`Then I was rescued and auctioned to Menelaus, another old man. I will never be alone and no man will ever love me and I will never be able to lie with the one I want, never, never, never. I am cursed. I wish that I was dead. They guard me as though I was a treasure, only to use me themselves, to own me.'
`Lady, they can own your body, but they cannot own your mind,' I observed.
She looked at me properly for the first time and took a breath, although tears flowed down her cheeks.
`That is true,' she said quietly. `Diomenes God-Touched. When did you meet a god?'
`When I was six, in the temple.'
`I wish the god had never lain with my mother, or that she had been barren,' she said. Her voice was clear and delicate in tone, like a moth's wing striking a thin glass vessel.
I said calmly, `There are no gods but Death.'
`Mad, you're mad. How can there be no gods?'
`Death is a god, I have seen him. He kissed me, here on my forehead.' She traced the scar of Thanatos' lips under my hair.
`But he is the only god, Lady. I come from the Temple of Asclepius and I know.'
Elene stared at me, straight into my eyes. I gazed back. Her eyes were brown flecked with spots of gold, deep enough to drown in. `And my mother?'
`Lay with someone, Lady, but it was a man she lay with.'
`And I?'
`You are beautiful beyond all reckoning and men desire to own you, as though beauty can be owned.'
`They will own me. They have possession of me. I cannot run away. If I did, the next man who saw me would claim me. I will always be owned by someone.'
`They can own your body, Lady, but so can sickness, so can sleep, so can pregnancy. Your body is not important. Only you can know what you are thinking. Inside your head you are always alone. If you do not speak you cannot be condemned. We god-touched keep our own council, Lady.'
`I hate them,' she said, not passionately but coldly. `Their greasy bodies and their dirty hands. I will never be theirs, never.'
`You need not be theirs,' I said. Thus I might have spoken to a bird in a cage, and it was false, all false, the counsel of a child or a slave, but I had to say something, I had to comfort her. If it had pleased her she might have spilled my blood to bathe in or stripped my skin for a garment. I loved her so much that I would have instantly died for her. Greatly daring, I leaned forward and just touched her lips with mine.
She took my hand and looked at it. It was clean with short nails. She laid it upon her breast. Instinctively, my fingers cupped the curve and pinched the nipple. Her eyes flicked over me, assessing something.
Elene knotted her hand in my hair and dragged my mouth down to hers. Her kiss tasted of salt, then of herself. She pulled my robe off and her hands found my phallus that rose to meet her. Then for the first time I lay down in a woman's arms, her body slick with sweat and tears still falling from her almond eyes, and I was inside her. I almost swooned with pleasure. She sucked at my mouth as though to extract my soul.
It was too sudden and sweet to last long. My seed sprang in her womb, but she would not let me go. She locked her flanks around me and held me fast, whispering, `I will give myself away, Diomenes, once in my life, to one who wants me, one who has not bought me. One man shall say of Elene that she was kind, she was generous, she loved me. Do you love me?' she asked and I said, `I love you,' into her throat, and kissed the breasts which pressed against me. Then we began to move again, dizzy with desire, the flowery musky scent rising from her body, until I cried aloud with a pleasure that was close to pain, and heard her stifle another such cry in my hair.
I knew I must not fall asleep and I rose from her arms with immeasurable reluctance. It occurred to me that I had done enough to be cut to pieces just by kissing her mouth. Menelaus would kill both of us if he saw us lying in each other's arms, my cheek against Elene's breast.
So I kissed her again and rose, sluiced my body down with boiled water and put back my healer's tunic, and covered the maiden with her robe. She was so still that I thought she might have fainted, but her heart beat under my hand which cupped her breast.
`Diomenes,' she murmured. `Do you love me?'
`I love you,' I said gently, `Elene of Sparta, wife of Menelaus.'
She sat up at that, a hand raised to slap. I sat still and she did not hit me. Nor did she cry again. Her face set and she took several deep breaths. No one ever said that Elene lacked courage.
I went to the door, and took in the wine, the poppy, and the broth.
`If you eat this, most lovely of all women, I will tell you a secret,' I said, and placed the bowl on her lap and the spoon in her hand. `It is a secret which will relieve you of all the attentions of old men,' I added. She ate the soup, slowly at first and then quickly as her body told her that it was hungry. `It is true that you may not bestow yourself as you wish, Lady, except this once and with someone whose life you now hold in your hands. But in this flask is syrup of the red poppy which brings sleep. When you run out, every healer in the country can make it. In this bottle is enough to send four strong men to sleep for the whole night. It is three days journey to Mycenae, Lady. The syrup cannot be detected in honeyed wine.'
She made a grab for the flask, but I swung it out of reach. I had something else to say.
`I will never forget you, Lady. You are the first woman to lie with me. I love you. But you must send him to sleep, Elene, not kill him; and you must eat and sleep and live or I cannot bear my life, Princess of Sparta. Your word, Lady.'
She was so beautiful that my eyes were greedy for her. Every curve, every bone, was perfect in its place. She was not like the maiden Galatea whom the sculptor made, because no stone could ever convey the smoothness of her skin, the delicate flush of rose upon her cheek, the scented hollow of her throat, the tracery of blue veins along the inside of her wrist.
She crossed both hands on her heart and said, `I swear, Diomenes, Asclepid, I swear that I will not kill, and I swear that I will live. Tell me you love me.'
`I love you.' I said, and she let me rise.
At the door, she caught me in a close embrace, and kissed my mouth until I was nearly overcome, then she pushed me roughly away. I staggered as I left the room and the old woman laughed.
`Did she slap you? I heard no screams.'
`No, just pushed me. She has eaten the broth and I have left her some syrup.'
`What was her ailment?'
`Fatigue and fever,' I said at a venture.
I walked the cold corridor behind a house slave until I came to the room. Neither Arion nor my master was there, for which I was very thankful. I could hear shouts and breaking pots from the great hall, and Arion's voice bawling a tavern song about a woman who could take nine lovers a night. I pulled off my robe and fell into the embrace of my cloak, exalted with the knowledge of the flesh and cold with knowing that I would never lie with Elene again.
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Apollo lounged against the balustrade of the Pool of Mortal Loves, a smug smile turning up the corners of his perfect mouth.
`By your own works are you bested, Aphrodite the Stranger,' his voice flowed like honey. `I have given your darling, your most beautiful mortal Elene, to my Diomenes. He will never love another.'
Aphrodite bit her lip, drawing a strand of her golden hair over her marble-smooth shoulder.
`You have wrought well,' commented Zeus hungrily. `Never have I seen such perfection in mortal form. She is as beautiful as a goddess - more beautiful than some,' he added under his breath. Hera shot him a ferocious look and he hurried on, `Is the wager won, then? Your princess of Troy can never equal Elene. And the Sun God has caught his mortal very young - such things remain for the rest of a mortal life, which is not long. I think you've lost, Lady.'
Aphrodite clutched the golden apple to her rounded breast.
`Cassandra has yet to meet a lover. Men are fickle, Lord and Father. Women, you will find, are not. She must not fall in love - not yet. Not until she meets Diomenes.'
`She will fall in love,' said Apollo, his voice smooth as oil. `And with no fickle mortal, Lady Aphrodite. Sicken her for human love as you will. Divine love does not fail. Your princess will love me - my maiden, my favoured one. And beside my love, the love of a god, no mortal can compare.'
`We shall see,' snorted the goddess of love.
We had always known about the future, Eleni and I.
When we were children it was small things - pictures. Sometimes flat and static like the frescos, sometimes moving, as though we were watching through a window. One time we saw a strange grey animal twice the size of a horse, barrel bellied and comic, rolling into the water with a great splash, and it was not until I heard Aegyptus the sea captain describe a creature he called a `river horse' that I knew that it was a living animal and not a dream. Occasionally we caught sight of people we knew. We once saw Myrine the Amazon with her sisters sitting around a fire in a wood and eating roasted venison, and told Nyssa before Myrine came back to Troy, that she had a new deerhide jerkin embroidered with black and white things which turned out to be porcupine quills. We saw, and heard, Aegyptus suggesting to his crew in the strongest terms that if they did not get up off their overfed Trojan arses and wear ship they would never get home to the exceptionally unchaste wives who awaited them in several ports. Once we had a vision, brief but alarming, of Hector in bronze armour casting a spear which went through a warrior in strange garments and pinned him to the ground.
We went, every evening, to dine with our parents. Nyssa dressed us in clean garments and brushed our hair, over our serious objections. Often we were asked what we had seen, and until we learned about tact we had often revealed things which the city would rather had stayed hidden. We had seen one of the ships dumping fish guts into the Scamander, for instance, an act forbidden by Priam.
We had seen our brother Pariki slap a maiden who did not fancy him, and had described in minute detail his assault on her and how she had broken a terracotta pot over his head and sent him reeling into the street. We wondered while we were telling this why the whole palace was laughing. Mostly our glimpses into the future were minor, and sometimes we had difficulty separating present from past. We had revealed with excitement that the fleet had found a whale stranded on the beach, which had happened before we were born.
At another time, however, we had seen a herd of horses being brought in, among them a pure white mare, which, we said, would be the mother of chariot horses. This mare came in the next season and Hector claimed her. She foaled his two chariot horses, so closely matched that no one could tell them apart.
Occasionally, the dreadful dream would come back and we would wake, crying and appalled. Beast men in bronze sacked and destroyed, raped and murdered, and the steep streets of Ilium ran red. We saw the Scamander choked with floating bodies. This dream we told, but to Hector only. The palace was too full of people for us to reveal anything which might cause panic. Hector listened, grew grave, and made us promise not to tell anyone. We didn't. We preferred not to think about it.
We did not want to remember that, as far as we knew, we had never been wrong.
Every evening, one of the sons of Priam would call for us and we would walk decorously up to the palace and take our seats on benches near the royal thrones.
If it was Hector we could usually persuade him to carry us.
All the children born from the dedications to the Lord Dionysius were sons and daughters of Priam the King. Any maiden who bore her first child from her sacrifice to Gaia had to give it to the king. This discouraged anyone tempting the gods by arranging that a future husband would present himself in the Place of Maidens. The children were given to such as Nyssa to be raised, and they had the same rank as Hector or Pariki. Children like Andromache, who came to be married, also lived in or by the means of the palace, and held the honorary rank of children of Priam. My Lord King Priam had five children by my mother Hecube, the Queen, three by other wives and some fifty sons and thirty daughters who issued from the loins of the god.
`Twins,' said Priam consideringly. We looked up. He was terribly old, that Priamos who had been ransomed by a princess. His beard was white and hung down his chest and his hair was like snow. His eyes had been blue but now had faded. He put out his hand and we kissed it.
`You have the gift, God-Touched,' said our father the king. `Pariki your brother is leaving Troy to go to Sparta. Do you see anything of his voyage?'
`We saw it before,' I said eagerly. `A beautiful woman kissed him on the mouth.'
`A beautiful woman?' asked the queen. `That is not unusual.' Pariki grinned and there was a general laugh.
`A goddess,' said Eleni.
The hall groaned. In some sense, we could hear what they were thinking. It was like Pariki, they thought, to go to Sparta and be kissed by a goddess while the rest of the sailors got dysentery drinking dockside wine.
I looked at the queen my mother. She wore a chiton of pale blue, the rarest and most difficult colour, and her wrists were knobbed with age and heavy with golden bracelets, her fingers weighed down with rings. She took my hand and said, `You are still with the Maiden, Cassandra?' I nodded. `And Tithone tells me that you will be a good healer. You have found your skill. There are strangers coming next week. Would you and Andromache like to leave the Maiden and join the Mother then?'
`My Lady, I ...' I glanced desperately at Eleni. `I do not wish to marry yet, not until I am a healer.'
`Do you wish to join the Temple of the Maiden?' she asked, meaning to ask if I was a lover of women. I did not know what to answer.
`Lady, I cannot decide.' I faltered, trying to hear what Eleni was saying to our father the king.
`Then I will decide. In eight days, Cassandra, daughter of Priam, you will sit in the Place of the Maidens. Then you will live here in the palace. You twin will live here too,' she added, noticing the desperate clutch of Eleni's fingers on mine, behind our backs.