Electra Read Free Page A

the barriers that guard me against feeling. This prophetess was telling the truth - they said she always did. My mother was going to murder my father. I froze, trying to find words, then gabbled, 'Save my father, Healer, you must save him.' I pleaded with him, even touching his shoulder in the suppliant's gesture.
    A line of pain divided his smooth brow. 'We can try, Princess, but Cassandra prophesies truly, and we may not succeed.'
    'We have to try, come, hurry!' I said. I ran through the maze of the women's quarters and they followed me, too slowly.
    The palace of Mycenae may not have a labyrinth, like the fabled Palace of Minos, but it has been added to by successive kings since Perseus, and it is said that no one can find their way through unless they were born here.
    The passages are unlit, except by occasional light wells. They dip below ground at unpredictable intervals, have distracting flights of stairs which seem to lead nowhere and odd corridors which conduct the poor lost ones out of their way and then strand them in the wine cellar. Without my help the men panting behind me would have been utterly confounded, but I had been playing in the mazes of the city since I was a child, and knew them like my own hand.
    I slid to a halt before the water-carrier's door. I heard voices, one calm and one cold.
    'Come, Princess,' said the cold voice, 'Will you not walk on the cloths? My Lord does so. Is it for his slave to disobey?'
    'I will not walk on the sacred tapestries,' said the other voice. I heard in it exhaustion and determination. This was a woman who knew she was going to die, had accepted it, and would not be further compromised. If she said she would not do something, then she would not do it.
    Eumides and Diomenes leaned forward, listening. On both faces was an identical eagerness and joy, so that for the first time they looked alike. They loved her, this Trojan slave who was my Royal Father's concubine. I shivered and tasted metal in my mouth. The corridor was musty and damp and stank of mould.
    'My Lord, will you not order your slave to tread in your footsteps?' insinuated Clytemnestra the Queen, my mother. I could imagine the flush of malice on her cheek, my beautiful mother with the long ringlets of ebony hair, the pale, skilled, pink-tipped fingers. There was a time when I thought her more beautiful than Elene, wife of Menelaus of Sparta.
    I found the catch and allowed the door to open a little way. Eumides and Diomenes pressed against me, and I had no room to recoil from their warmth.
    Three figures were standing on the steps leading up to the great bath. There was my mother and there was my father, armour removed, clad in a stained tunic.
    He was not a giant as I remembered. He was an ordinary man, man-sized, an old man sagging at the belly. His black beard and hair were streaked with grey. I could not see his face.
    'Enough, woman, let the slave do as she likes,' he grunted. Then I knew it was indeed my father. Just so had he grumbled if his wine was too hot, or his favourite horse had been badly groomed. I think I almost smiled at the memory.
    He was standing on the sacred tapestries, brought out only on festivals, which only the priests were allowed to handle. She had tempted him into blasphemy. The Gods would never forgive her. Neither would I.
    If I could have reached her, I would have killed her then.
    The slave stepped back, allowing the King and then the Queen to pass up the stair to the bath. The Queen was a tall woman of no particular beauty. Her hair hung loose like a maiden's and her face was as still and white as a statue before the painter has applied the tincts of nature. She looked like a Kore, Persephone the Maiden, in a green chiton, laden with gold jewellery.
    I heard Eumides and Chryse draw in a breath when they saw her. She raised her head and cried out in an unknown tongue.
    Eumides shoved the door open and plunged onto the stair. I followed and Diomenes came behind.
    The King was