She felt a slight shudder, the impending presence of the goddess. The soft darkness that lay within the light, the blended notes of the flutes, the scent of thyme and mint from the slopes beyond the walls, all things that, separate, were familiar matters of sense on a summer night, now flowed together into a stream on which her mind floated. She watched the slight sway of Iphigeneia's body, the rigidly held shoulders, the arms and hands motionless at the sides. The princess was walking with Artemis.

The sensation of weightlessness increased. Sisipyla's ears were closed now to the sounds of the night. Her steps did not falter, but her judgement of the distance from the ground of her raised foot grew less certain, she felt a slight threat to her balance and knew these for signs of the nearness of the goddess, who took from those who approached her the certainties of the body, so as to fill this unsureness with the sureness of her presence. She could smell now, acrid in her nostrils, the dead ash heaped round the altar, sweepings of old fires. The moonlight lay in intricate patterns on the stone of the altar table, bright where it was clear, darker where it was splashed with old blood.

The two youths who were sweepers at the palace and assisted in the care of the shrines marked out the circle that would contain all those present, starting off back to back and keeping the altar at the centre. The flute-players fell silent. Sisipyla followed round, holding up her basket, the water-bearers keeping pace behind her. Now the circle was sealed off from the world outside. The people stood grouped round the altar and held out their hands for cleansing, and those with the water jars went from one to another.

All was now ready; but the goat gave no sign, neither looking down in submission nor looking up in eagerness, but staring straight ahead, its pale eyes unblinking, moonlight gleaming on its gilded horns, on the ribbons of white silk that Sisipyla had so patiently fastened in the long hair of its flanks. It was necessary that the goat too should signify assent; without this the sacrifice was marred. Iphigeneia was standing beside the altar. She turned on the water-bearers the white, unchanging oval of her mask and raised a bare arm and fluttered her fingers rapidly, the sign for rain and the pouring of water. The nearer man stepped forward and sprinkled the neck and back of the animal, which still made no sound, but jerked its head with the shock of the water as if nodding up at the moonlit sky. It was the sign needed. Those within the circle took grains of barley from the basket and held them ready. Iphigeneia raised her arms to the moon and uttered the words she had learned from her mother, the prayer, the invocation, the wish and the vow. In the silence after her voice ceased there was no sound but the pattering of the grains as these were cast over the altar.

Then Sisipyla offered the basket to Iphigeneia, who took the narrow-bladed knife, now lying there exposed. The porters took the goat by its legs and turned it and lifted it up, exposing the throat. Even when raised thus, gripped in strong hands, there came from it neither cry nor struggle. The goat looked up at the sky and the moonlight made amber of its eyes. Iphigeneia cut hairs from its forehead and let them fall, to signify that the life was violated, the victim ordained to the goddess. She raised the lustrous moon of her face to the face of the goddess, now high overhead. For a brief while sacrificer and victim both gazed upward, as if asking jointly for blessing. Then Iphigeneia looked down and her arm swept across her body in a single movement from right to left and the blade flashed and dulled and the blood came, as the men struggled to hold the beast in the convulsions of its death, spurting from the severed throat on to Iphigeneia, who still held the knife, and Sisipyla, who still held the basket, and over the men holding the beast, and over the altar.

Later, while the men were skinning the animal and building up the fire in preparation for the burned offering and the feast that would follow, Iphigeneia did something that no one there had ever seen done before on the public occasion of a sacrifice: she slipped off her girdle from beneath the blood-stained apron and laid it on the fire and watched it burn.

Waiting for Iphigeneia

1.

At Aulis the burden of waiting was felt in different ways, as all such burdens are; but for everyone the nature of the waiting had changed, because it was known that the wind would not cease – could not cease – until Iphigeneia came. The wind itself had a different voice now: it was sighing or groaning or screaming for Iphigeneia to come. She occupied the thoughts and dreams of a thousand men, few of whom had actually seen her. Her face and body were imagined with intensity as the men lay through the nights of the growing moon; they saw her white throat, bared for the knife; and they felt the rigid blade, and the stabbing urge, in their own restless loins.

The knife was ordered early. First requesting the presence of Menelaus and Idomeneus and Chasimenos as witnesses – with the latter having the additional responsibility of close liaison with the Singer – Agamemnon sent for the bronze smith, who entered the tent with a single guard immediately behind him. He had come from his forge and wore the leather breast-piece and long apron of his trade. He was squat of build and thick at the shoulders. His head and face were shaven and streaked with healed spark-burns.

He stopped at some distance, abruptly, not waiting for an order, obliging the guard to stumble to a halt. He bowed his head briefly but said nothing, simply stood waiting, looking steadily at the King. He carried the power and mystery of the bronze with him and all felt it. The centre of his forehead was tattooed with concentric circles of red and blue, the eye of Cyclops, emblem of his guild and cult mark of Hephaestus, the god of smiths. The smell of fire and metal hung about him, he was answerable only to the master artificer who was his god.

'His name is Palernus,' Chasimenos said. 'He is from Crete.'

Agamemnon looked closely at the man, in what seemed an attempt to beat his gaze down. When this failed, he said, more loudly than was needed, 'I want a knife specially made, made to order, a sacrificial knife.'

'I understand, yes. A special knife for a special person.'

Hearing this, Chasimenos felt a glow of satisfaction. He had primed the Singer with the promise of a warm cloak for winter, and the Singer had responded well: if the smith already knew who the knife was for, then everybody else would too. He glanced at the King's face in the hope of finding some awareness of this, or even encountering an approving glance.

But Agamemnon's attention was fixed on the smith. 'It must be like no other knife that you or any smith has ever made before,' he said. 'No expense is to be spared, only the very best quality of materials is to be used, pure and unadulterated. The copper and the tin must be smelted by you personally, and they must be virgin metals. Nothing used in the making of this knife must ever have been used to make anything before. I have plans for the design. I intend both blade and handle to have expensive and state-of-the-art decorations. Chasimenos, you will report these words of mine to the Singer. No one will say I skimped on this, no one will say I failed in munificence, in honouring my house and my name.'

'A special knife for a special person,' the smith repeated, in exactly the tone he had used before. 'That is what Agamemnon desires and that is what I will fashion for him. But only a god can fashion a knife that is unlike any other knife. This one is for a sacrifice, as I understand the matter?'