In the spring, Chrysothemis begs Iphigenia to braid wildflowers into her hair. They gather a basket of anemones, white and gold and blood-red, from the meadow west of the palace. The greatest prize, though, is the blue bellflower that sprouts in clumps along the faces of Mycenae’s cliffs, like a boy’s first patchy beard. Iphigenia scales the wall of the citadel while Chrysothemis waits below, fretting over the height and the slick stones; but Iphigenia is sure-footed as a mountain goat, and knows that Artemis Acraea will not let her fall. She returns to her sister with a triumphant grin and a fistful of blue flowers.
They sit beside the window as Iphigenia works Chrysothemis’ hair. Her sister’s curls are chestnut brown, lighter than Iphigenia’s own, like those of their uncle Menelaus. She weaves in the flowers as she goes—garnets and sapphires to set in the crown of braids. Electra, four years old this past winter, hasn’t the patience for Iphigenia’s ministrations. She plucks the petals from her anemones, and soon she’s tugged her nurse away to the courtyard to watch the guards in their shining armor pass by.
“On the day I am married,” says Chrysothemis wistfully, “I’ll wear roses in my hair, and violets. Will you weave them in for me then?”
“Of course I will,” Iphigenia tells her. “Roses and violets, and lilies for Hera, and carnations like we wear to the Thesmophoria.”
Chrysothemis hums, leans against Iphigenia’s side. “You will be there, won't you? For my wedding day?” The question is tiny and plaintive. Chrysothemis is the gentlest of Agamemnon’s daughters, keen to be liked and afraid to be left behind.
“Of course,” Iphigenia says again, seriously, because her sisters are prone to fits of temper if they feel they’re being patronized.
“You won’t love Thrasymedes’ sisters better than me?”
“Thrasymedes,” Chrysothemis wails, looking up with wet eyes. “He’s to marry soon—Nestor sent a messenger. I heard Father speaking of it to Mother this morning. I don’t want him to take you away to Pylos, Iphigenia.”
They say Pylos is a place of sandy shore and western wind, a city perched upon the sea. Nestor of Gerenia rules there, surrounded by a sizable brood, among whom Thrasymedes is the eldest son. Are there forests in Pylos? Iphigenia wonders, gazing out at the groves of pine, cypress, and yew that spring from Mycenae’s rugged hills. Or is it all sea and sky? Would she spend all her days at her window, a caged gull watching over the harbor?
“Don’t cry,” Iphigenia says. “I won’t marry Thrasymedes.”
Chrysothemis sniffs, blinking away the threatening tears, grasping again for the veil of composure she’s lately learning to wear. “Maybe not Thrasymedes, but you must marry somebody. And then you’ll leave me, just as Mother did our aunt Helen.”
She speaks true, of course. Little Orestes has hardly begun walking, but someday he will sit on the throne of Mycenae; his sisters, in turn, will sail to allied lands and wed their kings. Iphigenia is just shy of fifteen. Fifteen, the age that Helen was when princes from every corner of Achaea came to fight for her hand. Old enough to be a bride, certainly.
She knows the old noblemen of the city mutter their disapproval when her father is out of earshot: of her flyaway hair and rumpled skirts, her tendency to steal away to the woods, the willfulness for which her Lacedaemonian mother must be blamed. (This last, most of all, leaves her burning with indignation.) King Agamemnon has indulged her far too long, they say, but he will see sense. If not queen of Pylos, she’ll be queen of Crete or Salamis or Thebes, the nuts and amaranth flowers she lays at the altar of Artemis replaced with honey cakes for cow-eyed Hera.
Will the queen of beasts still speak to her after she crosses the threshold of her husband’s house?
“I won’t,” she says to Chrysothemis. “My bridegroom will be a bear, you see.”
A little laugh slips from Chrysothemis’ throat—slightly wet still, but a laugh nonetheless. Iphigenia continues. “A great king of the wood and mountain, crowned with laurels, who wanders the forest carrying me on his back. We’ll feast on hare and pheasant and berries, and every summer, I’ll bring you baskets of fresh figs.”
She lets herself believe it for a moment, that she could be a woman with windswept hair and skirts hitched to her knees, darting among the trees like the nymphs loved by far-shooting Artemis; that like Persephone, she could return at the dawn of each spring to hold her mother in her arms; that her father, who looks so fondly on his wild-eyed firstborn, might let her remain a part of his house until the day she dies. It is a lovely dream.
“Not figs,” says Chrysothemis, finally. Her head drops against Iphigenia’s shoulder, and one of the flowers in her hair smears a saffron streak of pollen across Iphigenia’s cheek. “You must bring me bellflowers. No one gathers them as well as you.”
