The Lower Bedchamber in the Palace

Hours later, and Clytemnestra sat before a mirror in her room. She was beyond the natural tendency to look over the lines of the nose and chin, the colors of the eyes, and to ponder each strand of hair to its end. She stared past her own face for so long that she brewed an incomprehensible urge to strip everything away and have done with it. It did not matter if she was pretty—not that she knew whether or not she was beautiful—it was all a mask, a horrible mask made by a tribe of self-deception.

But then… should she tear it off… what would she reveal to the world?

Anything at all?

It was stiflingly hot in the palace that night, enough to break through her reverie and display a film of sweat on her motionless brow. She hated many things about this palace: the way all the windows were high on the walls so no once could see out, the bloodstained kitchens where too many soldiers had scuffled in its previous history, but most of all she hated the heat.

She had taken a lower bedroom, anyway. Her loneliness was more important to her than physical comfort.

She managed to be glad of her oneness and sick for her children at the same time, and so she often wondered whether it really was worth her while to torment her heart in so many ways.

She finally stood up and paced the broad expanse of the room until she came to the unlit firepit. It was strange to have this in her room, and she had spent far more than this evening wondering over its previous uses. Perhaps a useless old kitchen, or the remnants of a soldier's barracks. She imagined most, however, that it was an old temple built on to the sprawling house.

She wondered, too, to what god it might have sent sacrifices. The stones surrounding the pit were the coldest things she had touched all day, as she bent and caressed the blackened rock. They were carved so that the angular shapes of centaurs, deer, and great birds seemed to cross from one stone to another. It was not hard to imagine tributes to Artemis stirring in the smoky room.

Clytemnestra liked to think that Artemis had been worshipped in her bedroom. Artemis, whose image now hung half-hidden in the black sky. Artemis, whose grace had allowed Clytemnestra to happily bear Orestes, Iphigenia, and Electra. Artemis, whose carved animals that roamed the stones were also found plentiful in the hills of Aulis.

Clytemnestra lifted her robes and stepped over the stones, then knelt in the center of the barren pit. For a moment, she considered jumping back out in fear that what she was about to do was blasphemous, maybe she was offending some unknown deity, but she closed her eyes and settled herself to her task.

"Artemis, the Great Protector," she intoned. "Hear my prayer. See she ships off safely; see them off soon. Greatest Artemis, I beg you, end this standstill now."

Clytemnestra suddenly felt a stir about her, and looked frantically about the room for signs of change. There was now wind; not one heavy blanket stirred in a breeze. She had felt something in the room; what was it?

"So this is what you have been amusing yourself with all evening."

She felt the warm air blowing on the back of her neck, but she did not welcome it, or the hand that followed it with a feather-light touch.

"I have been looking for you."

She stood and faced him.

She had heard enough stories all her life to have expected differently. She had been prepared for the adultery, the violence, the callousness, the vulgarity, but there was something about Agamemnon that disarmed her and had led her to this pit of self-doubt on this night. In all those stories, the men were dumb, or cowards, or drunks.

"It has been a long day, Clytemnestra."

He was wonderfully horrible; charismatically brutish; beautifully torturous; she hated him and could not help attracting to him. Not now, though; she was never attracted to him in the way she had heard in those stories of her girlhood. The women that told those stories had all had abusers and lovers and every sort of man, but none would ever know one so magnificent as Agamemnon.

"You have seemed preoccupied all day. Even when we had our guests to dinner. Perhaps you should put yourself to bed?"

Oh, he could be like this. He could be normal, or at least she knew he appeared that way. In the first months of their marriage she had seen him as normal and brilliant. Now she knew he was never quite normal at all. Everything he did was specifically calculated and processed and perfected and it all went to benefiting his own purposes, though what those were, she thought she might never know. She would look into his dark brown eyes as she did now and never see behind the veiled visage.

He was moving away from her and ambling around the large room, moving closer and closer to her bed. Once he stood in front of it, he stopped and reached out a hand, pressing gently into the mattress. A veiled smile lifted his facial expression, and he said over his shoulder. "No wonder you are up. I would not sleep here, either. Would another room help you fall asleep? There are others on the main level."

She closed her eyes for several seconds and breathed, then opened them again. Agamemnon. "I do not think so, no. I am fine here. Don't trouble yourself."

He looked at her again, and she wanted to close her eyes again. Sometimes his thoughts were so clear she wanted to cry for the power she saw in them. "The rooms are a distance from mine."

She had suspected he knew for a while, but this subtle admittance was enough to weaken her will. She cast around for a chair, and stumbled out of the pit on her way to a crude stone seat near the outside wall. Oh, appearances, this is the way it will be for the rest of my life, I must not make it worse by angering him in my distaste. She consciously pulled herself upright and purposefully sat herself in the chair. "I will not sleep anywhere in this heat, Husband. I should be down here so as not to bother anyone else with my pacing."

He came back near her. She looked first to his face, where his expression remained unchanged, and then she looked to his clothes. He wore full war regalia, lacking only prizes he had won from others. He was not dressed for sleep at all. She began to wonder exceedingly at his purpose for coming down here, to these forgotten halls of his second-rate palace.

He stopped, placed his large hands together in front of him. "Odysseus asked after you. His wife asks after you, too, and that is why he continually asked me where you were tonight. I could not answer him."

She stood, and then wondered what she had thought she would do once she had stood. Oppose him? She never had, and never would. Run? He had fought far too many battles to allow a wearied mother more than a few feet in flight from him. Breakdown? It would serve no purpose except to confuse him, and he had called her out more than once on appearances before other leaders.

"Go upstairs and stay in the bedchamber on the western wall. I will be away tonight. Find a lady to help you move any things you might need. Perhaps you might find it within yourself to pay some respects to the lords tomorrow morning." There was something in his carriage that conveyed a strange hurt that she had caused him, and something that remained hidden from her and all others. He was planning. He was plotting. Neither she nor anyone could ever grievously hurt him. "Only if you feel up to it."

He was leaving, and Clytemnestra was always relieved at his exit, but tonight she saw failure in herself as well as her husband. The women had told her to be loyal, to be the good Greek hostess, and she, the Spartan princess, was ruining everything for her whole household. None of them would ever share a bed with Agamemnon, but then she counted herself as extraordinary, and rapidly mustered her courage. There was always time later for her to be alone.

"I do miss you, Agamemnon. I am sorry to have disappointed you today."

He stopped on his way to the door, and said without looking at her, "Do not worry about disappointing me, my lady. I have others to perform the services that you will not."

"Oh!" she breathed, and wished instantly she could inhale it back the moment she had accidentally let it go.

But he had not heard her. He was already gone, and she was left to unwind her sheets from the hot bed on her own.