Читать книгу Electra (Mycenaean Greek Trilogy) - Henry Treece - Страница 6

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All my life I have remembered what I saw and heard in that room, and the guilt of my listening has often run across my body at night like little mice scuttering, or small birds pecking inside me.

Agamemnon loomed like a dark bronze statue in the corner by the window, while Helen stood before him, simple as a farm girl now, clasping her narrow hands. Her voice, low and rough as a boy’s, said, ‘What of my family, brother? There are Menelaus and Hermione to think of.’

The king rubbed at his beard. ‘Not again, for god’s sake. We have been over it all before, woman. In this life there are tasks for us all. Does the young bull-leaper grovel on his knees whenever he smells the dung in the straw? Does the priestess draw back from catching blood in the libation cup?’

Helen lowered her gold head. ‘These you mention are trained for their work. I, wife and mother....’

Agamemnon began to laugh and to thump his hard brown fist against his armour.

‘Zeus! Zeus! Zeus!’ he kept saying. Then, ‘You get too nice, sister. I could name a dozen young fellows who have assisted at your training.’

But Helen would not let him say more. She swore with words that I had only heard among the slaves before, then ran at him and beat her narrow hands on his bronze breastplate, like a frantic woman chased by wolves, trying to get past a village gate.

Agamemnon was laughing down at her. He was so tall, she could not reach up to his face with her fists. Then he suddenly put his arms around her and drew her onto his armour. She was crying now that it hurt her, that he was bruising her, that she would have to explain the marks to Menelaus when she reached home again. But the king only growled at her, and bent over her, rubbing his harsh face against her smooth one. He was like a great bear, nuzzling its cub. Aunt Helen had stopped squealing out and was sighing and shuddering and trying to pull off her robe.

For a moment I almost thought of running into the room, to help her wrestle with my father, thinking that this was a game they played. But something stopped me, something that seemed to whisper at the back of my head, ‘Don’t go! Don’t meddle! This is not for you!’ I know now, what it was, but I was only a little girl then. So, I waited and watched, as far as I could, the curtains being in the way of some things. I saw the king wrap his heavy cloak round them both, and I heard Helen crying and laughing. I was very puzzled. I think I went to sleep for a while, in the hot afternoon, with the flies whirring round me in the dim passage-way.

Then all at once the curtains by me swung open waking me, and my father swept out, striding with long steps, his bronze sword-scabbard hitting against the stone walls, his cloak flaring out and taking all light from the place. I was glad that a fold of the curtain fell over me and he did not see that I had been spying on him.

For a while I sat there, then I heard Aunt Helen crying, and I went into the room. She was surprised to see me, but she sat up from the floor and arranged her robe. Then she wiped her eyes with the back of her slender hand and began to smile. I smiled also, because her hand had lain on the dusty floor and now her tears and the dust had left a smear across her painted face, giving her a comical look.

She drew me onto her lap and said, ‘Where have you come from, Electra? Have you been listening outside, then?’

I nodded my head. There was nothing I could think to say. Her gilded breast showed over her torn bodice and I touched it, as she often let me do. But this time she drew away from my hand with a little grimace. Then she smiled and patted my head.

‘There were things happening that you could not understand?’

I said, ‘The king was hurting you, wasn’t he?’

Helen shrugged her shoulders. ‘They almost always do. Kings, princes, barons, slaves.... They are all men. And men become furious and thoughtless. They can’t help it, Electra. Zeus made them like that. And perhaps it is just as well. If it were only like slipping into a warm bath, then we wouldn’t know it had happened, would we?’

I nodded, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. I got up and sat on father’s stool. Aunt Helen still sat on the floor, like a cat stretching when it wakes.

I said, ‘My father’s armour has scratched you, aunt. It is bleeding a little. Shall I get a cloth?’

She wiped her fingers over the scratch, then ran them down the skirt of her robe and smiled. ‘It is not the first time, and it will not be the last.’

In a while, she rose and came over to me, standing before me so that I smelled her musky scent. She reminded me of a mother cat, all furry and soft and warm.

She said, ‘Do you ever dream of Zeus, my love?’

I nodded that I did. She said, ‘What shape does he take in your dream? A bull? A fish? A goat?’

I said, ‘No. He is always like my father, the king. Always big, with a beard and red eyes, and that armour he wears. With the smell of horses on him. Like that.’

Aunt Helen sat down beside me and said, ‘Yes, that is how it is with me. I will tell you a secret—I think that Agamemnon is a god. No, not the highest god, perhaps—but a god, all the same.’

I took hold of her hand and held it to my cheek, as though it were a bird that had fallen from its nest and needed warming.

‘We both love him, do we not, Electra?’

‘I would do anything for him, aunt. I would lie down and let a bullock-cart roll over me. I would jump into the sea from the highest cliff. I would let him hack my head off, anything.’

Helen nodded, and hugged me to her. ‘So would I. If Agamemnon wanted to eat me in a pie, then I would let the cooks chop me up into steaks. If he wanted to eat me raw, I would hold out my arm and say, “Here it is, lord. Devour me!” ’

We both began to laugh then, our arms round one another, as though we were one flesh. Many folk said that we looked as alike as two twin sisters. That made me glad, because Helen was very sweet and pretty.

At last she said, ‘Men talk of freedom, but that is only a word. There is no freedom; there is only serving the god. And if the god is the king, then freedom is serving the king. Serving Agamemnon.’

I agreed with her. She said, ‘Just as the king must sometimes die for his people, as their Shepherd, so we must die for him if he wishes it.’

Her voice was so hushed and hoarse that I looked at her, fearing she would weep again. But she shook the tears away from her eyes and smiled.

‘I shall tell you another secret, Electra. And you mustn’t tell your cousin Hermione about it, or she will cry and have nightmares. Do you promise?’

I nodded my head, and she whispered, ‘Soon I am to be sacrificed. What do you think of that?’

I almost pulled away from her with shock, but she held me close, laughing. ‘Silly goose! Silly goose! I don’t mean like that—dead flesh, white, with no blood, just smelling cold.’

I hugged her warm body again and laughed in relief. ‘I am so glad, aunt. Our cat caught a shrew yesterday and bit its body open. I saw what was inside. It was horrible. I would not like you to be like that.’

She said, ‘There’d be much more of me, and different, I can tell you! But no, it’s not that.’

I said, ‘What then?’

She made me wait a long time. She was thinking how to say it, perhaps.

‘You know we have no gold in Hellas?’

‘Yes, the king told me about that. The Horse-tamers have it all now.’

Helen said, ‘Someone has to get it from them.’

I began to laugh, seeing my aunt wearing hard armour over her soft body and facing bearded Phrygians with a heavy sword in her little hand. She knew what I was thinking and she said, ‘There are other ways to fight than with a sword, Electra.’ But she was laughing, too. Helen always laughed a lot. Some of the men called her the merry queen. They never called my mother, Clytemnestra, that.

‘In a way, though, I am the sword of Hellas. The instrument, the tool. If I go to Troy, then the Hellenes will fight to get me back. They will kill the men of Troy, and then there will be gold in Mycenae once more.’

I scratched my head. ‘It seems wasteful. Could not the men of Hellas just go in their ships to Troy, without sending you there first? Why put you to the trouble, Aunt Helen?’

She made her eyes small and looked up at the rafters where the doves perched.

‘It is no trouble. There is a prince there I would like to meet; Paris, the son of King Priam. And besides, both the Phrygians and ourselves pray to Zeus—so we must have a good excuse to offer to the god if we are to kill his other people. I am that excuse. In a way, I am almost sacred, you see. Being the chosen one has made me different from all the others.’

I said, ‘Does Uncle Menelaus know this?’

She smiled at me then and said, ‘I have not spoken to him about it. It lies like a wall of silence between us. But I think he knows. These things one does not talk about.’

I said, ‘Then, if he knows, all the other kings will know, and the barons and the soldiers.’

She nodded and said, ‘When I walk among them, all talk stops. They stand with their heads bowed until my shadow has passed by them on the pavements. They are proud if I notice them or smile at them. It is a great honour to be chosen.’

‘But what if it goes wrong, aunt? What if you do become like the shrew, with the inside showing, and smelling cold?’

Aunt Helen rose and flung her cloak about her. She kissed me on the forehead and said, ‘I try not to think of that, Electra. That is what my dreams are about, every night. But in the sunlight, I do not think of it. I meet everything as it comes. That is the only way to live, my dear. You will discover that, as you get older.’

At the door she turned and said, ‘If you do not, then you will go mad.’ She went then, along the dark passage-way. I think she was weeping again, but suddenly I found a little beetle trying to carry a mud ball on its back. When I had finished helping him, my aunt had gone, and I ran out into the sunshine.