said, touching their flanks. 'I am yours.'
We could not bear to be apart, and fell asleep where we lay, in the warm darkness, wrapped in the mantle which was once the gift of King Agamemnon to his captive.
I woke in cool grey light. Diomenes had rolled over in his sleep and lay with his head on my thigh. My cheek rested on Eumides' chest. I was warm and sated and unable to account for what had woken me.
Eyes, for there were eyes on us, inimical, horrified. Golden eyes of the small woman clutching the boy on the other side of the room. I felt for the source of her disgust, trying to find what had shocked her, and recoiled from a burning rage, deep as a pit. I had not felt such a thing before.
I was suddenly very awake. I sat up, dislodging my lovers, and said, 'Lady, we must take the road again.'
She did not reply. The boy wriggled out of her too-tight embrace and said calmly, 'Electra, you are hurting me.'
Chryse woke, kissed the thigh he was lying on, then hauled himself and Eumides to the crouch which was all the hut allowed a tall man.
'Morning,' he stated.
'Again?' groaned Eumides, ran a hand through his hair, and smiled at me so that my heart glowed.
'Perhaps the Princess can make a fire, we'd better cook the rest of the meat, while I go out and find a leather worker. If you will give me your sandal, Lady, I'll get you some boots.'
'I can't walk further,' she said angrily.
'Perhaps, horses? Mycenae won't need them now that the treasure's in the city,' suggested Diomenes.
'I'll try. Give me four gold bracelets. And the sandals. Stay quiet, Cassandra,' Eumides said to me. 'We won't be long. The traders know us.'
It was the first time he had used my name.
Electra
The whore and the two strangers had mated in my plain sight - I had heard their breathing, their gasps, their laughter; I was revolted. Into such company my mother's actions had thrown me, and I had to rely on them, for I was so still that I could hardly move and I did not know the way to Delphi.
Therefore I said no word to the slave Cassandra as she blew into the brazier and made the coals glow. The hut, which stank of humans and goats and mating fluids, began to smell of roasting. Orestes took a skewer of meat from the fire and sat down to eat it. He was dirty and dishevelled but he seemed composed, licking his fingers as the grease dripped down.
I was not used to sitting on the ground and my legs cramped as I tried to move. I crawled to a crouch and snagged my feet on a trailing edge of my chiton. Cassandra reached out a hand and hauled me to my feet - she is very strong - saying, 'We will have to shorten these garments, Princess. Court robes are not suitable for the road. Have you a needle amongst your things?'
'I think so,' I had to talk to this degraded woman. I found two needles and gave her one, and she sat down to bundle up the hem of her own delicate robe with uneven stitches. I did not like to see beautiful weaving so mishandled, so I said, 'Let me do it.'
She smiled at me. 'I have never managed to learn sewing. I'm a healer, that's my skill,' she observed, shedding the outer robe so that I could work on it. Her body was almost bare under the northern chiton, which is slit up to the thighs on both sides, a garment that only a heterai, a courtesan, would wear.
I made a neat seam along the chiton and the undergarment, then started on my own. She watched me and commented, 'You sew beautifully.'
'It's easy,' I said, for it sounded like an honest compliment. I had not had much to do with other people. My mother's house was not happy, but it confined me in propriety to her company and those of the slaves. This woman was neither sister nor slave and I did not know how to talk to her. I had never met a courtesan before. I said, 'See? Just don't drag the needle through and it won't snag.' She began to copy my action, though she was clumsy.
'This must be your skill,' she said, sucking a pricked finger.
'You said that before. Not my skill alone, but the skill of all women. We are required to spin, card, weave and sew to supply the household. It is the mark of a good woman.'
'Good as in virtuous?' she asked, and I nodded.
'Good women do not stray abroad, gossiping; we do not visit other women and drink wine, even at festivals. We stay in the women's quarters, make clothes, supervise the slaves, and make all comfortable for our Lord when he returns.'
'I see. So you have no learning?'
'We do not need learning,' I said, a little stiffly.
She nodded and asked, 'Who tends you in childbirths? Physicians?'
'Indeed no, what an idea!' I was shocked. 'Good women never look into the eyes of a man, not even a relative, not even her husband. Midwives and wise women come to a birth. Of course, the baby is not named until the father has accepted it.'
'What if he doesn't accept it?'
I realised that she was a complete stranger to all civilisation and went on, talking more than I usually do. 'Then it is exposed, of course. That's why women say that one must not get fond of a child before it is a week old, because it may be rejected.'
'Princess, are you telling me that unless an Argive father accepts a child it is killed?' she asked, abandoning all attempt at hemming.
'Not killed, exposed; laid out on the hillside. If there's anything wrong with it, too, if it's deformed or a girl. Fathers require sons. My family is unusual because there are three girls before… No, there are two girls now.'
Cassandra did not speak, but held my hand gently as I remembered that one of the daughters of the Royal House of Atreus had been sacrificed by her own father. Iphigenia, my favourite sister, so gentle and beautiful, who had taught me the fast looping hemstitch which I was using.
I had a rare flash of memory. The dark hair falling glossy from the silver fillet, her almond eyes bent on me, her red mouth smiling. A smell of spring in the air, and the tinkle of little bells as my sister moved. 'Now, little Electra, don't pull the thread so tight, and the material will lie perfectly flat. If you finish the whole seam, I will give you a bit of honeycomb which father sent from Troizen.'
My mind shied off the thought of our father's death. That was something which I must not think of yet. I dragged myself back to the present and said, 'You will need to learn it all, Cassandra, if your Lord marries you to an Argive.'
'I have no Lord, and I will never marry an Argive,' she said firmly.
I realised that she was mad, and I was sorry for her.
When the men returned they found us sitting like friends at the hearth, sewing cat-scratch stitches on Orestes' spare tunic.
'Good news and good bargaining, we have horses and I think we'd better go,' announced Eumides.
Cassandra rolled her possessions into a compact bundle and swung her heavy cloak over her shoulder.
'Just how good a bargain?' she asked suspiciously, and the sailor grinned, showing missing teeth.
'A very
