In the months after my marriage, I do try. I’m grateful not to have to set foot inside my old bedchamber, never to have to look out again on the place where my father walked to his death. When I wake up, screaming for him to stop, to turn away, not to step across those tapestries she laid out, Georgios is there to offer what comfort he can.
We can see the palace from our home. It gleams and shimmers in the sunlight. To my shame, there are days when I can’t stop myself from remembering the cool shade of the courtyard in summer, the vivid painted walls, the fragrance of roasting meat and the sweetness of honey dissolving into wine.
When I thought of poverty before, I thought it was preferable to the sight of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. I thought that not seeing their smug and smirking faces would make living here a luxurious delight in comparison. I thought that leaving would buy me my dignity. But there is no dignity in being poor. It is a grinding, exhausting existence, and every morning I wake and stare at the dry, plain walls, which seem to shrink closer around me every day.
Of course, I am hopelessly incompetent at everything I attempt, and Georgios’ indulgent smiles have given way to quiet dismay as I burn bread, forget to fetch water, and let families of spiders festoon every corner of our home with cobwebs. He works endless, exhausting days out in the fields, and when he comes home so tired and finds me still mired in my despair, the easy conversations of our past friendship seem impossibly out of reach. I worry that he regrets tying himself to me and my misery, though he tells me it isn’t so.
She doesn’t come here any more. She tried, a few times, ridiculous in her sleek finery, with her unshakeable composure, in the doorway of my hovel. She tried to give me things – jewels, gold, precious trinkets. All belonging to her. Nothing of my father’s.
‘I don’t want it.’ I tired of telling her. I never mentioned her visits to Georgios, much less her gifts. ‘I don’t want you here.’
Her frown on her final attempt, her perfect forehead creased with confusion. ‘What can I do?’
My arms were locked around my body. I fixed my eyes on the square of sky behind her. ‘Leave. Don’t come back.’
I heard the quiver on her inhalation. A long silence. When she spoke, her voice was cold. ‘He would have killed you. Chrysothemis. Orestes. Any of you. All of you, if it bought him his war.’
I shook my head. She had nothing new to say, only the same arguments, over and over. I was too exhausted to tell her again. ‘I wish he had done.’
‘I thought you’d see it, too. When he was gone. When I’d made you safe.’
‘Safe? Like Orestes is safe?’
‘Is he?’ she whispered. ‘Do you know?’
At this, I looked at her. I’d learned enough from these exchanges to know what would twist the knife, what would give her a taste of the pain I’d endured in those years spent waiting for news of my father whilst she looked the other way. ‘No. He might be dead – and if I knew, I’d never tell you.’
Her face hardened. ‘You didn’t need to choose this, Elektra,’ she snapped. ‘You still don’t.’
She turned on her heel and was gone.
‘You’re wrong,’ I told the empty space where she’d been standing.
I had no choice at all.
33
Clytemnestra
‘Menelaus will kill you the moment you set foot in Sparta.’ Aegisthus shakes his head in disbelief.
‘I will take guards to protect me. I will approach Helen in secret. Menelaus need never know I am there at all,’ I insist.
‘If he is harbouring Orestes—’
‘It’s the only place he could be,’ I say. ‘My sister is queen there; I will be safe. I know it well; I can avoid being seen. But Orestes must be there.’ And if he is, I am sure that Helen will help me to find somewhere safer for him. Together, we can spirit him far from the reach of Aegisthus’ men.
‘And you will bring him back to Mycenae?’
‘Of course.’ I wonder if he believes me; if he thinks I trust him enough that I would bring my son back here. If he takes what I did to Agamemnon as a lesson, perhaps he would not dare to harm a child of mine. Am I absurd to even think he might? To let the poisoned seed that Elektra planted in my mind take root inside my head? She spoke from spite, but still, I can’t dismiss it out of hand. This isn’t something I can leave to chance. Aegisthus might think that I will bring Orestes home as I promise, or he might know I plan to hide him all the better. He might think this is his opportunity to double-cross me, to use me to find my son and end it all. I don’t know. I never dreamed that Agamemnon could kill our daughter – how could I know if Aegisthus, too, harbours the same terrible violence? He wanted to kill my husband badly enough, so why not my son as well? I know that the years I spent with him are no defence; Agamemnon had no pity, no respect for me as his wife, nothing to stay his hand upon that knife. Do I think Aegisthus so much better than him? I must have done, but I am afraid I was wrong again. My fingers curl tightly into my palms.
‘If you think he is really there—’
‘Where else would he go?’
Aegisthus shrugs. ‘And you can speak to Helen in secret? You are sure you won’t be seen?’
I laugh. ‘Menelaus will never know I am there.’
‘Then it’s worth finding out,’ he says.
And so, I find myself setting out in a chariot once more, this time wrapped in a plain cloak, on the road to Tiryns. I travel flanked by guards, Aegisthus’ men, who for all I know could have been instructed to murder Orestes the moment they see him. I need them to ensure my safe passage on the road; to pass a heavy bag of coins to the captain of the trading ship at the port of Tiryns in payment for my discreet place on the voyage to Gytheio, hidden from the notice of the crew. When I sailed from Sparta as a royal bride all those years ago, it was a different thing altogether. This time, I am smuggled on board like a sack of grain, the rough shouts of the men mingling with the slap of the waves against the wooden sides until my head aches. I am relieved when the ship docks, and we wait until it empties before the captain comes to release us. The fresh salt breeze is a blessing when I dare to raise my face to the sky and look out from under the heavy hood of my cloak. The wooden planks creak with the motion of the water beneath us, and the captain stands respectfully whilst I look out at the horizon for a moment, grateful to be free of my claustrophobic disguise.
‘The island just there,’ he says, nodding to a tiny spit of land, clustered with trees, just a little way across the sea from where we are, ‘that’s Kranai. It’s where the Trojan took the queen when he stole her from Menelaus. Before they sailed to Troy.’ His voice is laden with meaning.