back. I do not want his blood on my hands, Mother. Let all be clean here from now on. Let my father end away from home, as though in a dream.’
From that morning, Agamemnon seemed dead to me, as though he was nothing but a dream I had had when I was a little girl, five years before.
After that, I got stronger each day; and when they brought Orestes back to the palace, I felt that life had begun again, like a clear spring morning, with the new buds bursting and the white lambs jumping under the blue sky, unmindful of the butcher’s knife.
21
I am old now, doctor, and things which took years to unfold seem to have happened all in a few hours. After Orestes came back, my life at Mycenae was one long afternoon, always sunny, always clear, with the birds singing and the tall acanthus blooming, and the late crocuses under our feet as we ran across the hills, and the wild lavender sending up its scent behind us as we crushed its leaves in our running.
Surely, there must have been snow, and blustery winds. Rain must have come in through the hole in the palace roof which was always to be mended, and never was,… But if these things happened, I do not recall them.
What I remember was joy, and myself as the queen of the children, for somehow, since my sickness, they all seemed to take me as their leader in everything.
I formed a Company of my own, the Elect of Electra, we called it, and thought it was a great joke to make.
There were Orestes, Rarus, Hermione, Chrysothemis and myself. We got my mother to give us white ponies, and we persuaded Aegisthus to let the palace armourers make helmets and corselets and short swords for us. I even chopped off my hair, to be like a boy; but Hermione, though she agreed not to paint her face and fingers any more, would not do away with her long oiled tresses. So we told her she would be an Amazon who rode with us. Orestes thought it all the greatest fun, and became a real danger with his sword, because he used to live so much in our play-dream that he took it all for the final truth. For example, though he was only about seven, or perhaps eight, he was a strong boy, and big for his age, and he would fall so deeply into the game we played that he would really try to put his sword into anyone whom we pretended to be our enemy.
Once, as we came down the hill into a village one evening, Rarus said, ‘Let’s pretend that we are savage Dorian sacking this place.’
We cantered through a farmyard where an old peasant was trying to get a black goat into its pen. He turned and waved at us, but Orestes set his pony at him and badly wounded the old fellow’s head with his flailing sword. It was as though Orestes could not tell truth from dream. He never grew out of this, I am afraid.
The old peasant? Oh, we bound his head for him, while Hermione held Orestes. I explained that it was a mistake. The old man said, ‘Tis not the sort of mistake that should happen too often, my lady. Yon little lad bears too much of the stamp of the bad king for my liking. I remember Agamemnon as a lad; he and Menelaus used to ride like that, sword-mad. We should not want to see it all again, lady. Now we are rid of it, we should not want it to come back.’
I consoled him and promised it would never happen again.
When I told Clytemnestra about it, she pursed her mouth and said, ‘Yes, he is like Agamemnon. It is as well that we know, for now he can be trained differently. We must muzzle him, for we cannot h
ave a little lad upsetting all we are building among the folk. I will see that the smith knocks the edge off his sword, and if that does not do, then he shall have a wooden one.’
Orestes was so upset about his sword that we hadn’t the heart to punish him further, and so we let him go on calling himself Agamemnon, in our secret games. We thought it a small price to pay at the time, though, honestly, I think we did him much damage by our leniency, for it is my belief that the boy somehow thought he really was Agamemnon, come again.
I must say now, doctor, that my brother, Orestes, was never quite like other boys. Any more than Chrysothemis was like other girls. It was as though something ancient worked in them, without their knowing, just as wine works in the cask before it is ready to drink. I cannot explain it, but I often used to think that Orestes and Chrysothemis belonged to a distant time that all others had forgotten. They would have been better living when old Cheiron galloped the hills, or when Hera walked the roads of Hellas, like any market-woman. You cannot teach such children to come out of their dream and act like others. Yes, they can seem to be like others, for a time; but suddenly something sets them off, a clap of thunder, the earth shaking under your feet when Poseidon rumbles, a breath of wind from a new quarter, and so on…. Then they are off, and no words in the world can bring them back until their dream has played itself out and they have fallen asleep.
But we got on well enough. We could not see the end of the god’s pattern at this time, how he would use Orestes and Chrysothemis for his purpose. We were only children and we did not know the end of things. We lived for each day as it came, no more.
One of the things we enjoyed was watching the New Army being got ready. This was Aegisthus* idea, though my mother supported him in it. In my father’s time, every man, noble or merchant or peasant, had his own place, and could not shift from it. The lords fought and learned the usage of arms—the chariot, the javelin, the sword, the shield—merchants moved from place to place, on mules or ships, bartering their goods; peasants stayed on the land and tended the crops and the cattle.