It was only Helen who moved, Helen who wasn’t held back like Hecabe was, Helen who darted forward and wrapped her arms around me. For all Menelaus’ empty threats of justice in Sparta, everyone knew she was going back home, back to a life that still existed. As she embraced me, she whispered into my ear, ‘My sister, Clytemnestra, she is queen of Mycenae. She will be kind.’
I shivered. Helen’s words, the last fervent comfort she could give me, rang hollow. I knew already there was no sanctuary for me in Mycenae. As Helen stepped away from me, a desperation engulfed me; if only I was boarding her ship; if only I could go to Sparta with her. The urge to beg flared within me, a howl rising up, but I clamped my lips together. I wouldn’t give these men the satisfaction of refusing the pleas of a Trojan princess.
In Agamemnon’s tent, he drank wine and boasted. I stared at a gleaming gold plate, watching how the light slid across its shining surface. I wondered if it came from Troy – if it had been in the palace yesterday, if I had seen it a hundred times in my life and never noticed it.
‘She’s a priestess of Apollo, you know.’ It didn’t feel like Agamemnon could be talking about me, but I knew that he was. ‘Apollo, Troy’s protector.’ He laughed harshly. ‘He isn’t sending a plague for this one, though.’
At this, the men stirred uneasily. They were so close to going home, I thought, their victory scraped after ten long years, the dragging war made longer by the foolish pride of Agamemnon and men like him. At the very end of it all, on the eve of their homecoming, he dared to talk like this. I felt their eyes flicker nervously to the opening of the tent entrance, to the blank sky beyond, as though the god himself might be roused to anger, might strike them down where they stood.
I knew better, though. The gods had left Troy. They might have stridden across the battlefield once, when the war raged at its most ferocious. Even Aphrodite had sullied her pristine feet on the blood-streaked mud of the Trojan plains for her beloved Paris. Ares had rampaged beside Trojan fighters, his bloodcurdling yell bringing terror to Greek hearts. The great, black, leathery wings of Eris had rasped in the air just above their heads, carnage unfolding in her wake. And Apollo, sleek and sinuous, along with his wild sister, Artemis, they had stood with us, too. It wasn’t enough. And, in our defeat, they had deserted us.
All that was left to me of Apollo was the ache in my head, the dull throb of the tender split in my mind. The unpredictable streaking flash, like lightning searing across the sky, leaving its imprint against the back of my eyelids. It flickered when Agamemnon put his clammy hands on me, when I felt the heat of his rancid breath on my face. A strange comfort from the curse that had so blighted my existence, the power that had been my pride and my ruin, as the conviction settled over me like the fine mist of morning, as I thought of Helen’s final words to me before I was torn away.
I knew what was waiting for him in Mycenae.
Part III
21
Elektra
As the beacons light in their great chain from Troy to Mycenae, I stay at the window, held rapt by the sight. I have never felt like this before. The flames in the darkness are brighter and more beautiful than any dawn I’ve known; they herald a new day for Mycenae, washed in light, golden and magnificent. I’m rejuvenated, dizzy with joy: everything is lifted from me all at once, and I feel so weightless I could soar into the sky with no need of Icarus’ wings. I’ve waited for this for so long, I’d stopped believing it would ever truly happen. I’ve always had faith that my father would win the war, of course. But I have grown so used to a life of listless waiting, I hardly know what to do now it is so nearly over.
And so he will return. I have stood fast, and my faith has been rewarded. I won’t think of the sadness that has shaped me. Orestes continuing to grow, a physical reminder of the time passing. Chrysothemis, wrapped in her bridal veil, deserting us for a husband chosen by Aegisthus – that mangy dog sitting in my father’s seat, sniffing at my mother’s skirts, whining around our palace, making my skin crawl every time I see his narrow, fretful face. In contrast, my mother’s serenity, the implacable sheen of her face, which has stayed unlined and unworried, the lightness of her step never weighed down by the guilt she should bear. All of that is past.
I dress quickly and hurry through the quiet palace, outside into the cool air of the morning, swinging around the corners of the twisting path towards the farmer’s hut. ‘Georgios!’ I call as I get closer, laughing in delight at the sound of my own voice.
He emerges from the darkness of the hut, his brow creased in confusion, his eyes squinting with sleep. ‘Elektra?’
‘Georgios, he’s coming back! The war is over!’
‘It is?’
I throw myself against him and he jolts backwards, startled. I’ve never embraced him before. He pushes me away slightly and puts his hands on my shoulders. I can’t stop smiling.
‘How do you know?’ he asks. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Beacons,’ I say. ‘Beacons lit in a great chain, as far as I could see.’
He’s shaking his head before I even finish the sentence. ‘Even if it is the end of the war, how can you know the Greeks have won?’
‘Of course the Greeks have won,’ I say slowly. I step backwards, out of his grip. I can’t look at him.
‘Of course,’ he says quickly. ‘I didn’t mean – of course, the Greeks have won. I only thought – just in case . . .’
‘This day has been coming for ten years.’ My voice is harsher than I mean it to be. ‘We’ve always known it would happen, and now it has.’
He’s nodding hastily, trying to take back his moment of doubt. ‘Your father is the greatest hero the world has ever known,’ he says, and the sincerity in his voice mollifies me a little. ‘Mycenae has suffered whilst he has been away. Now he’s coming back, this is wonderful for us all.’
I pause. ‘Not quite everyone.’
Georgios laughs. ‘You aren’t worried for Aegisthus now, are you?’
‘Of course not!’ I look away. I don’t know how to voice the feelings squirming away against my happiness.
I hear his sigh. ‘She has betrayed him.’
She has done a terrible thing; she knows the price as well as Georgios knows it, as well as I know it, as well as everyone in Mycenae knows it. But she is my mother – however passionately I might sometimes wish that she wasn’t.
‘Perhaps, when he’s punished Aegisthus,’ Georgios says, ‘he might show mercy to her.’
‘She doesn’t deserve it.’
She wasn’t forced by Aegisthus. What she’s done, she’s done of her own free will. She and Helen both, architects of their own disaster. I wonder what Menelaus will do to Helen, what he might have done already. I don’t care so much about that. Helen robbed me of my father for ten years. But I can’t help feeling a twist of anxiety for Clytemnestra, deserving or not.
‘You can ask him to spare her,’ Georgios suggests. ‘Maybe for you, he might. If that’s what you want.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes, I do. Agamemnon is a good king, a good man. My father always said so.’
‘I know that’s true.’
‘Mycenae prospered when he reclaimed it,’ Georgios goes on. ‘And he united Achaeans from all over to follow him to war. He’s a great leader. Whatever he does, it will be the right thing.’
These words are a soothing balm. Poised on the edge of a thousand surging emotions, I blink back tears of sudden and unexpected gratitude. Georgios has always been there alongside me, always ready with something kind to say, always constant in his faith in Agamemnon.
I wonder, now that my father is coming home, what will happen to our friendship. When normal order is restored here, I’m not sure what the leader of all of Greece will think about his daughter sneaking out and talking unsupervised to a humble farmer.
That doesn’t matter, though. What matters is that he’s coming back.