The Songs of the Kings: A Novel

  “Well, that’s that,” Electra said, she too flushed and furious. “I won’t play this game anymore, not ever.”

  These words brought a certain pause; even at this early age she was known for one who kept her vows. The doll lay with arms outflung at Iphigeneia’s feet. She had started life as an elegant doll, a luxury product, with black silk hair and slanting eyes made of dark amber and a cloth-of-gold dress with ivory buttons, naming-day gift of a vassal chieftain from the island of Cythera, off whose shores Aphrodite was said to have risen from the sea. But the doll was hairless now and she was blind—there were only the stitch marks where her eyes had been. Her gold dress was gashed here and there and the stuffing showed through.

  Iphigeneia bent to pick the doll up. “You won’t get your hands on Maia again, that’s for sure,” she said.

  “Who cares?”

  “You won’t touch her again.”

  Sisipyla was swept by a rush of sympathy for her mistress. Whatever the others might think, she knew without needing to find the words in her mind that it was not Electra’s erratic aim or scornful manner that was upsetting Iphigeneia now, but self-blame, the sudden sorrow of seeing her doll, the familiar companion of childhood, disheveled and defenseless, with her limbs sprawled out. She was trying, too late, to protect Maia and make things up to her.

  “Whoever would want to touch your smelly old doll?” Electra said.

  At this difficult moment, a woman named Crataeis, one of Clytemnestra’s companions, entered the courtyard. She had been looking for the princess high and low, she said. The Queen required her presence immediately, was awaiting that presence even now in her apartments. Alone, the woman added, with a hostile glance at Sisipyla. What the Queen had to say was for her daughter’s ears only.

  Iphigeneia began to follow the woman across the courtyard, but realizing that she was still holding the doll, she turned back and handed it to Sisipyla. “Look after Maia for me,” she said, exchanging looks with her sister that were unforgiving on both sides. “You can keep her with you till I get back.”

  Sisipyla, bearing the bedraggled Maia back to her room, thought how similar the sisters were in some ways, and wondered what Clytemnestra could have to communicate to her daughter so urgent that it could not keep till the evening hour, when Iphigeneia always attended on her mother. Something to do with the riders she had seen, half shrouded in dust, with the pennants flying above them. But they were from Aulis, she had heard. What possible message for Iphigeneia could come from men about to embark for war?

  Maia lay on the narrow bed in an attitude of ruin and abandon. Light from the high window fell on the pale patches where her eyes had been and on her pulpy nose—Iphigeneia, when she was teething, had gnawed away at Maia’s nose and reduced it to a mangled stump. After a while Sisipyla began to feel a certain horror at Maia, and did not want to look her way anymore. She waited, listening for footfalls, sitting on the floor with her back to the bed. While she waited the sun sank behind the horizon and the brief summer twilight came down. The old slave woman, whose task it was, came with a long-handled pan of fire and lit the lamps in the vestibule and in Iphigeneia’s apartment.

  Darkness had come when the princess returned, and she was accompanied by two attendants who had lighted her way with torches. Iphigeneia was standing between the bearers, and the torches were still burning when Sisipyla passed through into the vestibule, so that her first impression, coming from the dimness of her room, was of the leaping and trembling of reflected flame, on the walls, on the bronze standards of the torches, on the face of Iphigeneia and the silver threads of her bodice. The princess’s expression was serious and exalted and she held her head high. She dismissed the torchbearers and waited till they had gone shuffling away in the loose felt slippers that all palace servants wore. Then she turned to Sisipyla and moved towards her, as if she wanted to speak low. Sisipyla saw her mistress’s expression change, now that they were alone together, saw it become more openly and tensely excited, and was carried back in memory, in these moments before Iphigeneia spoke, to the radiant face of the six-year-old princess and the questions and the laughing men.

  “They have come with a proposal of marriage,” Iphigeneia said. “You will never guess who it is.”

  She paused for a moment, it seemed for effect rather than in expectation of guesses. In any case, Sisipyla made no attempt to reply. Her hand had risen in an unconscious movement to clutch loosely at the waist of her skirt.

  “It is Achilles. He thinks of me day and night. He wants me—he can’t wait till after the war. He wants me to come to Aulis and be married before the whole army. Just think of it, a thousand spectators. My mother is full of joy. That generation always exaggerates everything of course, but she says he is quite the most eligible hero alive today. And there is also the fact that he is of divine descent on the mother’s side.”

  Becoming aware now of Sisipyla’s silence and stillness, she looked more closely at her companion’s face, and saw there an expression that she altogether misunderstood. “Do you mean to say you didn’t know that? No, it’s no use, I can tell from your face that you didn’t. Good heavens. His father was Peleus of Phthia, and he married the sea goddess Thetis. All the gods came to the wedding, which was a great distinction because it is very rare where a mortal is concerned. When Achilles was a baby Thetis dipped him in the river Styx to make him immortal, but she must have been thinking of something else at the time, she kept hold of his heel, so he is immortal in every part but that. My mother says I must have made a tremendous impression on him when we met, though it was only once and I was only in my tenth summer at the time. You were with me, you saw him too.”

  Sisipyla had moved her hands to her sides now and she stood very straight. “I don’t remember him,” she said.

  “Don’t remember him? A marvelous man like that? You really are hopeless. I remember him perfectly. There was something in the way he looked at me, even then—you can always tell. What I think myself is that he must have been repressing it all these years and now he is about to go into danger it has come bursting out, no longer to be denied. It’s very romantic. He probably thinks, you know, there isn’t much time, make hay while the sun shines. We must start to get ready, there is going to be a banquet in honor of Diomedes, he is the one that brought the proposal, he is a close friend of Achilles. My mother offered to send some of her women to help me dress, but I said I only needed you.”

  5.

  By virtue of his father’s rank, Macris was seated in the upper part of the hall, in the area above the libation stone. Clytemnestra occupied the King’s place in his absence, with the honored guest Diomedes at her right hand. Macris did not sit with his father, however, but lower down, as became his youth and relative obscurity. He was content with the place; from here he could observe and listen without anything much being required from him. Observing and listening were what he had vowed himself to, once the first shock of the news had passed. It was as near to action as he could come; and action, a refusal to languish or turn in on himself, was always his way of dealing with distress, had been so from his earliest years. Violent physical action, preferably; many were the setbacks and disappointments he had outrun, outwrestled, exhausted through the exhausting of his body.

  This was not possible now. He did not want to combat his feelings because Iphigeneia was at the heart of them. But he could cultivate hostility for others, which was still better than lamenting and mooning about. Much better. Achilles first, the absent threat. The heart could not but falter at such a rival, so celebrated for his beauty and fleetness of foot and prowess in battle. Only a few years older than himself and so many killings and lootings to his credit.

  Of course, a good part of this must be exaggeration; a lot depended on who had the ear of the Singer. This invulnerability business, for example—it was obviously something put about to scare people. Achilles had a heart and a belly and a gizzard, just like anyone else. I would be ready to put it to the test, he
thought. At the drop of a hat. Then there was this matter of divine birth. Easy to say you had a sea goddess for a mother, but what about the proof? His own mother was Leucippa of Dendra. Anyone wanting to check up on him could go to Dendra and find her there, looking after the estates while her husband did his turn of service here. She would vouch for his birth, and woe betide any who doubted it. But how could anyone go looking for Thetis in her palace under the sea? What kind of an address was that?

  He glanced across at Clytemnestra, who had calculated her effects well this evening, and looked spectacularly funereal among the festively dressed people round her, white-faced and raven-haired, with shadowed eyelids, in a black gown, the bodice tight and open down the front to show the dark borders of her nipples and the splendid depth of her cleavage. Pleasure at the news had warmed her face and softened the usual bitterness and hunger of her mouth. She had made the speech of welcome to the guests and poured the first libation, bearing the bowl herself to the altar. Seated on her left, across from Diomedes, was the mysterious Aegisthus, son of Thyestes and cousin to Agamemnon. His fair beard and florid complexion were in sharp contrast with the white-faced queen. He had arrived at the court almost as soon as the King had left it, and stories about him were rife. He was said to be the product of an incestuous union between his father and his half-sister Pelopia, to have been abandoned as a child and suckled by a goat. There were those who said, when they were sure of their company, that he was the killer of Atreus, Agamemnon’s father, whose body had been found in a lonely place on the seashore, bearing many stab wounds upon it. But there were no stories, not yet at any rate, only insinuations, as to why, in Agamemnon’s absence, he had received such a welcome at the Mycenaean court, why he lingered there, why the Queen kept him so constantly by her side.

  Macris was glad for the wine, but he had small appetite for the soup of lentils flavored with cumin that was placed before him, still less for the quail’s eggs and roast hare that followed. Nonetheless, he attacked the courses as they came with every appearance of gusto, in accordance with his principle of positive action. He saw Iphigeneia rise to take wine to the guest of honor. She was flushed and serious, conscious of being looked at as one about to change her state. Macris watched the tension of care in her movements as she poured out the wine, saw how intent she was on her duties, saw—with an insight unusual in him, born of his wretchedness—that she suffered, must always have suffered, at the fear of not getting things right, not being as she should. He had thought of her often, her face, her form, what it would be like to have her naked beneath him, the status and dignity it would confer on him to have her as his wife, how fertile she would be, whether she would bear sons. But it had not, until now that he was going to lose her, occurred to him to wonder what she might feel or think about things. He thought, She is one for whom nothing will ever be quite good enough, nothing will ever come up to the mark. As she stood before Diomedes waiting for the customary compliments, he thought he had never seen her look so beautiful, in her short-sleeved blue-and-silver bodice and long pleated skirt. A tress of her hair had been carried across the crown of her head and secured by gold pins.

  Diomedes finished his words and drank, and Iphigeneia moved away. Aegisthus leaned his face forward to speak, the torchlight glinting on his fair brows. The Queen’s eyes were lowered, she showed no sign of listening. She had thanked Diomedes in her speech of welcome, declared herself and the kingdom of Mycenae honored by the choice of such an ambassador. Achilles had sent his closest friend to show the value he placed on her daughter and on the alliance with the House of Atreus.

  Was it Diomedes who had told her of this close friendship? It sounded to Macris like one more exaggeration. Hardly likely, he thought, that the two would have met before coming together at Aulis. Achilles was lord of Phthia on the borders of Thessaly, whereas Diomedes was an Argive. There was no story that connected them, none that he knew of. It was true that friendship could take quick root among men about to embark on war; but it was Agamemnon that Diomedes was more likely to be close to, they were neighbors, they had clan ties, they were close associates and allies in the war.

  It was time now for the third libation. Iphigeneia rose and stood at her place and a silence fell among the people. She raised her head and chanted the words honoring her absent father, Agamemnon. Her voice was not strong but it was clear and pleasing. Macris watched the movements of her throat and the pauses in her breathing and saw that she was moved. When she ended and bowed her head there was a rustle of approbation among the seated guests. Diomedes took the shallow, two-handled cup to the altar, bearing it with both hands. He prayed to Zeus the Guardian for blessing on the house, and poured the wine over the stone slab. There was silence while they waited for the prayer and the scent of the wine to reach the abode of the god, which was the time required for the offering to run along the grooves in the altar stone and down into the circular basin at the foot. Then, at a signal from Clytemnestra, the flute players began again and talk was resumed.

  Macris’s eye lighted on his father, Amphidamas, who was saying something to Phylakos seated near to him. The contrast between the two faces was striking, his father’s good-humored, with something mobile and expressive in the play of the features, the other’s harsh and cold, with eyes that seemed always to be aiming, calculating distances. There was no doubt which was the better face. Macris felt an affectionate pride in his father, but it came accompanied, as usual nowadays, by a certain caution. He had vowed not to be any more like his father than he was already and could not help; he would not emulate a career that had consisted entirely of obedience to the dictates of duty and fidelity, to the dues of military service, to the toilsome patrimony of steep hillsides and narrow valleys. He had a better face than Phylakos, certainly; but it seemed a small reward. His father was fond of saying that a man should give a good account of himself. But Macris had felt increasingly of late that he wanted to be in that much smaller group to whom the accounts were offered. Duty and fidelity were for apprentices. It was like the drill movements in swordplay: feint, thrust, side-step, disengage, once you know how to do it, you could use it or not, you could find your own rhythm, you passed into the zone of distinction. Macris liked this phrase and repeated it often to himself. His father did not know the zone existed, and this seemed to Macris like a mark of arrested development. One had to reach out, to go beyond . . .

  This made him think again of Achilles, who must have entered the zone long ago. Where and when had he met Iphigeneia? In the time he himself had been at Mycenae Achilles had not been a visitor and Iphigeneia had not been away. If they had set eyes on each other before that, the princess must have been no more than a child. A sudden passion, after such a long interval, was always possible, but it seemed unlikely. It was more probably a political matter, a move to strengthen ties with the powerful kingdom of Mycenae. But in that case the proposal seemed oddly precipitate, lacking in ceremony, a hasty wedding far from home, on the eve of battle.

  Then there was the delegation itself. Diomedes was a good choice as ambassador, he carried weight, he was a friend of her father’s whom she might have seen at home sometimes. But who else was there? Half the escort were in the service of Diomedes and not from Mycenae at all; the rest were all members of the elite palace guard, personally chosen by Agamemnon and vowed to his service. Surely someone that really cared about the princess would have sent at least one or two people she knew well to accompany her, someone like Abas, who had been her singing master, or Penthes the gardener, who loved her and had pretended for years to comply with her instructions, generally wrong, for the cultivation of his vines and strawberries and walnut trees. Both men devoted to the family, who had volunteered for Troy when they might have stayed.

  The princess would naturally want to take Sisipyla with her, and probably some other women. But where was the man she could completely trust, who would stay by her side? There was the long journey by land and sea, the unfamiliar atmosphere of a milit
ary camp. She would not even have the company of her mother—Clytemnestra had expressed her regret that the security of the kingdom would require her presence at Mycenae. The security of Aegisthus, more like it, he thought. Of course, once there she would be all right, her father would take care of her and supervise the preparations for the wedding.

  He glanced again towards Iphigeneia, and in the moment that he did so Phylakos turned his head and the eyes of the two men met and locked into a stare, which for a moment neither was willing to break. There was dislike on both sides expressed in this, something which had been there before, but which the encounter at the gate had quickened. After some moments the older man looked away with a deliberate slowness, clearly contemptuous in intent. Something stirred in Macris, too vague to be called suspicion, a sense of incongruity, of elements that did not quite match up. By contrast, the words that formed now in his mind had a crystalline clarity and purity: I will be that man.

  An amazing sense of freedom came to him with this resolve. He would be the man of trust. He would protect the princess’s person and her interests. My own too, he thought, rather belatedly remembering the zone of distinction. It will get me to Troy, for one thing. Agamemnon will be grateful for my care of her, and remember it. And much can happen on a journey, she will see my worth . . . With or without his father’s permission he would go. It would be easier with permission, so he would try to obtain this, urging the princess’s need for protection—an argument likely to appeal to his father. If it failed, he would wait for them somewhere on the road below. He would take some of his own people, in case he met with any trouble, men who had come with him to Mycenae and would follow him to Aulis at a word—or anywhere else for that matter.