Timandra laughs, her voice echoing on the walls. “I take after you.”
A few young men enter with flutes and lyres. When Echemus acknowledges their presence, they start playing, their music sweet, like ripe fruit. More wine is set in front of Clytemnestra, and she looks at the image on the amphora, two warriors fighting with spears, their armor beautifully refined.
“Now Mycenae is called our mightiest kingdom,” Echemus says, eager to make conversation. “Mightier even than Troy.”
“The City of Gold, they call it,” Chrysanthe intervenes.
“Yes,” Clytemnestra says. “Though Babylon and Crete are mighty as well.”
“Crete is not as rich as it used to be,” Echemus says dismissively. “King Minos is gone, his crazy wife disappeared. Nothing worthy of attention remains.”
“Crete remains crucial for commerce,” Clytemnestra says. “They have ships and they have gold. They trade with Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians.”
Echemus looks like a boy scolded for not learning his lesson. He bites his lip, then starts again, eager to please her. “Did you know that my grandfather King Aleus built this palace?”
Clytemnestra turns to Timandra, but her sister is impassive, sipping her wine. Out of the corner of her eye, Clytemnestra sees Timandra’s knee brushing Chrysanthe’s. “Of course,” she says. “Everyone knows of your grandfather. He must have been a great man.” She doesn’t mention that he is famous for disposing of his daughter when Heracles made her pregnant.
Echemus smiles. “He was. We worship the goddess Alea, thanks to him.” He starts to talk about Alea and the many sacrifices needed in her honor, but Clytemnestra doesn’t listen to him. She feels Chrysanthe’s stare on her, as cool and piercing as an icicle. For some reason, she feels as if the woman is looking for her approval. Clytemnestra stares back, her limbs like those of a wrestler before a fight. She can’t tell her she doesn’t approve. She can’t tell her to be careful, to avoid being too happy or else feel the wrath of the gods. Sooner or later, even the luckiest fall.
*
They walk back together to Clytemnestra’s room, Timandra whistling a tune, Clytemnestra watching her sister’s light, careless steps. As they pass the large windows, they can see the moon, sparkling bright, and feel the breeze of the summer night. Just before they turn into the guests’ corridor, Timandra takes her sister’s arm and guides her in the opposite direction, into a storage room lined with jars of oil and wine. There is only a narrow window, and it takes Clytemnestra a moment to adjust to the darkness. Slowly Timandra’s contours appear—she looks giddy.
“Chrysanthe will come with us to Sparta,” she says in a whisper.
“I thought so,” Clytemnestra says, even though she hadn’t. She hadn’t expected her sister to be so reckless.
Timandra searches her face. “What is it?”
Clytemnestra glances out the window, then back at her. “She should not come.”
Timandra frowns. “Why?”
“You know why.”
“You were the one who helped me stay with her. You covered for me in Sparta. You said it wasn’t wrong.” Her tone is almost accusatory.
Clytemnestra takes a deep breath. “I said those things when you were a child. Now you are a married woman.”
“So you tell me you are faithful to your loving husband? The very same husband who murdered your first child?”
Clytemnestra slaps her. Timandra’s head jerks back, and when she looks at her sister again, her cheek is purple and her nose bleeding. She wipes it on her sleeve.
“What I do doesn’t concern you,” Clytemnestra says.
“And yet you can be concerned about me?”
“As long as you parade Chrysanthe, yes.”
“You are telling me I am not free to do as I please, to be with the woman I love?”
The word love feels like a bucket of ice water poured over her face.
“Listen to me.” Clytemnestra doesn’t know how to explain, how to make her sister understand. “You must do what you want, but do it in the shadows. Don’t let others see how happy you are.”
Timandra is silent. Outside, an owl cries and the leaves rustle.
“Do you know who Achilles is?” Timandra finally says.
Clytemnestra nods. Achilles, son of Peleus, king of the tiny Phthia and blessed by the gods. He is said to be the greatest hero of his generation. Agamemnon often speaks of the man with unease, though he has never met him.
“They say he lives with his companion, Patroclus,” Timandra says. “They eat together, play together, sleep together. Everyone knows about them. But this doesn’t taint Achilles’s reputation. He is still aristos Achaion.” She uses the words for “best of the Greeks.”
But you are not aristos Achaion, Clytemnestra thinks. Instead she says, “They are men, and you are a woman.”
“What difference does it make? It didn’t change anything in Sparta.”
“We are not in Sparta anymore.”
Timandra is pacing the room, raising her voice. “You want me to be a servant to my husband just because that is what the people expect me to be?”
Clytemnestra waits to find the right words, as if pulling them out of deep darkness. “You were born free and you will always be free, no matter what others tell you. But you must see what is around you and learn to bend it to your will before you are the one who is bent.”
Timandra stops pacing. Her dark eyes are inscrutable, but then Clytemnestra sees a flash in them, like a torch that is suddenly lit in the blackness.
“I will not bring Chrysanthe, then,” Timandra says.
*
Clytemnestra sleeps dreamlessly. When she wakes at dawn, the air is rich with the scent of summer, and her mind is filled with memories.
Her father talking to envoys in the megaron, offering her fruit and making sure she listened carefully. Afterward, when the men had left, he would say, “Clytemnestra, what would you have done?”
Her father watching her first fight in the gymnasium. She was six and shy, but his presence gave her strength. “People aren’t always as strong as they look,” he had told her. “Strength comes from many different things, and one of those is purpose.” She had won the fight, and he had given her a brief smile.
Tyndareus eating next to her brothers, laughing at their jokes, occasionally scolding Timandra for giving too much food to the dogs. Even when he was absorbed in someone else’s story, he would always look for Clytemnestra, just for the briefest moment.
Sorrow falls upon her, heavy, like snow. She has loved him, hated him, wished him dead. And now that he is, she has to go back to pray for him.
But gods don’t listen to women who curse their father, who loathe and dishonor him. For a daughter like her, there are no gods to pray to.
16
Burning of the Dead
THEY STAND IN front of the pyre, all of Tyndareus’s children, together after many years. Behind them, the palace stands against the sky, and around them, the people of Sparta. Menelaus lifts a torch and brings it to the pyre. It lights up like a thunderbolt, sudden and pale against the darkening sky. The wood burns and the flames consume Tyndareus’s body, turn it into ash and bone. A priest sings, and the words fly with the sparks, filling the air with colors.
Not many cry. Phoebe’s fair face is streaked with tears, but she keeps silent. It is not right to cry when a body is burned. The women have already screamed, torn their hair, and clawed their faces. The men have already howled and mourned.