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There was a loud shouting outside in the lower court before the palace. It was a bright clear morning, with a touch of frost in the air, and the roofs of the barons’ houses silvered, the colour a snail leaves behind him in the grass.

I was with my father. This was about a year before he left us. He was sitting on a carved oak stool and I was standing between his knees, tracing the dragons on his breastplate with one hand, and holding my corn doll with the other.

It is strange how clearly I see this—yet I forget what I broke my fast on only yesterday. Clearly, I recall the harsh dry scent of his hair and beard, the chill touch of his bronze armour, the deep tone of his voice that seemed to come from the cavern of his great chest, as water comes from the dark holes in rocks.

It was one of the last few times I was quite alone with my father, so that is why I remember it, perhaps.

I said, ‘King, why are you looking so grim? Why do you wear your breastplate every day now?’

He smiled and stroked my hair. ‘There are things a little girl would not understand, Electra.’

‘Try me and see, father. I can understand embroidery and where calves come from.’

‘Those things are easy, daughter. Zeus looks after the one, and a little fish-bone needle the other. But my grim looks and armour are not things themselves, they are the signs of other things, of something that lies back, and back, and back. There, I told you that you would not understand.’

He smoothed my dress and told me that I was getting to be a big girl. I pulled away from him and, dropping my corn doll, took hold of his hair on either side and tugged at it.

‘You are a bad father! Other fathers tell their daughters about things. Urana’s father tells her how chickens get in eggs, and where the sun goes at night. But you don’t tell me anything. And I am a year older than Urana.’

He bent and scratched his leg, where the bronze guard had chafed it. Then he looked up and said, ‘Urana’s father is only a second-class baron. He can walk round his boundaries in one short morning. A man like that, with only two wives, and about eight cows, has time to bother his head with eggs and where the sun goes. But kings.... Ah, kings are different.’

I was always being told this. It was often said with a sort of darkness, as though it was all a secret that children should not hear about. I said, ‘Please do not say this again, father. I have seen you in the bath, and I did not notice that you were much different from the boys I swim with in the stream. And if you mean that kings sometimes have to go under the axe, then that is not very different from being a soldier and having a sword hit you—or being a farmer’s slave and having a bull gore you.’

Agamemnon held me by the shoulders and said, ‘I know, death comes to all of us. But who told you about kings going under the axe, my sweet?’

His hands were so big that they seemed to fold round me entirely. My father the king was the biggest man in Hellas, I thought at that time. He was of the blood of giants, of Titans. I used to think that he could take any man in Hellas and break him apart with one twist. When he held my shoulders so, I wondered whether he meant to do that to me.

Frightened, I said, ‘Old Aphaea, the nurse. She tells me the ancient tales when she puts me to bed, father.’

He reached down and sat me on his knee.

‘My little Amber Princess, my Electra, half the trouble in this world is that old nurses will tell stories when they put children to bed. Most of our fears come from these old nurses. Especially the Cretan nurses, who will for ever be remembering magic. One day, I must make a rule to stop it. We will have all the old nurses put onto an island out in the sea, then they can tell each other these tales, till the wolves come down the hill and eat them up!’

‘You are trying to put me off again, king. I asked you why you always looked so grim recently, and why you wore your armour every day. You are being sly with me, father, and I don’t like that. You are a crafty Greek, that’s what you are.’

He bent me over and smacked my bottom with his big hand, gently though, and said, ‘Very well, princess, if you must know, you must. But listen carefully, and don’t interrupt.... You see, we are all poor men in Hellas these days.’

I said, ‘But, father, we have a great house, and my mother has fine clothes and jewels. Even Urana’s father has three swords and a carved chest to keep them in.’

Agamemnon answered, ‘If you interrupt again, I shall hang you in the pear tree for the hawks to peck at. That’s better, now be silent. I was saying that we are poor men, and by that I do not mean a few swords or a house or two—I mean that we only have what we can grow out of the earth, with our own hands; or only the calves and lambs that our beasts bear. We have nothing to spare, no gold to take to other lands and bargain with. All the gold has gone, my sweet.’

‘That is a silly thing to say, father. Gold does not go. It cannot get up on its feet and walk away like a man. How can it go?’

‘I wish you had stayed with Aphaea and played with your doll! Your questions make my head spin! Listen now; once we had gold, but much of it has gone back into the ground, into the graves, masks on the faces of the dead ones. Other gold has become arm-bands and neck-rings on ladies who will not give it up, or on warriors who have sailed away and died beyond the world’s edge. Other gold has gone to Hittites and Phoenicians and Libyans. Now do you see?’

‘I see only that you are trying to fox me with all this talk, father. Don’t you see that I can understand anything, if only you tell me? I am nearly eleven, and in three years I shall be old enough to marry a man, and have a baby of my own. That is old.’

Agamemnon gave a little gasp and pulled at the tight neck-ring he always wore. Then he put me down quite roughly, and went to the window. He was so immense, my father, that he blocked out all the light from the window. The room got dark straightaway. I thought he was crying at first, and I didn’t know why a great king should cry, especially in our family, the Kin of Atreus. We were not supposed to cry, neither the boys nor the girls. When my mother, Clytemnestra, first told me of this, she said, ‘My child, we are as a model for all the world. In us the lessons of the gods are made flesh. What we do, that the gods wish for all men one day. By acting as we do, men may grow to be perfect in the eyes of the gods. Gods never weep. If we weep, then we are betraying the gods. We are showing disobedience and weakness, Electra. So we deserve punishment. Learn always to control your tears, then you will not be beaten.’

I went to my father by the window and said, ‘A fine thing, for a king to weep.’ But he did not listen to me. Remember, I was only eleven, and so I began to tug at his sword-belt and his kilt, and to stamp my foot on the floor, quite angry. ‘Stop this!’ I shouted at him. ‘If you go on weeping, I shall weep, too. I do not want you to sail away and leave me, but I have not wept about it so far. Do stop!’

Then he half-turned from the window and gazed down at me. His face looked very old and wrinkled and leathery, like a tired god; but his eyes were blinking and his throat was moving, and tears ran down into his rough beard. And that made him seem less than a god, less than a king. It was the first time I had ever seen a man crying, and it was like the end of the world. I began to beat at the king’s legs, crying myself by this time. Suddenly, he stooped and picked me up, lightly, like a doll, and said, ‘You have seen what no other has seen, my daughter. You have seen a god crying.’

‘You are no god! I know now that you are like anyone else, father.’

I said it bitterly, yet even in that bitterness I loved him more than ever.

The king said, ‘I do not know. I think I feel different from other men, but there is a little part of me that is like other men, perhaps. The part that is not yet god.’

‘You cannot tell me that, now, father. I saw you crying. Why, the tears are still on your cheek.’

I began to wipe them away as he carried me about the room. He said, ‘It is when I think of you growing up and taking a man, Electra. That is when I am not a god. Consider; a king, even a great king such as I am, has few pleasures. He must always be at his trade of king, always giving judgement, giving battle, giving men a rule to live by. A king’s whole life is giving. So, there are times when he feels as though he wishes to receive, instead of giving. Yet what can he receive from others that his own power could not get for him? It is like giving once again, but to himself this time. Always giving.’

Now I was ruffling his hair and rubbing his stubbly beard the wrong way. I was hardly listening.

He said, ‘A king has only the love of his children to receive. That is his only reward for being a king. Only his close dear ones can give him that. So, when you speak of another man, a husband, I weep. Now do you understand?’

I pretended that I did, and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes! So tell me why you must sail away with the chiefs and barons and headmen, to leave me. If you love me so much, why leave me? I am ready to play with you in the orchard and on the hills every day, yet you plan to go away. Is that your love?’

He set me down on a table and clasped me round the waist. ‘All men, even kings, must often do what they have no taste for. A king is the chosen of his people, and he must do what is best for them. Hellas needs gold, and I must lead the men to get it. Far over the sea, my love, beyond the islands, where the great creatures spout in the waters, there lies a city of gold. The Phrygians who live there sit in gold chairs and eat off gold plates. To them, gold is as bronze to us, no more. Even their children play with gold dolls, and their dogs wear gold collars.’

Then the king walked away from me, beating one hand into the other and saying, ‘That gold I must have. I shall destroy the city of the Phrygians, and shall drive them like beasts into the wilderness. Then our ships can sail up along the route old Jason discovered, to get gold from all the distant streams, and no one to stop us.’

I was about to answer him when the curtains opened and my Aunt Helen came in. She was my mother’s young sister, but was very different from Clytemnestra, whose face was thin and her hair reddish. Aunt Helen’s face was oval and plump, and her hair was so yellow that it looked like spun gold. She wore it down her back, proudly, like an unmarried girl. She had been married to my father’s brother, Uncle Menelaus, for ten years, yet she always tried to look like a maiden. Her bodice was so small that her breasts showed, like apples. She used to paint them, to make them even prettier, as unmarried girls did in those days. Her dresses were always very rich and splendid, with gold wire fringes on the skirts, in the Assyrian mode; and lions embroidered all over her cloak. But one never noticed what she was wearing, really. Aunt Helen’s body always seemed to be speaking, even through the richest robes.

And there was always a strange scent about her. It was like musk, or some sharp herb. Perhaps like the faint smell of pinewoods, or of aromatic leaves burning in the distance. It was so much a part of her that I would have known if my Aunt Helen was in the room, even with my eyes shut.

She came to me as I sat on the table, with my legs dangling, and kissed me, letting her thick hair fall all about me until it seemed as though I was in a tent of gold. I touched her breasts, and even nibbled one of them, in game. She pretended to smack me and said, ‘You are as bad as your father, Electra!’

The king frowned and lifted me off the table. ‘Go into the cowshed,’ he said, ‘and see that those lazy slaves have milked all the cows.’

Aunt Helen saw my look, and said, ‘Then after a while come back and I will have a present for you. But do not hurry, for I have not got the present ready yet.’

I saw her glance at Agamemnon in a secret way I did not like. So I pretended to go to the barn, but turned round and came back, quietly along the passage, and hid myself among the curtains, where I could peep into the room.

Electra (Mycenaean Greek Trilogy)

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