And, in between the pulses of rage, the red raw edge of it, there is panic. Clytemnestra isn’t going to go back to being Agamemnon’s wife. If she was, I wouldn’t be trapped in here. They’re going to attack him, she and Aegisthus: that must be what they’re planning. And, whilst I know Agamemnon is strong and brave, victor of the Trojan war, I’m afraid of her cunning.
I scrabble under my bed, tugging at the bundle of cloth and pulling out the lion dagger, the last thing he touched before he left me. I remember the last words he spoke to me as I stare at it, the echo of his voice from so many years ago. Its blade is dull: it’s no weapon, just an ornament. There is nothing I can do with it, even if I could get out of this chamber.
And then I’m screaming again, choking on the harsh scrape of my own howls, back at the locked door. There’s nothing I can do but hope that he hears me, hope she doesn’t somehow manage to cut him down outside the palace before he even gets inside. I scream as long and loud as I can, pounding against the door in the desperate hope that he’ll hear my warnings, but my voice is swallowed up by the solid oak, and no one comes.
26
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. Any fear I might have had of rousing his suspicion has dissipated in the warm, stuporous breath wafting from the velvety blooms. He is wearing a silly, complacent little smile that sharpens the edge of my intent. I have thought of little else for ten years, but even so, I’m not sure if I expected to enjoy it like this. It was my duty, what I owed to my daughter. Now, with the image of the Trojan woman’s haunted eyes staring sightlessly ahead as she followed my husband, I see it as a service to the world. Something that it will be my pleasure to bring about.
‘Let me help you into the bath,’ I murmur.
Does it even occur to him that the last I saw of him was on the sands of Aulis, our daughter’s body broken between us? Is he so stupid, so self-absorbed, that he thinks I could forgive or forget? That I would let it pass unspoken; that I would welcome him back like a wife, even as his prized captive quakes in another room? It seems that he does, for he accepts my ministrations without a word as I help him shrug away his robes. He descends the steps into the warm, scented waters and I lean forward, feeling his eyes on me as I hand him a cup of wine; our finest vintage, into which I have stirred the liquid I crushed from the poppies in our meadows.
‘Tell me of the ending,’ I ask him. ‘How it all finished at last. What happened when you took the city?’
He lies back, the water rippling about him, petals drifting across the surface. ‘You want to hear of the sack of Troy?’ He takes a long draught of wine.
‘Not all of it,’ I say. ‘You can spare me the more unpleasant details. But I want to know—’ I pause.
‘What?’
‘I want to know what happened to my sister.’ I hate to ask him. I hate for him to know that he holds something I want. But I cannot bear it any longer; I have to know. ‘Did Menelaus . . .?’
Agamemnon snorts. ‘For years he talked of nothing else,’ he says. ‘What he would do when he took her from Paris; how he would slit her throat before all the army.’ At this, for a moment at least, he looks temporarily abashed, a flicker of awareness of what he has said crossing his face. But he shakes it away, sending small waves across the bath.
I try to keep my voice low. ‘And did he?’
‘Of course not.’ He smirks. ‘Your sister stood up, from among the Trojan women we had gathered outside the city. The moment that he saw her . . .’
‘He couldn’t do it.’ I finish his sentence.
He nods.
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. When she steps off the deck of his ship, the daughter she left behind will await her, warm and living. A tingling heat rushes through my body when I think of that, and my jaw clenches tightly.
A long silence stretches between us. For a moment, I wonder whether we ever used to talk. I am sure I remember it, idle conversations and exchanges about the minutiae of our days, an easy companionship that made me believe I would live out a peaceful life in Mycenae. The world is beyond recognition; the landscape of our life torn up, all of it at once familiar and strange, and I have an odd sense that nothing is really there at all, as though I might reach out my hand and find the solid objects before me dissolve into nothing.