Cassandra (49 page)

`Cassandra, we'll meet again. I will come when you die; I'll be waiting for you.'

The city murmured about my hard heart, while I escorted the bearers of Andromache to her rooms, for I did not weep.

I could not weep when Hector was walking beside me. It seemed absurd.

Andromache slept at last. She could not see Hector but she believed me when I told her that he was there and relayed what he asked me to say.

Achilles had dragged the body of my brother into his own camp. There was a great wailing, and a bonfire showed them to be weeping for the dead.

I wept for my own dead, for my brother and for my lost comrades as I bandaged wounds and set bones, with Polyxena crying beside me for lost Hector.

 

Someone left the city the next night; I only knew because Polyxena woke me, tripping over my feet in the dark.

`We have brought Hector home,' she said.

`Who has?'

`My father and I went to bargain with Achilles.'

`What did it cost?'

`A cartload of gold and my maidenhood.' She fell asleep with her head on my pillow.

I had taken the maiden, whom I judged wounded to death, and given her into the care of the Lady Cassandra. That dusk, still shaken, I was walking past the boats when someone fluted a bird call to me. I knew that whistle. `Chryse!' And that voice.

I came to a small boat upturned on the beach and sitting under it was Eumides the ex-slave. I embraced him. He smelt of tar.

`Just repairing the
Far Seer
,' he indicated a little boat, which at a pinch might have carried six people. `She's mine.'

`A very pretty craft,' I said. `You should not be here, it is too dangerous.'

`Not for me, I speak excellent kitchen Achaean now and who is to know? Have you missed me, my golden one?' I kissed him and he whispered into my ear, `I am going back into Troy, to speak to the Lady Cassandra. Even if the city is lost, she must not be.'

`No,' I agreed. `She is beautiful. Besides she is a healer and the world is going to need healers.'

`A cool statement, Chryse, but I have seen the way you look at her. I will wait with
Far Seer
if she is taken. She likes you - will you come with us?'

`Where to?'

`Who cares?' he laughed. I laughed too, my spirits suddenly lightening. Anywhere, I thought, as long as it was away from Troy.

`All right,' I said, `but be careful, my sailor.'

 

That night, it appeared, there was a great council of war. I did not attend it. Arion told me that the captains decided to risk battle if it was offered. And, miraculously, it was. The Trojan army came forth and challenges were cried and trumpets rang out.

I went back to my hut to make infusions and tear bandages.

The battle raged all day, then all night. Wounded were conveyed back to me and they seemed excited, as though the war was about to conclude; as though the city had lost its walls. I could see the archers still on guard, and a mass of roiling cloud in the middle of the plain. Three ships were burning; the plain was carpeted with dead.

By noon the next day the Trojans had retreated and we were mourning Patroclus. Something like a whirlwind, of flashing bronze, had erupted out of Achilles' camp when the body was brought in. It sliced through the Trojan ranks with slaughter; I swear that his sword moved faster than sight, men fell slashed and bleeding without knowing where the blow had come from. And the Myrmidons hunted after him, killing the wounded and following in his swathe like gleaners after a mower.

Achilles stood at the gate and called Hector to fight; and Hector came, the next morning.

I did not see the combat. I only heard the shriek from the city when their champion fell. Then I heard a disbelieving moan from both armies as Achilles dragged the body around the walls of Troy at the heels of his chariot. He was mad. I had always thought so.

We were badly damaged and so were the Trojans; and the gates were shut again.

That night I was sitting with my three healers and Arion, so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open, when the old man started, got up, and taking me with him walked silently through the encampment to Achilles' tent.

No Myrmidon stopped us. Beside the tent stood a cart loaded with something that glittered and chinked. The horse was head down, grazing. Arion stood at the door of the tent and beckoned for me to come forward but I would not.

I heard voices within; an old man and a very young girl. `I will give you a wagon load of treasure if you will give me my son,' said the old voice.

`Why should I do that?' The hero sounded a thousand miles away. `He killed the only person I loved. Why should I ransom him?'

`For gold,' said the old man wearily.

There was a pause. `For gold and that girl,' Achilles said.

I heard a gasp, then the old man said, `She is too young, Lord, she is only twelve!'

`You, girl. If I surrender your brother Hector's body, will you give yourself to me?'

Perfectly self-assured, the child's voice said, `Yes, Lord.'

`Come then. Now.' There was a rustle and a creak of leather bed-straps. I heard no cry from the girl and no sound from the hero. Arion, who could see, widened his eyes.

`Where is the gold?' asked Achilles.

`Outside, Lord.'

Arion and I walked to the other side of the tent as three Myrmidons unpacked the wagon and carried the contents inside. Then they dragged out the piece of meat which had once been Hector, champion of Troy, and threw him into the cart.

The old man and the girl climbed up and the horse moved away towards the city.

Inside the tent I heard Achilles talking to Patroclus as though he was there. `Do you recall how we walked by the waterside, sweet prince, heart's delight?' he said piteously.

`How can you leave me, my golden one, my dearest, my love? I have lain in your arms all night a hundred times. Your breast was ever a pillow for my head. Through all my short life you have loved me and guided me; without you where shall I go? What shall I do? Oh, Patroclus, how could you leave me?'

`Well, what did you see?' I demanded, as Arion dragged me away.

`You do not want to know,' he rejoined.

This was not the case. `What?' I pulled at his sleeve. `Tell me, or you will have no more of that Kriti wine.'

Arion hesitated, then said reluctantly, `Achilles stripped off the girl's tunic, lay down on top of her, and kissed her.'

`Yes, and?'

`He took the end of a spear and pushed it inside her, just a little way. That's all.'

`You are joking. Did you know... Did I tell you about the poor maiden that he gave me as a gift?'

`That was the Myrmidons, not their captain, evidently.'

`Well, well.' I took the bard back to my hut and plied him with good wine, but he swore that was all he had seen. Eventually, I had to believe him.

 

The three things which presaged the fall of Troy were done; and Eleni Apollo Priest affirmed that it would fall within the month.

Odysseus, Eleni said, held the key and must be wooed. The king of Ithaca had taken offence, it seemed, and was sulking aboard his boat. Agamemnon had sent Briseis back to Achilles, swearing that she was untouched, but this had made no difference to the hero. He was still talking to dead Patroclus; and Odysseus was refusing to speak to anyone.

I went back to my wounded and listened to Arion composing a song about the fall of the heroes in the great battle of the ships.

 

Not Epeigeus of Bedeion to his fair home returned,
Nor Prothenor son of Arielycus,
Pomachus, Archesilaus, Stichius,
Palamedes drowned by his beaked ship,
The Boeotian Medon and Iasus of Athens,
Of Phylace Echius and Clonius,
Deiochus slain by Pariki the Abductor,
Patroclus, loved one of Achilles,
Slain in error by the Champion of Ilium,
Soul devouring death took them all,
Death fell before their eyes,
They chewed the dust of the plain.
Illustrious Lycophron, son of Mastor,
Periphetes of Mycenae killed by Hector...

 

The list of dead went on for ten minutes, until I begged him to either stop or to practise elsewhere.

Then he took umbrage too. There was a lot of offence being taken outside Troy that spring.

We laid Hector's damaged body on the pyre and wept, and as the flames mounted we danced before it. I thought of all he had been to me - brother and comforter and protector, always kind and gentle and reliable - and tore my face with my nails, poured the unsifted ashes over my head and wept until I was almost blind because his ghost, which had kept me company for days, was gone.

Irretrievably gone.

Andromache, white and silent, nursed her baby; Hecube danced and cried with us, as did soldiers and traders.

On Hector's breast I had put his inkpot and papyrus and his favourite stylus, his short sword and a spear, and a bracelet I had woven out of Státhi's fur. I was glad that the grey creature had not seen the death of Hector. He would have attacked Achilles and been killed as well.

Andromache's bridal veil covered the body. It flamed and we danced until we stumbled with fatigue and fell asleep in the ashes.

Before I slept, I thought of the last conversation I had had with my dead brother.

`Hector, do you know the future?'

`I don't know why everyone assumes that the dead know anything,' he had complained. `It is difficult being dead; the past and the future is all one; it is hard to explain, my sister.

`Fate has summoned me, Cassandra; but I do not think I will see you soon. Many others but not you. But I will be waiting, remember; I will come for you, dearest Cassandra.'

In my sleep I saw him again and held him close to me, but he kept looking over my shoulder, as though he was watching for someone.

When I woke, I went to find Polyxena and demanded to know what the murderer had done to her. She told me: a symbolic rape which had not even hurt.

Then the vision came; she would die of a cut throat. A clean cut, made with a sword or a very sharp knife. I glared the vision into blinking out. Polyxena had always carried doom with her, my small and solemn sister.

`I can't get his face out of my mind,' she repeated. `I hate him but I can't forget him.'

`You will meet him again,' I told her grimly. `Send a message to the Argive camp, say that you will wait for him at the oak tree outside the Scaean Gate.'

`What do you mean to do?'

`Cure you,' I said.

She sent the message by one of the traders who went down to the Argives, selling wine and barley meal. At the first night watch the hero would meet her by the tree. I smiled and left Polyxena counting bandages.

I had something to do in the temple of the Mother.

That day we heard that Achilles had sacrificed twelve Trojan prisoners on the pyre of his only friend. We could see the burning as I climbed down with my little sister from the Scaean Gate.

I scaled the tree, Polyxena stood beside it, quivering with tension. Finally he came; a slim young man with long golden hair, not much taller than me. He took her hand and said, `Maiden, what do you want of me?'

`Your love,' said Polyxena with what sounded like perfect truth.

Achilles laughed bitterly. `I have no love to waste on women,' he said. `My body you can have; it has not long to live anyway.'

She accepted him into her arms and they lay down.

I shot my little bolt, a bird bolt no longer than my hand, and it struck him in the heel.

He twitched and sprang away from her; his reflexes were amazingly quick. When he saw me in the tree, a scarecrow woman with cinder hair and red eyes, the great hero cried, `Aleko!' by which he meant I was one of the Furies.

Then Achilles fell bonelessly into Polyxena's embrace. There she held him to her unformed breast and there he died about an hour later.

Just before the venom of the green viper robbed him of speech, he smiled beautifully, so that his whole face was transformed, and said, `Patroclus!'

He tried to stretch out his hand but he had no control over the muscles. His head dropped, his heart laboured, and then he breathed a long sigh, relaxing him into death.

Polyxena rolled him over and laid him out neatly, with his arms by his side. He was beautiful; his face still unlined, his jaw never shaved.

My sister took her small knife and cut a strand of his long hair and wound it around her throat.

Then my eyes fogged and cleared. A gleaming woman, sea-green and sea-blue wrapped the dead Achilles in her hair and dropped tears like pearls into his smooth brow. Thetis had come for her son.

I did not mention her to Polyxena, as we climbed the ladder in the dark. Nor did my sister speak of the hero again.

When it was known in the city that Achilles Man Slayer was dead, my brother Pariki modestly informed the council that he had shot him from the Scaean wall with an Amazon bow. Polyxena said nothing.

I did not wish our part in Achilles' death to be revealed, so I allowed my brother, the city destroyer, to enjoy his fraudulent glory.

They found Achilles dead that evening with a little puncture wound in his heel. The pyre of Patroclus, so loaded with wine and dead horses and shamefully-murdered Trojan boys that it was almost unburnable, was re-lit for the hero.

I had never been so glad to see someone dead.

Agamemnon ordered the funeral to be impressive but not too expensive, and Arion sang a remarkably-restrained ode for the hero, omitting mention of his having girls raped to death. The remaining troops feasted and drank themselves insensible.

Odysseus, as though he had been waiting for this moment, decided that a load of treasure would assuage his injured pride. He came to the kings one night, when all of the carrion on the plain had been burned and the smoke had almost dissipated.

`We must dig a firepit and forge a bronze horse, a beautiful offering to the god Apollo, who is master of horses,' he said.

In this he was inaccurate, as Poseidon is the master of horses, but I did not mention this.