Cassandra (48 page)

 

I took the girl to Tithone's house, where I was living. Most of the maidens of Troy now lived with Perseis, along with some of the wives, since the watchers lived in the palace. Food was getting short, though we still had plenty of grain. I wondered when we would be able to sow a new crop.

The girl was shocked into rigidity. Polyxena and I had to pry her jaw open to spill the hysteria infusion in wine carefully down her throat. She clung so close to the rags of her chiton that we let her keep it, covering her with a new gown and washing underneath it. When I found the red thread bound round her waist I realised that someone had plundered the Temple of the Holy Maiden, the strictly virginal priestesses who love only women and are never in the society of men.

This poor one had been in the society of beasts and was maiden no longer.

She had bled and the torn veil had been rubbed by so many assaults that it was one large sore, weeping plasma. We applied styptics and soothing ointments, then treated the bruises of rape. In all that time she had not spoken or uttered one sound.

Nor did she, until the middle of the night, when the potion wore off enough for her to scream. She screamed for hours and we could not stop her. Occasionally there were names; once she said clearly, `Achilles!' but mostly a wordless, tormented wail ripped at her throat and horrified all who heard it.

Hector came down to the healer's house, sent by Andromache. He was armed and carrying his sword unsheathed.

`What is happening here?' he demanded.

Polyxena looked up as we were attempting to drip poppy syrup past the drawn-back lips.

`This is Achilles' work,' she said, my strange, doomed Polyxena. `That name again, the one I cannot forget.'

`What has happened to her?' asked Hector as the voice failed at last and the cry died to a whimper.

`Rape, multiple rape,' I said. `She was a virgin priestess and she was raped by half the Achaean army. Go away, Hector, there is nothing you can do here.'

He reached out to touch the injured woman's cheek and she winced away from his hand. She died about an hour later.

Hector stood quite still and said, `This cannot be borne,' and then he went away.

 

When the Achaeans came again to the beaches with the spring, Hector stood at the king's council and announced, `They must be attacked and the greater part of this army must be killed. I have a plan which will do this. It is risky but it may work. If it does not there are still the walls.'

He crouched to draw on the marble floor with a piece of charcoal.

`Here is the Achaean camp; they have built a wooden wall around their ships. Here are we, here is the Scamander, and the bay. Now, if we send half the army here,' he drew a circle around the plain in front of the Scamander Gate, `and the rest of us attack the ships here,' he drew a line towards the sea, `then we may take the ships and burn them.

`If we can do that, they will be stranded and they will all die. Achilles is still refusing to take part in the battle, but Achilles, more than any of them, must die.'

`Prince Hector, what of the prophecy?' sneered Pariki. `You will not outlive him more than three days.'

`So be it,' said Hector calmly. `Do you understand?' The captains nodded.

Penthesileia added, `If you put your cavalry and the chariots on the edges, they will have room to move; and us further out, as scouts and skirmishers.'

`Very well,' Hector said. `The Argives must raid the coast no longer. They are a plague, like locusts or flies, and they must die. We attack tomorrow. And Achilles, if he enters the battle, is mine.'

There were no dissenting voices. I made three copies of the map for the captains and then I spent an instructive watch explaining very carefully in Scythian that the guards must stay on the Scamander Gate and protect the walls, and that they could hunt for heads later.

 

Feet raced, hoofs were cleaned, gear was oiled, bronze was polished. I spent a day among the armourers, watching the balancing of chariot wheels, talking to the arrow-makers and consoling the guards who were to be left behind on the walls.

When the army went forth, I was with them. Hector had no Státhi to sit on his shoulder, but he still had a sister to protect his back.

We waited on the plain for the Argives to arm and stream forth in battle order. As soon as they had all left their camp and begun to run towards us, Hector's wing began to move slowly, sideways.

It was as before - the screaming and the dust, the clash of bronze weapons. I shot steadily as the enemy hunted my brother, and the horse laboured under our weight. Hector had reached the edge of the plain when a huge man challenged him, and he slid off our horse, leaving me to control the nervous beast.

Hector gripped his spear in the middle and used it to stab. It was a heavy spear but well balanced. It went into the armour at the belly and out the other side. Hector had to trip the body and put a foot on it to retrieve his pear. I do not know who he killed, but he stripped off the armour and flung it aside, as is our custom.

Then we were off again, fighting hard now that we came on the bulk of the Argives. I was deafened by the noise, my eyes running in the smoke of watchfires which we were trampling. We swept aside the defence and threw torches into the ships; several burst into flame. But the wall was defended and moreover it was wet and would not take flame.

Then the ant-warriors came.

They wear brown armour, and their helmet is round, so that with only a thin gorget at the neck, and the wide flat curves of the shoulder-pieces, they look like insects. Myrmidons they are, and they move like ants, heedless of loss.

Hector said, `Achilles,' and spurred straight for the leader.

That was a fierce fight. I fell off and watched it from a nearby rock, where I picked off Achaeans until all my arrows were gone.

Hector charged straight for Achilles in his decorated armour, calling on him to stand.

The champion stopped his chariot and leapt down.

Then they began to strike each other tirelessly. The first blow was aimed at Hector's throat, but he parried and slashed at the head. Achilles blocked the blow with a screech of blades and then made a long stab for Hector's groin, which he evaded.

Neither could tire out the other; they were equals as swordsmen. The Myrmidons waited, as did the Trojans of this single combat.

Hector and Achilles cut, slashed and parried. At last, with a lucky stroke, Hector backed and turned and with tremendous strength, cut through the gorget, and into his opponent's throat.

He cried aloud in triumph, `We are saved!' and undid the chinstrap.

Then he stared. Uncovered was a head of curling dark hair. He had killed Patroclus.

The Myrmidons advanced with a scream of rage but we fought back. The wooden walls would not take fire, and arrows came from behind them, including stone-tipped ones from a Scythian bow.

We fell back towards Troy; Hector's expedition had failed.

Night caught us outside the city, with foes behind and all around us. The skirmishing Amazons kept the enemy back, and Simöes gave us water. I tended such of the wounded as I could find. We lit no fires. All around us, I heard men breathing in the dark.

Then a great ululation went up from the beaches, a wail of terrible grief.

`Achilles has lost his only love,' said Hector.

 

Morning saw us fighting our way back to the city. Arrows showered around us, men quivered and died under the deadly hail. We heard a great commotion, and something clove through the press like a wild fire.

`Achilles,' whispered Hector. `Find another mount, sister. I must face him alone.' I slipped off the horse and caught a straying one by the bridle.

Then I saw something so singular that, instead of turning my mount and fleeing, I stayed stock still.

A man in gold-inlaid armour, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen, was kneeling, clutching the body of Penthesileia in his arms. The Amazon queen was quite dead, struck through the heart, bleeding her life away into the dust. But he was crying.

Achilles the Hero, Swift Runner, Grey-Eyed, Son of Zeus, not long to live, was weeping into the Amazon's pierced breast. I stood close enough to hear what he was murmuring to her as he took off her helmet and stroked her hair.

`Oh my brave one,' he said, tears pouring down his cheeks. `Oh my brave love.'

He rocked her as though she had been a child - Achilles Stone Heart, Man Slayer.

Then an ugly, bow-legged man laughed jeeringly, and Achilles laid the Amazon's body down, rose to his feet, and punched the man so hard that he must have been dead before he hit the ground. Someone in the Argive ranks yelled, `That was Thersites' last joke!'

Before I joined jesting Thersites in death, I raced my mount for Troy and rode in through the Scamander Gate. I mounted the steps to the tower, panting with fear, to see what Hector was doing.

There was a confused mess of struggling men all over the field. It was hard to see what was going on, but all of it was frightful. Several chariots were still duelling; smoke arose from the ships, but not nearly enough; and Achilles' path could be traced through the plain by the hacked corpses who fell in his wake.

`I think we're dead men,' said the Scythian next to me, and I agreed with him.

But we were not; at least, not that day. Most of the army got back in through the gates and they were shut. The Argives returned to their camp and only Achilles remained, alone, as soaked in blood as though he had been wading in it.

`Hector!' he yelled. `Hector, come out and fight!'

`Tomorrow,' Hector said gravely. `Tomorrow I will come.'

`Single combat,' called the grey-eyed one, and Hector replied, `Single combat.'

`Hector, no!' I cried, clutching at his arm. My brother simply smiled down on me.

`Oh, Hector,' I sighed, seeing that he knew everything I was going to say, agreed with my conclusions and was nevertheless going to do it. `Oh, Hector, everyone else has left me. Don't you leave me too.'

`I must,' he said, and went to talk to Andromache.

I do not know what was said in that conference but I heard no tears or screams. Hector came forth in the morning and Andromache kissed him and smiled; such a smile as is seen on the face of a poisoned corpse.

 

The gates of Troy were opened to allow Hector out to meet his fate.

Achilles was armoured all in bronze with gold inlay. I could not see his face for he wore a decorated helmet with the mask of a snarling face.

`Come on,' he said. `Meet your destiny.'

`It lies on the knees of the gods,' said Hector. `No man can evade his fate. If it is your fate to kill me, then I will die. If yours, then I will kill you.'

He cast his spear; Achilles dodged and it passed him.

The eye-twisting aura I could see around the fighters meant that the gods were with us. Brightness fell from the air. There was that goddess again, the glittering lady. She was with Achilles, Man Slayer; and not with Hector, who stood alone.

Achilles did not throw his spear but stabbed with it. Hector ducked and cut at Achilles with his sword.

We were lining the walls: Polites was next to me, and next to him Andromache, white as linen and chewing her knuckle.

Hector slashed, Achilles danced aside, thrust and parried. The Achaeans cheered.

Hector drove him back three paces with a furious attack.

Achilles replied with an equally ferocious advance and regained his ground. Always that goddess was with Achilles, shielding him with her body so that Hector's strokes went astray. Once the sword hit the very centre of Achilles' shield, but it rebounded.

I called on Hecate but there was no rustle of leathery wings. The gods were no longer listening to Cassandra God-Cursed.

The battle went on for almost a watch. I was faint with fear but dared not look away. As the drums were sounding for the change of guard, the gleaming goddess made a fist and threw something to one side. Hector took his eyes off his enemy for an eye blink and Achilles' spear took him in the neck, in the joint of the armour.

Andromache slid down the wall. I had seen enough of those wounds to know it was a fatal blow. And I had seen all this before, in my vision. I did not speak.

Hector stood for a moment, a puzzled expression on his face, then fell with a clang of armour.

`You killed him,' howled Achilles. `You killed the only thing I loved. You murdered Patroclus. Why does your death not satisfy me? Why is your blood not enough?'

Achilles yelled an order and someone brought forward his chariot...

`Oh no,' Polites breathed, `he can't-'

...as the hero slit Hector's heels like a rabbit's, threaded a rope through and tied it to the axle. Then he leapt in and flourished a whip over the horses.

The body of my beloved Hector, my dearest brother, bounced behind the chariot in the dust.

I was about to scream aloud when Hector said, in my ear, `Ah, so that's what it's like, being dead.'

`Yes,' I breathed. `Oh, Hector, how can you leave me?'

`He will die too,' he said with satisfaction.

Hector stood beside me, looking just as I had last seen him on these walls, but clean and unmarked and in his favourite pale yellow tunic. `Three days, Cassandra, and he will be dead and the city might be saved. But even if it is not, the pirate and man slayer, the rapist will be dead.'

`Yes, but so are you,' I felt my voice waver. `Hector, I will only be able to see you until your body is burned and then you will be gone; and I will never see you again and I can't bear it. I can't bear it!'

`Don't cry,' he tried to touch me but his hand went through my shoulder. `Cassandra, at least you can see me. Don't let them do anything rash about my body. If it pleases that madman to mistreat a husk of Hector, let him.

`There is no need for you to watch, however. Get them to take Andromache to her chamber. If she can't feel my presence then I fear that this will break her heart.'

`Hearts do not break,' I said bitterly. `They are only bent and mutilated.'