`Cassandra, help me with the new one; it has coiled around the inside of this pot and they can't stay in terracotta; it's too hot and it will die,' she called. I came, because it is not wise to disobey a priestess and I had offended enough gods as it was. I crouched down next to her.
`What sort is it?' I asked, `Take away the mouse, it's clearly not hungry.'
`It's the green viper, the puffed-tail Afric one. Tithone needs its venom to treat the locked jaw; she has several cases of it.'
I nodded. We used snake venom for several healing purposes, though it was so dangerous a therapy we only tried it as a last resort. The locked jaw was the first symptom of an affliction of those who had taken deep puncture wounds which had not been cleansed immediately. The jaw locked, then the spine; they died in a couple of days in an agony of dreadful spasms and cramps. Those bitten by the green viper, on the other hand, lost all sensation in their muscles; they died because they lacked the strength to breathe. Thus the locked-jaw patients were treated with a drop of venom, rubbed into a shallow scratch in the skin. If the convulsions could be controlled they recovered. Any miscalculation and they either spasmed to death or died of poisoning.
`We can break the pot, in which case the viper will be angry and might be injured,' I said, `or I can put in my hand and try to pull it out. In which case it may strike and I will be dead.'
`The god protects you,' she said hopefully.
`The god has rejected me,' I rejoined. `I'll try.' I took a deep breath, tried not to remember how the snakebite victims died, sent a respectful appeal to the goddess - after all, it was her creature - and slid my hand into the pot. The snake had coiled itself tightly around the inside. I felt very slowly for the head, expecting the sting which meant death, found it and tightened my grip very slowly. It wriggled, then was trapped.
I drew it slowly out of the pot, my fingers grasping it behind the ugly, spade-shaped head. A fine healthy viper, it seemed. Venom dripped from the fangs in the hissing open mouth, which would be diluted eighteen times before it would be used on humans.
The priestess produced a straw-filled sack and I lowered the snake carefully inside, pushing the head down hard as she drew up the strings and tied them in a knot. I examined my hands for any mark or graze, washed them in a basin of water and only then let out the breath I had been holding.
After that I got to my feet and continued to prowl behind the temples. For some reason, I was shaking.
I was still doing so when a trembling twin enfolded me in a rib-breaking hug and breathed into my hair, `Oh, Cassandra, you should not handle snakes!'
`You knew,' I said into the heavy golden embroidery. `Eleni, you are still with me, you knew.' I leaned back to look into his face and demanded, `Why did you lie? You lied when you said "Victory". You lied and you have shut your mind to me all this time when you could still find me. I needed you and called for you, I begged for you and you did not come.'
He kissed my forehead over the great bruise. `Yes, I lied. The priests said they'd kill me if I told the truth - they said the god would shoot me with his arrows. They have poisons and purpose of their own. They hope to deal with the Achaeans, knowing that they respect the gods. I am in their power.'
He kissed me and I responded, wrapped in the scent of his skin, the taste of his mouth.
`Twin, I must escape,' he groaned. `Mysion Apollo Priest uses me for his purposes, which he says are the god's. But it has been so long since I shut myself off from your pain and your love, I cannot find you. I tried when you were ill, and they chained me in the temple. I did try, but there was a cloud, I wandered on the dark plain and could not find the spark that was you, sister, you must believe me.' He was crying, tears running down his cheeks. `Twin, I love you, I love you.'
I embraced him as closely as flesh would allow. `I love you,' I murmured, catching sight of Idume Adonis Priest grinning unpleasantly at the courtyard door. `Come with me, twin, come to our brother and he will protect you. Hector is stronger than any priest. Come now. Oh, Eleni, I love you. Come.'
He pulled away from me and leaned his head on the wall. His hair curled at the nape of his neck exactly as it had always done. The sight hurt me.
`If I leave then Apollo will curse me,' he faltered into my neck. `If he curses me I will not have... her.'
I was struck dumb. It was, of course, true. Apollo would not take his gifts back but he could modify them. He had changed mine so that I would know and could not speak. He would change Eleni's so that he would have Andromache, perhaps, but she would hate him. A mean, niggardly, cruel god was Shining Apollo. He was going to take my twin away, again and forever.
`From the city, then,' I said at last. His eyes shone, grey eyes just like mine.
`From the city,' he agreed, stroking my hair.
`Because you know what will happen to Troy,' I insisted.
`I know, and so do you. I will not leave the god, Cassandra. I must leave the temple.'
He was in my mind now, curling into an accustomed hollow which ached unbearably when it was empty and would ache again when he was gone.
`Stay with me; stay in my soul until I can contrive something,' I said. `I will get you out, twin. Until then, try not to make more prophecies of false hope.'
`Why do you strive against the god?' he asked as he let go my hands. `Troy must be sacked; why do you beat your fists against fate?'
`I don't know,' I confessed, kissing him again. His mouth was sweet enough to make me faint. `Trust me, twin; search my mind. I will help you. Now, I must go; you are watched.'
He turned in a panicky swirl of robes and ran. Idume smiled crookedly and held out a cupped hand. I folded his fingers over the coin and said quietly, `If this meeting is known, I prophesy confidently that you will die, Adonis Priest. A little viper venom in the cup and you will sleep and not wake.'
`I am faithful,' he protested. I left the temple courtyard, having purchased a little faith; a scarce and expensive commodity in Troy during the siege.
I probed my own mind a hundred times that day, and Eleni was still with me. I felt renewed. I saw twelve dead ones in the street, but the young man that I had seen as a fleshless grinning skeleton passed me without a mark on him. He had been in the battle and had not died.
So I did not know anything; not when, just eventually. I could not warn anyone; it was not specific to a time or place before the city fell, as it had repeatedly done in our visions. Even if I could have spoken, all I could have said was, `You will die' and everyone knows that.
Telling someone, `You will be skewered by an arrow,' or `You will drown,' would be of interest, but not helpful. I did not hope that what I was seeing was untrue. Too many of the dead ones had just died and in the way I had foreseen. But Apollo's most malicious wish was that I should see useless visions; sent only to torture me.
Eleni was puzzled; he saw the sendings, but did not understand them, and he recoiled. I realised that I had grown in strength beyond my twin. He blocked off the seeing, which he could do because they were not his torment. But I felt his love in my mind; his sympathy, which I had missed like a absent tooth.
Hector reported to the king's council, Státhi on his shoulder. Forty had been killed, twenty-six wounded retrieved, of whom eighteen would die and three were already dead.
`Small loss considering that a whole army was against us,' he added. `The Amazons and the cavalry drove them off when they encircled us; otherwise we should not have been able to get back. Are you satisfied, Father, with war on the plain?'
`It might have been peace on the plain,' retorted the old man, `if Pandarus had not fired at Menelaus. Pandarus has paid for his folly. He is dead. It is too much to hope that Menelaus is also.'
`I doubt it,' I said as Hector consulted me with a glance. `He was standing and bleeding, not even knocked over; the arrow was deflected by his armour,' and the goddess, I did not add. `He will probably recover, Lord.'
`Then we have lost nearly sixty Trojans for Pandarus' folly,' growled Anchises. `And no more must fall. Let them swelter on the plain and freeze in the winter gales. I would not counsel that we ever fight on the plain again.'
`You are wise, Anchises,' agreed Hector. `I presume that Pariki has slaked his thirst for single combat.' He looked for Pariki and found him lounging against a pillar, not a hair out of place, but pale and not smiling.
`Come, brother, tell us. How did you get back to the city so quickly? Did you tunnel? Or did you just outrun a rabbit?'
`The goddess brought me, bright Ishtar,' he muttered sullenly. `In a mist she carried me and I found myself before the open gate and wafted inside on a scent of roses.'
`Ah,' said Hector dryly. `I was wafted through the gate myself on a stench of panic and flung spears, but I am not protected by any powerful deities.'
Even if I could have told my elder brother that Pariki was telling the truth, I would not have. The affronted Pariki came forward and knelt next to Priam. The old hand caressed him. He was still Priam's favourite son. The king did not love Hector, bulwark and warrior, anything like as much as he favoured this worthless boy. I bit my lip and did not speak; neither did Hector comment.
`So, we lick our wounds and Agamemnon licks his and we wait,' said Anchises, watching Priam and Hector without expression. `Hector, beloved Prince and Cuirass of Troy, there are refuge-seekers come from the villages who wish to speak with you. Will you hear them?'
`Yes, of course,' said Hector, sitting down. `Cassandra, have you that list of villages? I have been trying to map the depredations of the Achaeans, to see how seaworthy they are, and how long it takes them to circle the Aegean and get back to Troy. I am hoping that they will be dragged down below Kriti by the current and have to row their way back; twenty days, thirty perhaps, in which time they are not resupplying Agamemnon or killing Trojans.'
The king nodded. From the floor of the hall a female voice ragged with pain added, `Perhaps they are not killing Trojans, but they are killing us. All of my village are dead; murdered in the agora as they tried to bargain with Achilles.'
Achilles again. There were thirty-nine names on my list of villages which had been sacked and ruined. Achilles name was attached to twenty-eight of them and he was probably responsible for the ones left so devoid of life that there was no survivor left to tell who had brought death upon them.
`Death came in three beaked ships from the sea,' said the woman. `I was herding goats away from the shore; I saw them coming and I ran. I did not stop to warn Ponticha; it would not have helped. Slim and golden haired and pretty as a girl is Achilles; yet he directed them, I saw him from the tree I had climbed. He waved his hand and they all died, even the children, even the dogs of Ponticha are slaughtered.
`You are the great prince!' she shrieked into Hector's face, spattering him with spittle. `Save us! Kill these invaders before they murder us all! You sit safely in your great city behind your walls, while the farmers and herdsmen are sacrificed to feed Achilles, until he gluts on our blood! Your brother's folly brought the Achaean pirates here - send them home or kill them before we are all dead. It is the fault of your house, Trojan prince - you must mend it. Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!'
Hector took no offence, but held her close until she stopped screaming, her bitterness smothered against his chest. Then he held her at arm's length and said, `Lady, I understand. Now you have delivered your message to Hector and you can rest. Go with my wife and she will take you to the healers. You are hurt.'
The woman felt dazedly at a splotch of blood which gummed her veil to her head. Andromache led her away.
Hector was disturbed. `What she says is true. Achilles must die.'
`The priest of Apollo, Eleni, has made a prophecy,' said Polites with a doubtful glance at me.
`What is it?'
`That neither you nor Achilles will survive each other by three days.'
I sought my twin and found him doubtful and wary, but it was a true sending and from the god. Eleni was trying to avoid false hope, but in this he had an interest. If he was to marry Andromache, then Hector must die.
I was so shocked by this realisation that I almost thrust my twin out of my head, except that he seemed equally horrified by the prospect. I was also finding it hard to resume the old knowledge. His mind felt alien to me now, and mine to him. We had grown a long way apart while he had hung in chains in Apollo's temple.
And how was I to get him safe out of the city?
This was my concern as I went to sleep and eat before the night watch. God-tortured eyes are sharp in the dark, and not so easily confused by the phantoms which drift across the unfocused eye and cause so many innocent and non-Argive shadows to be pierced by Trojan arrows fired by nervous sentries. Hector and I usually took the first night watch together. Státhi saw well in the dark and liked to hunt the moths which danced around the torches.
I could smuggle Eleni out of any gate; all the gate-guards knew me. The question was, where should he go after that? Inland, that was one possibility; there were plenty of little villages a safe distance from the sea and maybe five days ride distant. He could reach all the internal towns of Phrygia, Caria, and then go on to Egypt by sea or even to wander into the Hittite kingdoms.
No, going to Egypt he would run the risk of encountering the People of the Sea, who were Achaeans. Then again, in Hittite territory there were rumoured to be wandering tribes of cannibals, head hunters, and even monsters. He could reach Africa, but he would be known as an absconding Apollo Priest in the small Trojan communities who lived there for trade; beside it was fever-ridden and unhealthy and Argives and Thessalians had settled there. Not Africa.
Lemnos was a possibility; the women of that island had a short way with annoying men and needed husbands; there he would at least be close to me. No, I was being selfish; Lemnos was too close and could be raided at any time by Agamemnon.