The air atop the citadel of Mycenae was thick with the scent of wild thyme and the heavy, humid anticipation of a storm that had been ten years in the making. For a decade, a lone watchman had sat upon the roof of the palace, his eyes fixed toward the east, toward the distant shores of Troy. He was a man grown old in his vigil, tasked by Queen Clytemnestra to look for a single spark in the darkness—a signal fire that would announce the fall of Ilium and the return of the King. On this particular night, the spark finally caught. A beacon flared on the horizon, leaping from peak to peak across the Aegean Sea, a chain of fire that carried the news of victory and the impending return of Agamemnon, son of Atreus.
Down in the palace, Clytemnestra received the news with a face of stone. To the citizens of Mycenae, she played the part of the devoted, long-suffering wife, but behind her eyes burned a fire far hotter than any beacon. Her heart had hardened years ago, on the day the Greek fleet stood becalmed at Aulis. To appease the goddess Artemis and gain a favorable wind for the war, Agamemnon had lured their eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to the docks under the pretense of a marriage to Achilles. Instead of a wedding, there was a slaughter; Agamemnon had sacrificed his own flesh and blood for the sake of his ambition and the honor of his brother Menelaus. Clytemnestra had never forgotten, and she had never forgiven. While her husband spent ten years seeking glory in the dust of Troy, she had spent ten years sharpening her hatred and finding an ally in Aegisthus, the cousin of Agamemnon, who held his own ancestral grudge against the House of Atreus.
As the morning sun struck the Lion Gate, the dust of a returning army rose from the Argive plain. Agamemnon arrived in a magnificent chariot, the image of a god-king, draped in the spoils of the East. Beside him sat a captive woman, the Trojan princess Cassandra, a priestess of Apollo whom the King had taken as his concubine. The people cheered, but a sense of unease permeated the air. Cassandra, cursed with the gift of true prophecy that no one would ever believe, stared at the palace walls with horror. She did not see the limestone blocks; she saw walls dripping with the blood of children, the ghosts of the past, and the impending doom of the master of the house.
Clytemnestra emerged from the palace doors, her voice honeyed and her gestures grand. She commanded her handmaidens to lay out a path of purple tapestries, deep crimson fabrics that were reserved for the feet of gods. She invited Agamemnon to walk upon them, an act of supreme hubris that would surely tempt the envy of the gods. Agamemnon hesitated, his soldier’s instinct warning him against such pride, yet Clytemnestra’s subtle taunts regarding his bravery and his status eventually broke his resolve. He removed his sandals and stepped onto the blood-red cloth, walking into the palace as a man walking into his own grave. Cassandra remained in the chariot, her voice finally breaking into a series of shrill, rhythmic cries, foretelling the 'net of death' and the two-edged sword, but the elders of Mycenae dismissed her as a madwoman traumatized by the fall of her city.
Inside the palace, the atmosphere was stifling. Agamemnon sought the comfort of a hot bath to wash away the grime of ten years of war. As he stepped into the water, relaxed and vulnerable, Clytemnestra approached him. She did not come with a towel, but with a great, heavy garment—a net-like robe with no opening for the head or arms. With the strength of a woman possessed by a decade of fury, she cast the fabric over him, entangling him like a fish in a dragnet. Agamemnon struggled, but the heavy, wet cloth pinned his limbs to his sides. It was then that Clytemnestra drew a heavy, two-bitted bronze axe. Aegisthus stood nearby, though the historical accounts differ on whether he struck a blow; in the eyes of the poets, the hand that ended the King was Clytemnestra’s own.