‘Just that he is a great soldier,’ I said. ‘He will be a great asset to your father in this war.’ I searched for more. ‘I know you must be afraid,’ I began.
She shook her head. ‘I am not afraid.’ She looked at me, her face soft and open in the flickering light. ‘There is an adventure ahead – a new land, new people.’
I remembered leaving Sparta, coming to Mycenae as Agamemnon’s bride. How frightening it was for everything to change, but that thrill too, of throwing up the dice in the air and seeing how they would land.
‘His mother is a sea-nymph,’ Iphigenia went on. ‘I wonder if I will meet her one day; what would that be like?’ Her voice gathered pace, a throb of excitement running through it. ‘I have heard that when he was a baby, she anointed him with ambrosia and set him on a pyre to burn away what was mortal within him and leave only the immortal. Only his father, Peleus, came in and stopped her, for fear that she would incinerate him whole and entire.’
‘Or that she dipped him in the River Styx by his heel to give him invulnerability,’ I suggested drily. ‘He is a man about whom many legends abound.’
‘I wonder what the truth of them might be,’ Iphigenia said, a little dreamily.
I caught a sigh in my throat. The stories about him made him sound fantastical; I hoped the reality would not be a disappointing one. ‘You will find out,’ I told her. ‘I do not suppose your father is coming tonight after all, so let us sleep. Tomorrow will be quite a day.’
I heard the movement outside the tent, waking me from a deep slumber. At my side, the bed was empty and rumpled. I sat up, searching the grey dark for Iphigenia. I could just make out her shape, pulling her dress over her head.
‘Can you hear them?’ she asked me softly.
Footsteps outside, a host of them, and the soft murmur of male voices. I shook away the fragments of my dream. It still felt like the middle of the night, but Iphigenia had tied back the drapes of the tent, and the darkness was leeching slowly from the sky. The sound of the men was moving away; they must be going to make preparations for the wedding.
I struggled awkwardly to my feet, the bulk of pregnancy making me stiff and slow. ‘Come, let me help you,’ I told her.
The yellow fabric draped over her, gathered at the shoulder and falling in folds across her body. I combed my fingers through her hair, letting the curls fall around her neck. ‘You are beautiful,’ I said tenderly.
The murky light filtering through the entrance was obscured for a moment. A dark shape hovered just outside. ‘It is time,’ came a man’s voice.
‘Where is Agamemnon?’ I demanded. Surely he would at last appear.
‘He waits for his daughter at the altar.’
I had hoped he would be here before, that I could see him before the wedding took place, but apparently it was not to be. I hurried to dress myself, wishing that we had more time to prepare. This strange, rushed business was not how a wedding ought to be conducted. Still, I held my tongue. Iphigenia seemed to tingle with emotion, and I feared that she might be overcome with the immensity of what awaited.
‘Come, I will be with you,’ I whispered, and took her hand to lead her outside.
The early morning was misty and damp, a welcome respite from the blazing sun of the previous day. Through the haze of drizzle, I saw her eyes burning with fierce emotion, and I drew her close to me and kissed her forehead. No words passed between us.
The guards that encircled our tent now flanked us at either side. We walked across the unfamiliar terrain, past the final set of tents. I strained to see what was ahead in the still silence.
As we passed the edge of the camp, the grasses beneath our feet gave way to sand. Behind us, the tents were a looming mass in the dark. Ahead, the sun had just begun to emerge from beyond the flat mirror of the sea, and there on the beach I could see an altar, temporarily erected on a platform on the sand. The figures that stood there were only dark silhouettes, but one of them must be Agamemnon.
Iphigenia’s hand squeezed mine. I looked at her; she smiled at me, though her eyes threatened to fill, and we both breathed a strange, exhilarated laugh.
Just as I opened my mouth to speak, an arm locked about my throat. I thrashed in its iron grip, trying desperately to turn my head, to see who had seized me. At my side, two soldiers took hold of Iphigenia’s arms, and her little hand was pulled from mine as they marched her down towards that altar, away from me. Panic gripped me; what was the meaning of this? I pulled at the arm fastened so tightly around me, clawing futilely to escape.
The sun rose higher, orange spilling through the sky, illuminating the figures at the altar. I could see my husband, standing there. He did not move. The baby within me stirred as though it sensed my distress; it rolled and kicked as I wrestled with that solid, immobile bulk that held me fast.
And Iphigenia was marched onwards, out of my reach. Agamemnon watched her come. The mist was dissipating in the golden rays of the sun. His face was blank.
I whipped my head from side to side. From every angle, the army watched. Great sullen ranks of men, gathered on this beach in the dawn light, as still and silent as the air.
Odysseus was there, next to my husband; Menelaus on the other side. I did not recognise another face. My breath came in sharp gasps. I searched for Achilles, though I would not know him if I saw him. Against all evidence to the contrary, I searched for signs that this was indeed a wedding, that somehow this could be explained.
At the altar, Agamemnon drew forth a knife. The blade shone in the glow of the sunrise behind him.
I saw the growing realisation on my daughter’s face in the moment that she saw what he intended, and the fear leapt into her eyes. A shriek tore from my throat and reverberated through the still air.
He had her in a moment, and spun her around to face the army from behind the altar, his arms holding her fast against him. He must have smelled her hair, felt its softness against his chest. She looked at me, my daughter, from her father’s grip. In that paralysed moment where nothing moved, I still thought that it was not real, that this could not happen.
His arm was so fast. It was a blur of movement, a slash through the air against her neck, her soft and precious neck. Before she slumped across the grooved wood of the altar, I saw the blood streaming across that beautiful yellow dress, and for a second I thought how it would be ruined now, how the stain would never fade, no matter how hard it was scrubbed between stones down at the river. The river, back in Mycenae, where Iphigenia would never return after all.
I do not know what noise I made, only that the arm at my neck suddenly loosened. Although my legs gave way beneath my body, I hauled myself across the sand, towards the broken body of my child. I wanted only to hold her, to see life flicker in her eyes, although her blood was spilling down from the altar, across the wooden slats beneath, dripping dark on to the sand. The wood was rough beneath my fingers, splintering the flesh as I gripped it and pulled myself to my feet.
A swirl of wind whipped my hair across my face, plastered it to my streaming eyes. I heard the wind ripple across the water, the splash of waves all at once against the shore. The rumble through the crowd of realisation. Appreciation.
Iphigenia’s body slid from the wooden altar, thudding against the platform. I pushed my hair out of my face. The blood, the blood was everywhere, smeared across her drained skin, thickening in her hair, her hair that I had run through my fingers that morning.
He was walking away already. His cloak rippled out behind him in the new-sprung breeze. He had not spoken a word.