I did not know how I felt in my heart about this news, but I knew that my child was afraid and unsure, and that it was in my power to ease her worries. How many hours had I spent as a mother soothing away nightmares in the darkness, sponging fever from hot foreheads, singing lullabies and allaying troubles? My husband sailed soon to slaughter enemies in the pursuit of power and glory, but I had been slaying monsters for years, smoothing the path at my children’s feet so that they could step confidently into the future. And if ever there was a time to do that, it was now.
I put my arms around her and drew her close. ‘It is a great honour,’ I said, and I felt the shudder of her body against me. Her shoulders felt so fragile, and her heart pounded so fast. She could have been a little songbird in my hand. ‘The time for marriage has been drawing near; I confess I did not think it would be so soon, but Achilles is a great man. Your husband will be the stuff of legends, I am sure. To be his wife will be a blessing. And –’ I drew back, tilted her face to look at me – ‘his mother loves him dearly. He nearly missed this war for her. He must be kind, to care for her enough to give up his chance at glory.’
She nodded. Stepping back, she squared her slender shoulders and blinked hard. The tears that had threatened to fall were gone, and a half-smile hovered at her lips. ‘If you approve, I know it will be well,’ she said, and my heart twisted again. She was old enough to be married, but still young enough to believe I could solve any problem.
I was grateful to the gossips for letting the secret slip. When the herald delivered the official message – Agamemnon sends for his eldest daughter to give her in marriage to the warrior Achilles before they sail to Troy – both Iphigenia and I were able to smile serenely before the court. We were to leave the very next day and the great flurry of tasks before us swept us up in what was unmistakably a ripple of excitement. Chrysothemis, at ten years of age, was thrilled by the prospect of a wedding, and woefully disappointed not to be allowed to accompany us, but Agamemnon’s message had been unambiguous in its instructions – and besides, the journey would be hot and dusty and arduous. ‘You must stay to look after Elektra,’ I told her, and she rolled her eyes.
‘Elektra always needs looking after.’
I was too busy to reprove her. It was true that my youngest daughter was prone to illness; every malady of childhood seemed to grip her. Many times, I had feared that one of them would take her from us. I had prayed for her survival, called in healers and nursed her with a fiery determination I would never have known I possessed. I had felt myself close to that abyss more than once in her short life, but always we had pulled her back from the brink and she lived on. A pale and sickly child, without the strength and ebullience of her sisters, but alive. We treated her like a delicate vase; Agamemnon in particular. I was grateful for how, of all our daughters, she had captured his affection. She worshipped him so, and he couldn’t resist her adoration. Even I couldn’t deny the sweetness of seeing her shadowed little face light up when her father scooped her on to his lap, and of hearing the thin note of her laughter at his rumbling voice. In those moments, it was easy to dismiss the slave-woman’s stories about his family. I kept them buried deep in my mind, never letting them surface. No one had told them for years. We would forget them, I had resolved, and they would have no power over us again.
Elektra was too young, really, to understand why it was that Iphigenia and I were leaving, but she was quite composed as they waved us off in the first rays of dawn the next morning, holding on to Chrysothemis’ hand, Agamemnon’s dog at her side. She yawned and turned to her big sister to ask if there were fresh figs for breakfast before we had even got beyond the palace gates.
The rising sun was just staining the sky golden over the tops of the mountains as we climbed into the chariot. The journey would be long, and all the cushions heaped upon our seats would not do much to protect us from the bumpy road. I felt I should use the hours that lay before us to impart some useful maternal advice on what was to come for Iphigenia. I wondered what I could really tell her about marriage.
When Helen and I had talked of our husbands back in Sparta, I could see that we were naive, grasping at the prospect of sophistication and womanhood before us without understanding what it would be like. Even at sixteen, neither of us had really mentioned love. The bards would sing of it, but it seemed more the stuff of myth and legend than reality. My youthful heart might have swelled when I heard how Orpheus adored his bride Eurydice so much that, when she stepped upon a venomous snake on their wedding day, he followed her all the way down into the depths of the Underworld and, despite his quaking fear, played his lyre for Hades so beautifully that his wife was released. I might have shed tears when I heard how he walked ahead of her, leading her towards the light of the world above, but could not help but glance back once – just once! Alas, the condition that Hades had set was that Orpheus must not look at her until she was safely restored to the mortal world, and so she crumpled at his feet, her body, which had been gradually transforming back to flesh, becoming insubstantial air once more. Lost to him forever.
Those were the romantic stories of girlhood. They weren’t the truth of marriage. So, I could not tell my daughter of love, exactly. I could hope that when she looked at Achilles, she would see enough of a kinship in his eyes to know that they might lead a peaceable, contented life together. I could tell her that the joy of true love would come when she held her first baby in her arms – before then, even, when she felt it roll and squirm within her, when she sang to her growing belly and placed her hands on the warm, taut skin and marvelled at the unimaginable miracle that was to be hers. But I could remember the panic I had felt myself at contemplating such a thing: the fear that walked hand in hand with the happiness, the shadow that hung across that joyful prospect. When I looked at my slim, lithe daughter, I could not help but feel the worry stir within me. We would lay down our lives for our children, and every time we faced birth, we stood on the banks of that great river that separated the living from the dead. A massed army of women, facing that perilous passage with no armour to protect us, only our own strength and hope that we would prevail.
It didn’t feel like the right conversation to have on the way to her wedding.
Fortunately, she spoke first. ‘I’m glad we get to see Father again before he sails to war,’ she said.
‘I am, too,’ I replied. ‘We didn’t part on the happiest of terms; I’m glad of the chance to make peace before he goes.’
‘Why not?’ She was intrigued, and something about the intimacy of the chariot ride made it easy to talk, to say the things that had been turning over in my mind.
‘Helen is my sister,’ I said. ‘The way the men speak of her . . .’
The chariot jolted harshly beneath us, and the sun was climbing higher in the sky, beginning to beat down on the thin canopy that shaded us. Dust flew from the wheels, and I wondered what state our fine dresses would be in by the time we arrived. Iphigenia shifted a little on her cushions. ‘I have heard some things,’ she said, cautiously.
No doubt she had. Hardly anything else had been talked of since we found it out. ‘Menelaus is angry,’ I said, ‘and I don’t blame him. But your father should have enough affection for me to think of protecting my sister. He did not, and so I was angry when he left. I didn’t bid him a very kind farewell.’
‘He says the war will be won within days. Even if we were not to see him now, you would have had your chance to reconcile soon.’
My kind girl, always seeing the best in everyone. I wasn’t so sure. My tongue had been sharp in my last conversation with Agamemnon, and I regretted some of it, though I still felt the injustice of his words.