Cassandra (25 page)

The sun shone like a metal shield in the sky. His mouth was sliding down my chest, the dirty tunic cast aside. I lay naked, encompassed in the scent of rue and sage bruised by our weight. I had been cold, now I burned. I felt my whole body spasm as he found the phallus, and when I reached a climax I felt that all my despair and pain had been sucked out of me. I clung to Eumides, overwhelmed with gratitude. Then I fell asleep as if I had been stunned by a percussive herb of the fourth power.

I woke to a feeling of immense safety. I was lying on his chest, his back against the sacred tree. He had watched over me for three hours, until the sun left his throne and it began to get cold. At some time he had gone down to the camp to fetch me water to wash in and a clean tunic. We were both still naked, wrapped in my healer's cloak, purple and gold, woven of the finest wool.

`Eumides,' I said, jerking awake and then relaxing into his warmth. `Eumides.'

`Chryse,' he murmured. `It is time to wake. I would love to lie with you all day and night but I can't. We'll freeze.'

`Yes. All right.' I struggled to my feet, feeling more alive than I had since coming to Mycenae of the golden walls. `Thank you, Trojan. That was a great gift.'

He took my hand and kissed me gently. `Love is the gift of a free man,' he said, and we washed and dressed and went down the hill to the patients.

No one else had died. No one else did die. The pyre burned itself out. I escorted the survivors back to the city. Master Glaucus told me not to enter Mycenae but to await him at the gate, under the lions. A crowd of women were there as we paced up the path, with offerings for the favoured of the gods who had survived Apollo's arrows. A tall, commanding woman in a gold chiton and crimson cloak caught and fixed me in my place. She had black hair tumbling to her waist, a smooth and olive-coloured complexion and an eye that could have opened seashells. Her daughters stood behind her; I could not see them well, but among them was Elene, hidden under a grey veil. The tall woman had a basket of bread and the daughters had wine and coins to distribute to the suppliants.

`Apollo's temple has been repainted,' observed Eumides. `They say that the altar is gilded, now. It must have cost Agamemnon several fortunes.'

`Who is that woman?' I asked, fascinated by the basilisk gaze which seemed to contain concentrated horror and despair. She lived with bitter hatred burning out her guts. I could not look away from her regard.

`Ah, that is the queen. Clytemnestra, she is called. Behind her is Iphigenia and Electra. They are beautiful, but more lovely is the girl under the veil who hides from men's eyes.'

`Yes,' I agreed, trying not to think of Elene. `I fear that queen dislikes me but her life cannot have made her trusting of men. Thank all the gods, here is the master.'

Master Glaucus walked out through the crowd, which parted to allow him passage. He counted the patients as they filed past him.

`You have done well,' he said to me gravely. `You are now a healer and shall be confirmed at the Temple of Asclepius. Now, leave your patients. We are going to Corinth.'

I saw that he held the reins of Pyla and Banthos. With them was a slave and two other horses, the big raw-boned grey which only Arion could ride and a smaller rather nervous gelding with the Mycenae double-axe brand.

`This is Agamemnon's reward for the Trojan Eumides' care of the sick,' he said, giving the rein into the ex-slave's grasp. `I have had all our belongings packed and we need only mount and ride. Straight to Corinth, I think; perhaps we shall see Argos later.

Come,' he added, as Arion paced down the gravel path in his singing robes, `let us go, if you will, Eumides.'

`With all my heart,' said the Trojan fervently.

I said farewell to Elis. With the reward she would be relatively rich and be able to choose a suitable husband. She dropped to the ground and kissed my feet. I was very embarrassed, but raised her, and Master Glaucus gave her a blessing.

Then the saved ones went back into the city, I turned my back on the most beautiful woman in the world and we rode down the path and into the road.

`How far to Corinth?' I called as we picked up speed. It was delightful to be riding again, free on the roads.

I saw that Eumides, riding beside me, was weeping and laughing. `Three years!' he said, coughing, with tears streaming down his face. `Three years in fetters and now I am free, astride a horse and on my way home! Thank all the gods!'

`Two days. We shall sleep the night at Klénia, or Hiliomodi if the weather turns cold,' said Arion. `Oh, by the way, Asclepid, I have a present for you. I'll give it to you when we stop at noon.'

I teased him about it, but he would tell me nothing, and a bard is not to be pressed too far, especially a bard in possession of a dangerous secret which would make such a good song.

 

The Argolid is a flattish, well-watered plain, very easy to ride upon. I swapped the goatherd's tale of Pan with Arion in exchange for the present.

`It is this,' he said, and produced a small package tied with a golden ribbon such as the Argive women wear in their hair. I shook out a veil made of the finest gauze. Burying my face in it, I breathed again the scent of Elene's skin.

`Fold it close and the scent will stay for about a week,' observed the bard. `She sent it to your master for you when she asked for more poppy syrup.'

`So you did not see her?' I asked, feverishly bundling the precious talisman together and tying it around my neck under the Cyclopes' token.

`No man will see her again if Menelaus can help it. They set out just behind us, Chryse; heading for Sparta, now that the army of suitors has sworn a peace and gone home. Now. That is enough. Have you heard the song I made of the Odyssean peace? I know you haven't because I have just this moment finished it.' He tuned his lyre, glared around to make sure that we were all listening and began to chant

 

Odysseus of Ithaca, he of the nimble wits,
Sly Odysseus, peace was in his hands,
Spoke thus to the Argives, the high-born captains
We shall have a league...

 

It was a good song - all his songs were good. I wondered that he had been able to make a peace almost as exciting as a war. He was a bard of immense skill.

 

I do not now remember what the village we slept in was called, but it was relatively clean and we refilled our water flasks from the spring. Arion sang a song about it as I drowsed on Eumides' shoulder.

Long ago, as the goatherds had said, this was a dry place. Here a nymph out hunting had shot at a satyr by mistake, and ran from his justifiable wrath straight into the arms of Poseidon Blue-Haired, Master of Horses, Earth Shaker. I would have thought she might have been better off with the satyr, Poseidon being the most powerful of gods and rather short tempered, but he lay with the nymph and was so pleased with her that as her morning gift he told her to shoot an arrow into a rock. When the arrow was pulled out a spring gushed forth.

Eumides mumbled something about the truly remarkable number of nymphs and gods astray on the one small plain. Arion called him a godless Trojan and I laughed sleepily. I lay that night in Eumides' arms. He was tender of me and my broken heart.

Corinth seemed small after the great palaces of Mycenae and Tiryns. We went first to the white stone temple of Apollo to offer a sacrifice - a lamb, out of deference to my memories of the goatherds - and to explain to the god how we had dealt with his plague in the city of the golden walls.

Master Glaucus pulled me forward and presented me to Apollo Sun-Bright. The pained eyes of the statue stared lifelessly into mine. `Here is Chryse the Healer, worthy of your son Asclepius' regard,' he said. `Accept him and protect him. He is fearless, tested and skilled.'

I waited, but no sign came.

We left the temple and wandered into the agora, where we bought grapes and figs and decided not to purchase fish, because we were going on to the port of Lechaion the next day to find a ship for Eumides. There the fish might be a little less way-worn.

`Now, I wonder who that is?' I heard my master mutter. `An important person, evidently, but certainly foreign.'

A tall young man was standing at the door of the temple of Poseidon, leaning against a pillar and surrounded by what was evidently a trading ship's crew. He had long golden hair which was confined by a golden fillet, a chiton of rusty red and the belt and harness of a warrior. He was very well made and handsome as he stood there in the agora of Corinth and he attracted many eyes.

Arion joined us with Eumides at his shoulder. They had been talking to shipmasters and had bargained for a passage on a Kriti ship bound up through the Pillars of Heracles into the Euxine sea, trading in honey and wine.

`The Kriti will skin you in a bargain,' Arion was saying, `but they keep it once it is made, unlike the Ionians, curse them for pirates. And I speak from experience, Trojan. That is how I got my name, trusting an Ionian. Now who is this superior youth? A prince, by his studied carelessness.'

`A prince indeed,' said Eumides. `A prince of my own city. That is Alexandratos, called Pariki, a son of Priam and a prince of Troy.'

`You have never told me about him,' I observed.

`There is not much to tell. When he was born there was a curse on him, so they call him city-destroyer. Priam would not have him killed but fostered him with a shepherd - that is an embroidered version of a shepherd's scrip at his immaculate waist. He was accepted back into the court a few years ago. Priam must have sent him trading to Achaea.'

`Do you want to speak to him?' asked my master. Eumides shook his head.

`Not I,' he said hastily. `He is not liked, and I do not want to attract any attention. Pariki never comes to harm himself, but those who accompany him have come to strange fates. I am glad that I am not in his crew.'

I took another look at the languid and beautiful young man with the grey eyes of the god-touched, and then followed Eumides to our tavern.

That night, the last night we were to spend together, I turned my head on our shared pillow and said, `Tell me about Troy.'

`It is a great city, built by Poseidon himself, though he is exiled due to a quarrel between him and Laomedon, the fifth king. It stands on a shallow bay, where the current carrying ships through the Pillars flows in. We levy a toll on such ships. They object to this. What do you want to know?'

`Tell me about the king.'

`I do not know Priam; he is a very old man. I knew Hector, his son; a hero, huge as a wall and a great warrior, though gentle enough to children and maids. His sister Cassandra is the most beautiful of the royal daughters, though Andromache runs her close.

`Cassandra and Eleni, the royal twins - I haven't thought of them in years, Chryse - both golden haired and grey eyed, they are identical except one is male and one is female. I used to lie in my hut among the fisherfolk and dream of lying with them both at once. That would be wonderful. They must be lovely now. They would be about thirteen or fourteen, I suppose - just the right age. Cassandra and Eleni are God-Possessed; they are prophets, both of them. They share the same mind and heart; they even finish each other's sentences. I remember that they poured a flask of black ink on that same Pariki's head, once. The city laughed for weeks.'

He reached for the wine and poured a cup and we shared it draught for draught.

`I do not want to leave you, Chryse,' he said unexpectedly, in the middle of a highly-spiced recitation of the royal twin's exposure of a scandal.

`You are more beautiful than Eleni, Priam's son, and you freed me and gave me back my life. I do not think I would have survived much longer in the kitchens of Mycenae.'

`That is why I freed you,' I said, returning his embrace. `You have discharged your debt, Eumides. You have nothing to repay. I think that I was pining to death of a broken heart.'

`Elene of Sparta was as fair as the morning,' he began to sing Arion's song under his breath. `She has possession of your heart, Chryse. Perhaps if she had not, I would not be taking ship on the tide from Lechaion for Troy with a hundred amphorae of Kriti honey. It will take you a long time before you can love again.'

`I will never love again,' I stated. He hugged me and slid a hand along my belly.

`Never is a long day, Asclepid,' he said.

 

The journey from Lechaion to Epidavros took us three months, for we stopped in every village on the way, to repair the temples and restore the oracle of Asclepius. Argos had an outbreak of a stubborn skin itch. When we repassed Mycenae the city was healthy and settling down for a long winter's sleep. We stayed there almost a month, ordering the building of some rudimentary drains and cleansing the lower city. There I saw Elis again. She had joined the Pythiae, the virgin priestesses of Apollo. She seemed happy. She told me that Hera had forgiven her.

I slept every night with my face in Elene's veil and thought that my heart would never truly heal.

 

Epidavros was peaceful in the spring sun as we came down the road to the gate. I breathed in the scent of cypress and hyacinth and resolved never to leave it again, for the world was far too painful. I never went with the others to the whores in the village. I was faithful to Elene, and to Eumides who had healed me.

One morning in spring I was applying a hot lychnis poultice to a traveller from the Argive lands. He wanted to talk, to take his mind off the pain of the hot wet cloth and the ulcer underneath. He had traded as far as Egypt and had there picked up an intestinal worm which eats its way out of the body through an ulcer in the leg. I had snared and wound the worm out over a stick; now I was cleansing the sore.

`Great clamour in Sparta,' he commented. `Are you sure that you got all of the worm?'

`Examine the body if you like. What is happening in Sparta?'

`The princess has been abducted.' He winced as I pressed on the poultice.

`What, Elene of Sparta?'

`Elene, yes, a stranger has taken her. One Pariki, prince of Troy.'