Electra (25 page)

He got easily to his feet and led us up a winding street to a stone palace, built into the mountain. It was perhaps an eighth of the size of Priam's palace, but the ground plan was the same.

There were guards at the door, two tall men in Trojan tunics and leather harness. They crossed spears as we approached.

'It's all right,' Ormene assured them. 'This is the Princess Cassandra returned.'

'Lady?' puzzled one of the guards. 'Don't you know me?' he pleaded. I did not until he tore off his helmet and I saw the face of my favourite bronzesmith's husband and dredged my memory for his name.

'I am Polithi,' he rescued me. 'Lady, it is indeed you! We thought you dead - the bards are singing you dead with the Achaean tyrant Agamemnon. I rejoice that it is not so!'

'Agamemnon is dead, miserably and messily, but I was not included in the sacrifice,' I replied.

He grinned all over his broad honest face. 'What do you here, Lady?'

'I came to find a place to dwell,' I said. 'Let me in to the lord and lady, Polithi. Is your wife well?'

'Strong as a giant, and pounding the anvil as always,' he replied. 'Let them pass,' he said to his fellow guard.

We came into a common hall and found the lord and lady of Troas together in front of a charcoal brazier. He was spinning and she was winding the wool onto a shuttle. They were young, well dressed, evidently used to working together, and I liked them immediately.

'Princess!' Scamandros exclaimed, dropping his spindle. 'Lady, this is the Princess Cassandra, strangely returned!'

The Phrygian woman rose and made a profound bow. I saw uncertainty on her face and hastened to dispel it.

'Lady, we seek no rule or lordship here,' I said rapidly. 'I am no princess now, but Cassandra the Trojan healer, and my companions are Eumides, the sailor, and Chryse Diomenes, the Asclepid.'

'You and your guests are welcome to all that is ours,' she said, and a little girl came forward at her signal carrying a platter on which was heaped bread and salt, the hospitality gift of a Trojan household.

We sat down to a feast in the palace that night. Word had spread that Cassandra had returned, and such as loved me had come to find me. Nyssa, my own nurse, leading a three-year-old toddler, clucked when she saw the lines on my face and the wind-burned darkness of my white skin, then dissolved into tears as she embraced me.

'Oh, my nurseling, my own darling. I mourned you as lost!' she sobbed. I held her close. She was old, I realised. Her hair was quite white, but her soft body cushioned me as it had so often in the past. 'Oh, my dearest daughter,' she mourned over my bent head, stroking my hair. 'I had thought that you were both gone, the golden twins, gone with your brothers to the fields of heaven. Now I find you alive, and well, and strong, and beautiful! What of Eleni?'

'I have lost him, Nyssa,' I whispered. 'I've lost him. The thread broke when Apollo released me. I don't even know if he lives.'

'Now, now, my darling, don't despair,' she chided, as though I was five years old. 'Eleni was the favoured one, the God's fortunate child. He'll be alive somewhere, I fancy. Now sit up and drink some wine with me, Cassandra - I am quite faint with joy - and introduce me to your companions. Noble folk, I am sure.'

Nyssa recognised Eumides as soon as she saw him, and pinched his unshaven cheek. 'Ah, I remember you, my sailor,' she chuckled. 'A great provider of sacrifice babies, you were. Many a maiden remembers her homage to the Mother fondly because of you, Eumides.'

But she was stiff with Chryse, though he smiled his rare and beautiful smile and held her hand. 'An Achaean, and one who was at the sack?' she said uneasily. 'Well, you know your own mind, Cassandra. You always have. Greetings, Lord,' she said, and Chryse's smile wavered.

'They say she is returned,' snapped a voice at the gate. 'Let me in, simpletons. It is undoubtedly some imposter, some yellow-headed Carian, and you are too foolish to know the difference.'

I sat up with a laugh rising in my throat. I knew that voice. And she was going to get such a surprise when she saw me.

Tithone, my teacher, pre-eminent healer of Troy, Atropiad, wise woman, stalked into the audience chamber, saw me, and stood stock still.

She was older. Her body had always been spare, and now it was thin as a rod. Her hair, as always, was dragged back under a closely pinned cloth. She had come straight from her workshop. She was still wearing her healer's tunic of sooty grey and an apron of coarse cloth, down the front of which some dark liquid had spilled. The scent of herbs preceded her as she walked towards the high table like a woman in a trance.

I rose and came to her. When I was only an arm's length away, she caught up my hand and turned it over, looking at my wrist. I had been clumsy with a pruning hook when I had been ten, and the scar was still there, barely visible now. Oddly enough Eleni, my twin, had fallen off a wall onto a ploughshare a week later, and given himself an identical wound.

'Oh, my dear acolyte,' she said, slowly, as if the words were forced from her. 'Cassandra, my healer, princess and priestess, so they lied. I should have known not to trust the word of an Achaean bard, however silver his tongue. How have you survived?'

'I had help,' I said, leading her to the high table to introduce my companions. She knew Eumides - as did everyone in Troy; and gave Chryse her hand and a long, considering look.

'Healer, eh?' she asked. 'Well, in a barbarous place like Achaea perhaps even men can be healers. Come and see me tomorrow healers, sailor. Now I must return. I left my burn ointment on the brazier-'

'And it must not boil,'I completed the sentence.

We ate roasted kid that night, and bread made in the Trojan manner, drank wine of Kriti sealed with the Goddess' seal and smelled the familiar perfumes of Troy. The five essences - myrrh, pine, jasmine, hyacinth and hawthorn - hung in the air as the lord and lady of Troas did us honour, and the young men sang of the sea and trading to be done north of the Hellespont, in Colchis where all fleeces are golden.

I slept surrounded by my own language, alone with Chryse. Eumides was renewing old friendships along the docks, doubtless sowing more namesakes amongst the waterfront women who remembered him kindly. Trojan women require skill in their lovers, and their services are not for sale.

'It's no good,' said Chryse as we lay down in a Trojan bed together. Our beds are higher than the Argive fashion, and strung with a net to support the mattress. They are very soft, but Chryse was restless.

'What isn't?' I asked, knowing what he was going to say.

'I can't stay here. I am an Achaean and an enemy.'

'Chryse, no, you are a healer, not a soldier.' I protested.

'That will make no difference. You saw how your nurse received me. She is a kind woman, but she flinched at the mention of the name of Argive. Troas might have accepted a male healer - once I had proved myself competent to that alarming old woman - but not an Achaean.'

He was right, but I would not give up yet.

'We will see what Tithone has to say.' I embraced him, and we slept, hair mingled, on the same pillow, as Eleni and I had done so long ago.

Tithone looked up from compounding a cough medicine and offered the spoon to me. I tasted. She then gave it to Chryse and he sipped.

'More colt's hoof,' I said.

'More foal's foot,' he agreed.

'So, you are a healer,' said Tithone tartly, adding a handful of leaves to the mixture. 'I have a word for you, daughter. A bitter word.'

'I know.' I sat down next to a bale of yellow flowers. I have never liked the scent of those daisies and they sickened me.

'You cannot stay,' she said.

'Because Chryse is an Achaean?'

'Partly. If he is a learned, serviceable man - and he seems to be - that might be overcome. But he's an Asclepid, is that not so?'

Chryse nodded.

'Then he is in the service of the God whom we do not name - he who cursed you, my Cassandra, and who destroyed the city. We did not bring him to Troas from the fall of Troy. We carried the Pallathi of the Mother and the cine-staff of Dionysos the Dancer, but we will not have the Sun-Bright in Troas. A cruel God, vengeful and false. Is that not so?'

'It is,' I agreed. Eumides, sipping at the hangover cure which Tithone had thrust into his hand when he arrived, commented, 'but he does not believe in the Gods.'

'The more fool he, then, to serve a non-existent deity who is so cruel to his adherents. It will not matter to the Nameless One, my son, or to the city, what you believe or do not believe.

'But sadly it is not just you, Asclepid. It is Cassandra.'

'Me?' I was disconcerted. 'Why? Is this not my home?'

'No,' said Tithone sadly. 'Not any more, daughter of Priam. There is a new ruling house, a new dynasty. You will be a focus for discontent however quietly you live.

'There are always murmurings in any city. When the fish are scarce, the shorefolk will say, "It was better while we lived in Troy under the sons of Priam." When a house falls or there is an accident in the mines, they will say, "Such things did not happen under the rule of Priam's children." And from there to, "There is a daughter of that house living in the city, let us rise up and place her on the throne," is a very short step and one which must not be risked. Do you see what I mean, healer?'

'Yes,' I did see. To Troas, I was still and always would be the Lady the Princess Cassandra, daughter of Priam.

'And also, Cassandra, my dearest, you are cursed of that same nameless God and the city might feel that you are attracting his unwanted attention. He has shown no sign of noticing that Troas exists. Not only might you be a reason for civil war, they may blame any mischance on your presence, as one who had brought the Unnamed's wrath with her. I will not see you stoned from Troas, daughter. You must leave.'

'Now?' I asked desolately.

She smiled and embraced me. 'In time. We have much to speak of, healers together; we may learn much from the combination of Argive and Trojan practice. And I am sure that there are some women in the city that Eumides has not yet met. Stay until next sailing season, daughter. There will be no trouble in Troas if they know that you are not settling here.'

I asked about the kitten. It appeared that an anonymous priest of Bashtet, the Cat-Goddess, had sent three beasts to Troas as a present. I wondered if it had been Dion of the kelp-brown hair. The cats were sandy, barred with black, not ash-coloured like Hector's Stathi. They were certainly more equable of temperament, which was perhaps fortunate. They matched Troas, for it was also a modest and moderate city.

We settled down to winter in Troas, daughter of Troy, to drink wine, go fishing, keep warm and talk herbs and treatments with Tithone.

She agreed with me that stonecrop should not be used on broken skin.

'It seems that your poor little puppets are without refuge,' said Demeter pityingly, looking down into the Pool of Mortal Lives. 'Where did you purpose they should go, Apollo?'

'I have no purpose for them,' replied the Sun-Bright. 'They may go where they wish.'

'But they can have no home, a cursed priestess and a stray Asclepid, one of your worship, I might point out,' she replied.

'My neglect is their blessing,' he said, testing the string of a bow. 'But, yes, there is one small thing. I will break the block,' he said, and snapped his fingers.

My mother was a wicked woman and I was going to kill her, but she did know how to conduct the business of a palace and she had taught me well. When I swapped my recipe for pomegranate jelly with Abantos for his lentil soup - he added vinegar to it, and oil, and it tasted like nectar - I remembered my mother instructing the cooks in the Mycenean kitchens on the making of the pale pink confection. When I settled quarrels between the slaves or mediated with Pylades on behalf of his workers, I used my mother's example and brought peace to my productive household. I interceded successfully with Pylades when Tauros took a piece out of our neighbour, Stenor, and tried not to laugh when Aulos declared that the poor beast would be poisoned with such unwholesome food.

My small establishment needed to be cared for. I ordered honey and wine from the traders, finding a market for my fine-spun wool and my well-made cloth. I folded my fine weaving into the same chest where my doll Pallas lay, my only remembrance of Mycenae. We grew our own grain and ground our own flour to make our bread. Every year the olives were harvested and pressed and the oil stored for the winter. Every year Pylades' flock increased, goats and sheep. We prospered, and Orestes grew in size and in martial skill. The pain settled down into a permanent ache, so that I almost got used to it, and the nightmares faded. Pylades was courteous and never gave me cause to fear him.

Only once had I heard a sound in the night and come down to find out if the house-slaves had left a shutter unsecured. There I found Pylades and my woman, the slave Alceste, lying coupled in front of the fire. He was entirely naked, stocky and tanned from working in the fields. I watched as he kissed down from her mouth to her breast and heard her gasp, saw her body yearn towards his. His hands smoothed her waist and buttocks, her legs wrapped around him. I saw his eyes glow, heard his voice deepen, the contours of his face change from familiar to unfamiliar, blooming with blood. I must have moved, for they stopped and turned. They saw me.

Pylades put the woman aside, very gently, and said to me, 'Lady, I am only a man.' I nodded and crept upstairs again.

The next morning, Alceste having been absent all night, I asked, 'Did he hurt you?'

She smiled at me, pulling her tunic up over her soft shoulder, and said, 'No, Lady. He is gentle and kind.'

'He did not force you?'

'No, Mistress, I was willing. He was skilled and loving. He has been a long time alone. Lady, are you angry? He said - my Lord said - that you would not marry him. I would not displease you, Mistress. If you say so, I will not go to him again.'

She knelt at my feet, bending her tumbled head. I could smell the scent of the flesh on her. I put her away from me, trying not to be rough, and replied, 'You shall lie with him as he pleases. It is nothing to me.'