“I don’t ask you to forget. I ask you to make a choice. Follow a queen who has proven her worth, who rewards loyalty and justice, or leave your city to the vultures.”
The men hesitate. They would ask Orestes to rule if he were here, but her son is away to be king of another city—Aegisthus has made sure of that.
“Our queen, keeper of our house,” the large leader says, “we will serve you.”
The others follow his lead and repeat the words—they echo in the hall, slowly fading to silence.
“Gather every man, woman, and child,” she orders. “Give the news to the citadel.”
Their shadows leap high on the walls as they leave, the light falling behind the mountains into the shadows.
“Mother,” Chrysothemis says. Her daughters are standing together, their faces bathed in the light of the torches. Everyone else is gone—elders, warriors, Aegisthus. Clytemnestra knows he will be stalking Agamemnon’s men, listening to their every word, checking their every move.
She extends her hand, and Chrysothemis falls into her arms. Clytemnestra feels her daughter’s heart beating against her own.
When they separate, Chrysothemis turns to Electra and gestures her to do the same. But Electra’s eyes are sharp. Clytemnestra feels her daughter slip away quickly, like ashes in the wind.
“You may have their love and loyalty,” Electra says quietly, “but you took a father from me.” Anger shines on her face and something else—spite. “You speak of justice, but what you did isn’t just. You are no better than him.” She turns and walks away, leaving nothing but emptiness behind her.
Chrysothemis touches her mother’s hand. “Give her time,” she says, her voice faint, as if she were afraid of speaking louder. “She will forgive you.”
Clytemnestra closes her eyes. She would give anything to believe that, but she knows Electra. Her daughter doesn’t forgive.
*
When Clytemnestra walks into the garden, the pyre is burned out and all that remains are ashes. Electra is sitting on a fallen tree, the moon creeping overhead. She has tortured her fingers so much that her hands are like an old woman’s.
“Go away,” she says when she sees her mother approaching.
Clytemnestra walks closer but remains standing. She can feel her daughter’s anger on her own skin, not warm and burning, like a flame, but ice cold, like snowflakes.
“I don’t want to speak to you.” Electra’s voice is thick with grief, though she tries to control it.
“I do not care.”
Electra scoffs. Her face is pale, like the wild crocuses under her feet. Clytemnestra wants to reach out and cup her hands around it.
“You don’t understand why I did what I did,” she says, “but you have to live with that, and so do I.”
Electra lifts her chin, defiant. “Why do I have to pay the consequences for something I didn’t do?”
“Life is like that.”
“Life isn’t as simple as you want us to believe. And there is a difference between what is and what should be.”
On that, Clytemnestra agrees. But it is the spite in Electra’s voice that aches, like a rotten tooth.
“You can’t forgive me for killing a father who would have hurt you? A man who slaughtered your sister? I have loved you since the moment you were born. I have fed you at my breast, cried for you, laughed with you, understood you when no one else would.” She stops because her eyes are wet with tears. She recomposes herself. “But if you loved him so much, then kill me. It won’t bring him back.”
The air between them feels spoiled with smoke. Electra doesn’t flinch. “Do you think Orestes will forgive you? Do you think you’ll rule our land together, take it away from the Atreidai?” She shakes her head, a cruel smile on her face. “He won’t. He will come back with a sword in hand. And he will avenge his father.”
*
She stands in the garden for a long time. She keeps still among the trees, under the thinning light of the moon. The blades of grass seem to crawl over her feet. She bends and rips them out by the root, one by one. I will never forgive you, Electra said. She knows that, in moments of pain, some words are spoken with a harshness that is not truly meant. But even so, words can grow roots inside one’s heart. You can bury them, hoping they will wither and die, but roots keep finding something to latch on to.
A bird darts through the shadows, flying away from the trees and up toward the mountain peaks. She takes a crocus and presses it against her heart, then walks inside.
Aileen is lighting the torches in her bedroom when Clytemnestra comes in. “Your fingers are still broken,” she says gently. “I need to tend them.”
Clytemnestra sits on the stool and puts her hand into her servant’s. Aileen takes it with care, as if she were handling a newborn baby.
“You are not surprised I killed him,” Clytemnestra says.
Aileen takes a piece of linen and wraps it around the fingers as tightly as she can. “He was a cruel man,” she says.
“And yet Electra hates me for it.”
“You can’t have justice and everyone’s approval,” Aileen says, touching her queen’s thumb carefully, trying to move it.
I don’t want everyone’s approval, just my daughter’s.
“Electra knows what her father was,” Aileen continues, “but I think she would have wanted you to show him mercy.”
“Would you have shown him mercy?”
Aileen makes a knot to keep the linen tight around her hand. “I have never been in your position. I wouldn’t make a good queen.”
Under the torches, her hair is so bronze it seems to catch fire. There is nothing for a while, only the sound of their breaths in the warm air.
“An envoy came for you today,” Aileen says finally. “You were busy with the elders so he gave me the news.”
“From Sparta?”
“Yes, but not from Orestes. From your sister.”
Clytemnestra stares at her, frozen.
“She is alive and well,” Aileen says. “Menelaus has forgiven her.”
Menelaus has forgiven her.
She walks to the window, her hand clutched to her chest. The relief is so strong it is taking her breath away. Her sister, “burning men to death with her beauty.” She has heard the warriors who walked on the Trojan fields speak of Helen: the “bringer of agony,” “the scourge of Greece.”
What is left of the girl who was afraid to speak in front of her father? Who followed Clytemnestra everywhere? Who couldn’t lie, not even when her sister asked her to? She has survived a war that destroyed a city—a war that she started—and now is at home, safe in the arms of her brother. Clytemnestra holds on to the image, refusing to let it slip away.
And Menelaus?
She can hear Helen’s voice, as she used to when they were little. Do not worry about him, Sister. I can take care of myself.
Clytemnestra almost laughs. Lately kings and heroes have dropped like flies, but just as her grandmother predicted so long ago, queens outlive them all.
*
Dawn in the megaron. The light is feeble, like the first rays of sun on the water in the summer mornings. The frescoes rest, trapped in their still eternity. She walks by the throne. She once asked herself, what does it mean to be queen? Now she knows. It is daring to do what others won’t.
She has dared much in life and paid the consequences each time. She has been called “proud,” “savage,” “single-minded,” “mad with ambition,” “a murderess.” She has been called many things, but none of those matter. “It is the will of the gods,” the priestess had told her all those years ago. “You will be despised by many, hated by others, and punished. But in the end, you will be free.” She doesn’t know if the gods had anything to do with it, but the prophecy was true. For more than half her life, she has worn vengeance like a second skin. Now it is time to shed it. Who will she be without her anger, her pain? What will her freedom taste like?
Human lives are based on pain. But to have a few moments of happiness, lightnings tearing the darkness of the sky, that is worth it.
Inside her, the image of a Spartan girl waiting on the terrace for a foreign king, thinking about her future. When I ask your sister about you, she says you always know what you want. What does she want?
She has fought her war and won. Now she can rule.