Cassandra (34 page)

Hesione. It seems that the Achaeans have the better of the bargain.'

Hector took two strides and was beside his brother, gagging him with one hand and whispering, `Say one more word, Pariki, and I will snap your neck.' Pariki paled. Hector released him and he backed away, his hand automatically smoothing his dishevelled hair.

`My masters bid me say that the war against Troy, which has occupied eight years, must be brought to a conclusion,' the herald continued. I raised my eyebrows at Polites. It was news to us that Achaea had been at war with us at all.

Of course, they raided our port occasionally and stole women and goods; and any ship which they captured was looted and the crew enslaved. They continually attacked our coasts and tried to disrupt our trade, and had been attempting to plot against us with our allies, Caria and Phrygia, and even with Thrace, but that did not constitute a war, did it? I realised that perhaps, in the Argive mind, it did. We had just assumed that the new king of Mycenae was short of gold and had employed more pirates than usual.

`What conclusion do the Atreidae intend?' asked Hector.

`We have fought bravely,' said the herald, `sacking many cities and villages in Caria and in Phrygia. Much gold and bronze and many slaves have come to the Atreidae as they sat in their magnificent cities.' He paused.

`Well, they are fortunate,' said Hector.

`Now they come to sack the city of Troy. Come out and fight, Hector. We await you in the plain.'

`And you can continue to await me,' said Hector coolly. `I will not come forth from Dardanus' city of Tros, built by Poseidon, to engage with a lawless host. Attack more undefended villages, I say to the Atreidae, since that is their piratical way; let them exercise their valour by enslaving children; let them go forth and murder more goatherds.'

`Heart of a doe,' taunted the herald. `Are the men of Troy castrated that they have no courage?'

`You have exceeded your office, Talthybius of the lying tongue,' yelled Polites. `Return to the Atreidae and tell them what our commander, Hector of the glittering helmet has said.'

`This conference is ended,' Hector said, and moved back from the wall.

`Will they attack?' I asked. Hector was staring at the army as the herald rode back to it. When he reached the Achaean commanders and gave his message, we heard a cry of rage and fury from many throats. I never heard a thousand men cry out at once. It was chilling. I tried not to shiver as I sat on the floor, eye-to-eye with Státhi, who was unconcerned.

`Yes, I think they will,' said Hector. `Is everyone out of the lower city?'

`No, Lord, there are some who would not come; I went at dawn to order them in, but they refused.' Polites was apologetic. `I had some of them carried inside. The gates are shut and guarded. It is surely too late to open them.'

`Then they will die,' said Hector. `Go and call to them over the Dardanian Gate; tell them to look out upon the plain. If they run for the city now, we can save them. Go with him, Cassandra. The people trust you.'

I ran after Polites to the Dardanian Gate and shrieked down to the hovels, `The Argives have come! The army is marching! Come inside, all who do not wish to be slaughtered!'

`Princess!' A startled man looked up. `Will they kill us?'

`Yes!' I screamed. It was easy to speak when I did not have to prophesy. `Thus it will be if you do not come inside now!'

The man paused, sighted along the plain, and then called, `Cassandra, our princess has prophesied! Come, to the gate, to the gate, wife, come now, mother!'

I do not know his name but he was a good leader. The word spread along the sprawling alleys, and people ran, carrying babies and bundles. We must have collected a hundred of the lower city's laggard citizens through the open gate before the Argive army struck the Scamander side and sweating soldiers slammed the portal and barred it with tree trunks.

Even then one young man beat upon it. Polites dropped a rope to him and he clung and began to climb. I saw his death before it came to him. Then an Argive spear pierced him and he shrieked and fell.

Polites dragged up the rope. `Archers!' he commanded and ten women stepped forward to the breast-high rampart. `Wait the signal.'

The noise of the army was deafening. Dust rose from their feet upon the earth, and their footsteps rang like drums. They bellowed, `Eleu, eleu, eleu, leu, leu,' as though they were hunting. Rough music for murder.

I heard screams in the lower city as the huts burst into flame; I saw women dragged out and raped in plain sight, slaughtered and eviscerated. They cut off one man's head and thrust it on a spear for the sake of his long hair.

One of our archers clutched her breast and groaned at the sight, `My son!' She was a brave woman. She did not speak again after her shocked cry but bent her bow as the order came, and the Trojan arrows sped like birds to find lodgings in Argive flesh.

`Seek for the joint of the armour,' instructed Psyche, Myrine's pupil. `Aim for the legs, the armpit, the neck. There,' she said as a yelling man fell dead, pierced through the eye, onto the body of the woman he was attempting to gut like a deer. `See? Take a deep breath, let it out slowly and release the arrow, do not pluck at the string like a harpist. One in ten of our arrows will find good lodging.'

I went to Scamander to find Hector. He was standing in the tower, supervising the archers.

`Hold,' he ordered. `They have fallen back. We must not waste the arrows. Good, archers of Troy, see how many have been felled by your skill!'

The Scamander Gate was piled with dead. I looked down on them without pity; indeed, I seemed to have no emotions, and that was a relief. The army had drawn back and were screaming insults at us. `Come out, Trojan cowards, women, dolls!' they cried. `Come out and fight like men.'

`Come out and die like fools,' growled Hector. `Here they come again. Archers, bend your bows. Wait for the signal.

`Cassandra, go down to the gate and tell them to be on guard. I do not think that the enemy can break it, but they must watch for any Argive who reaches it and tries to climb.'

I ran down the ladder and then the stairs. Fifty soldiers gathered on either side of the massive gate, listening to the screams of the dying outside. If any foe managed to climb he would be shot off the gate by the Scythians, who kept to their group, horn bows ready. Theirs were the only faces which were smiling. Scythians love war.

I myself was not enamoured. Dust was blurring the attack outside and I was glad because I felt no glow of satisfaction at watching anyone die. Neither did the archers, though they drew and loosed with cold efficiency. Hours had flown past. The Argives attacked, were driven off, attacked again. The mound of dead Achaeans under the gate grew. There was a pool of collected blood the size of a lake in the Place of Strangers' Gods. The drum sounded for the change of watch.

`Myrine would be proud of you,' Hector told his soldiers. `Stay where you are until the one behind can replace you. Go into the watchtower, warriors, and then down into the palace where Priam will give you wine and bread. Songs will be made of your skill.'

The men smiled wearily at that, but a baker said, flexing her tired arms, `I want no songs, Hector Prince of Troy, but peace and more peace for a thousand years.'

A few Achaean arrows skipped off the walls, slightly wounding one archer and killing a soldier in the tower. An unlucky boy. I found as I came to tend him that it was Sirianthis and he was dying. The arrow had pierced his neck and gone right through his chest. I lifted him in my arms and rested his head against my breast.

`Cassandra, it's all going dark,' he said with effort, and died.

I laid him down, but then found that the arrow had arched his body so that he could not lie flat, even in death. I took my knife and sawed through the shaft. The breath left him as I rolled him onto a stretcher to be carried away for burning.

Poor Siri, always clumsy, always unlucky. I noticed as I straightened his body that there was still a callous on the bone in the shoulder joint which I had mended so long ago.

In that moment I found out how much I could hate. A dark wave flooded through me. My senses sharpened, my hands began to tremble. Had I had the power of a god, I would have blasted the Achaean army off the face of the earth. I would have laughed while they were atomised, and danced on the pieces.

Towards dusk the remains of the Argive army began to retreat. We did not trust them. No soldier left the walls until they were almost out of sight. Night fell. The watches were maintained. We saw their little fires; they would have seen the torches at each tower.

Tithone sent for me at dawn the next day. I had slept, it appeared, though I did not remember doing so. I put on a working tunic and followed the runner to Tithone's house. She was sitting in the street with ten women almost her own age; all healers. One of them was an Egyptian in the characteristic squared headdress, and three women from the port.

`Cassandra, we must do something about the dead,' she said harshly. `When the sun rises they will begin to stink and the city will be infected with the miasma. There must be a way that Hector can arrange to drag them away from the walls, over the river and into the plain. Do you know anything of the customs of the Argives? How do they dispose of their dead?'

`They bury them,' I answered, ransacking my memory for sailor's tales. `They won't be able to do that here.'

`No, that plain is hard earth and solid stone one spade's breadth down.'

`Tithone, Mistress, come up on the walls,' I urged. `There are too many for us to bury or burn; it is a massacre outside Scamander Gate. The Argives must come for their own dead, though what they will do with them I do not know or care. Of our own; maybe thirty were murdered. We can burn that many. I will go and ask Hector, and then I will come with you.'

`No, Cassandra, my daughter, we will deal with them. You are too young, maiden, to carry the dead. That is the crone's task, Athrope's duty. I do not doubt your courage,' she added, `but this is the way of it; old women know death and cannot be sickened of life by any horror. We have clung to it this long; we are intimate with despair. You, my daughter, Healer Scribe have borne no child, and it is forbidden for you to do this. Ask your brother, Cassandra, what he means to do about the corpses. We will await you here.'

I found Hector in the palace, eating bread dipped in olive oil and drinking not wine but water. Andromache was with him. I did not have to touch her to know that she was pregnant, though possibly she did not know this yet. I could not speak of my message in the hearing of an expectant mother so I stroked Státhi and offered him a piece of dried fish. He considered it for a moment, then snatched it out of my grasp, missing my fingers with his sharp white teeth only because I pulled them back. I had fed Státhi before. He could not be tamed.

The Státhi cub, however, was still reposing in Andromache's bosom, being fed on goat's milk. It purred and suckled at her ear while she winced and giggled, and it did not scratch her once, proving that it was entirely domesticated. Andromache allowed me to hold it, a tiny thing with a cold black nose and blue eyes which fitted neatly into the palm of my hand and had a delightful, absurd, triangular tail.

`Is it female?' I asked, and Andromache nodded. `Státhi will be pleased,' I added. `Can I borrow Hector for a moment, sister?'

Hector came three paces with me and I explained about the dead. He frowned.

`We will have to wait and see what the Achaeans do today. We have beaten back their first assault with great loss; they will be surprised and shocked. If they attack again, anyone caught on the plain will be killed. It is too risky, Cassandra. Until I have some words from those pirates, tell Tithone to wait. If they have not come by tomorrow, I will send a herald to their camp, a Trojan less haughty than their Talthybius. Deiphobos, I think. Three days will not render the dead so offensive that they cannot be handled.'

As I walked back down the steep streets, I reflected that three days made stinking carrion out of any corpse, especially in summer. For an eye blink everyone I saw was dead. There was a woman with the marks of the strangler's hands on her throat; a man with a wound in the belly out of which his entrails bulged. The wine-seller walking ahead of me had an arrow in his back; a woman carrying a basket was drowned, her hair flowing like seaweed, her face swollen with water.

`Apollo,' I spoke aloud. `I defy you!' The corpses' gummy eyes turned on me and I flung myself aside into the cool, paved entrance of the temple of the Mother.

`Gaia,' I began the ritual prayer automatically. `Look down on your children. Mother,' I screamed, `I can't bear it!' and I fell flat and began to beat my head against the floor, babbling and crying. Acid burned in my breast.

Someone said, `Cassandra.'

The woman sitting in the shrine was draped in green garments. When I lifted my head I saw that they were living plants. The Earth Mother, ever nurturing, ever patient, the most tolerant of goddesses until she becomes angry, and then she is death, drought or flood or fire and famine on the plains.

`Daughter,' she said, `your sight is sharp. You would not have seen me before Apollo cursed you.'

`Mother,' I rose to my knees, `help me. Take this burden from me.'

`Cassandra,' her voice was a caress. `You must know and not speak and you must live. From this curse you have gained eyes brighter than any other's. You are strong. You will bear this and you will endure; just as I endure, as the earth endures. Stone is strong but can be cracked in fire; metal must be your heart, daughter. To see and know and not speak you must be as flexible as metal. Time will melt you and re-cast you and then you will be shining.'

`Mother, it's not fair, it's not just!'

`Justice?' she seemed amused, though I could not see her face under ther jasmine veil. `What have the gods to do with justice?'

`How shall I bear it?' I wailed. A hand stroked my cheek.

`You will bear it,' she said. `You have already begun.'