And, in between the pulses of rage, the red raw edge of it, there is panic. Clytemnestra isn’t going to go back to being Agamemnon’s wife. If she was, I wouldn’t be trapped in here. They’re going to attack him, she and Aegisthus: that must be what they’re planning. And, whilst I know Agamemnon is strong and brave, victor of the Trojan war, I’m afraid of her cunning.
I scrabble under my bed, tugging at the bundle of cloth and pulling out the lion dagger, the last thing he touched before he left me. I remember the last words he spoke to me as I stare at it, the echo of his voice from so many years ago. Its blade is dull: it’s no weapon, just an ornament. There is nothing I can do with it, even if I could get out of this chamber.
And then I’m screaming again, choking on the harsh scrape of my own howls, back at the locked door. There’s nothing I can do but hope that he hears me, hope she doesn’t somehow manage to cut him down outside the palace before he even gets inside. I scream as long and loud as I can, pounding against the door in the desperate hope that he’ll hear my warnings, but my voice is swallowed up by the solid oak, and no one comes.
26
Clytemnestra
He is waiting in the bath chamber. The heavy fragrance hangs in the dim air as he leans closer to the wall, studying the painted figures. Any fear I might have had of rousing his suspicion has dissipated in the warm, stuporous breath wafting from the velvety blooms. He is wearing a silly, complacent little smile that sharpens the edge of my intent. I have thought of little else for ten years, but even so, I’m not sure if I expected to enjoy it like this. It was my duty, what I owed to my daughter. Now, with the image of the Trojan woman’s haunted eyes staring sightlessly ahead as she followed my husband, I see it as a service to the world. Something that it will be my pleasure to bring about.
‘Let me help you into the bath,’ I murmur.
Does it even occur to him that the last I saw of him was on the sands of Aulis, our daughter’s body broken between us? Is he so stupid, so self-absorbed, that he thinks I could forgive or forget? That I would let it pass unspoken; that I would welcome him back like a wife, even as his prized captive quakes in another room? It seems that he does, for he accepts my ministrations without a word as I help him shrug away his robes. He descends the steps into the warm, scented waters and I lean forward, feeling his eyes on me as I hand him a cup of wine; our finest vintage, into which I have stirred the liquid I crushed from the poppies in our meadows.
‘Tell me of the ending,’ I ask him. ‘How it all finished at last. What happened when you took the city?’
He lies back, the water rippling about him, petals drifting across the surface. ‘You want to hear of the sack of Troy?’ He takes a long draught of wine.
‘Not all of it,’ I say. ‘You can spare me the more unpleasant details. But I want to know—’ I pause.
‘What?’
‘I want to know what happened to my sister.’ I hate to ask him. I hate for him to know that he holds something I want. But I cannot bear it any longer; I have to know. ‘Did Menelaus . . .?’
Agamemnon snorts. ‘For years he talked of nothing else,’ he says. ‘What he would do when he took her from Paris; how he would slit her throat before all the army.’ At this, for a moment at least, he looks temporarily abashed, a flicker of awareness of what he has said crossing his face. But he shakes it away, sending small waves across the bath.
I try to keep my voice low. ‘And did he?’
‘Of course not.’ He smirks. ‘Your sister stood up, from among the Trojan women we had gathered outside the city. The moment that he saw her . . .’
‘He couldn’t do it.’ I finish his sentence.
He nods.
So, Helen has returned unpunished to Sparta at Menelaus’ side. The man that she had married could not find it in his heart to murder someone he loved for the sake of his war – unlike his brother. When she steps off the deck of his ship, the daughter she left behind will await her, warm and living. A tingling heat rushes through my body when I think of that, and my jaw clenches tightly.
A long silence stretches between us. For a moment, I wonder whether we ever used to talk. I am sure I remember it, idle conversations and exchanges about the minutiae of our days, an easy companionship that made me believe I would live out a peaceful life in Mycenae. The world is beyond recognition; the landscape of our life torn up, all of it at once familiar and strange, and I have an odd sense that nothing is really there at all, as though I might reach out my hand and find the solid objects before me dissolve into nothing.
I stand at a crossroads. Beside me, my husband and king luxuriates in a deep bath. Before long, he will rise, and I can take his hand and lead him to the feast being prepared in his honour, or perhaps to his chambers. I could step back into the life set out for me the day I said yes to Agamemnon’s proposal, because what else would I do? As careless a way to decide a future as tossing dice across the cobbles. If I abandoned the plan, would Aegisthus slink away into the shadows? Maybe he would raise a stand of his own: my betrayal would be exposed, and my husband would slaughter us both. This does not frighten me. But when I let my thoughts drift further, when I see myself standing amid the dim shadows before Hades, scouring the ghostly throng for my child, it is then that the cold shudder grips my spine. I cannot look into Iphigenia’s face without bringing her the news that I have avenged her at last.
‘Clytemnestra? Are you asleep?’ He sounds peevish even through a slight slur, the poppies in the wine taking effect. I had not even realised that my eyes were closed.
‘Of course not,’ I say. ‘Are you ready? Allow me to bring you your robe.’
He lies back in the water. This is the moment. I lean down to where I have placed it; the thick cloth slides through my hands like the smooth coils of a snake. Beneath it, hidden from Agamemnon’s view, I can feel the reassuringly sturdy shape of something else.
I shake out the robe and hold it before him as he stands, steam curling through the low light. He ducks his shaggy head and I settle the heavy brocade about his body. He twists to find the openings, suddenly trapped, stumbling and bewildered by his abrupt blindness in this impermeable net I have cast about him, dizzied by the wine I augmented.
He is disorientated and confused, engaged in a futile search for an escape from the robe, which I had so painstakingly sewn shut so that his hands will scrabble pointlessly for a sleeve. He pulls and yanks to try to free his head from the cloth that hangs heavy over him, the water adding weight to the lower half that is sunk in the bath, pulling him down still further. Now is the time for me to reach for the other object hidden at my feet.
The wood is solid in my hand. It fits smoothly against my palms as I wrap both hands around it and swing with all the strength I can summon, aiming right at the top of the lurching figure that is my husband.
It is darkly comical how ungainly he is, swathed in cloth, his feet sliding away beneath him as the sharp, gleaming metal edge of the axe hits him. Somewhere beneath the suffocating weight of the material, he bellows, but the sound is muffled, and I swing again. The noise it makes as it hits his skull is a dull, heavy thud. I don’t know if I have hit him hard enough to break through the bone, so I grit my teeth against the ache in my shoulders as I raise it up once more and bring it down upon him, again and again and again. His body tumbles beneath the flurry of blows; he collapses into the water, and I am still bludgeoning him with all the fury I have burning through me. I can still hear him spluttering, gasping somewhere under the stitched-up hood, and I aim there until I feel his head give way beneath the axe with a sickening collapse, and a splatter of gory liquid sprays from the bath, right across my face.