But other things are engraved on her mind, and the more she thinks, the more details come back to her, as if she were showing a wound to the lamplight and slowly seeing each edge and color, the torn flesh and the festering.
The two men who were with Odysseus in the tent, with their bright armor and sweaty skin. They had looked at her with no pity, no mercy. Just another victim of the gods’ plans, they must have thought.
The face of Calchas as he presided over the sacrifice, his black eyes emptied of any feeling. Back in Mycenae, he had told her, “You have a role to play in the war to come.” Oh yes, she does. But her daughter’s death is not it.
Diomedes dragging her child toward the altar stone. A decent man would treat a goat better than that. And yet he had taken her daughter’s precious hair and dragged her as if she were a doll. Dust settled on Iphigenia’s dress, the wedding dress she had chosen with such care, and her knees split open, bruised against the hard-grained sand.
Odysseus. She almost chokes when she thinks of him. Every word he had the courage to utter, every smile. All lies. Every night for years, she wished him dead, though she knew very well he wouldn’t die, not for a long time. Men like him are hard to kill.
Agamemnon’s blade catching the light. Her husband’s expression, grave, almost annoyed at her interference with the sacrifice. It was the same expression he wore before he hurt someone in the gymnasium. She remembers the thirst, the pain in her back when they kicked her, the sand on her tongue and in her eyes.
She has done a lot of thinking in the past years. For each painful memory, a thought of revenge. It is as if she keeps burning herself, then plunges her arm into freezing water to keep the pain at bay.
Iphigenia’s little hands.
Odysseus tied in his own tent, hurt and alone in the scorching heat.
Iphigenia’s big eyes.
Diomedes’s throat under her blade.
Iphigenia’s hair dancing in the golden light.
Calchas cut down, his lips finally sealed.
Iphigenia smoothing her wedding dress.
Her husband’s butchered body.
For a while, this was all she could do, all that kept her alive. She focused on each memory of her daughter and thought of ways to kill everyone involved in her sacrifice.
Then, slowly, those thoughts healed her, as much as one so broken can be healed. She showed her face again. She went back to ruling. She pretended she had moved on. The elders demanded it. If she had stayed isolated for too long, they would have taken over. They would have stolen her crown. A woman can’t afford to close her eyes for long. Now she moves around the palace, her heart as dry as a desert, her tongue poisoned with lies. No one will ever come again and take what she loves.
For a long time, she has known there are two different kinds of war. There are the battles where heroes dance and fight, with their glistening armor and precious swords, and there are those fought between walls, which are made of stabs and whispers. There is nothing dishonorable about that, nothing so different from the field. Either way, it is always what she has been taught in the gymnasium: take down your enemies and make them bleed. After all, what is a field after battle if not a stinking lake of corpses?
She will fight her own battle when the time comes. And the palace will be her bloody battlefield.
*
She is lost in her thoughts when she hears steps behind her. It is late night and stars are scattered in the sky, twinkling feebly. Time has slipped through her fingers.
“My queen,” Leon says. His voice has remained low and rasping since Odysseus’s men strangled him.
She doesn’t turn. She has ordered him never to disturb her when she is in the garden. “What is it?” she asks.
He steps forward, closer to her. “There is a man in the megaron. He claims he wishes for your hospitality, but he refuses to show his face.”
Clytemnestra turns. The shadows are dark on Leon’s face. “Let him wait.”
“You want me to tell him to rest in the guests’ quarters?”
“Yes. I will see him tomorrow, and he will show his face then.”
Leon takes one more step forward and touches his hand to her neck. It is rough but pleasant. She wishes she could close her eyes and enjoy the feeling of being soothed. But she can’t afford that. “That will be all, Leon.”
For a moment, she fears he will kiss her, as he has done many times in the past, but he nods briefly and walks away. His shadow on the grass is dark, like a starless night.
*
It was a mistake they both made. She knows she can’t blame him alone. When they were back in Mycenae, bruised and wounded, cut and broken, they found comfort in each other.
Clytemnestra was in the garden, a sword in her hand. She had refused to be tended and cleaned and had threatened anyone who came near her. Her hair was still caked in layers of mud from Aulis, her knees and elbows scraped. Her hands were a mass of blood, some nails missing. Leon found her as she was swinging her sword madly. “My queen,” he said.
She looked up then. He was standing by the flowers, his throat greenish and swollen, one of his eyes half-shut. They had beaten him again and again back in Aulis until he had fallen unconscious and they had left him for dead.
He took a step forward, his bruised arm extended. She took it but stumbled and fell. Leon knelt next to her and put aside her sword as if she might hurt herself.
They stayed like that for a long time on the grass. Then Leon left, and when he came back, he was holding a soaked cloth. He approached her hesitantly, as you do with a wounded beast. She stayed still while he wiped her face and arms, then her hair and legs, removing all the layers of blood and dirt. His care calmed her, and she gazed into his umber eyes, strong and comforting, like tree bark.
When he had finished, he put down the cloth and started sobbing. His breath came in muffled pants, like a soldier wounded in battle. She had never seen a man cry before. She drew him to her, and his head shook against her shoulder.
“She is gone,” she whispered. “She is gone.”
He cried even louder, and she thought of how cold his hands were in her lap. The stars were coming out when, at last, he stopped. He looked up at her, his face a mess of bruises and tears. He looked at her as though he didn’t see her or as though he saw her for the first time—it was hard to tell.
Then he leaned forward and kissed her. Her mouth opened under his. He was trembling and she tried to hold him still. She grasped his arms as hard as she could, knowing the pain would give him pleasure. She knew it because that was what she wanted too—and he gave it to her. They tore the clothes away from each other’s bodies and flinched as they touched each other’s wounds. As he moved inside her, she cried, thinking of his half-dead body in Odysseus’s tent, one of the last things she had seen before her world had fallen apart.
26
The Stranger
IN THE EARLY morning, the megaron is empty and quiet. She wraps her lynx skin around her shoulders and sits on Agamemnon’s raised throne, waiting, as the feeble light of the hearth flickers on the frescoed walls.
A man comes forward from the anteroom, alone. He is not one of her queen’s guards—he isn’t wearing any golden armor or a cap but a long dark cloak. He looks like a fugitive.
Leon appears behind him, grabs the man’s arm, and pulls him back. “My queen,” he says, “this is the man who refuses to speak his name.”
“Let him in,” she orders.
Leon stands aside, and the man walks past the footbath and into the hall. He carries a long sword at his waist, and locks of warm brown hair fall out of his hood.
“Clytemnestra,” he says. “I come here to ask for your hospitality.”
She almost flinches. She hasn’t been addressed by her name for a long time. Whoever this man is, he refuses to recognize her status as queen. A thief or a traitor. “Take off your hood,” she says.