“Why not?”
“Aegisthus is a secretive man. He loathes violence and spectacle. If he had wanted to kill you or your children, he would have done so in the shadows without revealing himself first.”
Clytemnestra stops pacing. She can’t help smiling. “You say you don’t understand politics, Aileen, but you understand people. They are one and the same.”
*
She wears a rich purple tunic for dinner and earrings with precious gems. Her face is more lined than it used to be, her cheekbones jutting under her big dark eyes, but her body stays the same, tall and slender, muscles rippling under the skin.
Orestes is waiting for her outside the gynaeceum. “I’ve come to escort you, Mother,” he says with a grin, “now that a stranger and traitor roams free in the palace.”
She laughs and smooths one of his curls with her fingers. His eyes are bright and watchful—it is hard to glimpse the shyness, the weakness, they once showed.
“Do not taunt him at dinner,” she says while they pass the frescoed chambers. Each corridor is brighter as they approach the dining hall. They can hear the servants behind them and their whispers. Clytemnestra knows they are looking at her son—he has grown into a charming man, and the girls in the palace buzz around him, like bees with honey.
“I never taunt anyone,” Orestes replies, though he is smiling. “I am just surprised you welcomed him.”
“I couldn’t send him away. He is an enemy, and enemies are better kept close. Then they’re easier to control.”
“Well, I pity the man. He probably thinks himself guest of the king of Mycenae’s harmless wife.”
She takes Orestes’s arm. “I can be harmless.” He looks at her, eyebrows raised, and they exchange a smile.
In the dining hall, the torches spill light on the meat fat and the golden wine jars. She has ordered ten guards to stand by the walls. Leon has been dining with them lately, but today he is standing near the head of the table, his sword at his waist.
Aegisthus already sits at the end of a bench, Electra in front of him. Her brown hair falls down her back, and her deerlike eyes watch the stranger. Chrysothemis is telling a story, and around her, servants listen as they pour the wine, giggling.
“Welcome to Mycenae, Lord Aegisthus,” Orestes says with a dazzling smile as he sits next to Electra. Clytemnestra takes the place at the head of the table.
“Thank you,” Aegisthus replies.
“It must feel strange to be back here after all these years,” Orestes says.
Aegisthus tilts his head. “I didn’t think the queen would accept me.”
“My mother is a woman of many virtues,” Orestes replies, choosing a piece of mutton. “Strength, wisdom, bravery, generosity. She has them all.”
Aegisthus studies him, trying to understand whether he is mocking or not.
“Where do you come from, my lord?” Chrysothemis asks him.
“The forest,” Aegisthus replies.
“Did you survive on goat’s milk? Did you hunt?”
“Something like that.”
“I once heard of a man who lived in the forest for so long that naiads came for him. They left the ponds and marshes and gave him food and shelter. But when he wanted to leave, they held him captive. They were jealous, you see.”
There is eagerness in Chrysothemis’s voice, as there has been ever since her father left—a constant need to tell stories cheerfully to avoid grief or struggle, any outburst of violence. She is like a blanket of glittering snow: she buries ugliness beneath it until it melts and she must find another cover.
“My daughter knows the most wonderful stories,” Clytemnestra says. “Do you want to tell some, Chrysothemis? Perhaps you can entertain our guest.”
“Of course.” Chrysothemis smiles. “There was the one about Boreas and the stallion . . .”
She speaks so fast, so excitedly that she forgets to eat. Aegisthus listens, frowning, and barely touches any food. At times, his gaze flickers to Clytemnestra and she pretends to be absorbed in her daughter’s story, laughing on cue.
She wants to ask him questions, to spill stories from him and know what lies behind that troubled face. But she doubts he would talk. A man like him probably hasn’t talked in his entire life. She imagines his thoughts crawling inside him, like worms in the earth, doomed to stay in the shadows.
Helen would have charmed him with her beauty and subtle cleverness, softening him until he opened like a peach.
Castor would have mocked him, pricked him with words like needles until he talked.
Timandra and Polydeuces wouldn’t have tried. “He is dangerous,” they would have said. “Better get rid of him.” And they would have been right.
He is dangerous, but she can’t get rid of him, so she has to find a way to crack him. She must dirty her hands and dig into the earth until she finds those wriggling worms.
*
She walks back through the corridors alone. The noises of the palace are dying out, fading like sounds underwater. She has ordered Aegisthus to be escorted back to the guests’ quarters, and now all she can think about is whether he will be able to sleep. She knows she won’t—she must keep cautious and awake.
When she reaches her room, a familiar figure emerges from the shadows. Leon.
“I told you to make sure Aegisthus stayed in his room,” she says.
“I left five guards outside. He won’t come out without you knowing.”
“Good.”
She walks past him and opens her bedroom door.
“Shouldn’t you send him away, my queen?” he asks.
She turns. “That is my decision, not yours.”
“He is dangerous. You know how long the elders have been looking for him. Everyone thought him dead. And now he comes here, after everything he suffered in this place . . .” He takes a deep breath. “He is like a rabid dog that has been beaten to death but somehow survived. He has made it inside these walls but can bite at any moment.”
“He hasn’t attempted to harm me or my children so far.”
His voice cracks. “You also trusted Odysseus when we were called to his tent.”
She strikes him so quickly he doesn’t have time to react. When he looks back at her, there is sadness in his eyes.
She clenches her fist, laying each word out as a knife. “You decided to come with me instead of keeping my daughter safe. I asked you to protect her. Instead you chose to protect me, not understanding that my life without her is nothing. Do not speak of it again, or you will be the one sent away.”
“Yes, my queen.” He has spoken so softly she might have imagined it. Either way, she closes her bedroom door behind her, locking him out.
*
When she slides out of her room to walk in the garden, the sun has long fallen behind the mountains, and the sky is black and cloudless. She stands alone among the flowers and finds herself thinking of her sister, as she hasn’t done in a few years.
The last time was three winters ago, when an envoy had come to the palace to give her the news of her mother’s death. She couldn’t find any tears.
“How?” she asked.
“In her sleep,” the envoy replied, and Clytemnestra almost laughed bitterly. Her mother, once a huntress and fighter, dead in her sleep because of all the wine she drank.
Such is the fate of a woman, no matter how shining and brilliant she is, to be crushed like grain under a pestle. And what is left of Leda now? Rumors, myths. The woman who slept with the god of sky and thunder, the queen who was raped by a swan, the mother of the most beautiful woman in the world. But Leda was much more than that.
Clytemnestra spent that night pacing the palace, grieving for the mother who spoke to her about the gods of the forest, about Rhea and her whispers in sacred caves and cypress groves. The woman who ruled Sparta with her husband, who taught her children to fight in the gymnasium, and who sometimes woke her daughters in the night for a secret walk in the moonlight. She held their hands and made them laugh until Helen’s eyes shone with happiness.