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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