Helen Had a Sister

by Penelope Haines

I sat for a long time, my head bowed, my hands clasped uselessly in front of me. Eventually the sun’s warmth became uncomfortable, and I went from intense cold to sweatily hot and had to move.

  I looked at my companions as I stood up. We had been together for so many years we were more than mistress and slaves. They were my friends, and they both looked stricken. I gave them a shaky smile. “He died quickly,” I said. “He must have known very little.” I wondered if Aegisthus even had time to recognise Orestes. The boy he had known would now be a man.

  “I want to go inside,” I said. “Io, could you go and help Nerissa and Chryseis with the laying out? Charis, come with me. I need to prepare.”

  I didn’t elaborate on what my preparations were for, and Charis seemed surprised when I required her to wash my hands, change the dress stained with Aegisthus’s blood and dress my hair. Perhaps she thought I would be issuing a call to arms for the guard, but she didn’t question me.

  I was grateful for her silence.

  When she had finished, she brought me more wine and some olives. I thanked her and dismissed her. She started to protest, but I waved her away.

  “Thank you, Charis, but I need to be alone now.”

  She left reluctantly.

  I looked at my reflected image, trying to understand what Orestes would see when he came to me. If he had changed, then so had I. I looked every one of my years.

  Was I afraid to die? I probed that thought again, as you would a missing tooth, and found no pain. I would welcome death if it meant I could join Aegisthus.

  “Wait for me,” I said again.

  I tried to compose my mind for prayer and contemplation, to ready myself for the afterlife, but such thoughts require a quiet mind, and mine was seething with swirling emotions. There was grief, of course, in its many facets, for Aegisthus, for Orestes and even for Electra. I tried to envisage a tomorrow without me in it but lacked the imagination. I wondered what Mycenae’s fate would be without Aegisthus or me to protect and guard her. Had Orestes returned for the throne as well as for vengeance? Did he intend to rule? I wasn’t native born but I had given my life to serving this city I had come to as a bride. I would like Mycenae to have a good ruler.

  I thought bleakly that Electra’s judgment was the one that would be accepted by history. I didn’t suppose I would be remembered as a great queen and custodian. I would be remembered as the queen who murdered her husband and was, in turn, murdered by her son. Our priests teach that our fate in the afterlife depends on being remembered and honoured by the living. By such measure, I was unlikely to reach Elysium, regardless of how well I had honoured the gods during my life, or however many sacrifices I had offered. I just hoped the gods judged us by our good intentions, otherwise I was likely to be sentenced to Tartarus.

  I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with Aegisthus, wherever we were sent.

  I took the wine and went outside to the terrace to look over the city. The view was beautiful, and in the far distance I could see the sea.

  It was pleasantly cool but the balustrade and pillars held the warmth of the day’s sun and pressed comfortably against my back as I sat on the railing in the twilight. Beyond, in the shrubbery, I could hear the susurrations of little night creatures starting to go about their business. The scent of jasmine hung in the still air and it was magically beautiful. Moonrise would be early tonight. Last night it was full and lit my room with its silver light.

  It was as good as anywhere to wait. I shut my eyes and leaned back against the pillar and let the long minutes pass.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY ONE

  ‘We can and must pray to the gods that our sojourn on earth will continue happy beyond the grave. This is my prayer, and may it come to pass.’

  Plato: The Death of Socrates

  I HAD THE ADVANTAGE, MY EYES HAVING been long adjusted to the dark. He came onto the terrace silhouetted against the flickering lights inside the palace. He paused and advanced cautiously. He knew I was there, but seated in the moon shadow of the pillar, I was invisible. I watched him in silence for some minutes, trying to take his measure. What sort of man had he become? Was there anything left of the loving, laughing boy I had cherished?

  At last I moved slightly. He was quick. I saw him swing towards me, then stop some five paces off. We looked at each other warily.

  I broke the silence.

  “Good evening, Orestes.” I cursed myself for such a banal greeting, but truly, what else was there to say? Sometimes courtesy is the only defence.

  I heard the quick intake of his breath. He said nothing, but shifted his weight. Something in his motion tore at my heart. He still had some of the awkwardness of a boy about him. I looked at him, searching for family similarities. His early resemblance to his father had gone. He was taller and slighter than Agamemnon. Where his father had been built like a wrestler with short, bulky musculature, Orestes was of finer build, with long, lean muscles. He looked like a runner.

  Unconsciously my head tipped sideways as I assessed him. If anything, I thought, he looked most like my own father Tyndareus. I could see the resemblance in the shape of the eyes and nose.

  He gave a sort of growl. “Stop staring at me, Mother.”

  I gasped. His voice was deep.

  “Sorry,” I said. “You look like your grandfather Tyndareus.”

  He turned awkwardly, shaking his head as if to ward off the comment. “I’m here to avenge my father,” he said roughly.

  The words fell like stones between us.

  “I know,” I replied.

  The words said, he seemed at a loss to know how to proceed.

  “Come and sit beside me,” I invited. “Talk for a while.”

  I saw anger in his face. “You won’t sway me by sweet talk. I have a duty to perform.”

  “I wasn’t trying to stop you,” I said tartly. “You’re the one with the sword in your hand, which you can use anytime you want.”

  Aegisthus’s words came back to me. Don’t talk to your victim, just kill them. Now I understood his meaning. Talk weakens a killer.

  Orestes looked embarrassed. I could almost feel sorry for him.

  I marvelled at my calm. “I haven’t seen you in seven years,” I said more softly. “Can you not satisfy my curiosity for a few moments? We loved each other once.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Everything. What sort of a man have you become? Have you a woman? Are you happy? Have you had a good life?

  I shook my head and didn’t ask any of them.

  “Promise me you will rule Mycenae wisely.”

  He looked startled. Perhaps he’d never considered his responsibilities to the kingdom.

  “It’s your inheritance. You are the last heir.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve not thought about it.”

  Silence fell between us.

  “I have missed you terribly,” I said. “There has never been a day when your absence hasn’t grieved me.” I found I needed him to know that, and with that need came others, as if my heart had come back to life. “I want you to know I have always loved you,” I said. It would be terrible to die and not have told him. It was terrible to die and never regain the love we had lost. Regret pierced me for all that could have been but wasn’t.

  “Will you grant me your forgiveness for what I have to do?”

  I stared at him in amazement. Old habits resurfaced: the reactions of a mother, eager to please her son. I was almost tempted to agree, before common sense reasserted itself.

  “No. You know I cannot do that,” I said sadly. “You killed Aegisthus, a man unfailingly kind to you. There was no justice in that death. It was murder. And as for my death, matricide offends all gods. There is not a female god in all Olympus who will not curse you for the act.”

  He bowed his head. “I must do my duty,” he muttered.

  Against my will my body betrayed me and I began to shake. I hated that he would
see it, know that at the end I was afraid.

  He hesitated then, and my nerves and patience wore thin. I could see his anguish, and it dragged at my heart. I hurt him by living, I hurt him by dying, this son I loved with all my being.

  I took a wobbly breath. Better to get it over with. There was no easy way to go through this, and the knowledge made me rough with him. “Oh, never mind,” I said curtly. “Get on with it then. I only ask that you give Aegisthus and me a decent burial with proper funeral rites. There is no need to shame us in death.”

  I lowered my feet to the ground and stood, readying myself for the blow. I could barely force myself to stand upright, my knees were shaking so hard. I couldn’t have taken a step forward.

  “Make it quick and clean,” I asked. I was ashamed that my voice wobbled.

  “I don’t want to do this, but I must,” he said. The words were wrung from him. I saw the pain in his eyes.”

  “So be it,” I replied. We stood still for a moment. There was nothing left to say.

  I was watching his eyes and saw them change. He reached for my arm and spun me quickly so I staggered back against his shoulder. I saw the sword lift to my throat, felt it penetrate my flesh. I heard rather than felt the skin tear, but there was little pain. I tasted the metallic taste of my own blood in my mouth as he made the cut. The world spun and for a moment it became dark.

  And then I stepped free.

  I watched as Orestes slowly lowered my discarded flesh to the ground, and winced at the terrible groan of grief he made.

  I turned to the shade that stood at my shoulder and smiled. Aegisthus was with me, as I had known he would be. I looked behind once more at my son, now prostrate and crying beside the body I had left. Then, still smiling, I turned to walk beside Aegisthus, together on that dark road.

  AUTHOR’S

  NOTE

  Aftermath

  IN AESCHYLUS'S DRAMATIC TRILOGY, The Oresteia, prior to confronting Clytemnestra, Orestes had visited the oracle at Delphi to ask the god Apollo what he should do to avenge his father. The oracle replied that Orestes must kill his mother and her lover. Matricide, however, is a terrible sin. Following Clytemnestra’s death, the Furies, spirits of justice and vengeance, were enraged by his bloodguilt and pursued Orestes, tormenting him and driving him mad.

  Orestes fled to Delphi, but Apollo was powerless to help him against the Furies. Eventually the oracle instructed Orestes to go to Athens and present his case to the Areopagus, the ancient court of the elders. During the trial that followed, Orestes was supported both by Apollo and Athena, goddess of Athens. The jury was divided equally on their verdict, and Athena cast the deciding vote for acquittal. The Furies were eventually placated and given a cult in which they were called the Eumenides (the Kindly Ones).

  Orestes returned to Mycenae where he became ruler and eventually married Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen.

  * * *

  Clytemnestra’s story has fascinated people from Classical Greece through to contemporary times. This retelling of her life is an attempt to see and honour the woman behind the myth. Her motive for murdering her husband is usually presented as a political plot to bring her lover Aegisthus to power, or alternatively as jealous rage because Agamemnon brings Cassandra back from Troy with him. The more obvious motive, at least to my mind, of vengeance for Iphigenia’s murder, is largely ignored or treated as a relatively minor subtext by the ancient playwrights.

  Writing this novel has posed several problems. Many modern readers may only be familiar with Homer’s Illiad by way of the 2004 film Troy, a rather loose interpretation of Homer’s story which focussed exclusively on the Trojan war. In that adaptation the story of Clytemnestra had no part. Other readers may be familiar with her story through the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, although the myths and themes on which the plays are based come from much earlier sources, and there are several different and sometimes contradictory versions of events.

  One tradition has it that Clytemnestra’s first husband was Tantalus, King of Pisa. Agamemnon kills both Tantalus and their young son before making Clytemnestra his wife.

  Other variants are that Artemis substituted a young doe for Iphigenia on the altar at Aulis, whisking the girl away to serve in her temple at Tauris. Subsequent to his trial, Apollo orders Orestes to go to Tauris and bring back the statue of Artemis. There the siblings recognise each other and escape together, taking the statue with them.

  For the purpose of writing this novel, I have relied largely on Homer’s telling of the story and elected to use the most straightforward sequence of events as the narrative, although where possible I have mentioned such variants as serve to enrich the plot.

  Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Trojan War was considered to be non-historical, but the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was convinced that Troy was at Hissarlik in Turkey, and he took over the excavations on the site from its previous owner. This identification is now largely accepted by scholars. Whether the Trojan War actually occurred as Homer described is a harder question to answer. Those who believe the stories are true point to archaeological evidence of a catastrophic burning of Troy apparent at one level of the excavated ruins. If true, the war is generally dated between 1260 and 1240 BC, at the end of the Mycenaean period.

  As Homer didn’t compose The Iliad and The Odyssey until the 8th or 7th century BC, several centuries after the events, it is reasonable to assume his stories are a fusion of tales circulating around ancient sieges and expeditions by the Mycenaeans during the Bronze Age.

  I have simplified place names and certain terminology. Greece, of course, did not exist as a unified country until 1830, but I refer to ‘the Greek army’ as a simple collective to cover the myriad of kings and kingdoms involved in the Trojan conflict.

  Perhaps the hardest part of writing this book has been evoking a culture where patricide, matricide and fratricide are acceptable as tools to fulfil oaths of vengeance. The culture of war, violence and blood feud is a very different ethos to modern Western sensibilities, although it is not hard to find instances of it even today in our news media. I have elected a plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose approach, where I posit that human nature and motivations have changed little over the centuries, although cultural expressions of dangerous emotions may have altered as society has developed. We enjoy Shakespeare’s plays, or the Classical Greek tragedies precisely because we can still understand what drives the protagonists in these dramas.

  Please continue reading for a bonus excerpt from Penelope Haines’s next novel –

  Death

  on

  D’Urville

  Prologue

  THE BODY SLUMPED IN THE SAND. An abandoned shell of lifeless flesh, incontrovertibly dead. Dead, dead, dead.

  The words rang in the head and twined into a chain. A necklace of finality that could be grasped and wound round the fist like a talisman; a rosary of the joyful mysteries; a protection against the evil this man had tried to spread.

  But his words weren’t dead. He was a writer and they would still live on in his computer.

  They must be destroyed.

  It was a short step to the house. A quick glance around to see if there were watchers, but the landscape was empty. The house was unlocked. Who locked their home here, when the total population of the bay only grew to around twenty, and that in high summer?

  The laptop sat on the table. A tea towel wrapped round the hand to prevent fingerprints. Fumbling to find the keys through the cloth, but it was easy to identify and erase the file.

  It would have been useful to have time to search the place, but that would have to wait. For now it was enough to know the man and his words had been wiped out.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  I FELT THE WHEELS TOUCH ON GRAVEL and let the aircraft roll forward down the strip. I gave a sigh of completely unadulterated pleasure. (I was alone and entitled to do so.) God, but I loved my j
ob, and on a day like that when the sky was clear, the wind calm and the surroundings so breathtakingly beautiful, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. My office was my plane. It didn’t come much closer to heaven than that.

  I turned the aircraft and taxied back, pulling off the strip in the space beside the barn. It was the only area wide enough for me to park without obstructing the runway. Another aircraft was already there in the shade of the dunes. I took a look and gave a snort of recognition. I knew that plane, knew it really well. ZK-FOG was registered to Paraparaumu Aviation, and I had watched Roger sign her out to a pair of foreign pilots a week ago. The little Piper Cub was supposed to be miles to the east of us, somewhere in the vicinity of Kaikoura.

  How it had ended up on the strip at D’Urville Island I couldn’t imagine. I thought Roger would be surprised as well. He had authorised the pilots to fly in New Zealand and accepted their intentions when he leased the aircraft. I wondered whether he had specifically briefed the pair for strip flying. It’s one thing to land at a promulgated airport, quite another to fly into the often unpredictable conditions experienced on little country strips. There could be insurance repercussions if the pilots had strayed beyond the limits of their hire.

  I parked into the wind and shut the engine down. I clambered out and took a minute or two to stretch my legs before climbing up to dip the wing tanks and check the fuel levels.

  Jorge wasn’t there waiting for me, which was unusual, nor was there any sign of FOG’s two pilots. I looked at my watch. 3.50 pm. I hoped Jorge wasn’t going to be late. Sod’s Law if he was, of course.

  It had been a year since David and I separated, a year of quiet living while I readjusted to singledom. I hadn’t seen anyone significant, and hadn’t wanted to. Tonight’s dinner with Sam would be my first venture into the social world of dating. I wasn’t certain it was a good idea. Sam was a nice guy but …

  It was the ‘but’ that worried me. I wasn’t sure whether the issue was Sam, or my response to him. I appreciated his sense of humour, and found him a pleasant colleague. We’d met at work where he had a habit of popping in for a visit in his spare time from running the flight information service in the airport tower. I liked him, but he didn’t set my world ablaze. Still, at twenty-six, did I really expect a guy to sweep me off my feet? I’d already invested four years of my life in one unsatisfactory relationship.