The day after. That’s what she ought to be thinking about – the day after Agamemnon’s death, because Aegisthus is certainly thinking about that, and his plans for the future won’t benefit her – or Orestes. With his father dead, Orestes will be in real danger, because Aegisthus won’t be satisfied with anything less than the throne. At some point, she’ll have to get rid of him, but not yet. He’s useful now.

  Drifting in the shallows, her dreams are full of screaming sailors, stricken ships, the storm in her mind raging, though outside her bedroom window there’s scarcely a breath of air. A noise wakens her. She can’t think what it was, can’t even be sure it wasn’t part of a dream, so she tries to settle down again. No use. She sits up, pushes the sheet back and reconciles herself to an hour or two without sleep.

  The trouble is, her mind’s buzzing from the meeting with Aegisthus. She’s known horses like him, with the same lack of respect for people’s space, all of them orphaned as foals. They grow up not knowing how to be horses and – though Aegisthus would probably kill anybody who said it – he doesn’t know how to be a man. He’s ruthless, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s as if he’s never heard of a world in which keeping promises, speaking the truth and being kind exist. She thinks she knows what his plan is: kill Agamemnon, marry her, claim the throne – and where does that leave her son, Orestes, eighteen years old, and with no experience of combat? Facing a man who, if he hadn’t been born into the royal family, might well have become one of those men who set themselves up in the backyards of taverns, and take on any man fool enough or drunk enough to challenge them, stamping on fingers, gouging out eyes, all for the price of a bowl of stew and a jug of wine. The threat to Orestes is very real. Somehow, she’s got to use Aegisthus but then as soon as possible get rid of him. And that won’t be easy.

  Throwing her robe round her shoulders, she walks on to the terrace, into the hour of darkness that precedes the dawn. Yawning, she notices a light growing on the horizon. Sunrise, she thinks, but no, it’s not that kind of light. This is bright orange, leaping, flickering, fierce. It’s obvious what it is – and yet there’s a moment when her brain doesn’t recognize what her eyes are seeing, followed by the slow, cool wave of shock as she realizes that in the far distance a watchfire’s been lit. Of course, it may mean nothing. Gangs of lads are always setting fire to them, just for the hell of it; there’ve been two false alarms in the last few weeks. Her mind reserves judgement, even as her heart leaps with the flames. It’s all she can do to stop herself crying out, but even as the cry dies in her throat, the gong in the hall is struck, and struck again.

  She puts her robe on properly, her fingernails snagging on the silk as she fumbles with the belt. Her hands are sweaty; wiping them down her sides, she tries to steady herself. Still just the one fire, but even as she thinks that, she sees another, closer, burst of flame. That’s it. Now it’s real. She goes into the corridor, takes a torch from the sconce beside her door and, holding it high above her head, walks down the main staircase into the atrium. As she enters the throne room, the guard’s drawing back the mallet for another strike so she has to wait for that noise, too, to swell and subside. There’s a group of people at the far end of the hall, slaves by the look of them – obviously slaves, who else but slaves would be up at this hour? Slaves, and the queen.

  ‘More torches,’ she calls, and they scatter in all directions, leaving her alone with the guard. One of Aegisthus’ men: young, fresh complexion, a frank, ready smile; he’d be overfamiliar, if he dared. He doesn’t dare.

  ‘The watchfire’s lit,’ he says.

  ‘I know.’ Her voice is sharp because it’s important to make it clear that she’s not surprised. She was surprised once, on the morning of Iphigenia’s death, believing her daughter was about to marry Achilles, seeing her sacrificed like a heifer, instead. Nothing has ever been allowed to surprise her since.

  People are streaming into the hall now, buzzing with excitement, though their faces remain curiously blank. It’s not just her, everybody’s shocked; nobody can believe it. The world’s changed, as it always does, between one breath and the next. The leader of the council, Alexandros, a decade younger and rather more vigorous than the rest, steps forward and bows. ‘Is it true?’ he asks. ‘Or just another false alarm?’

  The old men are muttering together. There’ve been so many rumours, so many false alarms, in recent weeks that they’re as skittish as hens who’ve smelled a fox. ‘Do you remember, just this week gone, a couple of watchfires were lit? And that was just a pack of lads playing with torches.’ ‘Need their arses tanning.’ ‘No hope of that these days. Now, when we were lads …’

  Oh my god, off they go …

  ‘It’s true,’ she says, and her voice carries round the hall, every bone in her head vibrating, as if her mouth has become the gong announcing his return. ‘I want fires lit on every altar, prayers, sacrifices. Today’s a holiday, and tomorrow. At last, he’s coming home.’

  She’s crying now, raising her hands to cover her face, though between her fingers she notices how approvingly they nod. She’s behaving exactly as a faithful wife should behave, and a large part of her is detached enough to applaud her own performance. But then, without warning, her left knee buckles underneath her and she falls to the ground.

  There’s a moment – almost – of peace, when she simply lies there staring at the ceiling. Only then they start clustering round her, a ring of wrinkly faces peering down. Grey aphids. She has a flash-memory of Iphigenia lying on the dusty path, her blood spattered over the plants behind her head. One of the drops, half hidden in the curl of a leaf, turns out not to be blood at all.

  ‘Ladybird.’

  The old men look at each other.

  ‘Bound to be a shock,’ somebody says. ‘It’s been such a long time.’

  A long time? Up until this last moment, she’d have agreed with him. Years of grief, years of anger, followed by the urgency and secrecy of the last few weeks. And now, suddenly, it seems like no time at all. The future’s hurtling towards her and, despite all the careful planning, the double-checking, the public and the private rehearsals, she still doesn’t feel ready.

  How can she possibly have reached this point so soon?

  12

  ‘No need for you to rush,’ Andreas said. He was leaning forward to fasten his sandals as he spoke, the bones of his spine jutting out of his skin like a particularly complicated snake. When I put my arms around him and pressed my face between his shoulder blades, he twisted round, pushed me back against the pillow and we lay there kissing and cuddling like a couple of kids in their teens. It all felt so easy after the spectacularly unpromising beginning of the previous evening when he’d tripped over a discarded tunic and fallen flat on the floor, emitting a string of heart-rending groans.

  ‘Back’s gone again, sorry, love, that’s it. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.’

  I’d tried to help him up, but he was a dead weight – so, being more than a little drunk myself, I lay on the floor beside him and closed my eyes. I might even have drifted off to sleep, if an insistent erection hadn’t persuaded him his back might last a little longer. Perhaps his falling over helped; at least it gave me something to think about other than sagging tits and stretch-marked belly and the onward march of time. None of those things seemed to matter at all now.

  One last kiss and he was struggling to sit up. ‘I should have been on deck an hour ago!’

  Despite his words, he wasn’t struggling very hard. I gave him a shove. Nobody was going to tell him off for being late.

  ‘What do you think Cassandra’s going to say if I’m missing when she gets back? C’mon, shift your arse, I’ve got to get dressed even if you don’t.’

  ‘She’ll still be in bed. Anyway, what does it matter what she says?’

  It mattered a great deal, but I didn’t insist. Instead, I lay in the circle of his arms, unromantically picking a beard hair from between my teeth. I’d forgotten how good a man’s body feels. I’d forgotten how good my own body felt.

  ‘You know,’ I said, after a sleepy pause, ‘one thing bothers me.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Why aren’t they looking forward to being home?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘No, they’re not. I don’t mean the sailors, they are. I mean Agamemnon, I suppose. Machaon. Sometimes they seem excited, but …’

  ‘No, they’re not celebrating much, are they?’ After a pause, he went on, ‘Of course, they’re going back to the palace. That can’t be a lot of fun.’

  ‘What’s the matter with it?’ I waited. ‘C’mon, tell me, I’m going to be living there too, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know – and I wish you weren’t.’

  I wasn’t going to push him; in fact, if anything, I felt a slight reluctance, a hanging back. Perhaps it was better not to know.

  ‘It’s a strange place. My dad worked there for a time, he was a ship’s carpenter really, but there was one year he did his back in – so he couldn’t go to sea, but he couldn’t afford not to work either, so he used to do odd jobs around the palace. Mainly repairing blinds, putting up sconces, that sort of thing. The whole place was run-down. Anyway, I remember looking forward to him coming home. Me mam always had a bath of hot water ready in the yard, and he used to get washed before he sat down. Well, I say wash, scrub more like. Top to toe, even used to stick his head underwater, and I always knew he was washing something off, and I don’t mean dirt.’

  ‘Did he talk to you about it?’

  ‘No, I was too young. I used to hear him talking to me mam sometimes. They’d sit on the terrace having a cup of wine and I’d be up at me bedroom window, listening. He used to talk a lot about the old queen, Agamemnon’s mother. He was repairing the shutters in her room, and she used to lie on the bed and watch him. They’d had every healer in Greece out to her – awful bloody concoctions she had to drink. He said she spilled some once and it went straight through the rug. Even the cockroaches turned their noses up. And she just went on getting thinner and thinner – like she was fading out of life. Like somebody had got a bloody big ball of putty and they were rubbing her out.’

  ‘What did your dad think was wrong?’

  ‘Atreus. He said being married to him would have killed any woman.’ For a long time, Andreas was silent. Then he said: ‘She was never the same after them children died.’

  ‘Her children?’

  ‘No, not hers.’

  And then he told me the story he’d pieced together, growing up. Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, had quarrelled with his brother and then, like the vicious bastard he was, arranged a ‘reconciliation’ dinner, smiling benevolently when his brother remarked on the tenderness of the meat. Only at the end of the meal did he produce the hands and feet of two small children as a way of convincing his brother that he’d been eating his own children, whom Atreus had kidnapped, killed and cooked.

  The story silenced me. When I could trust my voice, I said, ‘He must have been mad.’

  ‘Mad? He wasn’t mad, he was just an evil bastard. Should have had his knackers chopped off, and there’d have been a queue of volunteers to do it, believe me.’

  I couldn’t get the story to settle in my mind – and I’m not sure I ever have. It’s not just the brutality, it’s the … grotesquerie, which somehow detracts from the horror. It’s too much like the stories old women tell on a winter’s night, before sending their listeners shivering to their beds.

  ‘It’s got a nasty atmosphere,’ Andreas said.

  ‘The palace? You mean it’s haunted?’

  ‘No! Oh, c’mon, surely …?’

  Andreas obviously didn’t like the implication that he believed in ghosts. I remembered him as a boy pouring scorn on some of the more far-fetched stories the older men told, about ships that went on sailing though their crews were dead, or women with long hair and fishes’ tails who sang men to their doom. He’d probably dismiss tales of hauntings in exactly the same spirit: superstitious nonsense, fit only for old women massaging their arthritic joints by the fire.

  ‘All right,’ I said, teasing a little. ‘If the palace was empty, would you spend the night in it alone?’

  A long hesitation. ‘I’d have to think about it. I’m not frightened of anything you can swing a sword at, but no, I don’t think I would be easy doing that.’ He kissed me again, then hauled himself out of bed. ‘Anyway, it isn’t empty, it’s crowded. You stick with the other women, you’ll be all right.’

  And with that he pressed both hands hard into the small of his back and began to get dressed.

  The minute the door closed behind him, I was out of bed and pulling my tunic over my head, anxious to get back to the cabin before Cassandra returned and found me missing. As I was leaving, Machaon came out of his cabin. He nodded but didn’t speak, and I saw as he turned to go that he was grinning. I didn’t like that. I couldn’t think of any reason for my being in Andreas’ cabin other than the blindingly obvious, so I was going to have to live with his amusement.

  Pushing open our cabin door, I found the room empty and Cassandra’s bed not slept in. Quickly, I pulled back the blanket on mine and dented the pillow. Me, at my age, hiding the signs of illicit sexual activity from a girl. But she was my owner, and this body that had taken and given so much pleasure belonged to her, not me.

  She came back a few minutes later, lay down on her bunk and hid her face in her hands. I waited.

  ‘Well,’ she said, pulling her hands down so the insides of her lower lids showed red. ‘I told him.’

  ‘Was he pleased?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Then it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘Not that I had much choice. Apparently, Machaon’s been dropping hints. Thanks to you.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ Staring straight at me. ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Not one word.’

  She scanned my face, nodded.

  ‘Don’t make an enemy of Machaon,’ I said. ‘I know you don’t like him, but he’s powerful. And there’s not a lot he misses. Healing starts with observation – you know? And he’s very, very good at it. Agamemnon trusts him, more than he trusts anybody else, certainly more than he trusts you. He’s lost Odysseus, Nestor, Calchas – all the people he used to rely on. There’s only Machaon left.’

  No response to that. Perhaps she just couldn’t bear to hear Machaon praised, though every word was no more than his due. Bastard. I’d started brushing the tangled mess of her hair, holding every strand near the root, so the tugging wouldn’t hurt. Then I noticed she was crying, and that was sufficiently unusual to make me put the brush down.

  She wiped her nose on the side of her hand. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s just I get so sore. You can pretend about everything else, but you can’t pretend about that. Not that he ever notices. Bit of spit, in he goes.’

  Her hair was near enough done, so I fastened it in a simple knot at the nape of her neck. I didn’t want to pull her about any more than I had to.

  ‘You know what we could do with?’ She twisted round to look at me. ‘Your goose-fat jar.’

  I laughed at the memory. It had made many a poor woman’s life marginally easier, that jar. ‘Not a lot I can do about that.’

  ‘No jar?’

  ‘Worse, no goose.’

  She laughed. We hadn’t got on this well, since …

  Well, since for ever.

  I was shaking out her blue tunic when a knock came at the door. Andreas, looking suddenly red-veined and unfamiliar.

  ‘Summat you might like to see.’

  Cassandra was already reaching for her shawl. We followed him along the passage and up the stairs, where I stood beside her in the prow, breathing cool, moist air. A light mist transformed the sails into spectral shapes above our heads. We could make out lights on board the two ships nearest us, but further away the fleet had disappeared behind a grey wall. Creaking of joists and rigging, lapping water – altogether a peaceful scene, though the sailors crowding round us were tense. At first, it wasn’t obvious what we’d been brought up on deck to see, but then Cassandra clutched my arm and pointed. Deep in the mist, a flicker of fire. ‘You see?’ Andreas said, touching my back, then snatching his hand away. ‘They’ve spotted us.’

  Soon that fire was joined by another, and another, tongues of flame passing the news along faster than rumour, faster than fear. A mizzling rain was making the fires burn black; the smoke didn’t disperse but merged into the milky air. To me, there was something ominous about those black columns that seemed to rise out of the earth like a row of leafless, branchless trees. But the Greeks were happy, deliriously happy, because they were only hours away from home.

  After a few minutes, there was a stir behind us – and Agamemnon, attended by Machaon, came on deck. Immediately the atmosphere, no, more than that, the emotional weather, changed. His gaze swept from face to face and all of us, with the possible exception of Andreas, tried to make ourselves look smaller. It was extraordinary, the effect he had: the way articulate people suddenly stuttered and groped for words, confident people hesitated and took a step back. After acknowledging the cheers, he joined Andreas in the prow.

  ‘How long now?’

  ‘Hard to say, Sir. The wind’s dropping.’

  ‘Today, though?’

  ‘Oh yes, as long as the wind doesn’t die down altogether. Probably late afternoon.’

  Suddenly, Cassandra tightened her grip on my arm. I couldn’t work out where she wanted me to look, but then I noticed a building on the headland, its columns gleaming bone-white against the grey sky. At first, I thought it must be a temple to Poseidon, lord of the sea; every port has one, so sailors can pray before setting out on a voyage or give thanks for a safe return. But this, though it did look like a temple, was too far away from the harbour to be easily visited. And it would be a very steep climb. Glancing sideways, I saw that Agamemnon had noticed it too.