Free A Darker God by Barbara Cleverly

of its power to bewitch after three thousand years. Antique it might be, but this tale of hatred, betrayal, and revenge had been played out down the ages. The truth of it was undeniable and every succeeding war had thrown up its own similar horrors. Letty wondered if Agamemnon’s dying screams could have been much different from those of Sergeant Wilcox, who’d lived in her village near Cambridge. The local carpenter, Fred Wilcox, had come swinging home, unscathed, from the war ten years ago in the confident expectation of resuming his domestic situation. He’d been found, hours later, not in his hip bath still brimming with scummy water, coal-tar soap suds, and drowned fleas in front of the fire in the back kitchen, but in his garden workshop, hacked to pieces with his own adze. Mrs. Sergeant Wilcox, expressionless and silent, had held up bloodstained hands for the manacles. Letty smiled sadly at the memory of her father’s reaction. Lord of the Manor, Magistrate, and senior officer of the village, Sir Richard Talbot had stormed about ineffectually in much the same way as the leader of the chorus here onstage was now storming. Sir Richard chided himself likewise: surely he ought to have foreseen the tragedy … everyone in the village knew about Mrs. Wilcox’s fancy man, after all … But where did one’s loyalties lie? One ought not to forget that Wilcox was a notorious wife-beater …
    The two women fidgeted slightly on their marble seats and drew in breaths of thyme-scented air, cool off the hill. And immediately they stiffened with tension again. More faintly now, but carried towards them by the efficiency of the ancient acoustics, which, miraculously, were still capable of transmitting the merest murmur to the audience, Agamemnon—still clinging to life, apparently—gathered his pitiful strength to deliver one last exclamation.
    From the thicket of olive trees to the left of the stage theLittle Owl of Athens heard him. She called out a mocking comment, and was joined by her mate on the right, hooting his derision.
    “The work is done!” proclaimed the grey-clad leader of the chorus with a detumescent gasp.

Chapter 6
    D id you hear that, Maud? That wasn’t in the script, surely!” said Laetitia, running a finger down the page of the book she held open on her lap. “Drat! I can’t make it out. What did Agamemnon say? He sounded a bit surprised …”
    Maud Merriman took her time replying. The older woman seemed puzzled; her interest in the play suddenly sharpened. Her response, when it came, was slow and considered: “As you rightly observe, Letty, that was not in the script. I didn’t quite catch it either, I’m afraid. Greek? English? Not sure. A rasping squawk, I’d say.”
    “Those wretched birds! Did someone cast them as an extra chorus, I wonder? Were they birds, indeed? Eerily, they seemed to be repeating whatever it was Agamemnon was saying! Don’t you think?
To-whit-to-whoo?”
said Letty.
“Or—coo-coo-vay?”
    “Well, whichever language he was using, I hardly think a bird call makes a dignified exit line! But that’s Geoffrey for you! A law unto himself, that young man! He may be a highly competent actor but he’s not someone you’d pick for your cricket team—I’ve heard the view expressed.” Maud sniffed her disapproval.
    “I expect the poor chap stubbed his toe as he was dashinground the bath, changing costume. ‘Ooh! Ooh!’ You know … something like that … Anyway, all will be revealed in a second … Here we go … the coup de théâtre. This is the bit I’ve been waiting for. I’m longing to see my corpse appear!”
    Maud smiled a slow indulgent smile and murmured, “Of course, my dear. We are all anticipation.”
    The chorus of old men whirled about the stage in a dance of despair, fluttering their robes, full of foreboding, shouting contradictory orders and advice to each other. Then, in a choreographed movement, they lit torches and dashed here and there like