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First Iphigeneia, then Sisipyla hung up the offerings by their rope loops. Then Iphigeneia raised her arms and cried out the invocation to the goddess, praying for favour, vowing the next day's sacrifice of a goat in her honour. And it seemed to Sisipyla, standing as usual a little to the left and two paces behind, that there came an answer to this high, clear voice, a stirring in the foliage of the planes, among the leaves that had always seemed to her like the fingers of a hand held out in warning.
The sun was hot when they emerged and she felt the usual relief at being out in the open. Released by the performance of her duty, which she took with utmost seriousness, Iphigeneia smiled for the first time since they had left the others below. 'We could bathe,' she said, and Sisipyla inclined her head in a gesture that was both agreement and submission. The bathing was an established practice between them in the summer months, begun years before when they were hardly more than children; but the suggestion had always to come from Iphigeneia, had always to seem a motion of her will for the one occasion only.
On the side nearer to them the eddies of the water had made a shore of smooth pebble. Here, as always, they laid their ceremonial dresses, garments the same in every respect, identical in size, woven in the same undyed linen. This day of the effigies was the only time they dressed in the same way. Below the dresses they wore nothing but underskirts of the same material, quickly stepped out of.
Naked they walked together into the water and flickering shoals of the mi
Afterwards they lay for a short while on the warm pebbles, waiting for the sun to dry them. Sisipyla felt the heat gather and dwell on her eyelids and breasts and abdomen. She thought in a drowsy way of her next day's duties, the preparations for the sacrifice. She would be bearing the basket and the knife. She would have to make sure the musicians were assembled beforehand, that the goat was properly decked out...
Her eyes were still closed, but she heard Iphigeneia shift on the pebbles nearby and then get to her feet. She waited a moment or two longer, allowing time for her mistress to take the first steps. Then she rose and followed. They dressed quickly, not speaking. But when they were ready, when Sisipyla had brushed out the princess's damp hair and clasped it at the nape with an ivory comb, when she had restored some sort of order to her own hair, they still lingered a while longer at the edge of the pool; and once again Sisipyla's mind became crowded with the signs of the goddess's presence, signs hidden and revealed, in the water when it was still and when it was flowing, in the loitering flight of dragonflies over the surface. Her eyes felt pressed upon, besieged by detail. It was like trying to see the pattern in the wall hangings and the woven rugs that covered the floors of the royal rooms in the palace, the flowers and the leaves and the birds, trying to take it all in at the same time, at one single moment...
'What a long way you can see today.' Iphigeneia's voice came from above. U
'That's the river Cephinthos we are looking at,' Iphigeneia said. 'It flows into the Gulf of Argos. I've told you that before, haven't I? Do you remember?'
'Yes.'
Iphigeneia shook her head. 'You never remember the things I tell you. It goes in at one ear and out at the other. You should repeat things to yourself, over and over until you have got them fixed in your mind, that's what I do.'
'You said it is where the sea begins.'
'Good, so you do remember. It flows into the sea just below Tiryns. If you set out from there in a ship you would get to Asia.' Her face wore its teacher's look. From their childhood days she had enjoyed instructing her slave-companion, passing on stories, snippets of information, sometimes in garbled form, things she had had from her own teachers. It was she who had taught Sisipyla her first songs, her first words of Greek. 'It is good that you remembered,' she said gravely.
Sisipyla felt happy to be commended, but she knew that the sea did not begin at any one definite place, though it might seem so to Iphigeneia because she had never seen the sea. But Sisipyla had seen it – she had been brought with her mother and a shipload of other slaves from Miletus to the port of Tiryns, which she knew that her mistress had not seen either. She remembered the exposure, the terrible ope
The memory had remained vivid, kept fresh by the misery of her condition then, and the fear on the face of her mother. It was not possible to speak of it to Iphigeneia, to seem to know more than her mistress about the sea or anything else; but she had guarded it as something of her own. That fear, that lack of shelter, was a kind of possession, and she had very few. Not that much guarding had been needed: Iphigeneia had never shown any curiosity about her previous life. A barbarian child, chosen for her prettiness; she had been a gift for the princess's sixth birthday. A gift has no history, its life begins with the first glance, the first touch of the one to whom it is given.
This talk of the sea, in conjunction with the immense sweep of land that stretched before them, brought back, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, the lonely anguish of those days. She wanted to retreat from this great gulf of space, to go back to the play of water and light, the loitering dragonflies, the shape of pebbles, the shelter of detail. But she could not move until Iphigeneia moved. 'It's like the sea,' she said, gesturing before her, the words coming almost before she was aware of uttering them. 'You could fall into it and drown.'
'Like the sea? What in the world do you mean by that? You say the strangest things, Sisipyla. It doesn't look in the least like the sea, there is nothing watery about it. People are living and working down there, they have huts, they have families. I mean, it's not even the right colour, is it? You really should try to be more focussed.'