Elektra

by Jennifer Saint

Cassandra The war stretched on, unending, through weeks and then months and finally years. How did they have the stomach for the fight still, I wondered.

But since the day that Paris had set sail for Sparta, Apollo had not spoken to me. No agony split my skull in two, no searing flash of white dazzled me, and no insight speared me.

Something had changed. I dressed hurriedly and did not linger to drag a comb through my hair or to twist it up, but let it hang loose and tangled as I slipped through the sleeping palace into the city.

He was here. I could feel the raw edge of his menace: the fury of Apollo, as sure and steady as I had long ago felt it in the temple beneath the bruising pressure of his lips.

I watched, open-mouthed, as it descended on the Greeks, invisible to anyone but me: the acrid reek of disease, the choking stench of plague, breathed from Apollo’s perfect lips, a cloud bulging and distended with every sickness he knew how to heal.

They would beg for his mercy, for his healing powers. He would watch them die.

The Greek forces were depleted; so many of their men sickened and dying, or dead already from Apollo’s plague.

The end of the war rose before us; a beautiful vision that seemed so close within our grasp. Only I, alone in my family, alone in the city, did not believe it.

If Achilles had withdrawn from the war, then victory was ours – and everyone in Troy knew it.

Weeks passed, but our confidence continued to grow. The Greeks may have survived a plague, but they could never win without Achilles.

I chewed on my lip anxiously, the dry skin splitting under my teeth. I did not see our salvation ahead; only the sour dread of disaster unforeseen.

In his temple, I prayed again. I did not beg for our salvation. I wanted only to know how long the torment of waiting would last.

Clytemnestra ‘Go on,’ I urged, leaning forward so eagerly that the wine nearly spilled from my goblet.

‘Hector wore Achilles’ own armour, which he had stolen from Patroklos’ body, but Achilles strode forth in armour more magnificent than any that had been seen before – a gift, surely, from his immortal mother and worthy of the craftsmanship of Hephaestus himself.’

‘He chased the Trojans to the very banks of the river Xanthus, and there he turned the water red with their blood. Only twelve men did he spare—’ ‘Why any at all?’ Aegisthus asked.

‘He swore to slit their throats at Patroklos’ funeral pyre. But he would not burn his beloved’s body until he had sated his vengeance and for this, only the death of Hector would suffice.’

Such was his savagery and his reckless lust for blood that he would have fought Apollo himself.

I sat back against my cushions, sipping my wine. I had never seen Achilles at Aulis; if he was there, I did not know his face.

Now that I heard of his ferocious return to the fray, however, I felt a kind of affinity with Achilles begin to stir in my breast.

Envy twisted in my breast. If I could have wielded sword and spear and set out among that Achaean host who had stood and watched my daughter die, I would have taken the same satisfaction

‘Hector had fought hundreds of our finest men and lived. But Achilles rose up on the plain with all the might and fury of the sun itself, and, as he made his charge, Hector could not stand so bravely any longer.

‘With Hector’s dying gasp, he begged Achilles to give his body back to his father. But Achilles’ anger was still too great, even with Patroklos’ murderer bleeding into the sand at his feet.

He stripped away Hector’s armour. He slit Hector’s feet and forced thongs of ox-hide through the wounds to bind the corpse to the back of his chariot. Then he dragged him through the dust, with his parents watching still from the city walls. They say that the queen’s shrieks could be heard all the way back to the Greek ships.

He vowed to feed Hector’s body to the dogs, but I think he would have feasted on it raw himsel...

In Sparta, the daughter that Helen had left behind grew into a young woman whilst my daughter roamed the shadowy Underworld. Did my sister think of Hermione, just a child when she and Paris had crept under the cover of night to his waiting ship?

Hermione was older than Iphigenia had become; the younger cousin had overtaken my child, who would be frozen forever at fourteen.

If my daughter dwelt anywhere in this world, no army or ocean could stop me from reaching her.

History swelled and pressed upon me in this room from every angle; the deeds of the past presented as feats and triumphs to proclaim far and wide.

‘Is Hector truly dead?’ she asked. ‘He is,’ I answered. ‘Then the war will end at last.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Troy cannot stand without its greatest warrior,’ I said. She lifted her eyes to me. ‘Then my father will come home.’

Aegisthus’ face, different now. His demeanour, now that the wait was nearly over, was not more anxious, as I had anticipated. He wasn’t shrinking away. He looks ready, I thought. And I wondered why that did not bring me any comfort.

Cassandra ‘Paris is wounded! He is wounded!’ The shouting echoed up and down the gathering dusk through the streets of Troy.

Paris had been a dead man walking since Hector had fallen. He’d had his moment of glory on the battlefield the day that one of his arrows had miraculously lodged itself deep in Achilles’ foot.

Achilles, when his wrath had burned out, had fought a bleak and desultory fight. His grief shone from him; the baleful heart of a star collapsing into white ashes.

He roamed the plains in search of his own death; that was why Paris’ arrow was at last able to find its target. Achilles welcomed it.

So, today was Paris’ time to die. Ten years too late.

Helen looked away. ‘He should have died on that mountain as a baby,’ I said. The words jarred in the gentle breeze. They were not what I meant to say. ‘He will die there today,’ she said. I gave a stiff, jerky nod.

I had heard it said that if Paris fell, she would be given in marriage to Deiphobus, one of Priam’s few surviving sons, one of my last remaining brothers. How Helen felt about it, I had no idea.

The names of legend had tussled on the plains before the city for a decade, but now they were all dead.

When it had begun, I had thought the war would end in a mighty conflagration; a huge explosion of violence and savagery, the storming of our gates and the toppling of our towers.

But it looked as though it would limp to a close, that the victors would crawl over the heaped-up piles of the dead to extinguish us, that we would close our eyes and bow our heads to the slow and inevitable end.

So, when the Greeks left, it took everyone by surprise. The news reached us across the plains; we gathered at the walls and looked out to a long, empty stretch of sa...

My fellow Trojans were dazed, hardly daring to believe it. I watched the incredulous smiles, the gasps of joy pass one to the other, sparking through the crowds. The gates of Troy swung open, and the citizens poured out.

The coastal breeze whipped up around me, lifted my hair. I breathed the fresh, salty air into my lungs. Tears prickled my eyes. The ripple and shimmer of the water, the damp sand where the foamy waves lapped at the shore, the tangle of seaweed drifting in clumps – it was mesmerising. I stared and stared until my vision swam with salt water.

When I saw the horse, I felt the sensation of recognition. It was like seeing someone familiar in the distance and

So this is it, I thought. A trick. This is how we die at last.

It was a vast construction, towering above us, with its blank face bowed towards the sea.

How they had done it, down on this beach with only the timber they could gather was one mystery; why they had done it was the question gripping the tremulously excited gathering.

Although its silhouette was lumpen and ungainly, they had taken the care of plaiting together twists of reeds for its mane, of smoothing its shape and making it a thing of startling beauty.

Antenor’s counsel was respected in Troy, but I was not the only one to recall how earnestly he had advised my father ten years ago to return Helen to the Greeks with all the gifts we could muster in exchange for peace, and how Priam had turned to Paris and seen the resentment smouldering in his eyes.

Antenor had stalked from the palace that day, his cloak flying behind him, his words of wisdom discarded so that Priam’s son could keep his stolen wife.