Georgios comes out, and I wince at the sight of the black, bitter bread he’s brought for them. Orestes, though, takes it as though he’s truly grateful. I wave it away, squirming a little. Everything is wrong. I’m sitting with them, my husband is serving us, I’m horribly aware of how unevenly I have hacked away at my hair. I wish I had been prepared. I wish I’d known the day he was coming. I wish I’d made myself hold on to my faith that he would.
Georgios, apparently far more at ease with my brother than I am, starts asking the questions I can’t manage. ‘Why have you come now? What prompted your journey?’
Orestes’ forehead creases. ‘I’ve lived comfortably in Phocis,’ he says. ‘The king was always kind to me, he treated me like his own son – like Pylades – so we have lived like brothers.’ He glances at his friend and takes a long breath. ‘But however welcoming and loving my home there was, I knew it was not my true home. It burned at me always, to think of Mycenae.’
My shoulders relax a little at this. ‘You didn’t forget us.’
His eyes widen. ‘How could I? Elektra, I thought about you every day, about what might be happening to you here. You were so brave, smuggling me away, saving me from what Aegisthus would have done. I knew I had to come back, that I had to repay you.’
I can feel tears brimming in my eyes. I lock my hands together, pressing my fingernails into the back of each hand. The sharp pain holds me fast to the moment, keeps me from crumbling.
Orestes shifts uncomfortably. ‘Still, I wrestled with the thought of coming back and what that would mean – what it would require of me.’
What they’re here to do is no easy task. Though, in this moment, I wonder if perhaps it could be. If I imagine channelling all my pain into the fall of an axe, if I think of Aegisthus beneath it, and Clytemnestra, too . . . I pause, horrified for a second to think perhaps this is what my mother felt when she saw her beacons blazing. Revolted by the thought of sharing any communion with her, however brief, I shake my head vehemently. ‘She drugged our father and imprisoned him in a net she wove.’ The words are bitter in my mouth. ‘Then she cut him down with an axe. Her own husband. The gods cannot tolerate a woman who does such a thing.’ I don’t add that she has lived a peaceful life since that day. Zeus didn’t hurl his thunderbolt at her; no god intervened. I have heard of them striding out into the fray and heat of battle in Troy to save the mortals that they loved and to take vengeance on those who offended them. I can’t understand how Clytemnestra has lived on, unmolested, so many years since her crime.
‘I know,’ Orestes answers. ‘Every night when I lay down and closed my eyes, I saw our father. His shade, weeping in the Underworld at his dishonour.’ He swallows. ‘So I visited the oracle of Apollo and begged for answers.’
‘What did the oracle say?’ I’m intent on my brother.
Orestes’ eyes meet mine. ‘I told the priests what I sought to ask. They gave me instructions, what I needed to do and how I should approach the Pythia. I was purified there; I made my offerings and bore laurel wreaths to the temple. She sat in shadows, wreathed in smoke. I thought the words would desert me altogether, but I found them somehow. I needed to know. Her eyes rolled back in her head whilst the god spoke to her. And at last, she told me the answer.’ The world falls still and silent around us before he speaks again. ‘Our father will not rest whilst his killers live. If I turn away from my duty, if I fail to avenge him, through my own cowardice, Apollo’s priestess warned me that the god will punish me. It’s his command.’ His head drops forward into his hands. ‘There is no choice.’
He has returned a fully grown man, but seeing him here, sitting on the ground, his knees drawn up in this attitude of despair, I see the boy I sent away, and my heart twists. I don’t doubt the words of the oracle. Even as I pity him, I can feel a swell building up within me, something akin to excitement. ‘She has been no mother to you,’ I tell him quietly. ‘You recoil from it because it is a dreadful deed, I know, and you are a good man. But only you can let our father rest. Only you can bring justice to the House of Atreus.’
He lifts his head. ‘Can I?’
Before I can answer, Pylades reaches out and grips Orestes’ shoulder. ‘You aren’t alone,’ he says.
I stare at the two of them. The weight of their duty hanging so heavy above them, their courage in the face of it. It sends a strange thrill through my body, a feeling of roots uncoiling, branches stretching out towards the light. I don’t turn my eyes away from Pylades this time, I look him full in the face – and he looks back at me.
He is like a soldier, I think. His shoulders are broad, his dark beard and heavy brows making him look so much older and more serious than Orestes. I wonder if this is how my father looked when he marched back to Mycenae, a Spartan army at his back, to reclaim the palace as his own. This brave hero, accompanying his friend on his righteous quest – this is the kind of man I know my father would have chosen for me, if I had lived the life I was born to live.
‘Have courage, Orestes,’ I whisper. ‘You are Agamemnon’s son.’ I feel it, humming through the three of us, binding us together, too terrible to speak aloud, but too vital for us to shrink from.
‘How will you do it?’ Georgios’ voice breaks the moment, making me jump.
For a moment, I can see the moisture gleaming in Orestes’ eyes, the tiny quiver of his lip, but then a determined blankness sweeps his face. It’s so like Clytemnestra that nausea swirls in my stomach. ‘We’ve come back in stealth,’ he says. ‘We didn’t want more bloodshed than – than is necessary.’ He gulps a little, looking down.
‘We planned to arrive as strangers to Mycenae,’ Pylades interjects. ‘Strangers bringing news of the death of Orestes, looking for a reward for bringing such good tidings to Aegisthus. That way, we’ll get an audience with him. He’ll want to hear all about it. He’ll think the threat to him is gone – if Agamemnon’s son is dead, he will believe himself secure at last. That’s when we’ll have our chance.’
I’m nodding along to every word he says.
‘Could that be enough?’ Orestes bursts out. ‘If we cut Aegisthus down, there and then, is that enough?’ He looks ashamed as soon as he’s said it, but there is a defiance in the jut of his chin. Clytemnestra’s son, I think again. I’m horrified to see so much of her in his features, instead of my father.
There is a long silence. ‘The oracle said to avenge our father’s killers,’ I say. ‘You know that she was the one with the axe. More than that! You remember, don’t you, how she was in front of Aegisthus always, how it was her making the plans?’
‘What if it was him who told her to do it?’ Orestes suggests. His eyes are hopeful, turning to me, seeking out his big sister to help him again.
‘You know the truth,’ I tell him softly.
‘Elektra,’ Georgios says, and I flinch. He catches my expression and hesitates before he goes on. ‘She is your mother.’ His earlier words hang between us: when he told me revenge was futile, that it would only lead to more misery. He’s wrong though, I know it. We can end it, but only if we’re brave enough.
‘It’s the command of Apollo,’ I say. ‘Our family has ignored the words of the gods before, and all of us suffer for it. How can we risk it?’
‘She’s right,’ says Pylades, and relief bolsters me.
‘I don’t want to disobey the oracle,’ Orestes says slowly.