Cassandra (45 page)

`I am not a monster,' he said, not sadly but as though he were making a statement. `I am god-touched; and sometimes god-possessed, and the gods have made a stone out of my heart. Have you a cure for that, healer?'

`No, Lord,' I said, and Patroclus stroked the gold-thread hair of the downcast head.

Achilles was weeping for his stony heart.

 

Winter came suddenly. I woke one morning and found the camp white with snow. The sea was as flat as a plate and the colour of lead, as was the sky.

`Snow and more snow coming,' said Arion, crunching over frozen sand, `I wish I were at home in sunny Thessaly, or looking out from my own house in the morning while slaves blow on the cooking fire and bring me warm wine.'

`I wish I was back at Epidavros with the suppliants coming down the road and my master's cook baking barley cakes,' I replied. `But here we are.'

`So we are.' He sighed and pointed seaward. `Achilles' ship. Back from looting another village. There is no glory nor any song to sing in the slaughter of goatherds, Asclepid. But that is not what I came to tell you. Put on your cloak and come and see who Menelaus has caught. He is hurt and valuable.'

I cursed Arion for a babbling old man, delaying so long someone might have been bleeding to death, then followed him to the Atreidae's camp. A young man was lying on the snowy ground at the king's feet. A sword had sliced his scalp and possibly his skull. I knelt to examine him but Menelaus grabbed my arm.

`Asclepid, you must heal this one, or at least bring him back to his senses so he can talk. He must be important; his tunic was embroidered and his gear is of the finest. We caught him entirely by chance. He had left the city in darkness and ought to have been away, but his horse stumbled in the snow and threw him, and while he was stunned the Achaeans caught him.'

`After a struggle,' I said, observing the red patches on his bare arms and back. `After they kicked him. If you will release me, my Lord, I will see what I can do, but if you want him alive you had better have him carried to my hut, where I can get him thawed. If you leave him here he will die of cold before anyone can treat him, and then he will say nothing at all.'

Menelaus scowled but gave the order. Two Mycenaeans lifted the man and bore him to my hut where they dumped him on the floor.

`Out,' I said to their shins as I turned the body over. `There is not enough room in here for you and me both.'

`We are sworn not to let him escape,' they said stolidly.

`He is not going anywhere. You have beaten him to a pulp and the Lord Menelaus is going to be very angry if he dies. Now out. You can stand guard outside.'

They hesitated, then went. I shut the door of my wooden shack to exclude the snowy chill and unrolled a sheepskin rug. My brazier burned hot and the air in the little house gradually warmed. I shed my own cloak and lit the sweet incense which Polidarius had brought. It was used at home to perfume the healer's chambers, to bring peace to the asclepid's mind and to cover the frightening smells of metal and blood. I had not used it before in the mire of agony in which I had been dipped like a sheep at the shearing. But this prisoner had to recover; must recover.

I laid the prisoner down on the red cloak and washed blood away from the battered face, patching the shallow sword-cut with a comfrey compress and feeling over the back for broken bones. I had known who it was as soon as I had seen the curve of the cheek and the golden hair, though I did not know how I was going to hide this from Menelaus.

He had captured the Princess Cassandra.

Knowing that my visions were not false, because my twin shared them, gave me courage. I still could not speak but there were things I could do. The walking dead still horrified me, but I could endure them - just. Hector gave me the first pretext.

He came one day down to the temple of Poseidon and said to Dion, `Priest, I have a task for you to do. It is dangerous and only you can do it. Will you venture?'

`Ask and I shall obey,' said Dion. `What does Hector the Prince require of Poseidon's priest?'

`It is late for a journey,' said Hector, `but Poseidon is your ally, you are his faithful one. Dion, I want you to go to Egypt. Pariki stole the cat-cub from the temple of Basht; I would return her. Before it is too late, both Státhi and his wife must go home.'

I stared at my brother. I had never thought that he would part with Státhi. Dion, who knew the deep attachment between the two, faltered, `Lord, it is a perilous journey but I will undertake it. What should I do?'

`Wait for the wind. I will send you Státhi. The carpenter is making me a cage. Keep them warm, Dion, they cannot bear great cold and they must not get wet. Feed them on goat's flesh and water.

`Do not release them until you are at the temple of Bubastis in the Nile delta or he might try to swim back to me, my determined friend Státhi. Once he is there, he will accustom himself. Any Egyptian will help you, because you are carrying sacred beasts. Avoid the People of the Sea; they live on the left banks of the river and the current will not carry you there. Go soon, Dion, and do not return; that is all I can say.'

Hector left, stroking the grey creature which was his dearest friend. I was shocked and thinking hard.

Dion hugged me. `He does not want me to come back to Troy,' he whispered. `He fears some dreadful stroke of fate. Come with me, Cassandra.'

I shook my head. `No, Dion, stay in Egypt, you will like it there, or find another home. You have been sweet,' I kissed him hard. `Very sweet your love has been, Dion, and I cannot bear that you should-' I stopped as the vision rose, and thrust it firmly down.

I lay down with him, relishing his touch. Then I rose and went to confer with my sisters.

`Dion is going to Egypt,' I announced. `Will any of you go with him?'

`To Egypt?' said Iris. `No, why should we want to?'

There was no death mark on her, or on Eirene. It was doomed Cycne who caught on, and said, `You want me to go with Dion?' I nodded. `Because of a vision?' I nodded again. `But I can't swim and I don't like the sea and I don't like sailors, not your Dion either, even if he is a priest. They are rough and I don't like them.'

I could see the blood fountaining from her breast and I tried to speak. This brought the usual attack; I suffered through it, but Cycne was not convinced. She declined to leave the city of Ilium. `I'm a Trojan now,' she said mulishly. `I feel safe behind these walls.'

When the wind changed a day later, Hector brought Státhi, yowling with outrage, and his slim, delicate wife in a large wooden cage. Dion's boat was ready, sail furled, oars out.

`Be careful of them,' he said to Dion as he handed the cage into the priest's steady grasp. Státhi scrabbled at the bars and gave Hector one parting scratch. Then he sat down on his paws, wrapping his tail around himself, and Hector kissed his nose.

`Sail well, little brother,' he whispered. `Come safe to the temple. There you shall lie all day on the marble steps in the sun, waiting for the priests to bring you fish netted fresh from the Nile.' Hector was weeping.

So was Dion as he climbed with the cage into the boat.

We heard a shout from the Scaean Gate; the Argives were coming. Hector shoved the boat off the sand, and Dion rowed out into the bay.

Hector and I ran for the ladder and climbed amid a hail of misdirected arrows. When we gained the top, the little boat was out to sea and my eyes were so blurred with tears that I did not see it dip over the horizon. I resolved, henceforward, that my heart would be of metal.

I stole a horse and suitable gear and ransacked Priam's treasury for gold, for it was unwise to steal from the temple of any god. Eleni met me under Idume's sardonic gaze. The Adonis Priest accepted a cup of strong honeyed wine from me; which was foolish of him, for though it was not poisoned it was certainly drugged. I did not look at him but waited for the thud as he crumpled.

Then I cloaked Eleni in a veil and hood and led him down to the Dardanian Gate. It was a chill morning, presaging snow.

`Ride straight but not too fast,' I instructed. `My love, my dear.'

`My love, my sister,' said Eleni, and kissed me for the last time. Then I cried to the sentries, `Open!' and they shoved the gate just wide enough for the rider to go out. He leaned down and kissed me again, then the hoofs kicked up the half-frozen swamp water and he was gone as well.

One by one, my loves were falling from me like leaves from a tree.

 

Hector was spending most of his time with Andromache, who was more pregnant every day, uneasy and full of fears. Tithone said that there was nothing wrong with her. I was sitting on the window ledge later in the day that Eleni escaped, when a black cloud absorbed me and I slumped into a faint.

I woke with the dreadful certainty that something had happened to my twin, but I could not tell what. I could not see through his eyes any more, as we had done as children. He was not dead. I would have known that. I was lifted against Hector's chest and heard him say, `Cassandra, my sister, I am full of foreboding. This is not the god but your brother. What have you done?'

Leaning into his chest, I told him. He gave me into his wife's arms and began to pace the marble floor, thinking aloud, his voice soft and furious.

`That was a foolish thing and we will rue it greatly. He is not dead you say? Then he is probably captured. Gods, if it was not bad enough having Pariki for a sibling, I must have Cassandra and Eleni as well.'

I winced, but I had probably deserved this. I should have told Hector. But if I had, he would have sent my twin forth with the knowledge of Mysion Apollo Priest, who was, Eleni said, making some deal with the Achaeans.

I told Hector this as well and he stopped kicking the furniture. `Ah. That makes more sense, sister, I thought that you were just acting out of childish secrecy. Apollo Priest has always been proud and a man of deep plots. Now, I see why you acted as you have, though I wish you had told me, Cassandra. It is possible that Eleni is not captured, but merely thrown by the horse.'

`Yes,' I agreed, though my head felt as though someone had hit it.

`If he is a prisoner, what then? They will torture him if he does not co-operate; but that we will know, because you will feel it too, Cassandra. Your twin is fluent and clever; he may be able to hide his identity, and even if discovered he may be able to persuade them that he is valuable. Will they ransom him, I wonder? Or do they want him to prophesy for them?'

`Eleni will give no false prophecies,' I said, clutching my head. `There is something which the god has promised him which he dearly wants; more than life, perhaps. He will tell them the truth about Troy.'

`The truth cannot harm us,' said Hector. `Cassandra, my sister, you must trust me. If you compromise the safety of Troy again I will set you outside the walls to bargain with the Argives.' He sounded serious.

I nodded and regretted it immediately.

`I have a plan of my own,' he added, `which is happening even now. Each day more people leave the city. Long ago Dardanus prophesised, and so did the priestess of the Mother fifteen years ago, that there would be a new city inland from here, Troas, child of Troy. I have sent people there after dark along the line of the Simöes, where the confluence of the rivers covers even a hoof-beat. The priestesses have gone to establish a temple; some from every god except, as it happens, Apollo. Troas is high in the mountains, on the Pillars of Heracles itself. So far they have not seen any Achaeans. The enemy are avoiding the mountains because they fear them. Hundreds have left, traders and makers. Even if Troy falls we shall not be lost; not our skills or our language or our gods. Now you know Hector's secret, little sister; keep it close. There must not be panic. And now the snow has come, we must wait for thaw before any more can leave. Even Achaeans cannot miss trails in the snow.'

I had a vision of the new city, high above the channel; torches gleamed on stone walls and within there was a noise of children playing a counting game and of a man laughing. I smelt wine; I knew that laugh. Dionysius the Dancer was in Troas and pleased. I smiled against my will, for not only did my head hurt but my ribs ached fiercely.

 

We heard no more of Eleni's fate for a long time. I was occupied with Tithone, in treating a plague of sneezing and fever which had broken out among the children. It brought a red rash with weakness after it and some of them went blind. After the first, we learned to keep them in a dark room.

There were fewer people in the city every day. Nyssa, my nurse, had gone, weeping and blessing me, carrying the latest of Priam's children. My favourite smith had taken a cart with all of her tools and her husband and children.

The city of Troy did not gush people, but it leaked ceaselessly. Hector's pilgrims trudged out in twenties and tens every night when there was no betraying snow, like a patient slowly bleeding to death.

Troy was still great and populous, however. Troas could not be the city that Ilium was. Two generations had lived and died in Troy.

Towards the middle of winter, for some reason, the Achaean ships sailed out in great numbers, leaving only a few men on the beaches. I sighted Odysseus' flag, and Agamemnon's.

The city said, `They are gone,' but I did not believe it and neither did Hector.

More people left. With the thinned-out guard we could move wagons by day instead of people by night. Troas would be well supplied; we sent seed-wheat and barley, tools and instruments, and towards the second week of this migration Tithone came to me and said, `Child, I am going to Troas.'

`Oh, Mistress,' I hugged her. `I...' I was about to beg her not to leave me, then collected myself and said, `I will miss you.'

`They need me in the new city,' she said. `Ten healers will stay. Athropiads, as well as those concerned with birth and growth. Fare well, Cassandra. May the fates be kind to you. You have learned well, my daughter, I am proud of you. You are the Healer of Troy now.'

I watched the overladen carts groan out of the Dardanian Gate, pulled by four horses, carrying children and treasure and bundles of medicinal herbs. A child of the Pallathi went to protect Troas, a painted statue rocking her rope cradle.