Electra (27 page)

But Orestes did not speak or smile. When we stopped at night he sat for hours, honing the edge of an already razor-sharp sword with a mountain stone. The noise ate at my nerves. Our cousin tried to draw him out, but he would not be drawn.

'Lady,' Pylades said to me, as we rode from the city into the road south, for Tiryns.

'Lord?'

'Have you thought - about the future, Electra?'

'The future, cousin?'

'What shall we do if this murder is accomplished? Where shall we go from Mycenae?'

'We shall not leave Mycenae,' said Orestes. 'I am claiming my kingdom.'

'You would stay in that city after the murder of your mother?' Pylades asked, a line dividing his brow, his chestnut hair escaping from its fillet.

'Blood can be washed away,' I said bitterly. 'Stone floors bear no traces of murder. Who knows that better than we?'

He said nothing and we rode on.

Winter passed. When we saw the very first leaves sprouting from the tops of the fig tree, no bigger than a crow's foot, we set sail again. The children waved at us from the shore as we rowed out of the little bay.

Troas could not be our home.

'Well, Princess, where shall we roam?' asked Eumides. He had put on weight and needed less wine and some healthy exercise. He had done nothing at all in Troas, apart from his legendary performances amongst the women of the city, about which some exceptionally indelicate songs had been composed.

'It does not matter,' I replied. 'Leave it to the Gods. They might be intending to repair some of the damage they have done to us.'

'In that case, we'll to Lemnos first,' said my sailor. 'We can trade our cargo for axeheads there for wood, and is most acceptable to the smaller islands.'

We wandered for four years. We traded that cargo of wood for ingots of bronze. The ingots we bartered for sheep, as we carried a bleating cargo to Lesbos where the scour had come upon their flocks. The sheep sold well, but they loaded us with skins for the medicine Chryse and I compounded, which cured the remaining beasts. The fleeces we traded in Kriti for that most valuable of herbs, dittany, herb of immortality.

In Poros we heard that Odysseus had not returned to Ithaca, and we wondered what could have delayed him so long.

In the Chersonese we looked for Hecabe, my mother. The fishermen told us solemnly that she had turned into a black bitch with glowing red eyes and run off howling into the hills, as a certain red-headed Odysseus had told them to say; but a hefty bribe bought from them the location of her tomb.

We made the offerings. I did not grieve. She did not wish to live.

In Malea once, Chryse and I, being utterly exhausted, refused to make love to Eumides, and he had stalked angrily out of the inn, slamming the door. There were lovers, he declared, panting for him on the waterfront, and we bade him go and find some, for we had been tending the survivors of a shipwreck, pounding the water out of sodden mariners all day while they coughed and choked and tried to die out of sheer weariness.

We were woken by a shamed and penitent sailor, who lay down between us to be embraced, saying that there was no love like ours, and no one could replace us, and we made love to him after all.

We treated a plague on Samos. Eumides, now used to the company of healers, had conquered his distaste for retching, filthy humanity and worked two days and a night with us, pouring a Trojan remedy (which we used for cattle scour) down the stinking throats of Aegina's citizenry. We saved eighty per cent of the people. No one objected that I was a woman and could not wear an Asclepid's gown while they lay groaning. But after they recovered they gave us a cargo of olives and their best wishes and sent two ships out of the straits to escort us, making sure that the uncanny trios had really gone.

I saw men making the sign against the black sorcery behind my back as we sat down in the market place on Thera, and we beat a retreat, showered with stones, after Chryse had dissected the body of a dead man to find out why he had died.

They were all infected with voracious intestinal worms, we knew, but they called us necromancers and we just escaped alive.

It was a pleasant life apart from these little problems. Most places accepted us as traders or as physicians. But there was never an island where we could both have the same status. In some places women were healers, the child-carriers, and no one who could not bear could heal. In some places medicine was the province of men, grave Asclepids in impressive robes, and women's medicine was the province of devotees of Hecate, Drinker of Dog's Blood: sorcery and poisons and charms.

We grew wise with experience, stored with much knowledge and much practice. My skin was tanned with travel and Chryse's also, while our Eumides was as dark as an African and grew an impressive black, curly beard. We were wealthy, well fed, and had friends all over the Aegean.

But we were growing unsettled. We needed a home.

Then one night on the breast of the ocean I woke in agony, clutching my head. It felt as though someone was driving a needle into my brain.

I knew the fire, knew the voice from the fire. Eleni. Oh, the unutterable relief to know that he was alive; unhappy, tired, frustrated, but alive and mine, mine! I sent what must have been an aetheric shout into his mind, 'Eleni!' and I felt his response, a flood of love and relief.

'Cassandra,' he said. I could not hear any more words, though I strained my senses so that my head throbbed like a drum.

'Where?' I sent, frantically. 'Where are you?'

'Epirus, enslaved,' he said, and then the contact strained and slackened. I searched frantically and found the little glow that was my twin. I could not read him, but he was there. I had not lost him. He was there, a small fire in my heart. My lost one, my love, my dear.

I woke Eumides and Chryse. They sat up, alarmed at my pallor and the pain in my eyes.

'We are going to Epirus,' I told them. 'I have found my brother.'

They sang, and the ropes bit into my wrists unfelt. I knew that if I broke free they would charm the ship onto the rocks and I would join the dead in the Siren's meadow. They did not sing of love, as poets have reported who never heard them. They did not sing of maiden's yielding flesh or burning desire, nor of war and glory, trumpets or armies, fame or treasure.

They sang of land, of a small farm in poverty-stricken Ithaca, with the smoke rising from the one chimney and the sound of chickens clucking and pecking in the dirt beside the door. They spoke of new-washed linen drying on the bushes, olives laid in press, goats bleating after their dams in spring. They sang of poppies in the grass, children playing on the floor beside the hearth, of the scent of bread baking, of a woman suckling a newborn at her breast in the sun. They sang of cleanliness, of new linen next to washed skin, of sleep, always of sleep in peace.

They broke my heart. I heard it break.

Poseidon, most cruel of Gods, sea-monster, if you will not help me home, I will get there in your despite. Men will abandon your worship, Earth-Shaker, and your altars will lie cold in Ithaca, if ever Odysseus gets home.

Then I heard the boom and wash, as of cliffs colliding with immense force. Circe told me of them. Scylla and Carybdis, the Clashing Rocks. The sea was full of wreckage.

If ever Odysseus gets home? I would not wager one obol on his chances.

There was peace and plenty in the villages as we came through. The Artemision which had been starving was fat and prosperous and they sacrificed a goat for us. The Artemision, where someone had tried to rape me and I had killed him, seemed strange and it took a moment before I realised what was wrong. The figures around the well were not female. The men were still wearing the veils there and I asked why.

'The Goddess Artemis ordered it,' they said, making a devout sign. 'She came herself, the golden woman, Bow-Bearer, Divine Hunter. We were lucky to escape her wrath. We will not attract it again. Our village is rich and pilgrims come to see where the Goddess appeared, leaving offerings.'

We slept there that night and no one attacked us. Next morning we rode on. Mycenae lay before us in the dawn light, a closed, grey pile of stones.

'What shall we do? Shall we just go to the gate?' I asked.

'Saying, greetings, men of Mycenae, let us in, we've come to kill your king?' asked Pylades. He was always ironic when he was nervous. I was suddenly angry, possessed of fury, and had to swallow bile or choke.

We saw a procession winding down from the city towards the circle graves outside. The priests of Apollo were leading a bull, and walking in front was a figure I knew.

Dark curly hair, weak face, long legs. It was Aegisthus, wearing my father's robes, and I knew where they were going.

'Come, quickly. We can get to the sacrifice place before them. It's the bull-killing for strangers, there must be visitors expected. Xenoi, guests, perhaps, to be purified. Come on.'

I ran down the path, out of sight of the city, sliding down a grassy slope and hiding behind a bush to remove my veil, put back my hair into a plait, and drape my mantle in man-fashion. No woman could attend the rites of slaughter. They would take me for a boy, even if I looked odd. No Mycenean woman would dare masquerade as a man. The punishment for such presumption was death by stoning.

The priests came chanting hymns into the stony hollow where the altar stone was carved around with the spirals which denote the Sun.

Aegisthus looked at three strangers and did not know us. I stared into his hated face and saw no recognition in his eyes, no sign that he knew that death was breathing on the back of his neck.

'Greetings. I am Aegisthus, King of Mycenae. Do you require purging of guilt,' he asked, holding up a pitcher of spring water.

To allow him to pour it over our hands would make us xenoi, his guests, and increase our crime. Pylades shook his head, smiling. 'No, Lord, we are clean of offence. We are travellers from Phocis and have come to join your sacrifice.'

'King, King!' Aegisthus smiled assentingly and the priests brought the ox forward. It was unwilling, and lowed. This was a bad omen and it was usual under these circumstances to ask someone else to kill the beast. He offered the axe to Orestes.

'You Phocians are known as stout men. Show me.'

'I'll show you, if I can,' said Orestes flatly.

He waited until Aegisthus was turned away and then struck with all his force at the usurper's throat. The blow was so severe that his head was almost detached. Blood gushed over the altar.

The bull took fright and reared, breaking his tether and spreading dismay through the crowd as he galloped through them, bellowing with terror.

Aegisthus crumpled slowly in the ruin of the king's robes, purple now with blood as well as dye. My heart rejoiced. I only wished that I had been able to wield the axe myself. Despoiler, thief, murderer. He had a faintly surprised look on his face, and I barely restrained myself from spurning his head with my foot. I mired my hands in the wound, trailing my hem in his gore. Dead, dead. The monster was dead, and another monster soon to die.

'Stand off!' warned Pylades, fending back the astonished soldiers with spear and sword. 'This is Orestes, son of Agamemnon, claiming blood vengeance for the murder of his father.'

The soldiers paused, not knowing what to do. 'Who can identify this man?' asked the captain.

'Maybe I can,' quavered an old man. He had been my father's house-steward, and had known us both since we were born. He limped forward to Orestes and peered shortsightedly up into his face.

'Orestes,' he mused. 'Orestes was scalded when he was a child - a bad burn. The scar should still be there.' He tottered around my brother and son to look at his back, lifting the tunic. There was a flat scar just above his waist, where a careless slave had poured boiling water on him in his bath.

'The child I knew had brown hair and golden eyes, and he would know my name and the name of his nurse.'

'Your name is Nestor, and my nurse was called Cilissa,' said Orestes. 'I am Orestes, son of Agamemnon.' His voice was perfectly level. 'You taught me to make Panpipes out of elm-bark, Nestor, do you remember? And you gave me a puppy - she grew into a fine dog - her name was Racer. Half wolf - she never learned-'

'Never learned to bark,' concluded the old man. He gave an odd whistle, and a dog came running to the signal.

She skidded to a halt before Orestes, staring. Then she approached almost on her belly, whining and sniffing the air. The crowd grew still. The black dog cocked her ears, identified the scent, then threw herself at Orestes, snuffling and leaping up to lick his face.

'Orestes, son of Agamemnon,' declared Nestor over the bitch's slobbering joy. 'You have avenged your father. The rule of the unholy woman is ended, now that you have come into your kingdom. What will you have us do with the body?'

'What did he do to my father?' asked Orestes.

'Threw him out to rot in the sun. We came in the night and sprinkled earth for him, made the offerings,' said the captain, kicking the corpse. 'Do likewise to this murderer, son of Agamemnon. Expose him.'

'Bury him,' said Orestes, as though he was tired. 'No vengeance can be taken on a corpse. Dig a hole and put him in, suitably disposed. Now we must go up into the city. Where is the Queen?'

'In the palace, Lord. She rises late these days. We will announce you.'

'You will stay here. Complete the prayers to Apollo, pray also to Thanatos who is death and to Hades for favour. Bury the dead. No man will climb after us.'

I looked back as we walked up the hill, and they had not moved. Nestor held the bitch by the collar or she would have followed Orestes.

We came into Mycenae as the walls flushed golden with sunrise. I knew this city; every street that I had traversed as a fearless child, and I knew every step of the marble stairs up to the women's quarters. I had suffered agony here, endless pain, misery beyond measuring - and it looked ordinary. Well-cut stone, well laid. Tapestries on the walls exhibiting the deeds of the House of Atreus as far as they could be told. The smell of floral oils was in the air as we came to the doors of the Queen's apartments.