A Darker God (9 page)

“‘Woman! Loathed abomination! Whatever possessed you to do this deed? You deserve to be banished from the city, forever cursed!’”

Emotion had stripped away a layer of the actor’s smooth, upper-class English and Letty thought she detected something more raw, more musical, beneath. A Welshman perhaps? His heartfelt outpouring was scalding, and the perfect foil for the cold precision of the queen’s reply:

In pursuit of her flourish of “Justice,” Clytemnestra was distracted for the moment from her unwrapping of the corpse: a bit of business designed to prolong the suspense. The ancient writer himself, father of stagecraft, would have admired the device, Letty thought. The queen launched into a tirade against her husband, enumerating his many appalling sins against her. With each accusation she tugged at the cloth and, inch by inch, the guilty man was revealed.

Well—fairness in all things. That was the Greek way. Balance. Hear both sides. Letty could not help but agree with the queen that she had much to complain about. Foremost of the charges was that Agamemnon had offered up as a human sacrifice their young daughter Iphigenia to placate the gods and ensure a following wind to take the Greek fleet to Troy. And all with the intention of chasing after his brother’s wife, the lovely Helen, who had eloped with a Trojan prince. In pursuit of a whore, Agamemnon had sacrificed a virgin. The audience sympathised with the queen. Clytemnestra objected to his long absence from the family hearth. Ten years. That amounted, surely, to desertion? And, most recent of his offences, and most bitterly resented—he had brought back, as his concubine from Troy, his spear prize, his share of the
booty: the princess Cassandra. Agamemnon had fallen in love with the Trojan girl and had returned to Argos treating her with all honour, as his wife and the mother of his two small twin sons, rather than as his slave.

And, here also, Clytemnestra has a devastating revelation to make to the citizens:

She brandished her sword again.

Cassandra and her children: three innocents dead by the queen’s hand.

The chorus cringed and moaned at the cruelty. But the queen’s greatest sin in their eyes was the murder of Agamemnon. A king was inviolate, and a husband all-powerful. He might have concubines and bastard children by the hundred, he might have killed his own daughter: no matter. The moral law was clear. A woman guilty of the double sin of killing such a man was anathema to the good citizens of Mycaenae. Or Athens.

The chorus went on with its breast-beating while their leader remonstrated with her on their behalf, threatening dire consequences.

To no avail. The queen had an answer for everything. Obdurate and ruthless and a mistress of timing, she stood by her husband’s corpse, clutching the last fold of the cloth as though she would hold on to him forever, her trophy, the victim of her sword. Finally, judging her moment of revelation had come, she leaned in close to the body, a lowering Nemesis, and delivered over his head a mockery of a eulogy:

With a practised flick of the wrist she snatched the remaining length of cloth from the corpse and, turning as she did so to the audience, she sought to involve them in her triumph as she revealed their dead master to the citizen chorus.

Letty gasped, not in response to the queen’s gloating but in mortification that her so carefully applied wig had been wrenched loose from the dummy’s head by the gesture and, with an obscenely comical air, was now resting at a drunken angle over the upper part of the face. She could hardly bring herself to look.

“Ah! We descend into bathos … But don’t take it to heart, my dear,” advised Maud. “This is, after all, exactly why we have a dress rehearsal. Something always goes wrong. This is it. You’ll have plenty of time to reinstate the wig before the actual performance.”

The old men of the chorus ought to have wailed in shock and pity and held their hands before their eyes as though unable to bear the sight. So the stage directions instructed. But they stayed silent and still. Torches wavered and drooped. Then, with the sudden flashing movement of a shoal of fish,
the members of the chorus made a concerted advance on the bathtub.

What on earth was going on? Letty, for once, would have been glad of an explanatory footnote from Maud. One or two of the actors snatched off their masks, the better to see what lay before them. Gasps exploded, comments were muttered. Letty thought she heard an injudicious and very Anglo-Saxon exclamation. Weirdly, still behaving as a chorus and moving with purpose together, they began to close ranks, packing themselves in a double circle protectively around the corpse.

Clytemnestra, sensing herself being physically edged away from centre stage, hesitated. “What
are
you doing? What
is
all this?” Letty heard her hissing and then, receiving no response, her voice rang out, imperious and angry: “I say, you chaps! Have you all gone barmy? Get out of my way, you clowns! I’ve not finished yet. This is where I spit on the corpse!”

No one moved an inch to accommodate her. The queen raised her sword and advanced on the grey figures. Confused but still apparently acting in role, she picked out the tallest. The leader of the chorus. She jabbed him in the ribs. “Hey! You! Bossy Boots with the loud voice! I’m talking to
you!”

The man moved reluctantly to one side with a shocked protest: “No, madam, no! Believe me—this is not a sight for …” And, in firmer tone: “Madam, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave the stage …”

Clytemnestra ignored him and pushed herself swiftly forward into easy spitting distance of the corpse before they could close the gap. She peered down at the bloodstained wreck. Her regal left hand went out and grasped Agamemnon by the shoulder. She shook him.

“Geoffrey? Is that
you
, Geoffrey? What on earth do you think
you’re
doing there?” And, surprisingly: “This isn’t the time for playing stupid games!… Oy! Geoffrey!”

The warrior’s muscled brown arm flopped, lifeless, over the edge of the bathtub, knuckles grazing the rough slabs of the orchestra floor as the naked body, unbalanced by her shaking, folded at the hips and lurched forward.

“Oh, my God!” wailed Clytemnestra, and she slid in a silken whisper to her knees.

Chapter 7

T
he young lighting manager, hidden behind the scenes in the buildings to the rear of the orchestra, came suddenly to life. Confused and wondering how he’d managed to lose his place in the text—had he nodded off? turned over two pages at once?—he decided the sensible thing to do was to respond to the drama of the moment. He turned on the additional stage lighting and bathed the scene of confusion in an unkind glare. A second later, Letty found herself distracted from the events unfolding before her by the arrival at her side of a large and very welcome masculine presence. William Gunning settled on the stone bench and leaned across her, managing a fleeting but affectionate squeeze of the hand as he did so and whispering: “Lady Merriman … Laetitia … I’ve brought the car. Thought you’d appreciate a lift back. Ah—I see the
ekkyklema
worked … Now—where’ve we got to? Running a bit late, aren’t they? Good Lord! What’s going on?”

Maud replied, “You may well ask, William! They’ve gone mad. They’ve all forgotten their lines and they’re inventing their own rubbish. I believe on the London stage it’s called improvisation … Isadora Duncan has much to answer for! The queen has launched an unprovoked attack on the leader of the
chorus and has now sunk to her knees yelping over the king’s corpse. Where’s the stage manager? Where’s Hugh? And where’s my husband? I can’t believe he authorised this. Someone must fetch Andrew to deal with them.” She looked pointedly at Gunning.

Letty had to agree. Professor Sir Andrew Merriman, director, scriptwriter, and moving force behind this amateur entertainment, should at this moment be striding around the stage, boxing a few ears.

“William, my dear—would you mind? Go and roust him out! I’d go myself if only …” Maud’s voice trailed away and they filled in the unspoken: “… if only it weren’t for my weak heart … my palpitations … my arthritis … my nerves …”

Gunning had got to his feet and was standing tensely absorbing the scene. Letty was sure he hadn’t heard a word Maud said, but he was already starting towards the stage. Letty put down her script and scuttled after him, aware that Maud was staying firmly in her seat, tut-tutting with exasperation and clutching her bosom. Obviously, this was a palpitations day.

Gunning stalked to the centre front of the stage and held up his arms like a conductor. “Quiet! All of you!” he commanded. “Stand still. Stay exactly where you are.” The response to the crisp officer’s voice was automatic and immediate. “No one is to move until we’ve got hold of Professor Merriman. Now … anyone know where he is?”

“Sir … he’ll be backstage having a nip of brandy before the last scene,” offered a tremulous voice. The young man who’d been playing the part of Cassandra came back onstage again. He pushed up his white mask and looked over his shoulder towards the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of tents and wooden huts that served for a
skena
behind the orchestra. “He keeps it in the dressing room. Er … would you like me to go and do a recce?”

“That would be kind of you. It’s Simon, isn’t it? Thank you,” said Gunning, dismissing him with a nod. “Steady, the rest of you.” And then, tentatively: “I think you’re all aware that we may be looking at something of a problem …” He turned to the queen, who was still on her knees gasping and moaning in front of the bathtub, and held out a hand. “We haven’t yet been introduced, Your Majesty. William Gunning … loosely attached to the British School of Archaeology.”

The queen stifled her gasps long enough to mutter: “Thetis Templeton. How do you do?”

“Would you mind moving aside, Miss Templeton?”

At last she took his hand and, suddenly clumsy in her long robes, struggled to her feet.

With the queen’s presence removed, Letty had a clear view of the bathtub. She stepped closer, expecting at any moment to be ordered away by some bossy male voice, most probably William’s.

She’d guessed what the tub contained.

The slumping movement of the body seen from the audience benches had not been that of the stiff-jointed mannequin she’d worked on a few hours earlier. She’d become intimate with every limb of that doll and knew that she was not looking at it now. These legs and arms were not the smooth white waxen ones she’d daubed. They were tanned and muscled. This torso had flopped with what she imagined would be the heavy downward and forward motion of a real man who’d suffered a real death.

Fearful but drawn on towards the horror, she braced herself for the sight of Geoffrey in his agony. The recently exposed face was bloodstained and almost obscured by the black wig, which had slipped its moorings and been dragged down over the nose by Clytemnestra’s jerky unwrapping.

Someone was going to have to remove it.

Laetitia felt a residual responsibility for the contents of the tub, whatever or whoever they were, and she readied herself for the task.

Within two yards of the body, she stopped. She gasped and stared and her limbs began to shake. With a low moan of disbelief and protest, she flung herself the last few feet, sinking to her knees in front of the corpse, in unconscious repetition of Clytemnestra’s performance. Murmuring softly, she reached out to remove the wig, but her arm was firmly grasped by a strong hand before she could touch it.

The leader of the chorus spoke gently in her ear: “I’m awfully sorry, Miss … er … Talbot, isn’t it? You really mustn’t disturb anything, you know. I’m afraid there’s been a terrible disaster … In fact, I rather think we ought to clear the stage.” He released her into the protective custody of Gunning’s arms before leaning over to search with expert touch for a pulse behind the right ear of Agamemnon. After a few moments he stood up again, shaking his head in an unmistakable gesture. “Gunning, would you …?”

William took Letty by the waist and led her as far away as she would allow him, then he turned to face the leader. “I’m sorry … you have the advantage—and the additional concealment of a mask. You are
…?”