At this, I hear a stifled gasp from the woman who stands a pace behind him, partly hidden by his bulk. I have held my gaze steadfastly away from her. I know what she is, and it is beyond anything I can comprehend that he marches her up to the palace in full view of us all, that he stands in front of his wife with this woman cowering at his back. Now, I let myself look at her. Dark, tangled hair. A bruise blooming at her temple. I don’t want to think about how she acquired it. Great, dark eyes, cast down to the ground – until now, when she glances up, seemingly unable to stop herself. When I look into the depths of those eyes, I feel something touch me, pressing right into the raw wound of my soul. All at once, I have to blink back tears.
Agamemnon notices me looking at her and smiles briefly. ‘A princess of Troy,’ he says. He savours the words slowly. ‘Cassandra, priestess of Apollo, great protector of the city.’ His laugh is mirthless, but the woman does not flinch. Her glassy eyes stare blankly at the embroidered cloths on the ground. When my husband follows her gaze, confusion and annoyance mingle across his features, wiping away his smug satisfaction. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he snaps.
I tear my gaze away from the woman. ‘Why, a carpet laid out in your honour.’ The words spill out as smooth as cream.
He huffs, indignant and ridiculous, and I feel my stomach curdle to think this man has ever touched me. ‘Tapestries, Clytemnestra?’ he asks, incredulous. ‘I hardly dare to think of stepping on such finery; it is what we set out for the gods, and not for any mortal man to desecrate.’
A laugh nearly startles from me before I suppress it. What is this – self-awareness? Humility? Perhaps the war has taught him something after all. I shake back my hair, smiling still. ‘How humble you are, how full of respect for the gods,’ I soothe. ‘Be sure of it; they note your modesty. But you are no ordinary man, Agamemnon, you are something other than the rest of them.’ I pause. ‘You led your army in the mightiest war that Greece has ever known, and you return victorious. Troy smoulders in ruins, the impermeable citadel cracked apart by you and your men, its riches yours. What man has accomplished such a thing before? No one of mere mortal birth, surely.’ I force myself to step closer to him again, to turn my eyes up to his, clear and steady. ‘You bring with you a daughter of King Priam himself. Just imagine what he would have done if he had conquered the Greeks. He would not shrink away from stepping upon rich, purple cloths. He would take it as his due as the victor of this war. Do the same, Agamemnon. Do not deny yourself this glory.’
He looks back at me for the space of one long breath. I can hear my heartbeat thudding in my temples. Then he shrugs. ‘I will take what I am due,’ he says at last. ‘Though not in boots begrimed still with the filth of Trojan earth.’
I breathe out, a soft hiss of victory. I catch a slave-girl’s eye, incline my head towards his feet, and she hastens forward to loosen the leather thongs and lift the boots from his feet. I watch, exultant, as he steps on to the thick brocade. Beneath him, the intricate stitches tell the story of the pleasures of the immortals. His heels grind into the fine details as he walks, the rich, deep crimson dark like wine flowing beneath him. The elders cast their eyes down, looking away from him as he walks, unable to watch. I drink it in: the sweet scent of the morning air, the sunlight glinting from the buckles at his shoulder, and every slow footstep an insult to the gods. I utter a silent prayer to Zeus, bringer of justice.
The Trojan woman stands, transfixed. I cannot imagine the horrors behind her, the misery she sees ahead, within the grandeur and magnificence of our palace. I do not want to think of the indignity she has suffered, of what my husband has already inflicted upon her, the humiliation of being paraded before me and all who watch here. But I have no time to think of her. I instruct the slave-girl again, to take the woman inside, to treat her with kindness as a guest in our home. Even as my tongue twists around the words, I feel their inadequacy. No kindness can ever make up for what we have done to her, and she is no guest.
As I turn away from her hollow face, they are entangled in my mind, my daughter and this stranger. Iphigenia’s face is blurred and faded in my memory, though my body remembers the soft weight of her cradled in my arms, a baby with a future, bright and open, ahead of her. I think of how this young Trojan woman, this Cassandra, was loved and cherished, and how it has all been torn from her as well. I wonder where her mother is, the proud Queen of Troy who will never see her children again, and I wonder if this mother feels the same as I do – that if we could go back and see our babies’ trusting faces lost in sleep against our breasts once more, we would jump from our highest towers with the child clasped close, so that they never knew their terrible fate. So that we could spare them all the suffering to come.
But, inside the palace, the source of all our pain awaits his reward for what he has done. And it is in my hands, and mine alone, to deliver it.
My pounding pulse slows to a steady beat. I do not tremble, and I do not look back as I walk inside.
25
Elektra
I’ve been staring through the narrow gap of the window, my knuckles white against the stone, as though I could push down these walls with the force of my pain. I can picture it, a vast wave surging through me, tearing down everything in its path. But the walls stay strong, and all I can do is stare at this strip of sky.
I hear their approach. By straining up on tiptoes as high as I can, I see a flash of their heads as they ascend the slope, and my heart pounds painfully in my chest.
Which one is he? Is he leading them all, or do heralds go in front of him, other soldiers clearing his path? I don’t know. I’ve imagined this every day for a lifetime, but I don’t know what a returning procession looks like; I don’t know what my father would choose. I don’t know anything at all.
Useless tears squeeze out of my eyes as I twist and crane my neck, desperate to see more. The bobbing heads, flashing helmets and swaying plumes vanish altogether as they pass through the gate, and I grip even tighter to the edges of the wall, because now they will be making their way along the straight path and turning off towards the entrance to the palace itself, and that’s when they’ll come more fully into view. I press myself against the stone and stare, not wanting to blink.
They look more tired, more grim, more ragged than I would have expected: not a striding, triumphant army. They pass across the tiny strip that I can see, so quickly that I can’t make out their faces. My breath is coming fast and uneven, my palms are slick, and the desperate frustration overwhelms me as I search for just a fleeting glimpse of my father.
It’s so fast, I don’t have time to take it in. A swish of rich, deep purple, a cloak flowing from his shoulders, a cluster of dark curls and he’s gone. I don’t know what to do with myself. It must be him, but I didn’t even see his face. As I stare at the space where he was, I see her. A woman, I can tell by the loose hair that streams out around her. She’s slower than the men, but she’s walking right behind Agamemnon.
I think of Briseis, the slave-girl that Achilles demanded from him. Not her, though – my father gave her back. Another then, perhaps taken from Troy. I’m motionless as I think about that, and then I slam my hands hard against the walls. The shock of it reverberates through my wrists, but I don’t care, drawing them back and hitting out, again and again. She’s walking with him, she’s shared his journey home, Clytemnestra will be waiting at the door, and I’m in here, locked away. The lowliest slave in the world has what I can’t have, and my mother has penned me in like an animal, like I’m nothing at all. Fury consumes me: rage at my mother, rage at this Trojan woman and everyone who stands between me and my father.