‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We will marry. It will thwart any plans Aegisthus might have.’
It’s a strange acceptance of a marriage proposal. It weighs heavy in my heart; another sorrow heaped upon my others, dragging me down beneath the surface, further away from the light than ever. Although he offers me escape, I feel another door slamming shut upon my future.
I force myself to go on, to say more, even though I know the words are wounding. ‘But that is the only reason why. I would not give this answer otherwise.’
‘Of course. I understand.’ He nods. ‘We’ll wait together, until Orestes returns.’
I take his hand. My friend, the only friend I’ve ever had. I wish I had more in my weary soul to offer him in return for his kindness, but this is all I can muster.
31
Clytemnestra
Everything is at odds in Mycenae and nothing is as it should be. I felt my life spin into a tumult when I took my eldest daughter to be married and she was slaughtered like an animal before my eyes instead. Everything I knew veered suddenly off course at that moment, like horses startled on an empty road that bolt at once and drag your chariot across bumpy, uneven dirt. The path I had seen ahead of me – the calm and comfortable life I had envisaged – disappeared, and I learned to navigate the unknown terrain of grief and rage until I became familiar with every boulder and ditch that could have tripped me up again.
But now, I have killed the king, and no one can punish me. My clandestine lover is out of the shadows, parading before the world. And I feel again that the world has tilted, that my grip upon the reins could falter, that perhaps I do not know what lies ahead. Because, yet again, my daughter stands before me, now telling me of her impending marriage: one I had not foreseen, and one that has thrown everything into a new confusion.
There is no happiness in Elektra’s face when she tells me. No softness in her voice, no dreamy cast to her gaze. She looks at me, cold and sullen as always, and the only emotion I can detect in her is bitter triumph.
A farmer?’ I repeat. She is bristling for a confrontation; I can see it. I keep my voice deliberately neutral. ‘What a surprise.’
She scowls at me. Hardly a joyful bride. But then nothing about this is as it should be. We have become a family who flout the rules, and I can hardly begin to question the absurdity of this – that she should choose her own husband, that he should be so humble – when I think of what I have done. Will I forbid this? I married a king, and look what happened to me. The nobility of his blood did not temper the stain of the curse that ran through it. His riches did not buy him honour or kindness. Why would I want my daughter to follow in any of my footsteps? If Elektra has made her choice for love, I don’t care who she marries. I am fodder enough for the gossips of Mycenae; I hardly fear their judgement of my child.
She is waiting for my condemnation. I think the idea of it excites her far more than the prospect of her wedding. I am so tired, I think, of pitting myself against her. Besides, I have thought of what she said to me beneath the stone lionesses, when the panic of seeing Orestes’ empty chamber had made me think for a moment that she had taken the most terrible revenge she could conceive of. It never crossed her mind to harm her brother. But Aegisthus . . . I have turned what she said about him over and over in my mind. I cannot dismiss it. Any threat to my son most certainly comes from Agamemnon’s usurper. And so, once again, I find myself bound to a man who would kill my child.
Murdering Agamemnon had been my obsession for ten years; the whole of my son’s life. It was as though I walked in my sleep, dreaming of my husband’s death tangling together with Iphigenia’s. Now, I am awake and what I can see disturbs me. My son is gone, far beyond my reach. Elektra knows where, I am sure, but she hates me too much to tell me. If I am ever to see him again, I must soften her. I must make her see that what I have done, I did for her.
And if she marries a farmer in Mycenae, I will still have one child remaining here. Even though she despises me, she will be close at hand. It must mean she does not plan to run away.
‘Do you have nothing to say?’
I realise how long the silence has stretched between us. ‘It is an unusual choice,’ I say. ‘People will talk.’
She flashes me a look of deepest contempt. ‘About me?’
‘If you don’t mind, then neither do I.’
My mildness infuriates her. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You can marry him, if that’s what you want. I hope it will make you happy.’