At first, Agamemnon was a generous, joyful ruler of Mycenae, his project of uniting all the Greeks a long-held ambition that he was grateful to be realising. But, slowly, a peevishness began to settle over him and I saw him fretting from time to time. His imperious dismissal of what the slaves might think had been bluster. He couldn’t help but let slip his worries that perhaps he had not stamped out all lingering loyalty to Thyestes in his kingdom. Further afield, the Greeks were scattered across their islands, each with their own king and their own laws. Agamemnon worried that, even with the strength of Sparta and Mycenae together, the other lesser kings of Greece did not always recognise his superiority.
‘Do they think of Odysseus as the wisest?’ he would say. ‘Or Ajax the strongest? Who will they follow if it comes to a choice?’
I wondered what would be enough for him, what would soothe the broken boy within who had been chased from his home as his father’s blood spread across the marble floors of his own palace.
I had my own concerns. From the moment my baby daughter was born, the world seemed an altogether more alarming place, full of dangers I had never noticed before. This was love, I realised, looking at her tiny face, and with it came a swarming cloud of brand-new fears. An upturned pot of scalding water, a startled snake rearing from the grass, the rattling breath of disease – there seemed at once such a host of threats to her plump, perfect flesh. And it suddenly struck me as careless, arrogant even, to bring a defenceless infant into a place so haunted by grief and violence and the condemnation of the gods themselves. I could not ignore the fragments of the story that I knew any longer.
I sought out the slave-woman again. She had known Thyestes; what else could she tell me about the family that I had borne my little girl into?
‘You want to know about Atreus?’ She sounded disbelieving.
I wondered what she thought of me. Why had I not sought to find out more before I even married him? ‘I have heard some stories,’ I began guardedly. ‘But . . . I know there are other stories, too. Older stories.’
The slave-woman sucked in her breath. ‘No one in Mycenae would tell those stories,’ she said. ‘No one who valued their own skin.’
I paused. The fire burning at the hearth was the only light. Through the window, an oblong of starless sky was visible, flat and dark and empty. ‘Only the Queen of Mycenae listens to you here,’ I said. ‘There is no danger in any story you tell.’
Her eyes flickered to the sleeping Iphigenia in my arms. ‘The King of Mycenae might disagree.’
‘He doesn’t need to know.’
She smiled without mirth.
‘Please trust me,’ I said. ‘I want to know anything that might threaten my daughter. Any way that I can keep her safe.’ Speaking it aloud made me feel foolish. In Sparta, I could laugh this off. But here, it felt different.
She gave me a long, measuring look. I wondered what I was asking of her, if telling me the secrets of Mycenae might really put her at risk. I thought she wasn’t going to answer at all, but she glanced around at the closed door and, reassured that we were alone, she spoke. ‘It began with Tantalus,’ she said. ‘He was the first. Do you know what he did?’
‘He offended the gods.’ I shuddered, thinking of it. ‘He tried to trick them – he invited them to a banquet and . . .’ I swallowed. Motherhood was still new and raw to me. I couldn’t treat this as I had before, as a sensational tale consigned to a darker, more savage past. I was here, in the very palace where it had happened, where it felt as though the grisly spectres could reach out across the years, as though they could claw through the earth itself to clutch at me. At my daughter.
The slave-woman nodded. ‘He was a powerful, wealthy man, and the gods had favoured him with their friendship.’ Her words began to gather pace; although she had told me that no one would speak of this in Mycenae, now that she had my permission, the story flowed like one well practised. I wondered how many times these legends had been passed on here. ‘Despite the nobility of his blood, he was betrayed by the wretchedness of his nature. His cruelty and ambition tormented him, buzzing in his brain like a trapped mosquito, never giving him respite. He yearned for glory beyond the reaches of any mortal. He longed to see the gods humbled, to be the one to humiliate them. He imagined the sting of their shame and it warmed him better than the fire burning in his hearth. He could taste its rich sweetness like ambrosia flooding his mouth.’
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her.
‘The foulness of his plot only made it more delicious to him. The more depraved his ideas, the more delightful they became, until no stirring of conscience or pity could restrain him. Overcome with the worst of his hideous fantasies, he seized his own infant son, slit the child’s throat, carved his flesh and boiled him up to serve as meat to test the gods’ omniscience when they visited his table.’
Instinctively, I clutched my baby a little tighter to me, trying to shake the image from my mind. ‘Surely they must have known.’ The gods couldn’t be fooled.
‘In an instant! All except for Demeter. She was so distracted by her grief for her daughter, Persephone, that she took a bite. But the other gods saw at once what Tantalus had done, and they were horrified. They restored the boy to life, Hephaestus himself carving a shoulder from ivory to replace what Demeter had eaten. In punishment, they hurled Tantalus into the deepest cavern of Tartarus, where he stands to this day, suffering an eternity of thirst in a lake from which he can never drink, a thirst that will never abate for even a moment’s relief.’
I had heard of the fate of Tantalus, but it had seemed fantastical and far away. Now, the stories she was telling felt like a web she wove around me, as though she was a spider, hunched and malevolent, spinning the words that would hold me fast. In the stifling gloom of the chamber, the ancient tale felt so close that I could almost hear Tantalus’ howls of agony echoing from the abyss. ‘And the boy?’ I whispered.
‘The boy grew up,’ she went on. ‘But he was tainted by his father’s blood.’
‘Pelops,’ I said, the memory of it resurfacing. I wondered why I hadn’t paid more attention back in Sparta. ‘That was his name – I know he killed a servant in a quarrel.’
She was shaking her head. ‘Worse than a quarrel. Pelops sought a bride, and plotted sabotage and murder to win her from a rival suitor. He bribed the other man’s servant, a man named Myrtilus, to be his accomplice and to replace the pins in the would-be husband’s chariot with wax. The chariot crashed and the suitor died, but Pelops had yet more treachery in his heart. Rather than reward the servant, as he had sworn to do, Pelops pushed Myrtilus from the cliff edge, on to the jagged rocks below. As he fell, the betrayed servant shrieked out a curse of vengeance, imploring the gods to punish Pelops and all his line who followed thereafter.’
‘But they were both murderers!’ I couldn’t contain myself, my voice louder than I intended. Iphigenia stirred and whimpered, and I jumped to my feet, patting her and rocking her, soothing myself as much as her. More softly, I went on. ‘Why would the gods punish Pelops’ innocent children?’
The woman raised an eyebrow at me. ‘The children of Pelops were far from innocent.’
I sat back down, baby in my arms, a feeling of defeat swamping me.