Electra (33 page)

Pale grey doves called their sleepy note from the pine trees, 'Coo, coo,' as we began to dig and wrench up the roots of a dead tree out of the ground and lay them in the sun to dry.

Every noise seemed to echo and wound the silence. Against the sound of running water - you can always hear running water in Thrace - every chop and thud seemed loud enough to birth an avalanche. It was an uneasy place for humans; meant only for Gods and goats. Nevertheless we needed a fire and Orestes was cold, so we persisted, against a growing feeling of sacrilege.

What was a little more sacrilege to Electra, cursed daughter of the doomed House of Atreus; Orestes, the matricide; Cassandra, plaything of Apollo; and Diomenes, Pylades and Eumides, our willing companions?

The sun soared into blue noon. Even at this most fearless time we were subdued. Cassandra and Diomenes Chryse stopped their friendly quarreling about the factual existence of Gods. Eumides did not tell us he was a simple Trojan fisherman who knew nothing of these Attic mysteries. Pylades did not mention that he was aging by the day and not educated for hard labour. We were quiet, awed by the mountain, which did not loom but occupied the sky, higher than high, colder than the ice before the beginning of the world. We felt fragile, unimportant, mortal; and hoped only to be overlooked by the powers that dwelt on high.

We ate goat cheese and stale bread sparingly, for we were not hungry. The resinated wine we had bought in some village smelt sickening, and when Cassandra leaned back to embrace Eumides she sniffed and drew away from him.

'I know I haven't had a chance to wash lately, but you are perfumed with travel yourself, Princess,' he said, mildly offended.

'It isn't that,' she answered, kissing him. 'You smell human. This is not a place for humans.'

'Yet if we must stay here, as you say we must, as Apollo orders,' commented Diomenes, 'then we may as well be comfortable. There is a pool in the river, just down there, where we can wash and thus smell less offensively human.'

'No,' said Cassandra. 'If the Gods come I want to be clothed and alert.'

'Very well,' he said, and walked a little way up the gorge toward a small shrine. It was just a pile of Olympus rocks, built into a rough pyramid. A waymarker, perhaps. Someone had fashioned certain stones into rough images of the Gods, of Father Zeus, Mother Hera, Earth-Mother Demeter.

There was Hermes, the messenger with winged heels; Pluton, the wealthy God of the Dead; Ares, the God of War; Artemis, the hunter; Athena the Lady; Pan the Ageless, Lord of Forests; and Aphrodite, the Stranger, with many breasts. They were not finely carved as the masters at Mycenae would have made them, but they were compelling.

'This place is sacred to all the Gods,' I remarked. 'No one God can be called upon to aid Orestes.'

'Indeed,' Diomenes said politely. I was nettled by his tone.

'How can you say you don't believe when you've seen them? You've tended the bruises on Orestes; you've seen how the clubs of the Erinyes have wounded him.'

'The mind can make marks, Lady Electra' he said condescendingly. 'Tell a suppliant under Hypnos' influence that a dry stick is a brand and you can blister his flesh. Thus it is with Orestes. He believes that the Furies are attacking him, and so they are. His guilt and fear has created the monsters which beat and injure him, as he feels he deserves to be punished. The same for the place, Lady. This mountain is feared by all men. Even I know that, though I do not believe in Gods. That feeling is communicating itself to us, and so we feel afraid. That is men's minds, Lady, not the actions of Gods.'

I was so worried that I could not quarrel with him. I took up a stone and laid it on the mound, and he did likewise.

'If you don't believe, why add a stone to the pile?' I demanded.

'Pure superstition,' he said indulgently.

I reminded myself that this supercilious Asclepid had tended Orestes in the most devoted fashion, and bit my tongue. Orestes might need him again. He irritated me more than I can say, so smooth and beautiful, so sure of himself, with two lovers and no history of loss or pain.

Now I knew about love, I knew how much had been stolen from me. I might have ten years with my husband, perhaps less. I could have had twenty if Aegisthus and my mother had not stolen my time. I might have been Pylades' lover when I was clean and maiden, and learned the secrets of the flesh a long time ago. I might have had his children, tall sons and demure daughters, all with the dark hair and eyes of my beloved Pylades. I felt robbed.

And this Diomenes, this Chryse, all golden and beautiful, had two lovers and had been loved and indulged all his life. The sun and rain and mud of our journey had not added a line to his smooth face, or disarrayed his golden hair. It was as fine as floss, held back by a plaited leather band.

I reminded myself firmly that he was wearing that band because he had sold a piece of his silver fillet to buy skin cloaks for us, and blushed.

We walked back to camp in silence.

We sat all day by the banks of the Ennipeas River. We sang no songs and told no stories. We listened to the endless silence, the rush of waters, the calling of the doves; and eventually this formed a pattern which occupied all our thoughts, until it became an end in itself.

We had been mute for a long time. I was leaning against a tree, Cassandra was seated a little apart, her head cocked as if she were listening. Diomenes and Eumides had fallen asleep, Diomenes' head on Eumides' chest, wrapped in their mantle. I could see the dark and golden hair mingling against the dun pine needles of their bed. Orestes was lying on the river bank under his goatskin cloak. Pylades was tending the fire, safely out of the shadow of the combustible trees. The flames were almost invisible in the westering sun.

Then the mountain vanished.

It had been there all day, white and imminent, tall as the sky, the cloven peak like a hoof enclosing the abode of the Gods. In a moment it was gone and in its place was a burning cauldron of white flame, too cold to look at. My eyes filled with tears and dazzled, I covered them, blinded.

When I could see again, wiping my eyes with my travelling chiton, Eumides and Diomenes were still asleep, Cassandra was on her feet, staring, Pylades was still tending the fire, and Orestes was gone.

Without a sound, without a flash. The pressed grass showed where he had been lying. But he was gone.

Then I wept indeed, and not even Pylades could comfort me.

'Hermes carried him, I saw it, cradled in his arms like a baby. He's all right, Electra,' Cassandra chided me. 'This is why we made this journey. Orestes has gone to be judged, and all we can do is pray and wait.'

'We should search for him,' urged Diomenes, waking up and grasping the situation instantly. He was unconvinced by Cassandra's explanation. 'He might have run away while you were blinded.'

'Without a sound?' asked the Princess scornfully. 'Just shifting your weight on these pine needles sounds like rats in a haystack. I didn't hear anything, and I saw the Gods. Don't you speak Achaean?'

'I speak excellent Achaean,' he returned. 'The difficulty is not in the language but in belief. What if Orestes is lost in the forest, delirious, and we don't look for him because you see Gods, and he freezes to death?'

Cassandra scowled at him. He was in earnest, so we searched and called. Voices carry a long way in the mountains, but we did not find him.

Out of cold into warmth. Out of bitter salt into sweet air. Calypso, the nymph, rescued me from deep water and loved me.

Loved me when she saw me, without me saying a word, without a smile, for my lips were too cracked for kissing. My body yearned for sleep, even for death, as long as it was a dry death.

I had lost all that I had: comrades, crew, booty, time. My journey had eaten my years, the children I might have sired, the nights I might have slept and heard nothing but the night birds crying and Penelope breathing in her sleep.

There was nothing to please her in once-elegant Odysseus; I was flotsam, barely alive, yet she treasured me like gold netted out of Ocean.

She was the innocent net for Odysseus' feet, Poseidon's last and cruellest trap.

I knew that the Invaders, the Dorians, were on Ithaca besieging my kingdom, and I had to go home.

'My Lord Father Zeus,' said Apollo, sweeping away the goatskin cloak. 'Here is the matricide, Orestes, son of Agamemnon, here to be judged. I have purified him of blood guilt. His hands are clean.'

'Who appears on his behalf?' asked Zeus, mounting the steps to his throne and surveying the assembled Gods.

'I,' said Apollo, and the Father shook his majestic head.

'Not you, my son. You are a mover in these deeds.'

Orestes blinked and shivered. Gradually he was warming from his flight through the icy air, and he meant to make a fight for his life. But the Gods were too bright to look at, and all the faces he could see were grave and blank, like statues.

'My Lord Poseidon?' asked Zeus.

The shell-crowned one made a negative gesture.

'You, Hera?' he asked, and the shining woman said, 'He is a matricide. I will not speak for him.'

'Orestes, will you choose an advocate?'

Orestes, bemused, sighted a warrior maiden, tall Athena Parthenos, and saw that of all the Gods she was looking at him. He did not dare to point, but bowed to her.

'Lady,' he whispered.

'Athene, dearest daughter, will you speak for this man?'

'I will,' she said.

The Gods murmured. Putting aside the shield, Athene came to stand by Orestes' side, laying one hand on his shoulder.

'Who speaks against him?' rumbled Zeus.

'I,' said Hecate, striding forward with the Erinyes hissing and snapping at her heels.

'Orestes, are you innocent of the crime of murder?' asked Zeus.

'No,' said Orestes. 'I killed Clytemnestra, Queen of Mycenae, and her lover Aegisthus.'

The Gods shifted in their places. The plea of innocence went by ritual in all other cases which they had tried. Athene appeared unmoved. Hecate grinned.

'Then he is mine,' she said. 'If he killed her, there is no case.'

'Wait,' said Zeus. 'There are two sides to this question. We will hear both. Erinyes, what you to say?'

'We are revengers of blood,' said Tisiphone. 'Hatched to follow the matricide, instructed to harry him to suicide and despair.'

'He has shed blood,' said Alecko.

'Clytemnestra lies dead by his hand,' said Megaera.

'He is our meat,' they chorused hungrily.

They scrabbled toward him, and Orestes knelt and touched Athene's garment, burning his fingers. She lowered the golden spear and they retreated, howling. Their dog's voices echoed through Olympus until Hecate herself hushed them with a gesture.

'The case is made out,' said Zeus, looking at his favourite daughter. Born not of woman but sprung full-armed from his own head, she was the divine maiden, sharing no blood with humans.

'There is Law,' Athene said, and silence fell.

The Gods settled down to listen to the exposition.

'When men were savages and knew no laws, Lord,' she addressed Zeus confidently, 'they needed such primitive devices as these to restrain their blood-lust and regulate their desires. When the Titans ruled, Zeus Father, there was no restraint on the evil lusts of men. No man feared the Gods or the censure of his fellow men. In brutish settlements, armed with stone weapons, men slaughtered each other and stole each other's wives. Women slew husbands who had violated them. Men murdered mothers and coupled with their daughters, with no fear of Divine Law.'

'It was an innocent world,' muttered Pan Ageless. 'Before the Son of Cronos came.'

Athene ignored him. 'Then, Lord, revengers were needed. Many a man, lying awake with thoughts of murder in his heart, was constrained from acting for fear of the snake-haired ones.'

'Revenge,' hissed the Furies, and the court echoed to the jangle of iron bells.

'But the world needs them no longer. You, Lord, have imposed law upon men. No man needs now to make his own decision about whether his action is right or wrong.

All men know that murder is wrong. All men know that to transgress divine law is to merit punishment, both on earth and beneath it in the realms of your brother Hades.

'Is this not so, Zeus, Father of All?'

'It is so.' The gold-wreathed head inclined in agreement.

'Then the Erinyes are not needed any more, Lord. They are remnants of an earlier time, archaic and senseless.'

'Well, daughter, that is a good case. Now we must consider particulars. What do you urge on behalf of your suppliant, Orestes?'

'Stand up,' she ordered him, and Orestes stood. 'Do not be afraid,' she said, and smiled. The warmth of the divine regard nerved and strengthened him.

'Take off your tunic,' she told him, and then turned the naked man by the shoulder to face her.

'If he should be punished, Lord, he has borne punishment. Look at him.'

She exhibited his blackened torso to the assembled Gods. The marks of the studded batons were clear. She turned Orestes to face the Gods and said, 'Tell us what you remember of your mother Clytemnestra.'

'She sang songs to me, Lady, Lords,' he faltered. 'She tended me and fed me, she nursed me in her arms and her breast was soft as a pillow for my head. She loved me and waked for me and she was beautiful beyond measure.

'But she murdered my father, and I killed her. Apollo was with me, Lady. He ordered it.'

'And you obey the Gods?' she asked.

'Lady, of course.'

'My Lord Apollo wished for an end to the story of the House of Atreus,' said Athene, her golden face as cool and set as bronze.

'He set on this little scion of that cursed house, and Orestes did as Apollo wished. All mortals will do as the Gods wish. I am defending Orestes because my Lord Apollo interfered in the matter. Agamemnon was my man in the battle of Troy, but I did not order this vengeance. The Sun-Bright wants the tale of the House of Atreus concluded, as though he could order a storyteller to roll up the scroll.