Clytemnestra's Bind by Susan C Wilson

Author:Susan C Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911107613
Publisher: Neem Tree Press

CHAPTER 17

Harmonia, as Aegisthus once warned me, was unfit to be my daughters’ nursemaid. Any woman could have managed Iphigenia, but Harmonia had failed entirely to discipline Electra. Her nurturing instincts were for her son alone. She had, however, once been my most efficient handmaid, and I decided to reappoint her as the most senior among them.

My new choice of nursemaid was a woman recently captured during a raid on the island of Anaphe, who’d taken to suckling the slaves’ little ones after her two infant daughters were traded abroad. I waited until I’d heard enough satisfactory reports about the woman’s character, before summoning Harmonia to dress me in place of my usual maid.

“Your daughters are used to me,” said Harmonia, tightening my braided belt. “Can’t you keep us both, lady?”

“Two nursemaids in one nursery? Bad as two master smiths at a furnace or two kings on a throne.” I shook my head to dispel an unbidden memory, Thyestes and Atreus, warring kings, been and gone.

“Electra will be upset,” said Harmonia.

I selected a jewelled headband from a casket on the table. “She’ll adjust.”

“Still, I expect it makes sense, given your condition.”

The headband slipped from my fingers. “What?”

Harmonia stepped back to study me. She loosened my belt. “Should I send for Eritha to examine you, or would you prefer the palace herbcutters this time?”

Though I’d missed four bleeds, my belly barely showed. I still hoped to miscarry, as I’d done numerous times. The prospect of giving a son to the House of Atreus, a boy to be moulded into the image of those violent men, jolted me awake at night, soaked in sweat, like Thyestes haunted by his murdered boys.

Every bit as much, I feared losing the child or having another girl. Agamemnon was furious at his lack of an heir. What would happen to Iphigenia and Electra if I failed him again? My daughters were safe for now, but what if the notion struck their father to take a new royal bride and put us aside? As Jason did with Medea, Heracles with his faithful Deianira – and those women had lavished devotion on their husbands, as I never had.

“I’ll send for Eritha closer to the time,” I said, “if I must.”

*

Now that my secret was known, I had little choice but to tell my husband. First, I broke the news to Aegisthus, seated together on a bench in my throne room.

“I suppose it had to happen sooner or later,” he said, grimacing. “What now?”

I laid my hand on his. For a startling moment, I felt the life force swirling within him, within his veins, this man who might have been mine. “What can I do?”

The question required no answer, but he turned his face to mine with such vehemence that I drew away. “What can you do? What can you do? You should have escaped while you could. Taken your daughters. You’ll never take a son from him.”

“Of course not,” I said, stunned.

“He’d never let you. Oh, what’ve I done?” He squeezed his temples between clenched fists.

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