Cassandra (50 page)

`Then we will get into our ships and sail to the other side of Tenedos and wait,' said Odysseus. `On the first day, they will keep the watch; on the second day, they will slacken but still be there; but in three days, now that Hector is dead, they will be around at their favourite woman's taking off their armour, I guarantee.' He smiled. `The gates will be opened and the city will be ours.'

`How will the gates be opened?' asked Menelaus.

Odysseus shared a glance with Calchas and said suavely, `They will be opened, Lord,' and Menelaus did not press him.

I took Eleni and Arion to watch while the army found enough skilled craftsmen to make the clay model and then the shell, in order to hollow-cast the horse in the sands of the beaches.

Only Mycenaeans had this skill. It was much wondered at in the world, because bronze is too heavy to make solid statues more than about two hands high. Some Mycenaean genius had found that a thin shell of bronze is enough to support a large sculpture, the size of a human.

The smith's fires burned to charcoal all night. It took them three days to make the model and then another two days to pour and cool the mould enough to break it and free the image.

It was remarkable, a full-sized bronze horse with mane and tail flowing, one hoof raised as if about to gallop.

Then we packed up everyone, the wounded and the sick, and sailed off to lie off Tenedos.

I was seasick again. But among the flotilla I sighted a little boat with a dark-haired sailor and a crew of three. Eumides was sailing with our fleet.

It took Troy a day to believe that the Achaeans had gone. When we finally ventured onto the sands, all we found was a marvellous bronze horse with the inscription: `To the Sun Bright; a splendid offering by the Achaeans.'

We took it inside.

I felt the vision - Troy burning - wash over me and crash, tying my tongue.

The city I saw was populated with the dead: grotesque, bloody, and still talking.

I woke in the Temple of the Mother, and the priestess told me that the Achaeans had gone for good, discouraged now that Achilles was dead.

The watch did not sleep on the walls that night. The king held a council and I went. He was doddering and old beyond belief; he could no longer stand alone. Pariki was by his side all the time, whispering.

`They are gone, and now we must dismiss our allies,' said the old man. `Scythians, you have done nobly; here is your reward.' He loaded them with gold necklaces and decorated belts, adding `and there are horses for you at the gates.'

The Scythians bowed, took the gold, regretted that they had not collected many heads, and left. The Carians and Mysians were also thanked and went.

The Amazons were called and rewarded with more gold than the others. Priam also gave them seventeen of the Trojan horses whose sires and dams were from Olympus. They kissed me cordially, saddened by the death of their lady. I noticed that Eris' chest was now loaded with numberless strings of Argive teeth.

By midnight, all our allies were gone.

`No!' I wanted to scream, `we need these people, do not let them go!' But, even if I could have spoken, no one would listen to Cassandra, who was known to be mad; especially now that her brother Hector was dead.

More of the people left for Troas. Boats set out into the empty seas, carrying people and livestock. The city was loosening, settling, relaxing. I saw it all and could not say a word.

The first night, the gates were kept shut. The second night, the watch was still there, hanging on although the rest of the city was reverting to normal.

On the third night I received a message from Eleni, mind-to-mind; a warning so strong that it startled me out of my dreary misery and I went into the streets and up onto the Scamander Gate. No one was guarding the walls.

I was about to beat the drum for the alarm; I had the drum stick in my hand, when someone threw a bag over my head and I was tossed over a shoulder.

I kicked and struggled until someone held a nauseating cloth over my mouth. It made me dizzy - I think it was compounded of henbane and a certain mushroom, and I could not prevent myself being thrown down onto a stone floor in the dark.

Someone hissed, `Lie there until they come to ravish you, Princess!' It was Mysion, the Priest of Apollo.

I heard a door thud shut.

I tore at the bag until I managed to release myself. I was in the dark. I felt around until I encountered a smooth face, then another, and realised that I was in the Temple of the Pallathi. I knew what was going to happen. I could not save the city. But I could do some damage to the attackers.

The sanctuary leads into the inner chamber of the Mother, where Eleni and I had been taken when we were children and the vicious god had given us the poisoned gift of prophecy.

I did not expect to be able to call the spectral snakes, the divine serpents, but I could call the others. I made the high whistle that meant food, and scattered their supply of dead mice across the floor. They came. I heard the rustle of scales on the floor.

Then lightning flashed, thunder struck, and I heard screams and the shattering of wood.

The gates were down.

I arranged myself at the foot of the Pallathi, the biggest one, which was unsteady on its plinth, and waited for the Argives to find me.

 

It must have been dusk when the door burst open. A huge man shouldered aside the shards of broken wood, saw me and grabbed my ankles, fumbling with his tunic. This was not unexpected. I waited until the light from the burning, the red light of my own city burning, could fall on me and let my potential rapist see what he was attacking.

I was wreathed in snakes. They were harmless brown ones, who have no poison, but my huge attacker did not know that. I parted my legs, and the golden one that had been lying along my thighs was dislodged, rearing up and hissing.

The Argive went grey and scrambled to his feet.

I pulled my rope. The falling statue, regrettably, missed him and shattered to lumps of rock on the floor.

`Come with me,' he said through numb lips, `Lady.'

`Take me to Agamemnon,' I said haughtily.

I began to unwind the snakes, cropping them carefully near the entrance to the lower pit whence they had burrows into the outside earth. If they were not cooked by Troy burning overhead they might gain their freedom; as I had just lost mine.

I retained one, as decoratio; and I had other resources.

`What is your name?' I asked the monstrous Achaean and he said, `Aias, Lady.'

Outside the Temple of Apollo lay Mysion, who had betrayed the city. He had been tortured to death, doubtless to make him reveal the hiding places of all the temple's treasures. They had almost burned his feet off at the ankle.

I stepped over him, avoiding the Achaeans who were carrying loads of the Sun Bright's temple furnishing down the stairs.

Vengefully I reminded Apollo that this was all his own doing.

As a soldier tried to grab my arm my captor roared, `She is mine!' and the man let go, falling back as my snake hissed at him.

I followed Aias, son of Telamon, through Troy and I could not close my eyes.

In the Palace of the King, Polites, Deiphobos and Priam all lay slaughtered on the floor, lying as they had fallen from their benches. A girl screamed monotonously as she was raped; until the scream was abruptly cut off.

I heard a shriek and saw Perseis thrown from the top of the Palace of Maidens. She died broken on the stones. Her hair tore out of its comb as it always had and flowed over her mutilated face, fine as mist. I understood that the injuries I had seen on her in my vision were produced by the steep streets of Troy.

I heard Achaeans laughing and a girl crying, `No!' I thought it might be Eirene. Men fought in the streets and alleys, unarmoured, barely awake. They were cut down, crushed under stone casts, slashed and decapitated. Maeles lolled over his temple railing with his head almost cloven in two. Blood wet the cobbles and everywhere was the stench of smoke.

As we stepped down the streets to the lower city, I saw drunken men dancing in fine tunics, hung about with jewels of the queen of Troy.

Barley meal, blood and wine were spilled into the gutters.

Lying in the street was the body of a girl, a knife standing upright in her left breast. Aias spurned the corpse with his foot as he strode before me. Blood spilled as she was rolled over. It was Cycne, who could not bear to be a slave again.

Along the way my captor met other Argives leading women, and they brought us finally into the Place of Stranger's Gods.

We were loot; the spoils of Troy. I saw Hecube there, Iris and Eirene and Andromache with the baby. There perhaps three hundred women, mostly unharmed, for we were valuable, not plunder to be wasted. We were the well-skilled women of Troy.

Behind us, as in the vision which had haunted me since childhood, the city burned. The wooden scaffolding that ran along the gates took fire and belched smoke; the Scamander Gate tower flamed and collapsed.

Doomed Troy was burning. It was a thing so familiar that I was not affected as I might have been; it was almost a relief.

Ash spilled on us as we hurried away. Agamemnon did not want his captives damaged.

I heard the other women comforting each other; as the soldiers drove us on, not unkindly but firmly. We were cattle now.

`It's all right, don't cry, at least we're alive,' I heard a linen-spinner tell her sister. `Even being a slave is better than being dead.'

`I shall tend some man's house,' said Hecube. `I shall carry water and kindle the fire. Aie! Aie! Ah, my grief! My sons, my sons are all dead!'

I was not so sure about that. Eleni was alive. I knew this because I could feel him. His horror echoed my own as we watched aghast. The vision which had woken us from a sweet sleep when we were three became reality before our eyes.

My death-visions, the special curse of Apollo on Cassandra, had almost ceased; most of them had already come true.

For a flash, I saw the Argive soldiers as skeletons; most of this army was going to die when or before it got home.

Only the glowing healer, Chryse, was fleshed in this bony multitude. Only he had life and breath in this bodiless wilderness.

I stumbled, then dragged myself upright. Evidently I was going to live. I must endure.

The plan worked. Odysseus' plans always worked. By the middle of the third day the city was taken. I saw them bring the captives down to the beach, weeping as the city burned behind them.

A boy, Neoptolemus, had come in the night saying that he was the son of Achilles. Agamemnon had accepted this. There was some argument about Achilles' armour; no one seemed to know what had happened to it.

I saw dreadful things on the beaches.

I saw a very pretty captive youth arguing with a soldier, something about the precedence due to a prince. The soldier lost patience, a sword flashed and the youth lay with his entrails spilled into the dust.

It seems that he was Pariki, Alexandratos, Prince of Troy.

Then there was a discussion with a woman pale as wool, clutching a baby. They spoke to her and she wailed in heart-rending grief while the other captives tried to comfort her. She tore off her veil and threw sand on her hair; she writhed in agony. It was pitiful to watch her.

Then she kissed the baby, said, `Go to your father,' and gave it to the son of Achilles.

He went away with it. I later heard that he had thrown it over a cliff. It was Astyanax, the son of Hector.

After that a young man came, carrying an old man on his back. He was one of the captives and Agamemnon said to him, `What is your name, Trojan?'

`Aeneas, and this is my father Anchises.'

`Put me down, boy, and run,' wailed the crippled old man. `Burdened with me you can never escape.

Agamemnon grunted, then said, `Hear all men! This is an example of filial piety. Let Aeneas and his household pass; give them a ship.'

The young man came to the captives and took two women out of the herd; an old woman, and a child. They cried after the others as the young man Aeneas took them away toward the Trojan port. He did not run, but walked proudly. I hoped that he would survive.

The army was breaking into groups with their spoil. The wife of Hector and the Apollo Priest Eleni were allotted to Neoptelemus.

Hecube the queen, in ragged garments, her hair torn from its binding, was given to Odysseus who took her arm courteously, as if she was not been the defeated queen of a sacked city. She snarled at him, showing all her teeth, but he spoke soothingly to her and she suffered him to lead her away.

The other women were sent here and there across the encampments, pulled apart from their friends, not even given time to say goodbye. My heart was moved; I was close to tears.

Then I saw her, Cassandra the Princess. Her hair was stuck into bunches with ash, which the rain was rendering into mud and her cheeks were furrowed with parallel scratches. There was a golden snake around her neck. She looked like Hecate the Destroyer and she had evidently scared her escort half to death, for the Telamonian Aias instantly declined when he was offered the Princess Cassandra as a prize.

Finally Agamemnon ordered her into his own boat and she went with a grim smile. I packed my medicinal gear and a considerable treasure, which I had been given in gratitude by my patients. Wrapping them in a rolled cloak, I humped them to the shore, where I sat down on the bundle.

The wind changed just on dark. I found the little boat and hid inside, where Eumides hugged me. He said, `That is the king's ship. I can't afford to row; we'll have to rely on drift. Keep your eyes on the masthead. There is a little of the fire of gods in the air and it glows. There, see?'

All round were rocking ships, men talking and laughing. I heard the occasional splash as someone overbalanced under too much looted wine and fell in, to be hauled aboard again with laughter and curses.

I loathed them all, all of them. The tall city was burning still; the reek of smoke was in my face.