Iphigeneia and Sisipyla followed more slowly. They saw Macris turn off towards the staircase on the south side of the palace. They themselves took the broader road to the main entrance higher up. Here, in the small cobbled courtyard that lay immediately below the massive supporting wall of the terrace, they left their horses to the groom and made their way directly to the Great Court and from there to the royal apartments, taking the staircase that led up to the women's quarters. Because Sisipyla was accompanying her mistress, it was permitted to her to go by this shorter route. On her own, she would have been obliged to take a more roundabout way to the same point, through a maze of narrow passages and short flights of stairs. Her room was within calling distance of the princess's apartments, separated only by a narrow vestibule; but the routes it was possible to take were rigidly prescribed in accordance with rank. Sisipyla could spend as much time as her mistress wished attending her in the royal apartments, but on her own she could not approach the apartments by the main southward passage that led to the vestibule. It was in this vestibule now that, having made sure her services were for the time being not needed, she took her leave of Iphigeneia.
2.
Her room was small. The pallet on which she slept and the chest in which she kept her clothes took up most of the space. High in one wall there was a square aperture, which let in light and air from an open courtyard beyond. A narrow, curtained opening gave access to the vestibule and adjoining bedroom and dressing-room that constituted Iphigeneia's apartments.
She took off her robe, folded it carefully and laid it in the chest. Then she put on the clothes that were still lying on the bed: the bell-shaped skirt and close-fitting bodice, open at the front to show the inner curves of the breasts. It was the usual dress of unmarried ladies of the palace and similar, though plainer, to Iphigeneia's own; an unheard of privilege for Sisipyla, who was an alien and, technically at least, still a slave. It had been much resented in that narrow, jealous world of the palace; but the princess had insisted on it, from the beginning she had wanted her companion to look like herself – it was the highest mark of favour she could show.
Even with leave to go Sisipyla felt uneasy, worried that Iphigeneia might require her for something, might want to talk. She was almost never out of sight or hearing of her mistress. But today she felt a certain need to be alone. Something in the combination of events earlier – the meeting with Macris, his words and looks, the arrival of the messenger with news of a mounted party approaching – had troubled her in a way she did not yet fully understand.
There was a place outside the walls where she had sometimes been before when free of duties and wanting solitude. She left her room and made her way through the narrow passages on the north side of the palace, emerging below the walls, near the precincts of the shrine. From here she followed the road to the postern gate. The men on duty there allowed her through without question. Beyond the angle made by the outworks of the gate a narrow terrace led on to a path that followed the contour of the slope. She passed above a disused kiln, with farther down the ancient gashes of quarries, half overgrown. It was from here, she had once been told, that long ago they had taken the great blocks of stone for the citadel.
The path descended and opened into a level area, planted with pine and holly oak. She sat where she remembered sitting before, in the shade of a pine, with her back against its trunk. From here she could look down over the hillside, steeply terraced with olive and vine and scattered with the beehive shapes of tombs, many of them neglected and invaded by scrub, resembling random clumps of vegetation, with the thatched huts of those who worked the terraces lying here and there among them. Far below this, half hidden in the haze, she could see a stretch of the road that came through Perseia and approached the citadel from the south.
She began to think again about the meeting with Macris. The princess had been aware of his admiration and not displeased by it. She had not returned his looks, but she had not been displeased. They had talked about the young man once or twice before. Iphigeneia was in the habit of confiding in her, though not always immediately. They had laughed together over his forwardness, his ardent looks. It was bothersome, the princess had said once, always to find someone's eyes upon you. But she had not seemed much bothered today... To her parents such a match would not be good enough, the son of a local chieftain bound by dues of clan service to Agamemnon. No, they would be looking for an ally more powerful, perhaps a prince from Crete or the land of the Hatti or even Egypt. But whoever was chosen, the day could not be so far off now. Iphigeneia would be given to someone, someone would come and take her away.
Strange that Iphigeneia too could be a gift. This was already in my mind, Sisipyla thought. Watching them together. Then the messenger came with news of visitors. Iphigeneia would take me with her, it is not that – she would not go without me. But once there, at a foreign court, she will have new claims upon her, there will be the family of the husband. Perhaps I am needed only here, only at Mycenae, a gift for childhood, for growing up, not for a new life.
She was swept suddenly by fear of abandonment. She had no life, no existence, without Iphigeneia. The princess's favour had isolated her, made her an object of jealousy and dislike among her fellow servants. Once again she thought about the day she had been given to the princess. The great people of the palace had been there, Iphigeneia's parents, her four-year-old sister, Electra, the senior clan members and the high-ranking officials of the court. She remembered the men's darkly bearded faces looking down, how strange and fearsome they had seemed – the men in her native Lydia were clean-shaven. Within this ring of faces, on a level with her own, there was Iphigeneia's, glowing with excitement but serious, always serious. Sisipyla could close her eyes and see in exact detail the princess's excited face on that day of celebration, and her dress, dark red with a gold sash and tasselled sleeves. Thin gold bracelets on each wrist, her hair dressed high on top of her head, held in place by a gold net.
The slave dealer was there too, he who had been with them on the ship. He had brought her to the palace because of her prettiness, hoping she would take someone's fancy. This she had not known at the time – she had not known why she was alone, separated from the others. It had been the man's luck to have come just when the wild plum trees were flowering, the season of the princess's birth. While the flowers were on the trees a day was chosen to celebrate the event. It was thus that Sisipyla had come to the King's notice, thus that the idea of the gift had come into his mind.
She had been helped by the presence of the dealer. In the course of trade he had picked up some Lydian; he had been able to make her understand the questions. She had seen the pleasure on the princess's face, she had known at once that she was acceptable as a gift; but the questions she remembered as terrible, because she had not answered them well, and because of the laughter of the men that stood round.
'What is your name?' This was the first thing the princess had asked her, and she had replied – when she understood – with the name that belonged to her then and which she had kept in memory since, as a sort of possession, like her memory of the sea: Amandralettes.
But it was too difficult. Iphigeneia had a hesitation in her speech at that time, a slight lisp, since overcome. She could not get beyond the cluster of consonants. And at her efforts the laughter came, like a wave lapping round their two serious faces that were so exactly level.