Elektra

by Jennifer Saint

‘It was the wise thing to do,’ I said carefully. ‘No one doubts your power, but when the strong show kindness, people speak their admiration and—’ He swept away my words with an imperious wave. ‘If I had killed the boy, they wouldn’t dare to speak at all.’ I wanted to turn, to walk away from him altogether, so horrified was I by this, but curiosity held me to the spot.

Before I had lived a year in Mycenae, our first child was born. I had felt relief when I had known myself with child; this baby would extinguish the last flickers I had of insecurity here, for I would be mother to the heir of Mycenae.

With no sister at my side, I had felt adrift and alone, but with my baby in my arms, I would have my place in the world again.

I had thought a new baby would be such a fragile, breakable thing, but her soft solidity felt more like an anchor, as though it was she who held me safe in the world, instead of the other way around.

Agamemnon deferred to me for the naming of her, and I knew it at once. ‘Strong-born,’ I said to him, in those precious first hours of her life. ‘That’s what it means.’

He was pleased, thinking I meant that she was a healthy child, pink and full of vitality from the start. But it was the strength I derived from her that ...

He had been proud, benevolent. ‘What is the name?’ I drew in my breath, sore and exhausted but bathed in contentment, so commonplace and magical all at once, and I spoke ...

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.

Agamemnon worried that, even with the strength of Sparta and Mycenae together, the other lesser kings of Greece did not always recognise his superiority.

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.

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.

Elektra My first memory is illness. A fever that wracked my body, bathing me in sweat as I shivered from head to foot.

He had a pair of daggers made of bronze that I loved to look at. The blades were inlaid with gold and silver. One was decorated with sea creatures, shining tentacles looping across the surface. The other, my favourite, was a scene of men hunting lions. I loved to trace the tiny bright gold spears, the silver shields, the snarling face of the lion. He laughed, pleased at my interest.

An evening when I couldn’t sleep. The distant sound of my parents arguing somewhere in the palace, my mother storming from a room. The only word I heard distinctly was Helen’s name.

Cassandra In Troy, I had grown used to walking out of step with everyone else. But I had never known what it was to be shunned.

When Apollo’s gift set my senses aflame and blinded me to everything but the revelations he showed me, I rolled upon the floor and screamed with the agony of it. It was better to keep myself alone as much as I could.

There was no escape from Apollo’s invasions into my head. I had no sanctuary in the city; not even my mind felt like my own. Even in the respites between his attacks, I felt afraid, never knowing when the visions would seize me again.

The sweetness wafting from the jug of wine carried the memory of the temple, the silent hours I had spent there in dedication. The only place in the city that had ever really felt like it was mine. I was still his priestess. I’d sworn my oaths. I was bound to serve him for the rest of my life.

In the peace of that night, I could reason with myself. If I returned, if I showed him my loyalty and my obedience, then maybe he would grant me his mercy. Maybe he would end this punishment for my defiance and quell the visions.

I took up my duties again. I laid offerings at the feet of Apollo’s statue, as I had always done. He remained impassive: silent, motionless stone.

I was used to being misheard and misunderstood. I had been a timid child and an awkward young woman, always striving to make my voice clear and brave.

Such was the power of Apollo: he could shatter my existence from beginning to end.

I could tell by the blaze of the sun on the flagstones that it burned at its zenith, and I knew I was expected at the palace, but I could not turn my feet towards it. I felt that pull, stronger than ever, drowning out my sense of duty, drawing me from the city towards the shore.

‘You are Paris,’ I said. ‘My baby brother, cast out to die. Did the herdsman take pity on you, save you from your fate?’ At this, he could not help but look a little taken aback. ‘Your intellect is sharp,’ he said, and I could see he had thought me a simple idiot.

Such a man speaks poetry in place of facts and thinks he tells a higher truth when all he spins is fantasy.

But no one heard me; that was my curse. Not my family, and certainly not the gods.

I did not need Apollo to turn my vision white and play the scene out before me to know how it went.

Helen, married to Menelaus for fifteen years. So long since a hundred men had bombarded Sparta with desperate entreaties for her hand. No such excitement in her life since. Everyone she saw had seen her before. Would she ever make anyone gasp in wonder again?

And then Paris, the Trojan prince with an exquisite face and a romantic heart; Paris, who thought himself worthy to judge between Olympian goddesses; Paris, who believed that he was entitled to a love that would be sung of for generations, stepped off his ship on to Spartan shores. The lingering glances, the press of his hand, the stolen whispers in hidden corners.

And when foolish Menelaus placed his trust in the sacred tradition of guest-friendship and went on a hunting trip, leaving his lovely wife and the Trojan together in the palace, how could anything else have happened?

Helen was veiled, and as they made their approach through the streets of Troy to where I stood with my parents and my siblings, I itched to see her face. Not to see if she was as beautiful as they said. I needed to look at her, to know if I saw the same catastrophe in her features as I had read in Paris’ the day he came back.

And then I realised. I had seen nothing in Helen’s eyes because there was nothing new to see. We had known it all for years, from the moment of my mother’s dream. A fire, coming to sweep the city. Troy would fall. And for all that everyone might disbelieve me if I said it aloud, somewhere in their bones, I knew they knew it, too.

Elektra The palace was in chaos. My father was gone for weeks, travelling back and forth across Greece. When he returned, he was constantly receiving visitors in a flurry of activity, gathering as many men as he could.

I was still weak from illness. I didn’t want to come out of my sick chamber into a world turned upside down. I felt tears welling up. ‘Don’t cry, Elektra,’ Iphigenia said. ‘Father doesn’t need to see you upset.’

There on the palace steps, as the dusk gathered and the breeze carried the scent of jasmine, I swelled with admiration, struck with awe at how impressive a man my father was.

But all the while, the preparations were being made for him to leave. I tried to smile for him, to be brave. I prayed that the gods would bring him a swift victory.

My mother found me with an armful of wildflowers I’d gathered from the gardens, and when she asked what I was doing with them, I told her I wanted to take them to the shrine of Athena, the goddess of war.

She knelt down beside me, cupping my chin. ‘Don’t worry about your father,’ she said. ‘He will come home safe.’ She smiled at me, her eyes warm and sp...

Everyone said how beautiful her sister was, but I couldn’t imagine there was anyone prettier ...

When the day came that we had to wave my father off to Aulis, my sisters cried, but I was determined that I wouldn’t. He kissed them, then he stooped to kiss my forehead. ‘Here,’ he whispered, and under the folds of his cloak, where no one could see what he was doing, he passed me the lion dagger. ‘You can keep it, but make sure it stays hidden.’

Methepon whined as my father walked away, but I stroked the thick fur of his neck and he pressed his nose against my arm, as though he knew I needed the comfort, too.

I remembered what my father had told me about my name, that I was the light of our family, and so I tried to shine as brightly as I could for him. I hoped that my face would be the memory he would take with him to war, and that it would draw him home as soon as possible.

Clytemnestra ‘Mother?’ Her voice was hesitant, uncertain. I looked up, squinting in the sun, thinking for a moment that it was Elektra who spoke, but it was Iphigenia, standing framed between two pillars.

Everything had been thrown into tumult. I did not like to think of the way that Agamemnon had sailed away; of the words between us before he left.

I was seized for a moment by the wonder that still made my breath stick in my throat. That glorious, maternal sweep of pride and delight that was almost painful in its intensity.

I had three daughters now, and another baby kicking in my womb, but motherhood could still swell my heart in these simple moments: my daughter, four...

But at other times, when I saw her shriek with laughter alongside her younger sisters, the elegance she tried to assume nowadays shrugged off and forgotten for a moment, I could see the little girl she had been, the infant I had been cradling in my arms when I first felt that fierce, sweet rush of a mother’s love.

So many ships, to carry back my sister. Helen, somewhere across that ocean, behind walls we had never seen. I tried to shake the thought from my head; I could not imagine her there.

‘I thought that too,’ Iphigenia said. ‘That it would be news that they had sailed, and so I said I would come to fetch you myself – I thought you would want me with you.’ She was always kind, my daughter, and she knew how I had dreaded this moment.

I could not wish my husband anything other than victory in war, but I feared what punishment awaited my sister at the hands of this man, who seemed suddenly a stranger. Gone was the gentle, worshipful lover that had been so glad to win her; here instead was a vengeful, embittered, humiliated king with all the armies of Greece at his disposal.