Elektra

by Jennifer Saint

I had wondered what had changed his mind and made him agree to fight after all – perhaps this was it. Perhaps my husband had offered him our first-born child in exchange for his loyalty.

I had so many feelings, I didn’t know which one took precedence. To me, she still seemed so young, and although she was old enough to marry, I had hoped we might have a little longer before a husband carried her away.

And Achilles, a fighter, being the one to take my gentle girl? I knew that Agamemnon would consider him a son-in-law to boast of, but what would ...

Besides, he was to sail to war immediately. And I could not suppress the shameful thought that war was an uncertain thing. For all we knew, he may not come back. At the very least, it could take some time, and my daughter would still be mine for a little longer.

‘Mother?’ she asked again, tremulously, and I saw that her eyes were swimming with unshed tears. I did not know how I felt in my heart about this news, but I knew that my child was afraid and unsure, and that it was in my power to ease her worries.

My husband sailed soon to slaughter enemies in the pursuit of power and glory, but I had been slaying monsters for years, smoothing the path at my children’s feet so that they could step confidently into the future.

The tears that had threatened to fall were gone, and a half-smile hovered at her lips. ‘If you approve, I know it will be well,’ she said, and my heart twisted again. She was old enough to be married, but still young enough to believe I could solve any problem.

When the herald delivered the official message – Agamemnon sends for his eldest daughter to give her in marriage to the warrior Achilles before they sail to Troy – both Iphigenia and I were able to smile serenely before the court.

Chrysothemis, at ten years of age, was thrilled by the prospect of a wedding, and woefully disappointed not to be allowed to accompany us, but Agamemnon’s message had been unambiguous in its instructions – and besides, the journey would be hot and dusty and arduous.

‘You must stay to look after Elektra,’ I told her, and she rolled her eyes. ‘Elektra always needs looking after.’ I was too busy to reprove her. It was true that my youngest daughter was prone to illness; every malady of childhood seemed to grip her. Many times, I had feared that one of them would take her from us.

We treated her like a delicate vase; Agamemnon in particular. I was grateful for how, of all our daughters, she had captured his affection. She worshipped him so, and he couldn’t resist her adoration.

I felt I should use the hours that lay before us to impart some useful maternal advice on what was to come for Iphigenia. I wondered what I could really tell her about marriage.

When Helen and I had talked of our husbands back in Sparta, I could see that we were naive, grasping at the prospect of sophistication and womanhood before us without understanding what it would be like.

Those were the romantic stories of girlhood. They weren’t the truth of marriage. So, I could not tell my daughter of love, exactly.

I could hope that when she looked at Achilles, she would see enough of a kinship in his eyes to know that they might lead a peaceable, contented life together.

I could tell her that the joy of true love would come when she held her first baby in her arms – before then, even, when she felt it roll and squirm within her, when she sang to her growing belly and placed her hands on the warm, taut ski...

We would lay down our lives for our children, and every time we faced birth, we stood on the banks of that great river that separated the living from the dead. A massed army of women, facing that perilous passage with no armour to protect us, only our own strength and hope that we would prevail.

I realised that when I had seen all those suitors clamour in the hall for Helen, I had believed they were there because they loved her, but I had been wrong.

They hated her. They hated her because she was so beautiful and because she made them want her so much. Nothing brought them more joy than the fall of a lovely woman. They picked over her reputation like vultures, scavenging for every scrap of flesh they could devour.

Just as I opened my mouth to speak, an arm locked about my throat. I thrashed in its iron grip, trying desperately to turn my head, to see who had seized me. At my side, two soldiers took hold of Iphigenia’s arms, and her little hand was pulled from mine as they marched her down towards that altar, away from me.

And Iphigenia was marched onwards, out of my reach. Agamemnon watched her come. The mist was dissipating in the golden rays of the sun. His face was blank.

At the altar, Agamemnon drew forth a knife. The blade shone in the glow of the sunrise behind him. I saw the growing realisation on my daughter’s face in the moment that she saw what he intended, and the fear leapt into her eyes.

She looked at me, my daughter, from her father’s grip. In that paralysed moment where nothing moved, I still thought that it was not real, that this could not happen.

His arm was so fast. It was a blur of movement, a slash through the air against her neck, her soft and precious neck.

I do not know what noise I made, only that the arm at my neck suddenly loosened. Although my legs gave way beneath my body, I hauled myself across the sand, towards the broken body of my child.

Iphigenia’s body slid from the wooden altar, thudding against the platform. I pushed my hair out of my face. The blood, the blood was everywhere, smeared across her drained skin, thickening in her hair, her hair that I had run through my fingers that morning.

He was walking away already. His cloak rippled out behind him in the new-sprung breeze. He had not spoken a word.

The army sailed almost immediately. Everything was ready; they must have had it all prepared before we even arrived at Aulis.

A long time later, I would hear the bards sing of my daughter’s death, along with all the other stories they told of Troy.

Often, they would say that at the very moment Agamemnon raised the knife, Artemis took pity on Iphigenia and swapped her for a deer. In this version of the story, my daughter lives on as a priestess and favourite of the goddess on an island somewhere.

But I saw her body convulse in her father’s arms as he drew that blade across her throat. I held her, warm and bleeding and dead on the beach, whilst the sun climbed higher in the sky and the winds whipped up around us.

I remember how the crimson-streaked saffron fabric fluttered around her ankles, and how I stared for so long at her face, not believing that her eyes would not open again and that she would not look at me and call me mother and kiss me.

How long I might have sat there, my child cradled in my l...

I felt my own chest rise and fall, here on the bloodied beach, and I wondered how it continued, how my heart still beat in my chest when this had happened.

She was so slight, so small, that they could lift her with ease, but I was glad even in my shattered mind that they touched her with such care, as if she was made of glass.

The things I did for my child so she could rest, even whilst my body felt like it would split apart, that no one could hold this much pain inside them and not shatter.

In Troy, the Greeks would burn their battle dead atop glorious pyres. My daughter, the first victim of their war, would burn before them.

I remember the crackling of the flames as the pyre was lit, and how I dug my fingernails into my palms until the skin bled, to stop myself from plunging into that fire and pulling her body out.

I don’t know how I let it be consumed, her face that I had kissed, her hair that I had combed, all blackened and charred to crumbled ash.

My children came from my body; their flesh was born of mine. Their arms reached out for me first, they called for me in the night and I scooped them into my embrace and breathed in the sweet scent of their little bald heads. As they grew, I felt the echo always of their infant s...

I had gone everywhere before her; trodden the paths I sent her down to make sure they were safe before I let her go. How could I let her go now, to where I did not know, without me at her side?

That pain that clawed me apart from within, tearing away at my flesh and stripping me down to nothing. Nothing but this. The hard certainty at my very core; the cold taste of iron and blood in my centre that said: He will feel this too, and worse.

I prayed that my husband would survive this war and come home safe to me. I wanted no Trojan soldier to take what was mine; no glory-seeking warrior to seize his chance of fame by plunging his sword into Agamemnon’s heart.

Let him come back, I hissed into the empty sky. Let him come back so that I can see his eyes as the light drains from them. Let him come back and die at the hands of his bitterest enemy. Let him come back so that I can watch him suffer. And let me make it slow.

Elektra When Clytemnestra came back from Aulis without Iphigenia, her face was streaked and puffy, and her hair hung in tangled ropes.

Iphigenia was dead. I tried to understand it, what it really meant. She hadn’t come back; she was not going to return. I wouldn’t hear the light patter of her footsteps; she wouldn’t be there to sit and play dolls with me.

‘It was a trick,’ Mother said. ‘No wedding. He slit her throat for a fair wind.’ Her face crumpled as though she was about to cry. I reached my arms out to her, not understanding what she meant, but afraid to see her so broken, so strange.

‘Artemis demanded it,’ she told me later, her voice scratchy with sobs. ‘Father had to give up something he loved, to prove how brave he is.’

Artemis had spoken and so Iphigenia was dead. But my mother was not dead, so I didn’t understand why she was behaving as though she was.

My legs ached and my head hurt, but no one seemed to notice. Where was our mother? Why didn’t she come to bathe my forehead and sit by my bed again?