I hardly dare to breathe as he considers what we’ve said. The threat he heard at Delphi, that Apollo will punish him if he leaves his father’s murderers untouched, it tells me that we’re right, even if what we’re talking about is a horrifying thing. But what I don’t say out loud is that, if he kills her, it will be the Erinyes who come for him instead. The snake-haired Erinyes with their baleful eyes and their unquenchable desire for revenge on those who kill their own parent. Apollo might punish a son who doesn’t avenge his father, but they will chase down a son who kills his mother. My brother will be pursued to the very ends of the earth, their wings beating through the sky and blocking out the light of the sun. Their barking cries will ring in his ears, day and night, their thirst for torment unabated.
But at least then she will be dead, along with her lover. It’s easy for Orestes to prevaricate. He’s lived in comfort since I sent him away, whilst I’ve been here, living in disgrace and squalor. I’ve borne the burden of suffering for what she’s done, and no one else has had to. Not yet.
‘Do you think it’s the only way to fulfil Apollo’s instruction?’ he asks me.
I’m sitting here, rank and dishevelled, a peasant on the ground, but these three men are turning to me, waiting to hear what I will say. I am Agamemnon’s daughter. I feel the truth of it, and that my future is unfolding before me; this life I’ve found myself in feels only temporary. I can see a chance ahead, something different at last. I turn my face up to the sun, like a flower ready to bloom.
Orestes has always trusted me. I told him what the world was, years ago, and he’s never had reason to doubt me. If I tell him, if I set this in motion, it will happen.
For the first time, the power is mine.
‘It’s the only way, Orestes.’ I lean forward and rest my hand on his. His eyes meet mine and I feel a shudder, as though I’m looking right into the cracks of his soul. ‘You have to kill her.’
It’s agreed that Orestes and Pylades will spend the night hidden in our hut. I watch them talking, making their preparations, praying to the gods for success. I know it’s ours. We won’t fail.
Georgios is busy all day, working as always, and I make more than my usual half-hearted attempt to prepare food and impose some sense of order upon our home. I sweep the floor, startling the spiders, who scuttle frantically away from the brush I’ve barely ever wielded. I grind up barley for the dense, tasteless bread I bake, and slice wrinkled vegetables for broth. Chores that I despise, carried out today with a willingness that surprises me as much as the poor spiders. I’m jerky, restless, full of agitation as I work. The smell and the smoke churn together nauseatingly, and my head pounds in time with my throbbing pulse. All the while, I keep glancing out to Orestes and Pylades, pacing up and down outside or coming in to sit across from one another in exactly the same attitude, leaning forward with their elbows on their knees, intent in conversation. But for all their preoccupation, I feel Pylades’ eyes rest on me when I look away from them. I even steal away when I can, and drag a comb through my uneven hair, twisting it back neatly into a coiled braid, my fingers remembering the steps from years ago, when I last cared. I smooth down my tattered skirt. I wish for a moment I’d accepted some of the fine linens Clytemnestra had tried to bring me, some of the gems. But why would I think that? How could I sit with my brother, wearing clothes that she had given me? However self-conscious I feel before them both, I have my dignity. I’m not besmirched by anything she’s touched. I drum my fingers impatiently.
Georgios returns with the sunset. He takes in the scene: a fire burning in the hearth, the smell of simmering broth, my brother and Pylades seated at our table, where the ripe fruit I’ve gathered lies on a plate at the centre, beside a jug of wine. His mouth twists in a half-smile that tugs at my heart for a moment, and unexpected tears rise up, blurring my vision.
I curse as the broth I’m stirring splashes up over the side of the pot, droplets scalding my arm.
‘Are you alright?’ he asks.
‘Fine,’ I snap. ‘It was just clumsiness.’
‘Come with me.’ He takes my unburned arm and steers me away from the other men. I follow him outside into the darkening air. The breeze stirs, the scent of jasmine heavy and sweet, the stars glimmering to life above the red-streaked horizon. I wish that he wouldn’t speak at all, that we could leave it all unsaid.
‘After tomorrow,’ he says. He clears his throat, looking down, not meeting my eyes. I fasten my gaze on the sinking sun. Everything is infected by its crimson glow; the whole world inflamed and seething. ‘After it’s done—’ He stops.
I won’t make him be the one to say it. I think I owe him that much, at least, not to draw it out any longer. ‘I won’t come back here.’
I can hear the splintering of his heart in the silence. My old friend, Georgios. The only person who understood, who remembered the Agamemnon that I did. We’d constructed him together, the king whose absence has carved the shape of our lives.
‘I knew when I married you that you deserve more in life than I could ever give you,’ he says quietly.
I wish I could have been happy in poverty, happy with Georgios: a good man with an honest heart. But I’m a daughter of the House of Atreus. If Orestes must take responsibility for bringing justice to our father’s killers, I can’t turn away from my duty to live the life that Agamemnon wanted for me. He hoped I’d bring our family honour with a glorious marriage, a great alliance. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell Georgios, and although the words are inadequate, I mean them.
I leave him, standing alone in the gathering darkness. I go back into the house, where my brother is; a house that has been empty of feeling for so long. Now it is alive and vital. At last, it is our time, and though the magnitude of it makes me unsteady, grasping on to the doorway for support as I walk inside, I won’t let sympathy pull me back. There’s no place for weakness, not any more.
35
Clytemnestra Sleep comes easily to me now, every night. I don’t roam the palace in darkness any more, don’t stare out across the black void searching for distant flames. My slumber isn’t restful, though; it drops over me, heavy as a cloak, trapping me in its folds. I feel my dead limbs, inert and useless whilst my mind races frantically like the thrumming wings of a hummingbird. I lie paralysed as the nightmares come.
I’m back in the torchlit chamber with the old slave-woman telling me of the curse that creeps throughout our home, twisting around our family, ensnaring us all. My belly rises in front of me, taut and round, but when I see the baby stirring restlessly beneath the thin fabric of my dress, I can’t make out the shape of a foot kicking from inside my womb. It looks like the heavy roll of coiled flesh, something snake-like and inhuman slithering in my body. Then I’m in my chamber, with a swaddled bundle in the crib, but it writhes, a mass of scuttling creatures wrapped in its folds, and when they swarm out, I cannot scream, cannot see, cannot move, as they tear at my flesh, as they gnaw down to my bones. The dream tilts dizzyingly; I am outside on a vast plain, rubble smoking in the distance, the ground sticky under my feet, and it oozes up between my toes, a glistening crimson. There is a river, but its waters run red and dark; the earth is choked with the dead, and the blood spills out to the ocean itself, staining its vast waters.
When I wake, gasping, in the early light, the horror clings to me like a vapour.
36