Cassandra (22 page)

He made it sound noble, even heroic. I was enchanted by his voice. Glaucus my master was leaning on Arion and listening like a child. The bard was grinning in admiration.

The hall echoed with men repeating after him, `I swear that I will defend...'

Menelaus sat back in his seat and fanned himself with a fold of his robe. I noticed that Agamemnon had not moved. He was sitting on his throne with his great sword across his knees, like a statue of a god, as he had been while the mob raged at him.

Odysseus completed the oath. `Heroes and high-born men, tomorrow you ride home,' he said, `but tonight you feast!' and he drained a cup of wine and smashed it against the wall.

 

The next day the army rode, each to their several homes. It took them five hours to leave the city. Master Glaucus, Eumides and Arion were busy. Eumides returned to our room after noon. He had skinned both sets of knuckles and had a few extra bruises, but he appeared very happy, and swapped extremely indecent sea-songs with Arion as I dabbed comfrey lotion on his hands.

My master was in deep converse with an asclepid, a very old man with a profound knowledge of herbs. I found his halting speech and slow tongue tedious to listen to and wandered outside.

I could not even sit on the wall, because everyone in Mycenae seemed to be sweeping. Most of the populace had gone out to the fields, to see if anything could be saved of the harvest. The remaining slaves were bad tempered. They would not actually be rude to me because I was an asclepid, but they asked me to move my feet and then myself until finally I wandered right out of the city and sat down on a suitable rock to grieve.

It was time to leave Mycenae. I could not bear to be in the same place as Elene and never touch her. The Achaean women were seldom seen, anyway. They kept to their houses unless they were so poor that they had no slaves to send to market. Even then they hurried along the streets, muffled in veils and unspeaking.

I was summoned back from my sulking rock by a shout. `Come, Chryse!' called Eumides, `your master has work for you!'

I dawdled up the steep road, scuffing my sandals in the grey limestone gravel. I was still chewing my mouthful of mint when Master Glaucus cuffed my ear and bade me follow.

I followed. He seemed to be in a hurry. We puffed down the hill to the poorest streets and I heard moaning as I came.

Little stone houses lined the walls. They were no bigger than shepherd's huts and much dirtier, because all the sewage and rubbish of the acropolis flowed downhill. There seemed to be no gutters and the stench, even on a cold autumn day, was enough to make me choke.

Master Glaucus paused to kilt up his tunic and take off his boots and his healer's gown. I gave my sandals to Eumides, who had accompanied my master. He was looking decidedly green.

`Don't come any further, Trojan,' I said. `It can only get worse. Does Arion know where we are?'

`Yes,' said Eumides. `What is happening in that hell-pit?'

`I think we've got plague. If you stay here the master will be able to send messages, which would be very useful. Can you wait at the top of that stair?' I judged that it was out of the dangerous miasma. Healers are protected by Asclepius; we seldom get sick. I did not know if the god was going to protect me, since I did not believe in him, and I was sure that he would not help a Trojan who knew no real gods.

`I do not have to - you are not ordering me?' asked the ex-slave.

`No, of course not, don't be so sensitive! You may go or stay as you wish, but if you go send another to wait on us.'

I did not want to go down into that poisonous fog, but I was going to, and I did not want to delay any more in case I lost my courage altogether.

Eumides sat down on the wall, holding the robes in his arms.

The small houses were filled with dead and dying. Master Glaucus was ordering the stronger men to carry them all out into the flat place at the bottom of the stairs. The smell was enough to bleach an African chieftain and I hastily wrapped a length of bandage over my nose and mouth.

`Chryse, go that way and find out how many are sick, bid them all come out, especially the women, take no denial, call the wrath of the gods down on them if they argue. By Apollo Sun Bright himself, this is a dreadful place! Enter every house and mark where there are corpses. We must isolate them somewhere close but out of the city and have this den cleansed or Mycenae will be a graveyard within a week. Hurry, Asclepid!'

I picked my way down the filthy street of six houses. This was what Master Glaucus had not allowed me to see in Kokkinades.

The first house was empty. The second contained a dead woman clutching a dead child and a man in the last stages of fever. When I dragged him out, hands passed him down the alley and I drew the sign on the door, breathing the parting prayer to Thanatos, my protector. All in the third house were dead; a woman and three children. I marked the door with a chalk circle. The fourth house contained a recovering woman and her new-born. She was carried out, weeping about shame, since Achaean women who had given birth were strictly forbidden to leave their houses until ten days had passed and the proper cleansing had taken place. I told her that Asclepius would explain to Zeus. The fifth hovel also had no life inside. I was not sickened by the dead - they were gone. What remains is only a shell, a plaster image of someone once beloved. My master need not have kept me apart from them.

When I came to the sixth house I found three dead men and a girl, crouched in the corner, her face blank with shock. The men in this house had not died of the plague. Two had been poisoned and the one lying across the girl's legs had been stabbed. She still had the dagger in her hand.

I crouched next to the girl. She was very young, perhaps younger than me. I heaved aside the corpse and took the knife out of her fingers.

`I am Chryse the healer priest,' I said gently. `What is your name?'

`Elis,' she faltered. `They came to rape me. This is a street where whores live, but I am not one of them. They came to drink my mother's wine, for we have no protector. My mother-'

`Hush, we will find her.' I hoped that she was not the dark-haired woman in the filthy house. `Now, are you hurt?'

`No, they did not... they did not have time. I put it in the wine.'

`That was quick thinking. What did you put in the wine? ' I have often found that shocked people will recover better if they have to think about something else. The girl's eyes were dilated black and I was worried that she might have taken poison herself.

`Hecate's leaf,' she said mechanically. `The lord will exile me and the men of the city will rape me; then they will stone me and I will die!' Her voice rose to a wail. `Aie! Aie!' Her hands clenched and she began to beat her breast and tear her hair.

`Drink this and do not lament yet,' I urged. I could see what had happened. I could also see the bruises forming on her thighs and arms, and the swollen face. Such a small creature, did they need to beat her in order to rape her? If they had approached her with kind words and presents, they might have had what they wanted without any coercion. But here into this poor and dirty place, they had to come swaggering. They had pinned her like prey in their god-like power, and beat her when she dared to protest. Such heroes, to rob a poor maiden of her only possession. Such deservedly dead heroes.

I heard my master calling me and said to the men outside the door, `Carry these out, they are dead, and I will bring the maiden.' They dragged the bodies into the alley and then to the wall, where they threw them over for slaves to pile and burn later.

`You will be silent about this deed,' I said to Elis. `And I will be silent as well. You did rightly, daughter of Mycenae. If you survive this plague and wish for cleansing, go up into the city to the temple of Hera and there open your heart to the goddess. She is a woman and the guardian of families. She will forgive you. Go, there are other women who are dying. Go to them and help them.'

She went where I pushed her and I came to my master's side.

`The plague-struck must be carried out of the city, before this spreads. They must have clean air. Chryse, establish a camp uphill from Mycenae and see if the goatherds know where there is water. You know the treatment. Now, where is our Trojan friend? I must wash and then I must speak to Agamemnon, Lord of Men.'

Eumides the free man brought water and washed my master down, draped him in his healer's gown, and then said diffidently, `Can I help you, Chryse?'

`Yes, run and get all the poppy that we have, bring a jar of honey and a big cauldron and come to the camp. Poppy will stop this plague, if it is what my master thinks it is. Do you know where the nearest spring is?'

`Up there,' he pointed. `That's where the god Pan found his lady giving birth under a tree. They call it the Spring of the Nymph.'

`Is it pure water?'

`The goats like it.'

This was good news. I escorted the trail of sick people on hastily made litters out of the city. We plodded along, whimpering and groaning, until we came to the flat high grassy Spring of the Nymph and I tasted the water. It seemed clean and had a pleasant tang of snow.

`Lie down, cursed of Apollo,' I ordered. `You have been struck down by the god and some of you are dead but those still alive may remain alive. You must pray to Apollo the Archer, Sun God and to Asclepius, Master of Healing.'

The crying decreased until only the newborn wailed. She was affronted about being born at all into this disconcerting world. I took the girl-baby from the mother's arms. The woman seemed to have no fever, so I had her carried to the side and she lay down with a sigh of relief. She did not seem to be bleeding from the birth and as her eyes closed in sleep, she told me that the baby was two days old.

I considered the baby. She was beautiful. I rocked her gently until her screams died away to sobs. A tiny hand gripped my finger, all perfect and complete, with little nails like shells. She snuffled at me, burrowing her round hard head into my chest. Finding no suitable breast, she heaved a resigned sigh and went to sleep.

I sat nursing the child. The suppliants were praying, but I had no prayer to offer, and I could not do anything until Eumides arrived with the cauldron. I could see all the way to the sun. The sky was as blue as lapis lazuli and the rounded shoulders of the hills were green-grey with spinifex and goat-thorn. A gentle breeze wafted the smell of sickness away. The air was clean of men; there was nothing here that they had ever smirched with their dirty fingers.

Elis came to kneel beside me. She was still shocked and white, having found her mother's corpse under the wall, but she had recovered her courage, which must have been considerable.

`There are seven women who are very ill,' she whispered, `and your slave has come with the medicines, Healer.'

`He isn't a slave,' said Eumides. `He's a free man and this cauldron is heavy.'

`Elis, help him with building a fire. First the poppy, then we will need hot water to wash them in and some sort of cover. It will be cold tonight.'

`You make the fire and I'll go to the herdsmen,' offered Eumides. `They will have skins and they may have tents if we can pay them.'

`Tell them that Apollo will pay,' I said, meaning the temple.

I knew what my master was doing. He was announcing to Agamemnon that the god Apollo had cursed his city, the looted temple being evidence of the city's blasphemy and the plague being proof of the god's displeasure. I knew that the temple would be refurbished and new priests found, and that woven blankets and such food as was to be found in the city would be on the way up the hill, along with whoever else had caught this plague.

Apollo has several plagues at his disposal. One is this dreadful and sudden one, from which no one recovers if untreated. It is as though the insides turn to liquid, so that the victim dessicates fast - in a few days it can reduce a strong man to a skeleton whom his family cannot recognise. I believe that the Egyptians use some caustic purge to clean out a corpse before mummifying it; they call this fever after it, the sarcophagi disease. We call it purging fever. This is the worst of Apollo's arrows.

The second we call the ague. It arises out of swamps and mists. It gives fevers that either kill or return at times for the rest of the sufferer's life. It also makes corkscrews out of the bones and twists fingers into useless knots.

The third brings sneezing and coughing and a high but intermittent fever. Cities especially are prone to this plague in winter. It kills only the old, the sick and very young children, and there are various herbs which will mollify the heat of the fever. We call it the chill, or snow fever.

Apollo is not a god to be insulted lightly.

Elis and I made the fire and melted the honey and poppy. I had just administered a dose to the last patient when men came from the city bearing torches and blankets. They brought fifteen further sufferers who had to be bedded on the grass. It was getting dark when Eumides and his goatherds had erected tents and we had everyone tucked in for the night.

We sat by the fire - the goatherds, Eumides and me - to eat white cheese, flat bread and grapes. I took a swallow of hot milk and wine, a drink new to me, and listened as they began to tell stories of their patron, Pan the Ageless, Unborn, Forest Master, Lord of Goats, Titan, Oldest of the Gods.

`This spring,' said the oldest man, a bent grandfather with a face like carved wood, `is the Nymph's Spring. This was a dry land, this Argos, dry as a desert. Nothing grew here and no one lived here. A pregnant nymph and her husband who were travelling were attacked by bandits just over there,' he pointed to the road, beyond the ring of firelight, `and the husband was killed. The nymph ran until she fell under this tree. She prayed to the gods of this place, whoever they were, to save the child. Then she swooned, poor maid.

`When she woke she was bedded with goats, sheltered under their fleece and healed by their warm breath. Goat-God Pan, Lord of Woods and Darkness, had found her and sent his flock. Her babe was born and at her breast; they say she had slept for days. She accepted the god when he revealed himself later - who could refuse Pan, Goat-Foot, Satyr-Lord, the lecherous and joyful?