Elektra

by Jennifer Saint

I thought of all the men that had fallen since that day, and shivered as I felt the cold press of that silent, massed throng, their sm...

‘A gift to the gods,’ Antenor said at last. ‘For their protector, Athena, I wager. They leave it here in her honour to buy her...

‘Let’s take it!’ came the shout from somewhere in the gathered spectators, and it began to echo through them, people nodding vigorously and smiling at the prospect. ‘We will take it into the city; make it our offering to Athena instead, and she will smile on us rather than them.’

Into the shocked silence, he spoke. ‘Fools!’ he said again. ‘How can you be so blind? How can you not see at once that this is a trick?’ His face was contorted with rage, his chest heaving as he spat the words at us all. At his side, his two young sons stared as though they did not recognise him.

If I was going to run, this would be my chance. No one wanted to hear any more of my warnings; they wouldn’t care to listen to anything that might puncture this fragile newfound delirium that had overcome them all.

In a city that had succumbed to a credulity that seemed insane, it was only me, the mad prophetess, who had clarity.

A tide of resentment was building in my body, seething into a rage. I had done everyth...

I had bitten down on my unwelcome insights as hard as I could manage, all these years. I had fought my best to contain them.

I had no respect from the people of Troy; I, daughter of Priam and Hecabe, was reviled and ignored, no matter how hard I tried to help them. Perhaps I should leave them to their doom, let them happily embrace the devastation of the city.

The walls that had withstood ten years of the biggest army anyone had ever seen battering against them, now they would fall at Trojan hands, because of Trojan foolishness.

‘Cassandra, it isn’t safe out here.’ The ring of panic in her voice gave me pause. I had never heard Helen so rattled. Not even when the army first arrived. Certainly not when Paris died. ‘It isn’t safe back there,’ I said.

Hector, prince of Troy, was dead. Now the city had only me.

I was the only one who could see this threat; I was the only one who knew how and when Troy would fall. Apollo had given me this curse for a reason.

Today was the moment that it would have meaning; Apollo had given the knowledge to me alone, and that meant it was I who stood between Troy and the doom I had foreseen when Paris strolled carefree from the mountains, our death in his hands.

I, Cassandra of Troy, I could save the city. I could save my family – and I could save myself.

Cassandra There was a fierce edge to the celebrations across the city.

The horse stood garlanded with ribbons in the central square of Troy, and all around, the people danced and cried out their heartfelt joy.

A madness possessed the city, one so seductive that I almost felt as though I could succumb to it myself, as though for once I didn’t need to stand apart from my family and my people, that I could lose myself to this gleeful intoxication of the senses alongside them.

But I knew what awaited, and my heart ached with sorrow. Their happiness was an illusion, a deception woven by our enemy, who waited so patiently for their moment.

Elektra As the beacons light in their great chain from Troy to Mycenae, I stay at the window, held rapt by the sight.

Clytemnestra As they bolt the door behind Elektra, her screams muffled by the wood and iron, my breath escapes, weak and shaky, from my lungs and I pass a hand across my eyes.

before I ever knew of the House of Atreus at all. I stroke my daughter’s painted hair and the upward curve of her lips. I hope that among the gloomy shadows of the Underworld, she knows what I will do for her, and that, in the dark, she will smile again.

Cassandra The palace is a tomb. I see it rearing from the land, this edifice of monstrous stone, and the reek of death that leeches from its foundations overwhelms the salt scent of the wind.

But I cannot hope for the future, for I know what it is to become.

Clytemnestra The clouds are feathery, tinged with fading pink as the gold disc of the sun climbs higher in the sky. The air is warm and filled with promise.

Somewhere, far beyond my reach, wreathed in cold shadows, my daughter waits for this.

As I turn away from her hollow face, they are entangled in my mind, my daughter and this stranger. Iphigenia’s face is blurred and faded in my memory, though my body remembers the soft weight of her cradled in my arms, a baby with a future, bright and open, ahead of her.

I think of how this young Trojan woman, this Cassandra, was loved and cherished, and how it has all been torn from her as well.

Elektra I’ve been staring through the narrow gap of the window, my knuckles white against the stone, as though I could push down these walls with the force of my pain.

Clytemnestra He is waiting in the bath chamber. The heavy fragrance hangs in the dim air as he leans closer to the wall, studying the painted figures.

So, Helen has returned unpunished to Sparta at Menelaus’ side. The man that she had married could not find it in his heart to murder someone he loved for the sake of his war – unlike his brother.

I had expected a surge of emotion. Whenever I had pictured this moment, tears had swamped my vision unbidden. I had thought that exultation would seize me, that I would be flooded with a savage joy.

The silence of the room is as heavy as ever, unstirred by the cold breath of Hades. Agamemnon is nothing but butchered meat, lying slumped in the reddened water.

Cassandra A high, narrow window lets a sliver of sunlight into the cell where they brought me.

Do not make me live on here, I implore her silently. Do not condemn me to a life among strangers. I have lived an outcast in my own family; do not make me one here in a place where I am nothing but a conquered enemy, forced to live out years of futile yearning for a world that is lost forever.

But it is her compassion I seek, and beneath her monstrous exterior I can see she overflows with pity, and I know that she will help me.

She shakes her head just a little as I guide her hand. As I hold it suspended above my breastbone, the sharp blade poised over the fluttering pulse beneath my skin, my other hand still clutches at her knee in supplication. ‘No,’ she says, and I hear a trembling in her voice. She yanks her hand away.

She cut down the king of all the Greeks, the leader of a thousand ships that thronged the Trojan shores for so long. She cannot be afraid to take the life of one woman.

Clytemnestra I pull back from the Trojan woman when she brings my dagger to her breast; an instinctive horror making me look away from her.

This woman, I think, is dead already. It comes to me in an abstract flash of clarity; a moment of absurd calm. She is a ghost of Troy: a citizen of a world lost in flames and crumbled to ash.

Iphigenia roams the dark bowels of the earth, her life stolen from her. Elektra screams with rage and yearning, and a pain I do not know how to begin to heal. But here, before me, there is a gift I can bestow. A suffering I can ease.

I touch the woman’s face gently. I cradle her trembling jaw. I remember the suddenness of the violence when Agamemnon pulled my daughter against his chest; th...

I smooth my thumb against Cassandra’s eyelids, closing them gently. I feel her breath, warm against my palm. I keep my hand steady when I draw the blade against her neck. Even when it is done, and my vision swims with tears and her body slumps against...

Even though her blood runs warm through my skirt, I hold her there still. I stroke her hair softly, her dark curls spilling through my fingers as if she is lost in no more than a...

No longer do I need to sit in shadowy rooms weeping over a dead girl. My daughter is avenged. Somewhere, she is free.

I see how his gaze slips away from me, how his thin face grimaces with something that looks a little like disgust.

I think how everyone will shrink from me, and I want to laugh even more. But underneath it all, I feel the hollow void at my core, and how its edges are collapsing in, and I am afraid that I will be lost forever.

I didn’t see her. I didn’t feel her. When his legs gave way beneath my blows, she did not guide my arm.

It is a wary gathering of old men and slaves in the throne room. I feel the bitterness of their stares when we sweep in, Aegisthus and I, but that is all they have.

I want to be gone from here, to be alone with my thoughts. To find somewhere peaceful, somewhere silent, where I might hear her at last, where the echoes of her gratitude might reach me from a world away.