by Henry Treece
But the one I had already taken in secret told me what lay in store for me. My head swam, my hands and feet were as cold as stones, an awful griping pain twisted my bowels, coming and going in great thrusts so that I could hardly keep myself still. Pylades noticed this, but he thought I was still in the after-moments of the dream we had called up together, and took no account of it.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘swallow them now. I have the water cup in my hand, to wash them down.’
But I was deeply afraid, for my eyes had become so dim I only saw a blurred grey shape before them and the pain had come up from my belly to my head. The blood in my temples beat like quick drums, almost bursting my head.
I pushed him away and gasped, ‘Not yet, my husband, not yet. Let us wait till the sun goes down; then I will swallow them.’
‘Swallow them now, dear one,’ I heard Pylades say. ‘If we wait until sunset, it might be too late. The cup-bearers might come and treat us cruelly before they give the draught. So, I will hold you while you swallow them.’
But even as his arms went about me, warm and shaking, I twisted away and retched, as deeply as a dog that has eaten dirt. Then, exhausted, I lay back on the bed, too spent to speak.
Pylades bent over me and whispered, ‘The god in you has answered me. You are sick with terror, my poor one. Your stomach would not keep down the pills, I see now. Forgive me for pressing you to do this. You are right, and I am wrong, Electra. So, we will wait, as you say, until sunset, for that is the time the god has decreed to you.’
I smiled, for now, after that sudden wrench of sickness, my head was clear again and I could see. Only the pain, deep in my stomach, still echoed on. Shortly, we quenched it together, for a little while, as the time wore on and the red sun sank below the ledge of the little window-hole, high up in the wall.
Slow-spoken and pale, his features now as delicate as though of alabaster, Pylades touched me quietly and said, ‘Now, at last, the time has come. I am so parched that, if you do not use the water to wash down the pellets, I shall hardly be able to keep from drinking it myself.’
He was trying to make light of it, I knew. Yet I also knew how thirsty he must have been, for at that moment I could have lain in a cold mountain stream and have let the torrent flow through me, like a hollow stone, or a fish.
So I took the pills in my hand, all of them, and prayed silently to Mother Via, whose priestess I had been for a while, to let the darkness come down on me swiftly, like the lightning of Zeus. I should not have chosen such a comparison I knew, even as it crossed my mind, because I heard her deep voice reverberate in my head, saying that it would be long and painful, that I must pay for my mistakes, that there was no escaping the final judgement, the long agony, even with these magic pills from Egypt.
My hand shook so much that they fell to the earthen floor. Pylades, now a little impatient, also slopped some of the water as he set the cup down, and got to his knees to seek the poison again. The little pellets had rolled into dark places and were hard to find. Pylades reached for them everywhere, hampered by the twilight that fell over all like a dark cloth.
‘Oh, woman,’ he gasped, ‘this is a fearful thing. What made you do it?’
I did not help him to search, but sat on the bed still praying, still hoping for the Mother’s pardon. I said, ‘It was the god who spilled them, not I, husband.’
He muttered, quite angrily, and went on feeling about the floor. At last he put five of the little things into my palm and said, ‘Come now, place them in your mouth and keep them there until I find the water cup again.’
I pretended to do as he said, and I heard his hands slithering over the clay floor, trying not to upset the cup when his fingers found it. At last, as my heart thumped and the sweat ran down my breast, he said, ‘I have it. Now all is set, Electra. Take it gently, for every drop is precious.’
I held the cup in my hands and, in the dusk, felt its coldness, felt the smooth glaze on its sides. Soon, I thought, I may be as cold and my skin as smooth and waxen.
Pylades whispered through the dusk, ‘Farewell, wife, and may the journey be a swift one back into the sunlight.’
43
My trembling fingers were on the point of putting the pellets into my dry mouth, when suddenly my ears were filled with a great rustling, as though the leather wings of Furies were being rubbed together close to me in the twilit cell. This sound came so violently, that I almost dropped the cup.
I thought: So now I know that I have chosen wrong all my days, even when I thought I was choosing right. The deaths of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, of Aegisthus and poor Rarus, are laid at my door. And the madness of my brother. So the god speaks to me in the darkness and tells me of my crimes. Yet he cannot hold me responsible for Iphigenia: I would never have hurt her in ten lifetimes.
I thought again: I did not sacrifice my sister, I only dreamed of her ending in the cavern by the sea-shore. And it was from this sacrifice that all other deaths inevitably came. So, why should I carry their blame? If the god’s lightning strikes a tree, then that tree topples and crushes a house, and that house falls and kills a man, whose children starve because he is no longer there to provide for them—who killed the children? Surely it was the god with his lightning? His was the first step in the journey, one would say. Why, then, if there is a law that governs men from above, should the Furies come for me in this cell? Or can even gods fall into error and punish the wrong one? Or are they jealous, like common men, and anxious to prevent another’s happiness and escape? Or are they cowards, willing to shift the blame on to others for the wrongful deeds they have themselves committed? Do the gods, fearing even greater gods too vast for man’s understanding, lay their own faults at the door of humankind, so hoping to forestall judgement on themselves?
All these thoughts came to me in the dark. Then, on an impulse, I whispered, ‘Do you hear the rustle of wings, Pylades?’
As I stood close to him, I felt his limbs trembling, and I heard him say, in a dry voice, ‘Yes. They are outside the door.’
Someone else heard his whisper also, for a man’s voice spoke then, not a voice I knew: a rough voice, speaking words that were barely intelligible to me. It was as though someone with a mouth full of pebbles tried to speak the Hellene tongue, like an Egyptian talking-bird, trained by a Phoenician to squawk Greek, so as to attract a buyer by its few cadences of tone that resembled language, but were not language.
This voice said, ‘Is there anyone inside? Who is there? Speak, or I shall shoot arrows. Who is it?’
Pylades was the first to find his voice. He called out, ‘Electra, the princess, and Pylades, her consort, are here.’
We heard the brutish voice outside the door speaking to someone else, repeating our names. Then the rustling came again and this time I recognised it, not for the wings of the Eumenides, but the rubbing of sheepskin jerkins and hide shoes against the stones outside.
Through the door’s grating the red light of a resin torch glowed, the wood crashed back, and then we were surrounded by men. I could not see them clearly, but they seemed shaggy and big. Their hands were hard and savage; the rancid stench of uncured sheepskins came to my nostrils. One of them shouted in my ear, ‘You must come. Our king waits for you.’
Then another bustled against us and called out, ‘Let me take her to him. It is my right. I am the son of his oldest wife and I claim this girl as my own.’
The first voice answered, ‘She will go to no one. The king will use her for his own before he takes her head. Leave her to me.’
I was pushed about among these men as though I were not a living creature, but a bundle of merchandise without feelings or thoughts. The cup and the pills were knocked from my hands. Now I wished I had them again: now they seemed like friends to me.
I heard Pylades grunting as he scuffled, and about him there was much stir, as though he had dealt shrewd blows in the darkness. But there was a shout, the sound of a heavy thud, and a groan; then things were quieter
in the cell and I was rushed towards the corridor, where torches flared. Once, as I was half-dragged along, like a swimmer in a strong sea, I turned back my head and, gazing between shaggy heads, saw Pylades, white-faced and limp, his arms swinging helplessly, following me on the shoulders of four men who carried rude-thonged flint axes. Their broad faces were streaked with soot and red ochre. Their blue eyes stared out from the paint and the ragged hair like the eyes of madmen. They were as strong as the great apes of Libya: they stank like the rams of Leuctra, massed in their closed pens during a long winter. Their smell oppressed me so deeply that I almost fainted.
And all the while, as they carried me along passages and up stairways, their hands were at me, so savagely that I could have howled; and at last so often that I accepted them dumbly and with no more feeling, as a shepherd, out on the bare hills when the thunder rages and the lightning plays all about him, must come to accept the storm —grateful only that he is not burned or riven like the grass and trees about him.
So we came up at last to the Great Court, where the pillars were and soft music used to sound. But in the light of many torches, I saw that the pillars were now hacked and charred, and, instead of sweet music, there was only the sound of rough laughter, the babble of outlandish voices, and the constant clash of weapons. The Great Court was swarming with men, all of them as ragged and dirty as our captors.
Then suddenly I was flung on the broken pavement in the centre of the Court, in a small cleared space. Pylades fell beside me, shook his head, then got to his knees. I had thought him dead and was glad to see him smile again, though painfully.
‘Courage, Electra,’ he said from bleeding lips.
A whip cracked and Pylades fell again. I looked up in fury and saw that we lay almost under the hooves of a shaggy mountain horse. On its broad back sat a man, his bowed legs, wrapped in sheepskin leggings, bent round the horse’s belly, the toes turned inwards as though he had been a rider all his days and clipped his mount close with as natural a motion as other men use in putting meat into their mouths, or cupping their hand to drink from a stream.
This horseman was a man to look at twice. Though his legs were short and thin, as a born rider’s are, and his body thick and hunched from much galloping, his face was fine in an untamed way. It was broad and brown and darkly-bearded, but the ears and nose and lips were delicately formed, and the pale eyes were sharp and quick, missing no movement in the Court, yet seeming to be neglectful in their pride. His brown hands were fine and still, too, on the reins, though I noticed that his right hand lacked the two middle fingers. He was a swordsman as well as being a rider.
From beneath his round leather helmet, plated with bronze strips, his thick dark hair fell to his chin, no more, and was then chopped roughly across in a line, as though his camp-barber had used a meat-knife, or a dagger.
He wore no ornaments, save bronze bands at his throat, and about his wrists. His heavy squat body was protected by a horse-hide corselet, shaped in boiling water to his form, so that almost every muscle was reproduced in the moulded leather. This corselet was studded at its edges, at waist, and neck, and arm-pits, with gold nail-heads, which told that he was no common man. A short kilt of black bearskin hid his thighs from me. A thick blue cloak of Dorian frieze hung heavily behind him, on to his horse’s back, held at the shoulders by two copper brooches as big as plates, and set with garnets and jet.
At his left side he wore an iron sword as long as a four year’s child and as broad in the blade as my wrist. Its haft was bound with gold wire and its edge was full of hack-marks the whole length
All these things held my eye. He was like one of the rich Outlander kings who had sailed with my father from Aulis many years ago; yet not so—for I could not imagine this rider so forgetting his own pride as to follow another king; I could not picture him kneeling before my father, and taking the oath of subservience.
He broke the silence, saying abruptly,’ You are mistress of this place? You are Electra, the old king’s only blood-kin?’
I nodded, half-afraid. He pulled in his restless horse and said, ‘This is your husband, Pylades?’ He flicked his broad thumb towards my husband.
Once more I nodded, and dared to say, ‘And who are you, sir?’
He threw back his head, so that his stiff black beard jutted upwards for a moment, and laughed. He said, ‘No one you know, lady. I am a cattle-king from north of Thessaly. I am the Scourge of God, yes, a Dorian, lady. I come to make a clean sweep of Hellene rottenness, so that the world may begin afresh. My name is Thoas. Does that satisfy you?’
Pylades had got to his knees again. His face was working and I feared he would leap at the horseman and have the sword put through him. I began to plead, my fingers touching the rider’s horny feet.
‘King Thoas, pay no heed to my husband. He has suffered much and acts without thought.’
Thoas glanced at Pylades, briefly like a hawk, and said, ‘Then he is my sort of man. There is a place for him behind me, if he chooses. As for you, lady, it seems to me that you acted with a great deal of thought, from what I hear, dragging down all your enemies so carefully, until there were none left!’
I hung my head and said that all my life I had only acted as the god prompted. King Thoas laughed again and said,’ Was it the god, or the goddess, Electra? Your family seems to have been divided on this.’
I was puzzled and said,’What do you mean, sir?’
He beckoned among the thick crowd behind him, and a cloaked woman came forward on a white pony. When she was beside him, she opened her hood and I saw that it was my sister, Chrysothemis— but now so grown-up and altered that I hardly recognised her. Her face was streaked with black and blue war-paint and on the sheepskin saddle before her sat a red-haired little boy of about three, mother-naked and twisting at the pony’s mane.
‘This is my wife, who is renamed Thoasa,’ said the man. ‘She has told me of the many gods you prayed to in Mycenae. But now there will be only one god, and his name will be Thoas!’
My sister smiled down on me, but so pityingly that I did not know how to greet her. She saved me the trouble by saying, ‘All debts are paid, if one but waits, Electra. So now I sit on a horse above you, and find you on your knees.’
I said, ‘Yes, sister, and I find you with your face painted like a barbarian. The gods have strange patterns for us all.’
Chrysothemis did not take up my taunts, but only stroked the little boy’s head absently and said, ‘You thought to be Queen of Mycenae when they were all dead, but, you see, it will not happen so. King Thoas and I shall sit here and rule Hellas. And when we are gone, this little boy will sit on in our place and be the god-king after us.’
I was angry at her words, because I had never wanted to be queen.
I said, ‘Orestes is the only king here, sister, and in your heart you must know that.’
She smiled again and half-turned her head away. At last she said, ‘Orestes is dead—or so mad that the bears in the forests will tear his limbs from him. That is no king, sister.’
King Thoas coughed as though he was a dog growling. ‘Have done with this,’ he said. ‘We have come here to fulfil the god’s command, not to taunt our prisoners. Go back to your place among the other women.’
My sister bowed her head and swung her quiet pony round. There was no leave-taking between us.
Then King Thoas said thickly, ‘You may think we are thieves, yet I would remind you that our coming has saved your lives. The chair of Mycenae is little enough price to pay for that, especially among soft-fleshed creatures such as you are. Is that not so?’
When I did not answer, he said, ‘If you still have dreams of power, there is a place for you both, behind me—though I must tell you that from now on you will forfeit any claim to noble blood, and will ride among the least of my followers. You see, I come to bring a new order to this crumbling kingdom. The choice is yours,’
I cursed him in my new anger, but he did not seem to mind. He only
nodded and said, ‘They call us Dorian uncouth—well, it is but a word, and words break no bones. So, I have your answer, Electra, and it suits me well enough. But never think that you will turn the years back. We are here now, and here we stay. Your day is ended, and for the rest of your years you will proclaim to all who see you that your turn has passed and that you hold your life from Dorian. You must carry their mark, so that all shall see.’
Then he turned and shouted over his shoulder, ‘Bring the fire, my friends.’ Men shambled forward with a low brazier, supported by staves. On to its glowing charcoal they placed two broad-bladed Dorian daggers. As I watched the iron begin to redden, King Thoas called out once more, ‘Where, for your sister, Thoasa?’ And I heard the voice of Chrysothemis answer firmly, ‘Where it was for me— but deeper, since she must carry it always.’
King Thoas nodded down to me, like an impassive farmer judging the quality and growth of his cattle. ‘You see how fond these sisters are of one another!’ he said. Then, his face still smiling, he gestured to the men about him. They ran forward and took hold of me, bending me backwards over their knees till I thought I would break, pulling the front of my robe open, and holding my threshing limbs firmly, so that I was as helpless as a calf. They must have done the same to Pylades, for I heard him swearing and roaring, like a trapped boar.
Then one of them laid the broad-bladed iron over my thumping heart, bearing so hard on it that the god let me know sleep. I was not away long, it seemed, for when I found sense again, the iron was still there, but lying upon the other side. I wept and heard myself promising them a fortune to let me go.
And when the grief grew too great for bearing, I let the darkness come down over me again, for these hands and their iron stood outside the limits of pity.
They were throwing water over me when I knew myself again. I lay with my lips against the charred and broken tiled floor. Pylades was near to me, his shoulders shaking as though he was a boy again.