Electra finds her in the morning, nestled on the throne as if she were a child. Clytemnestra hears her daughter’s quick steps on the floor and opens her eyes. It is still early, and she turns to her right, expecting Leon to be there. Then Electra speaks. “You sent Leon away.” Her voice is thick with accusation.
Clytemnestra sits up, her joints aching, and fixes the boar skin around her shoulders. It must have rained: the air smells of wet earth, and the morning light is soft and bright. “Leon decided to leave,” she says.
Electra takes a few steps forward, her eyes shining with rage. “But you drove him away! You went with the traitor Aegisthus and he left us!”
What an interesting choice of words, Clytemnestra thinks. Didn’t Electra ask her if Aegisthus was handsome and say that broken people fascinated her? When she speaks again, she seems on the edge of breaking down.
“Leon was like a father to me, to Chrysothemis, to Orestes. He cared for us because he loved you.” She stops, catching her breath. “You knew he would leave if you went with Aegisthus.”
“I didn’t.”
“Why did you have to go with him?” There is an edge to her voice. For a moment, she sounds almost like a child, whining.
Did Electra really desire Aegisthus? Clytemnestra had thought her fascination with him was nothing more than a whim, a result of his fathomless nature.
“Why did you go with him and send Leon away?” Electra repeats.
“I didn’t want to push Leon away.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him so?”
“Queens aren’t meant to beg.”
“So your pride sent him away.”
Clytemnestra stands. “Are you angry with me because you wanted Aegisthus?”
Electra narrows her eyes. “I did desire him, but I would never have gone with him, because I understand that some things must not be touched. Some people must not be taken.” The pain in her eyes is a living thing. “You, though, have always taken what you wanted, ever since I was a baby. You have taken Father’s attention, Iphigenia’s love, everything.”
“You think I wanted your father’s attention?” Clytemnestra almost shouts, her body racked with anger. “The very monster who slaughtered the man I loved and took me for himself?”
Electra doesn’t back down. “What about what I wanted? You took that too. The people’s loyalty, Orestes’s respect, Leon’s adoration.”
Everything I have I have earned. “You think this is a challenge? A fight between me and you?”
“Yes.”
“You do not know a real challenge,” Clytemnestra says, sharpening her words like axes. “You do not understand a real fight. When I was a child in Sparta, my mother would beat me if I lost a race. She humiliated me. My father starved me. The priestess flogged me. Those are challenges. Those are fights. The things you complain about are nothing more than childish whims, but you are no child.”
“Don’t you understand?” Electra replies. “Your childhood . . . that is something else you have won. You have won games and wrestles, you have survived beatings and floggings, you have been on hunts and killed a lynx! And what have I done? Nothing.” Rage is gone from her face, and now she is back to her unsettling coolness.
Clytemnestra takes a deep breath. Speaking to her daughter is harder than fighting a match, for Electra’s words are always unexpected blows.
“You do not see the things that make you special,” Clytemnestra says. “You make everything a challenge and refuse to see that you are different from me, and that is good. Your aunt Helen did the same when we were younger. She once told me she was jealous because I had everyone’s attention, but Helen has always been a much better person than I will ever be.”
“I am not like Helen,” Electra replies. She is standing fixed, like a tree that won’t be bent. “Nor am I like Iphigenia.”
“No, you aren’t.” Iphigenia was never jealous or unkind. She was unlike anyone else in this world.
Electra stares at her as if trying to pierce her skull, listen to the thoughts inside. Then she speaks the words that Clytemnestra has hoped she’d never hear: “Sometimes I think you wish I had died and Iphigenia had lived.”
*
She stumbles out of the megaron and into the courtyard. The guards move aside to let her pass, and when she looks at their faces, they are ugly, disfigured. She moves past them, past the griffins that seem to be bleeding. Everything is breaking down around her, losing shape. The columns become blades, the servants wild animals. The jars and baskets they are holding are like corpses.
Sometimes I think you wish I had died and Iphigenia had lived.
She finds her way to Chrysothemis’s room. The light is bright in this part of the palace, and contours fall back into place. She clutches her chest, feeling her heart beat wildly.
Chrysothemis is still in bed, sleeping with her hair spread around her. Aileen is sitting by the window, polishing some jewels. She stands when she sees her. “You are feeling unwell,” she says.
Clytemnestra gestures her to sit and takes the place beside her. She catches her breath as Aileen cleans the gems, giving her space. Holding each to the light to make sure it is shining, she rubs it gently with a cloth whenever she finds an opaque spot. Chrysothemis’s rhythmic breathing behind them is as soothing as a cradle song.
Sometimes I think you wish I had died and Iphigenia had lived.
“My daughter despises me,” Clytemnestra says.
Aileen puts the tiara and cloth down, looking at her with her gentle eyes. “Surely she didn’t use those words.”
“She said worse.”
“You know how Electra is,” Aileen says, taking her hand. “She harbors sadness in her heart and makes it come out as hatred. But she loves you.”
“I don’t think she does.”
“Electra has grown up in the shadows. Iphigenia was older, better than her at everything, and Orestes was a boy. They had all the attention. It has been difficult for her.”
Clytemnestra draws away her hand. “You know what is difficult? Losing a child. I gave my life to these children. I made them strong, fought so that they could learn how to rule.” And I expect their loyalty in return.
“Electra lost a sister.” Aileen sets down the tiara and picks up a pair of earrings. “When you came back from Aulis, she would spend every night outside your room, listening to you as you cried. When she couldn’t bear the sound and wanted to hurt herself, Leon would find her and stay with her until dawn.” She gives her a small, sad smile. “He might not have been her father, but she loved him.”
Clytemnestra feels a rot inside her body. “He left, and I did nothing to stop him.”
“You had no choice. If you had stopped him, he would have stayed here and hated you. If you had followed him, you would have disgraced yourself.”
Chrysothemis stirs in her sleep. The sun pours on her like a shower of golden light. Clytemnestra used to cradle her in the sunlight when she refused to sleep as a baby, and Chrysothemis would drift off in a second—she liked the warmth on her skin.
“Sometimes I fear that I am becoming the person I am pretending to be,” she says quietly. “I felt nothing when Leon left.”
Aileen shakes her head. “The first night you came to Mycenae, you saved me from flogging. Remember that? You may not, but I do not forget. Then a few days later, you came into the kitchen and asked if I wanted to walk around the garden with you. You said, You remind me of my sister. When Agamemnon wanted to sleep with me, you intervened. When I had the fever, you gave me herbs. You taught me to read so I could help you with the inventories. Would a cruel person do any of this?”
She reaches out and takes her queen’s hand once more. This time, Clytemnestra doesn’t draw away.
“Even when you are pretending,” Aileen says, “you are still better than most people.”
*
That night, she lies wakeful, looking at the stars that swirl outside the windows.