Читать книгу Electra (Mycenaean Greek Trilogy) - Henry Treece - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Outside the lowest wall of High Town, there was a grey field of boulders, where the King’s Justice was done. Nothing grew there, except a sort of sedge, and sometimes an aconite or two. People said that the earth was poisonous here, because of the blood that had been spilled, and so nothing grew. Indeed, when I was quite small I saw a prince’s brains dashed out on one of the rocks. He was of a distant tribe, of course, but what made it worse was that he was only very small, hardly able to walk by himself. But he was still a prince, and the thing had to be done because, as my father pointed out to me while we sat watching under the striped awning, one day this child would grow and be as big as any other man.

Another time, two youths who had been drinking wine and saying that they would face Zeus himself if he came to earth, were punished in this place by being blindfolded and ordered to fight with stone axes. They missed as often as they struck each other, and that was quite laughable; but what stuck in my mind and made me feel unclean for years afterwards was the way they called out pitifully for pardon when their blows did strike. What with those calls and the horrible thudding of their axes, I wonder I ever slept again.

I mention this place of rocks and dead grey earth because it was here that something very strange happened to me, one evening before my father sailed away to fight the Phrygians. I was walking alone in the moonlight by our wall, weeping to myself, and thinking how lonely I would be when Aunt Helen and father had gone from Mycenae, when someone called my name from among the rocks.

‘Electra! Electra, come here; I have something to show you!’

It was a rule in our house that the girls should not go down into the lower town at night unless a baron went with them. Only slaves and bad women strolled in the dark in those days. When I heard this voice calling, I knew that I should risk being whipped before all the servants if I went; and I did not like the thought of going into that awful place in any case, where the baby prince had died terrified, and no pretty flowers grew. But the voice was so strange and piercing, not like any other voice I knew, and it kept on crying, ‘Electra, I have something to show you.’

I think that I was perhaps curious, in the way young girls are, and wanted to know what the thing was. Perhaps it was a present for me—a cup from Samothrace, a necklace from Crete.... And the voice was so thin and sharp and reedy, it went on sounding in my head even when it was not speaking. I even began to wonder if it was some god or other; and I knew that if it was, and I did not go when it called, I should be sorry later.

I did not want to go blind, or lame, or have sores all over me, so I looked round to make sure that no one was about, and then I gathered my skirts up round my waist and ran out of the tall Lion Gate and over the rocky field. It was a stupid thing to do, I kept telling myself as I ran, but the words seemed to draw me, like the voices in the dreams that Zeus sends.

But when I got away from our high stone wall, deep into the bright moonlight, I could see no one there; only the shadows cast by the boulders, or by dry thyme bushes, that had been dead for years. And I was about to turn round and run back into the palace, when a man stood up from behind a rock and nearly frightened the life out of me.

His face was round and white and hairless, and his eyes were as black as marble. He wore a goatskin hood and cape. At first, I thought it was Pan, and I almost fainted where I stood.

But this man laughed and then hobbled over to me and took my hands. I think he was frightened, too, because his fingers were clammy with sweat. The goat smell that came from his clothes made me want to heave, and I drew as far from him as he would let me. He was surprisingly strong, though, once he had got hold of me, I could not free myself at all.

‘You have never seen me before,’ he said. ‘But soon you will see me every day of your life.’

I remember saying, ‘I find small comfort in that, whoever you are.’

He answered, ‘I am glad to find that you are of a humorous disposition, Electra.’ Then he began to laugh in a high bleating manner, and suddenly took hold of my hair, down at the roots, and started to tug at it. Then I was really afraid, and thought this man meant to kill me. It did no good to threaten him with my father’s guards, or to say that my mother would have him hunted down. At everything I said, he only pulled the harder, until at last I sank to the ground and wept helplessly. This seemed to affect him more than anything else, because he stopped tugging my hair then and flung the goatskin over me.

‘Come, then,’ he said, ‘now we know who is the master.’

He had his fingers twined in my girdle and was dragging me along at a fast pace. I said, ‘Where are you taking me? I shall be beaten for going so far from the palace gates.’

He laughed and said, ‘Yes, you may be thrashed, but you must still come with me and see what I have to show you, Electra.’

Beyond the rocky field the wooden houses of the town began. There was one street that led down to the place of tombs, the tholoi. It was a narrow straight street, with hardly any windows in it on either side. The white houses looked blind in the moonlight. It was like going down a gully, or between high cliffs. There was no one to call out to. It resembled the entrance to a great tomb.

I said to the man, ‘I beg you, let me go back again. I have never been here at night and I am afraid.’

He chuckled as though I had made a joke, then suddenly drew me into a side-turning, away from the dark street. The change was bewildering. We came out into a little secret place, where vine-leaves straggled and clustered over trellises, and where men and women sat or stood about glowing braziers, whispering to each other and drinking wine from brightly glazed cups.

By the far wall, a young man strummed at a tortoise-shell lyre, and a young woman danced with her body, never moving her feet. The moonlight glowed through the net she had wrapped about her, showing up the tints of her flesh.

White doves strutted about on the ground, or purred from above in the rafters. A great grey she-cat lay in the straw and fed her kittens.

At a brazier, a young Libyan was roasting pieces of goat flesh on a stick of hard olive-wood. The scent that came from it was tempting, and at the same time faintly sickening. It was as though the flesh was alive still, warm and smelling of life, twitching with life, even writhing with life.

I said to the man, pointing, ‘Look, it is alive!’

He shook his head. ‘No, it is only the fire shrivelling the sinews, drying them up, making them twist.’ He smiled at me a while then suddenly put out his damp hand and touched me, drawing his fingers up slowly, letting them rest on me. It was like a spider crawling over me and I pulled away. He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘There is little of the old Mother in you, I see. You are disgusted to see the meat cooking on the fire, and you draw away from my hands. You are altogether too nice, Electra. In the old days it was different. Then the girls were more fierce, more passionate, than the men. When my father’s house was great in Hellas, it was because the women drove the men on and on, to do things. But now the men hide behind Zeus and Poseidon. Yes, they clash their spears and grow big beards—but that is nothing. They are still only children. They still scurry past the dark corners, in case She is waiting for them.’

I wanted to be away from him, he was getting so excited. Trying to calm him, I said, ‘You are making too much of it. People are as they always were, surely. In my family, my father holds to Zeus and my mother is allowed to make offerings to Dia on the special days.’

‘Allowed!’ he said, and spat into the fire. ‘Does one allow the rain and the sea-storms? No, they happen by divine will, which is beyond man’s small saying.’

He was pulling at his rags and twisting his face so terribly that I began to wonder how I could best get away, when suddenly from the shadows a dark-faced young man wearing a yellow hat of straw came up to us and touched him on the shoulder, almost like flicking him in derision.

‘Well, well, Aegisthus,’ he said, showing his white teeth. ‘Everything is ready. We thought you weren’t coming. She’s quite a big girl, isn’t she. I thought she’d be smaller than this.’

The man in the skins shook his head, coming out of his dream and said, ‘Is the other one here, the boy?’

The young man nodded and grinned. ‘He’s beside himself with fright, poor thing. The men have been telling him lies about how it’s done. I think he’s got a terror of knives, or something. He’s lost the use of his tongue. Come on, or he’ll go mad—then he’ll be no use to anyone.’

Aegisthus gritted his yellow teeth and grasped me by the arm, harshly. Then we followed the young man into a dark stable, where there was hay on the floor, and a resinous torch burning in a bronze socket by the wall.

Three men were bending over a boy, laughing at him as he tried to burrow into the hay away from them. One of the men who laughed the most, a red-faced fat fellow, held a knife in his hand. I was furious, all at once, and ran towards him.

‘What are you doing, you cowards?’ I said. ‘Would you dare face Agamemnon like this, laughing?’

The man turned to me, his smile stiff on his face, and said softly, ‘I would face him, the High King, with only a stick in my hand, girl. Or even a stone, picked up from the river bed. And if he let me choose the meeting-place, at a spot where his barons were not lurking behind rocks to have me, I would even face him with these two bare hands. That is what I think of Agamemnon!’

All my life I had thought there could be no one bigger and braver than my father. This man’s words angered me beyond bearing. I reached up in my fury and struck out at his face; but he caught my clenched fist easily and held it, bending down to look into my eyes. A heavy smell of garlic came from his mouth as he spoke. He said, ‘Princess, oh, princess, I mean you no harm—but do not tempt me. I am a lawless man from over the far hills, and I would as soon taste a bit of suckling-pig as anything else. Do not put me in the way of it.’

I struggled with him, but he was very strong and I could not break his grip. At last I said, ‘Let me go and I will not tell the king. Let me go, with this young boy, and I will say no more.’

Then he said slowly, as he loosed my hand, ‘Tell the hills, tell the streams, tell the birds! Tell the king, and tell the king’s god, Zeus—it is all the same to me. I am of the Mother, and they cannot touch me. Look!’

Suddenly he pulled open the folds of the tunic that hung about him and in the torchlight I saw the snake tattooed across his broad chest, its folds running into the thick black mat. He laughed as I drew away and said, ‘So, you see, princess, you are not talking to a straw-haired Hellene now. You are talking to one who can tell you something.’

I put on my best face and said, ‘And what can the likes of you tell me?’

He said, almost whispering now, ‘I can tell you that the House of Atreus is finished. I can tell you that once the ships have sailed away, that will be that! Then the House of Thyestes will come again, never fear, and Mycenae will know the old ways once more.’

I said, ‘You are a fool, man. There is my father and my brother, Orestes. And there is my uncle, Menelaus ... all of the House of Atreus. How can it fall? And who of the House of Thyestes still lives?’

The moon-faced man who had brought me to this place pushed in then and took my hand in his damp palm. ‘There, there,’ he said, ‘you ask too much. Perhaps you would not like it if you got the answers! Come, this young boy in the hay is all you should be thinking of, not great Houses and their fall.’

The boy had risen from the floor now and was standing, shivering in every limb, his mouth open as though he wanted to cry out but didn’t dare. His black hair hung, uncut, over his shoulders. A lock of it came down the side of his face as low as his jaw. He was very thin, and very dusty. From the leather collar round his neck, he looked to be a slave.

He said to me, in his thick dialect, ‘Lady, do not let them hurt me. They said they would, and I am afraid of knives.’

He was perhaps two years older than I was, and quite a big boy. I did not like to see the tears running down his face, making runnels in the dust. It made me want to weep, too, so I slapped him hard on the cheek.

The moon-faced man laughed at this and said, ‘Well done, Electra! That is how a wife should treat a cowardly husband!’

I turned on him and he backed away, pretending to be afraid of me. ‘He is not my husband,’ I said. ‘He is only a boy, and I am too young to marry.’

The man with the knife growled and said, ‘He is only a boy, but one day he will be a man. You are too young to marry, but before long you will be old enough. And he is not your husband, yet before a man could run to the High Town and back, you will be wed.’

I began to cry out and struggle, but they held me, laughing. The moon-faced man said, ‘The choice is yours, Electra. Do as we say and no one will be harmed; or run home to your father if you wish, and tomorrow this boy’s heart will be thrown through your window. So choose now, and choose wisely.’

I would still have run away from this frightening place, but the boy began to weep so piteously, on his knees, holding my skirts about him, that I gave in and let them do what was in their minds.

In the darkest corner of the byre the men set us face to face, the boy and me, standing so closely together that our breaths mingled and his long coarse hair touched my shoulder and made me shudder. I thought for a while that they would make us do something awful to each other and was glad when this did not happen. The boy was relieved also, I heard his breathing close to my ear, almost a quick gasping which stilled itself when the danger seemed to have passed.

All at once the moon-faced man in the goat-skins came between us and pushed something into my hand, something thin and alive, covered with cloth. ‘Take this firmly,’ he said, ‘and do not lessen your grasp. It is a dangerous thing, so hold it well.’

He seemed to be laughing as he spoke, but underneath the laughter there was a darkness, a threat. I did as he said, feeling the thing twisting in my fingers. Then I heard him whisper something to the boy who stood before me.

All was quiet for a time, except for the twitching of what I held. Then suddenly the red-faced fat man who had spoken slightingly of my father came near us, a long-bladed knife in his hand. ‘Are you ready?’ he said; then before we could answer, he brought the knife down between us, hissing as he struck. What I held in the cloth gave a violent jerk and I almost dropped it into the hay at my feet. Then it was still and limp in my hand.

A man held the torch over me now and said, ‘It is done. Now see what you hold.’

At first I dared not look; the boy in the torchlight seemed pale-faced and agonised. His black eyes were staring, glazed, in the glow. Then I saw that he too held something in his hand, and I found the courage to unfold the linen wrapper.

In it lay the head and half the length of a shiny black snake, the last life still throbbing in it faintly. I saw that the boy held the tail part, staring down at it with his mouth open and his lips shining in the torchlight.

Aegisthus, the moon-face, put his hands on our shoulders and said, ‘So! Now each has a half of the Mother’s sign. The snake binds you together and you may take no other mates until the Mother gives her permission.’

He took the snake’s head from me, and the tail from the boy. ‘I will guard the signs,’ he said, ‘in case either of you needs to be reminded that you belong to each other.’

I drew away and said, ‘When my father hears of this, he will come with the barons and punish you.’

The red-faced man laughed again and answered, ‘Your father has other things to hold his mind, Electra. He is more concerned with the winds that will take him to Troy than with you. Besides, if he tried to find us, it would be like trying to find where the eagle nests on Olympus. This place is a dream, no more; and who can find a dream?’

I was going to say something angry, but a man came behind me and held his arm across my chest and throat. ‘Drink this,’ he said, and pushed a clay vessel between my lips, tilting my head back at the same time. I had to drink the bitter draught, or I should have choked. The last thing I heard was the boy’s voice, crying out again, pleading. Then I felt myself dropping as though into a deep, dark valley of sleep.

I woke with the moonlight on my face and the bare rocks about me, outside the palace walls. Aegisthus sat beside me, smiling and nodding and fingering a small reed flute. He blew a note or two on it before he spoke to me. Then he said, ‘Go straight to your bed and speak to no one about this. Think of it only as a dream, until the time comes for it to be put on flesh and become reality.’

‘Where is the boy?’ I asked.

Aegisthus shook his head and said, ‘He is well. No great harm has come to him, nor will it come to him if you are silent about what has happened. His life is in your hands; do not destroy it. One day you will see him again, if you let him live. That is your destiny now. Go home and do not meddle with what lies beyond your understanding.’

I went back through the gates without seeing anyone. I was shuddering with a strange fear, but I looked once and saw Aegisthus on a rock, still watching me, and nodding in the moonlight.