“How dare you—” Helen starts, but Clytemnestra takes her wrist.
“Go, Helen. I will talk to him.” She doesn’t want to be left alone, she doesn’t want her to go, but her sister isn’t strong enough to face a monster, and Agamemnon has already taken too much from her.
Helen hesitates, her hands clutching her dress. She’s like a bird scared to leave her cage, waiting for an arrow to fly and sink into her wing. She takes a few uncertain steps toward the door. She is barely outside when Agamemnon closes it, shutting her out. Clytemnestra hears her sister protest, then her hurried steps. She must be running to Timandra for help.
Agamemnon fastens his gaze on Clytemnestra. “Your father has informed you of the marriage.”
“Yes.”
He seems unsettled by her quietness. “So he also told you of the pact he made with me, of how he betrayed the foreign king.”
This is how he operates, she thinks. This is how he turns daughter against father, Spartan against Spartan. Treachery and cruelty are his ways to power.
“My husband, you mean.”
His face hardens. “I’m to be your husband now.”
She stares at him, silent. This disturbs him. She can see that he expected her rage, maybe even wished for it. But he doesn’t know how to react to coldness.
“I desired you from the moment I saw you,” he says, tilting his head, looking at her as one looks at a fresco.
“It must be easy to live such a life as yours,” she says, “to believe you can take everything you want.”
There is a flame in his eyes, though he tries to hide it. “No one has ever given me anything, so I learned to take it.”
She laughs bitterly. “You can take people, cities, armies. But love, respect . . . those can’t be taken with force.”
He watches her, his eyes glowing. “I won’t touch you until we reach Mycenae. You deserve that.”
Does he truly believe he will earn her respect like this? She can barely see for the rage she is feeling.
“You may grieve for the foreigner now. But you will soon forget him and learn to love another.”
For a moment, she can see Tantalus on the terrace, his body so close to hers she could almost feel his heart. He had looked at her, the heat of his gaze like the warmest blanket in winter, and spoken of Adonis, the young man loved by Artemis. The boy dies, but the goddess’s love for him remains. It is a reminder of beauty and resistance in times of adversity.
She gazes at Agamemnon and says, “I do not forget.”
*
It is late evening when she is called for her cleansing. Two servants come for her and Helen, ordering her sister to go back to her husband and taking Clytemnestra to the baths. The hatred in Helen’s eyes as she walks toward the guest rooms is blazing like wildfire, and Clytemnestra clings to it, feeling its warmth as she steps into the bathhouse.
The priestess is standing by the painted clay bath, her slim figure reflected in the water. Her long hair cascades down her back like a heavy cloak, and her eyelids are painted black. Upon seeing her, the helots step back and run away. A flicker of satisfaction burns in the priestess’s eyes, and for a moment, Clytemnestra wonders how it must feel to live like that, dodged and shunned like a poisonous blade.
A single torch spills its pale light over the floor, and Clytemnestra steps forward, removing her tunic and climbing into a tub. Strands of her short hair stick to her face, and she smooths them back. The room smells fruity, which makes her nauseous, or maybe it is just the way the priestess is staring at her, as if she were dissecting a dead animal.
“You burn with rage for your father.”
Clytemnestra bites her tongue. Rage is not what she feels. It is hatred, raw and relentless, clawing at her heart.
The priestess tilts her head as if listening to her thoughts. “He was blinded by power, as men often are. He formed an allegiance to better the interests of Sparta.”
And he tore his family apart.
The priestess moves forward and grabs her arm. Her breasts are white and pointed, like shells, and her hand on Clytemnestra’s skin feels like fish scales.
“You are a woman now. The gods have given you a taste of true sorrow. They have taught you loss. It is their divine duty to do so or else you forget you are mortal.”
“Your gods are cruel,” Clytemnestra chokes out.
The priestess lets her hand fall and shakes her head. Her hair sways gently, like seaweed under water. “Death comes for us all, sooner or later. The moment we forget it, we become fools.” She looks outside the windows at the black vault of the sky, the stars glimmering.
“I still remember the first time I had you whipped. You had disobeyed the king’s orders and hidden in the temple.”
Clytemnestra remembers too. The coldness of the floor, the redness of the columns under her hands. The priestess had found her and dragged her by the hair onto the altar in front of her brothers.
“You were afraid, as everyone is, but you didn’t show it. You wanted to make me angry, to prove yourself to your mother, to make your father proud.”
It is true. She had bitten her tongue so hard she was afraid she might lose it and had stared at a crumpled leaf on the ground, swirling with the wind.
“You are a strong woman. Whatever opposes you, you will fight it,” the priestess says. “It is only death that you can’t defeat, and the sooner you understand that, the better.”
Clytemnestra leans back, and the priestess stands, the feeble light blurring her features. Her steps fade as she walks away. Clytemnestra remains in the bath for a long time, the water turning cold, the priestess’s words swirling in her mind.
*
That night, when she is cleaned and perfumed, she walks in the darkness of the corridors, away from the gynaeceum and toward the main entrance of the palace. She steps outside into the breeze, her feet bare, and hurries along the narrow path that leads down the hill to the river. A few torches are lit in the guests’ rooms—she can see them from outside, dim and flickering in the windows. Feeling each stone and flower under her feet, she runs toward the Eurotas, careful not to disturb the horses in the stables and the dogs in the village. In the shadows of the night, the valley floors are covered with wildflowers, shining under the stars like gems.
On the right bank of the Eurotas, between the rocks and the weeds, an excavated corridor is lined by large, squared stones. At the end, an open door, like an empty eye socket, two painted green columns on the side. The tholos, the tomb where royals’ ashes are placed, its stones piled up to form a dome. Clytemnestra takes a few uncertain steps toward the entrance. Then, clutching her tunic, she moves from the shadows into the blackness of the tomb. She hasn’t set foot in here for a long time, not since her grandmother died. The place is small and dark, the air sad and sodden. Gold cups and jewels fill the spaces between the ashes, the tombs arranged like a beehive. Her husband and baby are here—she can feel their presence.
She kneels. In the utter silence, she can almost hear a breeze, as if the dead were breathing. She presses her forehead to the ground, her arms tucked under her chest, and cries.
*
She doesn’t remember much about the wedding. Her world is opaque, shapeless, as though she were an unburied spirit, doomed to wander in the world of the living, mute and invisible. The only thing that feels real is her sisters’ touch on her arms. Before walking outside with her, Helen had said, “You are so strong.” Clytemnestra couldn’t tell whether her sister meant to convince her or herself.
When the ceremony was over and dinner was prepared in the hall, she ate in silence while everyone around her talked and drank. She despised them all.
Tyndareus raised his cup and shouted, “To the Atreidai and the Atreidai’s wives!”