Cassandra (17 page)

`No,' I said as boldly as I could. `I will spend the rest of my life alone - as alone as I am now. I had better get used to it.'

Perseis patted me and led me back to my room.

`Now, there are few rules, mainly because if there are rules I must ensure that they are kept and I haven't time,' she smiled. `We must live in harmony. If there is disharmony the gods are displeased. We must be clean and behave as befits the Maidens. If you lie with a lover, you must tell me where you are going and when you are coming back - and you must not be away more than a day and a night.

`If Tithone needs you, she will tell me also. Raiders come into the bay of Troy sometimes and they carry off Trojan women because they are valuable. We have never forgotten the loss of Hesione. You must not go down to the docks alone if there are foreign ships down there. Until your royal father makes arrangements for you to marry you are a free woman, Cassandra. Tithone the healer is our healer also, and can be called if you are ill. And if you are pregnant I must know; offerings have to be made.'

I shuddered at the idea of having a lover. I had not enjoyed the man with the blue bead. The only lover I really wanted was my brother, and that could not be. Perseis noticed my reaction. `You may have cause to change your opinion,' she said, with a reminiscent smile. `Now, why don't you get comfortable and come down for some food when the watch changes,' and she left me to the small room and the silence.

It was a good distance to the sea but I could hear it, as you can always hear the sea in windy Ilium. I listened for the voice of either the god or my brother, but no one wanted to speak to Cassandra today.

There was a chest in my room, and I unpacked my belongings. A long chiton of my favourite colour, a soft dark mossy green. Two working tunics for healing, dyed a rather stipply grey with a soot-based dye which I had not dissolved carefully enough. One splendidly-red tunic for the festival of Dionysius and the golden wreath that went with it, Nyssa's parting present.

It occurred to me that I could attend the Dionysiad this year, now that I had gone to the Mother. Those under the protection of the Maiden were always kept indoors during the three days of the festival, and the rampaging crowd outside our door had always intrigued Eleni and me.

But that would mean taking a lover and I didn't want to. I folded the red tunic and laid it at the bottom of the chest. I put the other clothes away, noticing that I had taken Eleni's sheep's wool cloak instead of mine. I buried my face in the folds, smelling his scent, which I knew as well as my own, and wept for a while. This was useless. After a while I laid the cloak on my bed and sat down to examine my chattels, trying distract myself from the thought of my lost twin, my own sweet Eleni.

What did I own? I laid them in the chest one by one. Three interesting stones with garnets in them. A small ivory creature called an `elephant' which Aegyptus shipmaster had swapped for an ointment for piles. A carved wooden Pallathis, the guardian of the city, who is a lady holding an apple in her hands. Some people say that it is not an ordinary apple, but the fruit of the end of the world, golden and dangerous.

At the beginning of the city, when Dardanus followed his straying cow to the hill of Até, a prophecy said that if the image was kept safe then the city would never fall. Worried about there being only one, easy to find and to steal, Dardanus ordered a thousand copies made. Every child in the city owns a Pallathis. The temple of the lady is crammed with them, all sizes and made of all sorts of different material, wood and stone and metal. One of them is the original, but no one except the priestess knows which one. Mine was the span of my hand and painted in bright colours.

Then there was my soft purple-dyed leather bag of medicines, including the sharp stone knife I carried to lance boils and clean up broken flesh. All healers carry a stone knife, as it can be cleaned by thrusting it into the fire. When it breaks we just chip another one. I had also several bandages of old clean linen, salt impregnated, for wounds, pots of ointment for burns and bruises, a bundle of soapleaf for cleansing and I found a forgotten bunch of the flower we call driftweed, which has short squashy stems and is used for scalds and blisters. They had rotted and I dropped the bunch out of the window into the flowerbed, shaking out the bag and repacking my tools.

I had a mixture of soapleaf and oatmeal in a twist of linen for washing myself, a pot of kohl for my eyes, some salve for reddened skin, a small knife for my nails, a silver mirror and a comb made of cypress wood. I found a tiny phial of the finest Egyptian stone called `glass' in the bundle. It contained oil scented with spikenard, a rich exotic smell.

Eleni and I had been given it for prophesying the safe return of a sailor from a long voyage. He was ten months overdue but we had insisted to his distracted wife that he was safe. We could see him, we told her, building a fire on a sandy beach and roasting a goat. He had lost the first two fingers on his left hand in the shipwreck. It was only a little picture and we could not guess where he was. We had not told his wife that he seemed to have some female company, as Nyssa had spanked us for saying something similar the week before. I smiled as I remembered her hard hand impacting on our wriggling backsides as she said, `Prophets should see all, and say very little.' However it was with the nymph, the sailor had finally come home. He and his wife had given us the perfume, the man possibly motivated more by our tact rather than our prophetic gifts.

Nyssa had kept it, saying that it was too precious for us to spill in some game. Now it was mine.

I must have fallen asleep then, because the next thing I remember was the dream Cassandra going to the window and looking out. She cried aloud at what she saw.

The whole sea was black with ships, hundreds of ships. They brought doom and death and I screamed myself awake with the smell of smoke and burning flesh reeking in my nostrils.

Cycne was the first to reach me. She asked breathlessly, `What does the god say?' and I mumbled something, then said, `Nothing, nothing. The god says nothing. I just had a bad dream.'

`You must go to the temple tomorrow,' she said calmly. `There the priest of Apollo will welcome you, Princess of Troy, and he will also explain your dream. Perseis told me she forgot to mention it. You can talk to Apollo now, since you joined the Mother.

`It's funny, Cassandra, back in Achaea you would have to be a maiden to be a prophet of Apollo. All of the pythonesses are maidens. Here you can't be a priest of Apollo unless you have abandoned maidenhood.'

`Yes, someone was telling me that you Achaeans worship virginity.' I levered myself upright and groaned. She took my hand and said kindly, `Come along and bathe. It's hot. Don't call me an Achaean! I'm a Trojan. I was sold as a slave, except that here there are no slaves. A prince of Troy bought me and I thought that he was going to rape me, it was his right as my purchaser, and my master had kept me fettered so that no one should damage me, not even him. I was so sick after that voyage, it took a moon to get here - and I was only twelve and just a woman and he thought he could get a good price for me.'

`Slavery?' I was still muzzy with the black aftertaste of horror in my mouth. Nyssa had often mentioned slaves but I had assumed that it was a way of keeping us under some control. Now it seemed that the institution was not mythical, after all. `The Achaens have slaves? What's a slave?'

`A slave is a human owned by another human. A slave can be raped or killed or tortured and cannot complain, and if they run away they can be burned alive.'

`That's too horrible to be true,' I declared, stripping off my tunic and sliding into the clear green water.

Cycne took off her tunic and joined me in the bath. Wordlessly, she exhibited her scarred wrists, where she had been chained for a moon, and the marks around her knees where her master had tied them together so that she should keep her virgin price. I ran a finger along the nearest wrist. It was an old scar and well healed, but I thought of the cruel friction which could so mark her delicate skin and felt sick.

`What happened then?' I asked, not knowing if I could cope with the answer. `Did he rape you?'

`No,' said Andromache scornfully from the edge. `It was Hector, peerless among Trojans. Of course he didn't rape her. If the poor girl hadn't been captured by barbarians she would never have feared it. He sent her here until she should find a trade. She is going to be an excellent potter and when she went to the Mother she had no veil anyway.'

`Most of us don't,' said Perseis. `Aren't you going to bathe, Andromache? No? Then show me what is wrong with your leg.

No, that leg, the one you are limping on.' She nudged Andromache into a sitting position and seized her foot, returning to her previous topic. `Only the daughters of Priam and Hecube seem to have a complete veil, which makes the initiation painful, poor girls. And, of course, our Amazon here, who has collided with... a stone. Hmm. Now why weren't you telling me about it, eh? Could it be the competition tomorrow? Yes. Well. If you want to compete, maiden, you will have to avoid the running races.'

`Spear and bow,' pleaded Andromache. `I don't have to run for them. Please, Perseis.'

`If you are well enough,' said the older woman. `And if you can stand without trouble. But not to bathe, though. And next time, Andromache, you will tell me about your injuries and not leave me to strain my wits on discovering them for myself.'

`Cassandra had a bad dream,' said Cycne, demonstrating that lack of reticence for which barbarians are famous. I kicked her under water but she evaded me. Perseis blinked.

`Did you tell her to go to the god tomorrow?' Cycne nodded. `Well, he will know what to do. She is his, after all.

`Now, maidens, be good. I have a headache and I am worried about Oenone's child.'

`The child is coming?' I asked eagerly. `Can I attend her?'

`If you will and Tithone allows. She may well die in the birthing. Such can be expected from such misery,' and Perseis clucked away. I seized on Cycne.

`What is this misery?' I demanded. `Tell me, Cycne. And I won't drown you for telling Perseis about my dream.'

`Didn't you want me to tell? It is no use trying to hide anything form Perseis - you'll discover that, Cassandra. All right,' she said hastily as I dived for her feet. `Listen. You know that your brother Alexandratos is called "Pariki"?'

`Yes. It means `purse' and it refers to that scrip he always wears at his belt, like a shepherd.'

`Cassandra, he
was
a shepherd. When he was born there was a prophecy that he was to be the destruction of Troy. The Mother's priestess ordered him killed, smothered as he was born, as the healers sometimes do to children too deformed to live, sending the soul back on the birth journey to try again. But your lord father would not have it so, and gave the child to a shepherd. He lived on the slopes of Mount Idus for years and years, until he came here to compete in the games and the king recognised him.'

This sounded familiar. In fact, I think that Nyssa had told us about it when it happened, but we had taken such an instant dislike to Pariki and he to us that I had forgotten it, almost on purpose. The beautiful Alexandratos; so he had been a shepherd, that lofty one who was so proud and arrogant. I giggled at the thought.

`But he had taken a wife, this Oenone, poor thing,' Cycne continued, `and he treated her very badly. He beat her. He scorned her for being of lowly birth, though she is the daughter of the Scamander. They say her mother conceived of the river god by eating an almond.'

I was about to mention that this method of conception sounded very unlikely, even for a river god, when Oenone was carried in and I held my tongue.

She was stripped and lowered into the water by three Amazons, who scowled and bade us make ourselves useful supporting her.

`Where did you find her?' asked Perseis. `Cassandra, attend to our sister. Eirene, run to Tithone and tell her that the daughter of the river is giving birth. Tell her to hurry. Cycne, take her legs and we can hold her up. Good.'

`We found her on the field,' said Myrine's lover Eris, a short-tempered woman with a very fast slap, that frequently knocked annoying Trojan youths off their insolent feet. Her head was shaved and her eye as black and fierce as a wolf's. She had one breast removed, wore only a loin cloth, and was as hard muscled and strong as a tried warrior.

Eris was the Amazon's best hunter, and fearless. They said that she had killed eleven men in the tribal feuds which blew up periodically between the Amazons and the herdsmen whose flocks they sensibly diminished. Certainly eleven strings of teeth hung onto her own scarred breast. She never mated with men, not even at the Dionysiad.

`Oenone said that she was returning to the river to give birth, but it is in spate, swift flowing , and we feared that even we could not hold her long enough. She came back with us only on the promise that we lie her in water, Perseis, so we have done that.

`Now, little sister,' she added to Andromache, `how is that bruise? Will you stand with us tomorrow?'

`It is nothing,' said Andromache, lifting her chin. `I will stand with you.'

Dismissing all concern for the birthing woman, Eris knelt next to our sister and laid her hard hand over the bruise. She concentrated. Over Oenone's moaning, which was increasing in volume, I heard a distant noise like a storm, a roar of voices and a clang like many bronze bells sounding together.

Just for a moment I caught a glimpse of a terrible figure, a woman in armour brandishing a spear over her head, and saw that she was standing on a pile of corpses. Blood ran from her open mouth. A bunch of severed heads was in her other hand, suspended by their hair. Thus I saw for the first time Hecate, Destroying Mother, Goddess of the Amazons and of Battles, Sacker of Cities, Butcher of Men.

I was very frightened, but the image flicked out as soon as I had focused on it. Andromache winced, bit her lip, then stood and crouched. The bruise was diminished and use had come back into the insulted tendons.