The young man embraced her, nestling her head against his shoulder, while she could not hold back her tears. He led her to the shelter of a jutting rock and had her sit beside him. He held her tightly, nearly cradling her in his arms.
She suddenly started: ‘You are mad,’ she cried, ‘to have come here! If anyone sees you, you’ll be killed at once. Aegisthus’s men are everywhere.’
‘I had to see you and let you know you’re not alone. We are gathering an army and when we are ready we shall lay siege to the city.’
‘You’ll never succeed,’ said Electra. ‘The city is invincible. The Phocian forces have no chance against the squadrons of war chariots that Aegisthus can send into the field.’
‘Uncle Menelaus is back. Haven’t you heard?’
‘Yes, but I had heard that he was very ill, close to death.’
‘He’s fine. But don’t let the word out; no one must know. Nestor will send his fleet to sea to stop the Cretans if they should attack us; he’ll send us one thousand men, commanded by Pisistratus, and one hundred chariots. Many others will join us from Argos, Tiryns, Nemea and from Mycenae as well.’ He took a fleeting look at the slab covering the cistern. ‘Our father will be avenged and he will finally have peace in Hades.’
Electra couldn’t take her eyes away from him, and he stroked him gently as he spoke. When he had finished she dropped her head for a while as if gathering her thoughts: ‘Do you know what all this means?’
‘I do,’ said the youth. ‘It means the death of our mother. By my hand. If we win. If we are defeated, it means my death, and yours, and the death of all of our dreams.’
‘You’ve never killed anyone. How could you kill your mother? Have you thought of how you will feel afterwards? Of the nightmares that will torment you for your whole life? Her spirit will give you no peace, neither by day or night.’ She kissed his eyes, his forehead, his hair. ‘You’re just a boy. . you would have the right to different thoughts. Oh gods. . why? Why us, we’ve done nothing!’
‘Do not ask, sister. There is no answer to your questions. Destiny is blind and has cast all this misfortune upon us. In this very moment someone else, in some other place, far away, is enjoying every happiness. . even ours, the happiness that would be ours. But one day, who knows, perhaps more serene days will dawn for us as well. Perhaps we’ll be able to live, and to forget.’ Orestes rose to his feet. ‘But now we will do what must be done. Don’t cry as I leave you.’
He covered his head and turned, soon disappearing into the darkness that had descended to cover the land.
The chirping of the birds had ceased; they were sleeping in their nests under their mother’s wing. The dark valley now sounded with the hoots of the birds of prey and the howls of the jackals which roamed the darkness to rob the dead of the offerings left by the pious living. Electra pulled her cloak tight around her shoulders and started her walk back. As she was leaving the valley, her gaze flew to the citadel and the high walls of the palace. She thought she saw, for just an instant, a solitary figure dressed in black on the tower of the chasm. Then the wind carried the echo of a wail coming from a house near the road. A babe crying for fear of the dark, consoled by his mother’s singing.
Electra listened to that lullaby and it called up lost images, forgotten long ago. A knot tightened her throat and an aching nostalgia filled her soul.
Then the baby’s crying stopped, and the mother’s song as well. Electra began walking.
11
Anchialus journeyed at length amid steep mountains and thick forests, living on what he could find. When he came upon a village, he would remain and work there for some time, in exchange for food and shelter. He pushed on this way until one day, having decided that it was time to move on, he realized that the choice was no longer his to make. The people whom he lived with had come to consider him their property and intended to keep him as a slave. His sword was taken from him, and an iron collar was put round his neck, with a ring they used to chain him up at night. He remained in that state for a long time, without understanding where he was or who the people who held him prisoner were, until one night the village was stormed and sacked by a people coming from the north. The Dor.
He was spared because he was a slave and that day he traded one master for another. He saw that the Dor community was divided very rigidly: there were the warriors, those who did manual labour, and the slaves, nearly all plunder of war, like himself. The slaves had to attend to the animals and take the flocks to pasture.
He had never managed to learn the language of the people who had first kept him slave, but he realized that it was much easier for him to understand the language of the Dor, which sounded strangely familiar to him, similar somehow to his own.
He could not fathom the reason for this, and he tried to remember the traditions and stories that the elders of his people would tell when he was just a boy in search of an explanation, but he found none. At night when he dropped on to his mat of dried grass, he could not sleep, exhausted as he was. He thought of the comrades whom he had let die at sea, he thought of the others who had stayed with Diomedes; he thought of his king, to whom he had made a promise it would be very difficult to keep.
He implored the gods to free him, to remove the yoke weighing on his shoulders, to restore his shield and his spear. But much time passed before anything happened.
The Dor settled for nearly three years on a plain near the shore of a lake encircled by tall mountains, and he with them.
One day they gave him a woman, a slave like he was, so they could generate more slaves, but when he lay with her he spilled his seed on the ground so that he would not be bound to that life, so that he would have no wife and no children. Every day, at the break of dawn and at the setting of the sun, he repeated to himself: ‘You are Anchialus, son of Iasus, and you fought with the son of Tydeus, Diomedes, under the walls of Troy. No one can keep you in their thrall.’
He feigned docility and cowardice, he pretended to tremble in the sight of his master, he grovelled and whimpered when they threatened punishment and soon no one had any more regard for him than for the sheep and goats they raised in their pens.
And so one night he strangled his master in his sleep, took his weapons and his horse, and escaped. He descended the banks of a river, leaving no traces, and he continued on day and night without ever pausing, never eating and never sleeping. When he was certain that he had put enough distance between himself and his enemies, he stopped to look for a little food so he could gain the strength to go on. He set traps, as he had learned from his first masters, and caught some game. He dug in the ground for tubers and roots with his sword, and he gathered wild fruit from the trees as he had done after surviving the pirates’ attack.
When he felt strong enough, he took up his journey once again, keeping well clear of villages this time. Nearly two months passed in this way, although he could not say how much ground he had covered. He knew only that he was walking southward, leaving the darkness and night behind him.
One morning, just as day was breaking, he finally reached a rocky peak from which he saw an expanse of waves that shone like polished bronze. A strong salty odour was carried on the breeze and his heart swelled in his chest. ‘The sea,’ he murmured aloud.
Along the coast he found a village of fishermen who spoke his language. He asked them what land he found himself in, and they told him it was Epirus, ruled over by Pyrrhus, a youth just seventeen years of age. The fishermen told him that their young king had come by ship after fighting at length in Asia. It was said that he was the son of a fearful warrior who had died far from his native land. ‘The son of Achilles!’ thought Anchialus. ‘Achilles’s son, here. . how could that be?’ He was more convinced than ever that the accursed war had ruined them all, overturning kingdoms and dynasties, procuring no less trouble for the victors than for the vanquished. So the son of Achilles did not reign in Phthia and over the plains of Thessaly as would have been his right, but over a poor, primitive place at the edge of the land of the Achaeans!