“I have no children you can take from me.”
Clytemnestra ignores her. “It feels like drowning. As if someone is holding you underwater, and as soon as you give up and prepare to die, that person drags you to the surface, makes you breathe, then pushes you down again.”
Cynisca stops walking. Clytemnestra knows she is wondering why she is telling her this, but she won’t ask.
“You have been in my mind throughout this torture,” she continues. “I have always despised people like you, who have nothing good of their own so they try to steal someone else’s happiness.”
“I never wanted to steal anything,” Cynisca says.
“But you did.”
Before Cynisca can reply, Clytemnestra throws the knife in her direction. She feels Cynisca jump and take the shield and hears the clang of the knife against it. She moves to the side as Cynisca runs forward and crashes into the table. The cup rolls on the floor and Cynisca stands back up. Clytemnestra bends and takes her knife again. In the dark, she feels the shield flying in her direction a second too late. She manages to move aside but the metal hits her shoulder and she gasps in pain. Cynisca runs forward, but Clytemnestra throws her knife again, and this time it hits the target. Cynisca falls on her knees in front of her, and Clytemnestra takes the knife out of her flank before Cynisca can grab it. The metal feels as cold as ice. She tears away a piece of her tunic and stuffs Cynisca’s mouth with it.
“I wanted to kill you before I left, but Agamemnon would have complained,” she says. “Now he doesn’t even remember you. No one cares if you die.”
Cynisca moans and shakes her head. Clytemnestra stabs her again; the dagger sinks deep into her chest. The sound Cynisca makes is like a sigh.
“Your plots and plans haven’t worked. I have power and all you have is whispers in a king’s ear. I am queen of Mycenae, and you are nobody.”
She takes the jeweled knife out of Cynisca’s chest and steps back as Cynisca drops to the side, blood pouring out of her wounds. She finds her cloak in the shadows, wraps it around her, and leaves.
Soon people will wake and fill the narrow streets with life. Soon Cynisca’s husband will come home to find his dead wife. But no one will suspect Clytemnestra, because no one knows what Cynisca did to her.
*
She runs in the maze of narrow streets until her hands are shaking and her face is wet with tears. In the shadows of a blind alley, she stops to catch her breath and clean her mother’s knife on her cloak. The moon shines feebly above her, dripping light like a bucket of milk filled to the brim. The air is thick and sweet with the smell of ripe figs, but there is something rotten about it too, as if the place is tainted.
“Promise me you won’t be as vengeful as I have been,” her mother has said. And she sat there and promised, knowing it was a lie, that her words were cracked, like dried mud.
When she was young, she was scared of the Furies, the goddesses who take vengeance on all those men who have sworn a false oath. Leda had told endless stories of how the Furies found their victims and hunted them down like hounds, their scourges as painful as a thousand burning whips. Now she is standing here, a murderer and an oath breaker, yet no one comes for her.
A feeling of loneliness opens inside her, as big as a ravine. She rests her head against the wall as clouds and stars float above her and cries for what her life might have been. Was there ever a chance for her? A human’s blood is fertile. Once it is spilled, it breeds new violence, but gods can’t bring back a life. They can only take another. Leda must understand this. After all, she has kept secrets; she has lied and killed those who opposed her. She has stood aside as her husband betrayed her daughter.
No, Clytemnestra considers. Her mother can’t ask her to keep a promise.
17
The Strongest Rules
MYCENAE APPEARS IN the late-afternoon light, and Clytemnestra spurs her horse. Outside the Lion Gate, the street is thick with people. Thin children move aside as she passes, and noblemen’s slaves bend and kneel. She lifts her arm in greeting as her horse moves upward, leaving the gate behind. Inside the walls, women are grinding and weighing wheat in front of the barn, their heads covered to protect their eyes from the sun. Girls bear baskets of olives on their heads, and a group of boys count the pigs in a yard. As Clytemnestra passes them, the crowd opens and closes behind her like a wave.
Outside the palace on top of the citadel, on a big terrace warmed by the sun, a woman with auburn hair runs to meet her.
“It is good to have you back, my queen,” Aileen says. She has changed since they met fifteen years ago. If her eyes were once downcast and her hands trembling, now she moves in the world with certainty—Clytemnestra has made sure of that. Many servants have come and gone, but Aileen has been her most faithful.
“My daughters?”
Aileen leads her to the garden, where Chrysothemis is playing with some colored stones. Her bare feet are cooling on the grass away from the heat of the terrace. Behind her, a group of dancing girls moves in and out of the shade of the olive trees. A young man is playing the lyre a few steps from them, his eyes closed.
When she sees her mother, Chrysothemis springs up, a sweet smile warming her face.
“I chose this for you while you were gone, Mother,” she says, holding out a blue stone.
Clytemnestra brushes her lips against her daughter’s head. “Did you choose some for your sisters as well?”
Chrysothemis shows Clytemnestra a reddish stone and a white one, as smooth as an egg. “This one is for Electra,” she explains, holding the white stone to the light. It catches violet and yellow shades, just like the clouds when you look at them long enough. “Because she always dresses in white. And because she is as serious and boring as the goddess Athena.”
Clytemnestra wants to laugh but she says, “Don’t call your sister boring.” Behind them, Aileen chuckles.
Chrysothemis turns to look at the group of dancers. “Iphigenia has learned the new steps—look!”
The women are swaying and swirling. The steps are intricate, and some falter, their eyes flying to the light-haired girl at the front. Iphigenia moves with the grace of a goddess, her lovely face twisted in concentration. Clytemnestra knows that look. It is the fire, the fierce determination that accompanies her daughter’s every action. She is wearing a small tiara adorned with amethysts and several gold anklets as rich women in Mycenae do. They swing and glitter as they catch the light of the sun.
Chrysothemis stares at her, clutching the stones, shaking her little head with the rhythm. It has been a while now since she started modeling herself on her sister.
When the boy stops playing the lyre and the dance ends, Iphigenia looks around as if waking from a trance. She sees her mother and flings herself at her. “Mother!” she shrieks, throwing her arms around her. “I didn’t know you were coming back so soon! How was Sparta? How is Aunt Helen?”
Clytemnestra cups her hands around her daughter’s cheeks, searching her face for any trace of bruises or sadness. But Iphigenia glows like a freshly painted fresco. Behind them, the girls are resting under the trees, pouring water on their sweaty arms.
“Everyone is well,” Clytemnestra says. “I saw your cousin Hermione, who is as big as your sister.”
“And your brothers? Did they talk about Colchis? Did they say anything about Jason and Medea?”
“They did,” Clytemnestra replies, and the light sparkles in her daughter’s eyes. “But now is not the time. I must see your father first.”
Chrysothemis looks down at her feet, suddenly sad. “Father spent all his time in the great hall with those soldiers from Crete and Argos. We saw him only at dinner. Now the soldiers are gone, but Father is always with the elders.”