The sea hit us once more and the boat screamed. I heard the mast, under incredible strain, wail as the wood began to twist under the fist blows of the gale. We staggered across the face of an enormous wave like a drunken fly. We were lost. I began, under my breath, the prayer for the dying. All of us, including me and my beautiful Dion, were going to die when that wave toppled. It would smash us under a hammer of water as an ant is crushed under an anvil.
The wave did not fall - it stopped. Dion released me and stepped back, awestruck. Shipmaster Ethipi roared, `Row, dogs!' and the ship began to move in an eerie calm. I heard each separate splash as the oars entered the sea.
Over us towered the thunderheads, meeting the mountain of black water. The god's power had stopped time. We rowed silently through slack water and then we heard a cry.
`Wait!' wailed a voice. Hands slapped the gunwale and the lost navigator pulled himself into the boat and fell dripping and coughing on the deck.
`All of us,' I heard them begin to mutter. `She said all of us, and now we've even got Maeles back! The god is with her. The god is with the princess.'
`Row!' bellowed Ethipi. They rowed.
We beached the boat beside the ruined dock and ran inland. There is only one path up the cliffs, narrow and dangerous. I did not wish to hurry, but Dion dragged me. I wanted to look at the suspended wave. I was sure that the Lord Poseidon would not betray his bargain. We had been reprieved on my promise.
We reached the top, joining a crowd of fisherfolk and sailors who had retreated out of the endangered bay of Troy. Women, children, old and young men, they were all stunned by the violence of the weather. They were all staring out to sea.
As soon as the last foot paced the cliff top, the wave fell. It seemed to roll forward very slowly, then drop on the harbour with a noise like the gods fighting in the sky. Ships snapped. Hector's trading dock was broken like a seashell. Water flooded and clawed at the cliff as foam flew and the hungry sea sucked at the land.
Then it receded and sleet began to blow like daggers.
`Princess,' Shipmaster Ethipi knelt at my feet. I was embarrassed and tugged at him. `You saved us all,' he said. Then he announced to the crowd, `She did not just save herself. All of us, she said, all of us. We even got Maeles out of the cauldron of a sea and he should have been dead and drowned deep. She bargained for our lives with the God of the Sea, Poseidon Earth Shaker. Who can doubt his power? We all know and fear it. She is our princess. She is our lady. We are greatly favoured. Why, Apollo even gave her Dion here as a present; one of us.'
I was surrounded by people. They did not touch me, but their eyes were full of awe. I, personally, had not deserved this. I wanted to sit down and I wanted everyone to go away so I could be sick in decent privacy. I was shuddering. My drenched cloak clung to my skin.
`Cassandra is a true princess,' said an old woman. `This is a great thing and the city must know. But we must care for her now. See, she's fainting.'
I have a vague memory of being borne up in many arms. The next thing I recall is being fed salty fish soup by Dion's mother.
`Is everyone all right?' I murmured. `Someone should see to Maeles...' and then I drifted out again.
Perseis came when I did not return home in time, ready to scorch my ears off, and those of my fisherman lover. She did not say that Dion was low born and no fit lover for a princess, but she thought it. She found me in the centre of a pious group of the sea-people. It was a terrible waste of a good scolding. Perseis immediately sent for Tithone.
I had a high fever and was sick and delirious, which was fortunate, because thus it was not me who had to convince my father Priam to bring Poseidon back into Troy.
I was sick for three weeks. There are fragmented memories of Hector's body filling the doorway of the wooden shack, Státhi's lashing tail and my brother's worried face. The news of my intercession with the Blue-Haired, exiled god, had gone all over the city in two watches and Priam had no choice but to re-admit him, though I doubted that he would be pleased with me. It was announced that new priests of Poseidon would be found and the temple would be re-opened.
The new priests of Poseidon, I was told, were Maeles and Dion.
By the time I had recovered enough to walk, the dedication ceremony had taken place. Dion lived in a house which had been built near where Hector was planning his new jetty (on a greatly improved scale, of course). I had made my fisherman a powerful person. He came to his mother's house every morning and night while I was there, bringing me shells and coral and strange things found in shipwrecks, and sitting beside me for a watch at a time. He did not talk, but that did not trouble me because talking hurt my head. I lay languidly stroking the net-cuts and the rowing callouses on his broad palms. I found comfort in his regard for my irreparable grief.
All the time that I was ill, Eleni had never come to see me.
Â
`She melts in the arms of my avatar, myself in mortal form,' gloated Apollo. `She is mine.'
`But the city of Troy,' commented Poseidon, stretching out a weed-wreathed arm in blessing, `has accepted me again. I have priests and I have worship. Troy shall not fall.'Salt water dripped onto the creamy marble at his massive sandalled feet.
`You did it on purpose,' accused Apollo. `You summoned the great wave, you knew she would try to save Dion, my chosen one. You cheated!'
`It is done,' said Aphrodite venomously. `You made my daughter love you, my Lord Sun God, and on account of that love she has welcomed your rival into the city. Your favourite, Dion, is priest of Poseidon now. Possibly you should not have chosen a fisherman.'
Apollo bared white teeth in a soft red mouth. `It is she, Cassandra, your darling, that has done this. She will find out what it is to affront a god!'
`Cruel and petty - petty and cruel, these new gods,' observed Demeter the Great Mother. `You heard the King of Ithaca, Odysseus the Nimble-Witted. What he said was true. You play with these poor mortals for sport. You have no pity. I warned you, Sun God. I support her, this misused princess, if you cheat.'
`You have no power, old woman,' snarled Apollo. `I have taken over your worship. Your python-priestesses at Delphi are now my oracles. Mortals are forgetting you in the dazzle of my eye, which is the sun. Soon there will be no one who remembers you, crone of the earth, but a few old women who scatter seeds and mumble invocations. You have no power.'
Demeter said nothing.
`Cassandra will suffer for this,' continued Apollo. The fire of his eyes heated the water in the Pool of Mortal Lives, so that steam arose from the surface. `And I do not forget the insults of Odysseus of Ithaca.'
`The game continues,' said Aphrodite, rolling the golden apple from hand to pearly-perfect hand.
We were saved. The army of suitors was reported still to be sacking the plain of Argos but the Atreidae and their prisoner Elene were safe within walls.
I saw her as she walked in from the horse litter. She was tired and dusty but not bruised as I had feared. She was dishevelled, dressed in a tunic too big for her and she was beautiful enough to stop my heart.
She looked into the crowd and saw me. She did not smile. The gaze of her trout pool eyes encompassed my whole vision for what seemed like a long time. Then she was hustled into the women's quarters and I knew I would never see her again.
Eumides was behind me. He slid an arm around my waist and drew me out of the press of people.
`Asclepid, I fear I that have lost my heart. You are right. She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Come, we need wine and solitude.'
We were not to get either. Arion was called upon to entertain the Lord of Men and I was taken by my master to tend the temple of Apollo, which was without a priest and had been neglected. I think that the master Epidavros was making perfectly sure that I was not summoned to the Lady Elene's side if she was unwell from fatigue or fever.
The temple was in disarray, however, and the Lord Apollo, if he had existed, would probably have struck Mycenae with all manner of plagues in his annoyance. In fact, in view of the lack of any drainage and the number of wells which seemed to be in exactly the wrong places, Apollo might do that in spite of his non-existence.
`I would not go to her again, Master,' I assured him. `Such a thing only happens once in one lifetime.'
`Being the brother of Death may have made you wise beyond your years, Chryse.'
Something made a clinking noise in the dust. `Master, look at this.'
What have you found?'
`A seal, I think.' I polished it on my dusting cloth and held it up to the lamp. `Very old.'
`Yes, and broken. Probably cast away.' He turned it in his surgeon's fingers. `By the gods, Chryse. Look at the image!'
I still could not see it until my master crouched and printed the seal in the dust. Then it was clear. The horned ram, Perseus' seal. Perseus, the demigod, first king of Mycenae.
`A very interesting find. Arion must see this. Now we must keep sweeping and see what else may be here.'
It was a poor temple. The Apollo was wooden, much cracked and faded. I dusted him thoroughly and cleaned the stains of old blood from the altar. The offerings with which the temple must have been packed had been looted bit by bit as the worship faded, along with the furniture and the tapestry, which fell to shreds as I touched it. It was an unhappy place and exactly matched my mood.
Zeus was the ruling god of Mycnae, the Father. Heracles came second; the hero. Otherwise they had a rich temple dedicated to the foreigner, Aphrodite of Cyprus, the goddess of love. For the first time it struck me as odd that the Achaeans kept their women confined, punished female adultery with death and lauded domestic virtue, yet worshipped the goddess of lust and lawless passion.
I have never made much sense out of Achaeans.
My master and I finished the shrine and moved into the body of the temple. There was a roar from the acropolis.
`I think the league has been signed,' I said hopefully, but my master frowned.
`No. That was another sort of noise. Come, Chryse. I have an idea that might be useful if I can get to that rogue of a bard in time. We will have to risk the great hall. She will not be there.'
My life hung on the thread of an Argive woman's word. I did not care.
Glaucus struggled through the crowd and we forced our way into the great hall. The shouting was deafening. Each prince and princeling was proclaiming his own case at the top of his and his captain's voices. I caught sight of Odysseus of Ithaca. He appeared to be carrying on three arguments at once with perfect ease.
Glaucus sighted Arion, shouted `Catch!' and threw him the broken seal. Arion caught it, examined it, and pulled Odysseus' expensive hem.
The king of Ithaca took the seal and looked at it carefully. Then he smiled.
He walked to the middle of the dais and grabbed both Aias, shook them and gave them an order. They bellowed `Silence' in unison.
It worked. Odysseus held up the seal.
`Do you know what I have here?' he asked in a conversational tone which reached me at the back as though he was speaking in my ear. No one interjected.
`This is the seal of a hero. Perseus the demigod left it in the temple of Apollo when he passed through here. Now, where do we find heroes now?' he asked, walking along the dais.
`Here men contend as though there were no gods. Here men bellow and brag as though there were no death. Remember, princes and kings, high-born and proud, there is a destiny for all of us. `Perseus' destiny was to be a hero. He was the first king of this palace, of golden-walled Mycenae. Danae's child by Zeus Cloud-Compeller, even the journey in the wooden box and the quest of the Medusa's head was not beyond him. With the gifts of the gods he slew the monster and flew glittering through the skies. He outwitted the Graeae, beat the gorgons, though they turned all men to stone. In the kibesis woven of gold he carried the venomous head; by that weapon he rescued his wife, fair Andromeda, fairest of all mortal women until Elene was born.'
I heard Arion's lyre chiming behind the words, binding the spell of the king of Ithaca's voice.
`By his own strength and honour and will he conquered the unconquerable, endured the unendurable. What would Perseus, first king of this golden fortress, have said of these babbling boasters that throng his hall, these quarrelling upjumped princes who shriek like market women, who believe that the loudest voice means the strongest arm? He knew that only a great-hearted man, a man of honour whose word is of stone and bronze, can attract the favour of fate. For it is all a matter of fate. It is Menelaus' fate to have Elene, and Elene's fate to be his wife.'
Some muttering broke out and I saw Arion lay a strong hand on one man's shoulder.
`If we fight then we shall assuredly die,' continued the king of Ithaca, without raising his voice. `And that would be a waste. Better we should live, for in life there is hope, joy, wine and women.' Coarse laughter greeted this remark. `But in death there is cold, the decay of mirth, the draught of the Styx and endless unremembering in a dark realm ruled by the rich one. Consider, princes, consider death. It comes to us all, but it need not come soon.'
There was complete silence and attention in the hall as he went on, still in a confidential tone. `As it will if we do not make this league. Here are princes and kings and men of great worth; here are heroes. When Perseus asked for peace, did he not get it? Partly because he was in a position to enforce it. As am I. I will kill the first man who strikes another.'
He gestured elegantly at the walls. Around them were ranked all the bowmen in the city. Phrygians who spoke no Achaean. They were Odysseus' own guard. Each bow was drawn; there was an arrow on each string.
`Under the gods we all make our own choices. I choose to swear that Elene's father shall award her to whom he will, and we will all defend against anyone who tries to take her away. I swear before all the gods that I will defend Menelaus Prince of Sparta's bride, Elene, from ravishment and capture.'