Cassandra

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘The blind man’s whispering in the Greek king’s ear again,’ said the man. Then an ‘Oh!’ and a shout went up at some unpopular statement by Menelaus.

  Then I felt I was far away, smelling the reek of fish, a lamb-fat tallow candle, sweat and sex. I guessed my mind had taken me down to the docks where, I knew, in some corner my brother Paris was with a girl, helping to pay her dowry. Why was he there?

  Then I was returned to the great hall. I saw the blond hairs, like tiny gold threads, on the huge muscular legs of Agamemnon. I caught the odour of the Greek queen’s musky scent. She stood behind her lord, clad in white linen. Her skirt was long. Only one tiny foot in a blue sandal trimmed with silver emerged from the folds. Blue beads were wound into the gold of her elaborately dressed hair. Her face was white marble and very still. Her red lips were slightly parted and her blue eyes moved with polite blankness from the face of my father to that of my mother. I was reminded of the faces of the women at our ceremonies, their minds wiped by drugs and chanting, of the beautiful madman who sat in a corner of the temple and thought he was an eagle. I felt sorry for her and did not know why. I saw Hector, standing behind my father’s chair, looking at her and knew that loyal husband as he was, at that moment he desired only Helen. And that would be why Paris was trying to find forgetfulness in a corner of a warehouse with a woman from the port. He dared not see Helen. She was irresistible.

  The sun became hotter. Slanting beams came through the windows striking the barely moving figures in their chairs. The voices of the leaders and their interpreters went on and on, droning the same points over and over. The close-packed crowd shifted and muttered. The smell of roasting meat came into the packed room.

  The afternoon seemed eternal. They told me my shrieks broke into the mumble of voices, shocking everyone. I imagined my own small figure in the elaborate, too-heavy costume, standing, head thrown back, pointing at my brother in the doorway. I cried out, ‘Take him away! Make him go! He’ll be our ruin!’

  The entire room, they say, fell silent. The Greek kings, though angered by the interruption, did not move. My mother’s head turned to me but she did not move either. My father half-rose from his chair. Adosha pushed through from somewhere, grasped me under the armpits and started to haul me through the crowd. Helenus was beside her, whispering to me, ‘Quiet, Cassandra. Quiet.’ And I was screaming, ‘Ruin! Ruin!’ while they pulled me through the room and past Paris in the doorway. But even as they dragged me through he was not looking at me. He was staring, transfixed, at the Greek queen, Helen. And she was looking back at him, that familiar half-smile on her face.

  My father resumed his seat once I had been removed. He covered the situation by saying that alas, I was suffering from a fever, and King Agamemnon nodded coldly and delivered conventional phrases of sympathy.

  Polyxena told me later, ‘It was horrible. The eyes of that blind priest of theirs found Paris where he stood by the door and even when the discussions started again he went on looking at him, just as if he could see.’

  Adosha, having dragged me up a flight of stairs and smacked my face hard on both sides to discourage any further visions, now leaned exhaustedly against the wall while I lay, sobbing with pain and fright, on the stone floor of the landing. Helenus had run after us. She turned on him. ‘Helenus,’ she said furiously. ‘How dare you run out of the room after your sister! Go back into the conference as if nothing had happened. Sit down in the same place quietly.’ He went off downstairs.

  I struggled to my feet and went to the arched window looking over the plain to the harbour, where the Greek ships bobbed lightly on the blue waves under a blue sky. ‘Don’t you see?’ I said to Adosha. ‘Don’t you see the land full of fighting men, my brothers dead, the city –’

  ‘Shut up!’ Adosha cried. ‘Shut up, you crazy little bitch!’ Her voice was cracking. ‘The queen will have me beaten for this. You, too, and not a moment too soon. I’ll laugh to see it. You should have been whipped from the moment of your birth, from when you could stand up. That would have cured you – why your mother didn’t order it I shall never know. She had too many duties; she was worn out when she had you. So – she handed both of you to me, let me try to rear you – I’d rather have had two apes given me, two Numidian tiger cubs to control than two mad infants with their eyes rolled up, twitching and starting, ranting from the moment you could speak, telling me things I never wanted to hear –’ She was sobbing now. ‘That my uncle would die in such pain, my sister would have three children at one time, three ugly boys –’ She wiped her eyes with her arm and raved on: ‘– both of you, forever cursing. Now this – I could throw myself from that window, smash myself on the rampart wall – what will she do to me, Hecuba, Hecate, the Goddess? What place have you here? You should be in the blood-pit,’ Adosha went on, unforgivably. ‘I wish I’d pushed you in – if the gods want you, let them have you, I say …’

  I leaned my head against the stone wall by the window. Adosha had never said such terrible things to me before. Now she told me what I knew, though only a child – that there was no real place, anywhere, for an individual like me, who was, in some ways, less than human – I was the same as the man who thought he was an eagle, as deformed as the boy in the fishmarket whose legs had never grown, who ran about bearing baskets of fish above his normal head on little stumps of legs. I said to the wall, bitterly, ‘You’re going to make up a bundle, Adosha, and run away and leave us before my mother catches you and beats you.’ (That much anyone could tell, without prophecy.) ‘Because of what I did, Helenus and I will lose you.’

  There was a silence. Then she said, ‘What else do you expect me to do, Cassandra? It’s your own fault –’

  ‘Go,’ I told her. ‘I’ll be alone then. They won’t let me be with Helenus much longer. They’ll take him.’

  I could feel already how lonely I would be. I turned then and added angrily, ‘Still, let me tell you – you’re carrying Hector’s child.’

  I think she had already guessed, but she denied it furiously.

  ‘Bring up Hector’s child,’ I ordered. ‘Go now and leave us. Perhaps the child will live. Perhaps.’

  I’d frightened her. She took off up the stairs at speed, calling behind her furiously, ‘What makes you think I’d let it live?’ She stopped on the next landing, calling down, ‘Why would I let it live? I could be unlucky. It could be like you. Who would want to give birth to anything like you or your brother!’

  I stood shivering on the landing, alone and frightened. I looked at the Greek ships in the harbour. A few minutes later Adosha passed me, running lightly downstairs with a bundle tied up in a good linen sheet and wearing my sheepskin coat. Passing, she said, ‘Come and see me when the fuss has died down.’ Then she ran on. She’d taken off her sandals for the sake of speed and silence. I went upstairs, lay down on the rug by the dying brazier in the scattered room and fell asleep.

  In the event there was no beating for anybody. My mother sent a messenger after Adosha when it was discovered she’d gone. The messenger, mounted on horseback, caught up with her walking the rutted road back to her parents’ farm. He presented her with a new dress from the queen and an assurance she could return safely. Adosha, nearly home by then, sent the man packing, rescued the bundle from where she had hidden it, with my coat, under a roadside hedge, and trudged on. My mother then sent her five silver coins, for her dowry, and a message of loyalty and gratitude – a sincerely meant gesture, no doubt, but Hecuba also knew that Adosha had three strong brothers whom it would be pointless to alienate when Troy might have need of them. She recognised, too, that there might be some basis for my hysterics about the Greeks – she was a priestess herself. Also, there are punishments for those who punish an oracle, or anyone connected with him or her, if the oracle speaks truly. She did not want to attract bad luck. So the queen dealt kindly with me and Adosha, and told the Greeks we had been beaten sorely, when we hadn’t. But she declared that hereafter Helenus must stay with the men,
and I with the women. She hoped, no doubt, if we were split up firmly and forever, the prophetic gift we both had would dwindle.

  Adosha did not return, though, but married a cousin who was pleased by the silver and just as pleased, I expect, by the birth of a strong son. Without my brother or Adosha I was lonely. No one noticed. Nor did they notice I was neglected and neglecting myself, becoming thinner and dirtier. The Greek kings and their retinue stayed for a month, as if determined to eat us out of house and home, and the work and expense took everyone’s attention, to the exclusion of anything else. They cost us a whole ox or five sheep a night, the kitchen was in turmoil, carts arrived daily with the remainder of the year’s wheat, oil and figs coming from further and further away because the farmers close at hand had already sold the last they had to the palace.

  ‘The old trick,’ my father muttered after three weeks. ‘The early spring visit, after your own planting’s over, when your own stock of cattle and wheat is running low. Then you go on a visit and live on your host’s exhausted stocks.’

  Since the women didn’t particularly want me among them, and an eleven-year-old girl can be almost invisible, I roamed about continually, like a ghost, in and out of kitchen and stable, taking long walks in the countryside, slipping unobserved in and out of rooms. One day I slipped unseen into the room where my parents and their advisers were sitting, and sat on the floor against a wall, my hands round my knees. Major conferences took place in the great hall, generally after a feast. Nobles, landowners, merchants came, and even the humblest people had some access to the deliberations. Next to the great hall was a smaller room, where the immediate household would gather. This was where my parents now were, with Anchises, my father’s old friend. His son, Aeneas, was married to my sister, Creusa.

  ‘We’ll visit them next year,’ promised Anchises.

  ‘We’ll visit without warning,’ said my mother.

  ‘And with soldiers, and without cordiality,’ my father said. ‘Just as they’ve visited us. Let’s pray Deiphobus returns soon from his trading journey. With any luck he’ll have some slaves, and swords and vessels we can present to our guests when they depart. Otherwise I’ll be unhappy when I open the treasure-house door to search for suitable gifts. And all the time,’ he said, with his hand on his temple, ‘I ask myself the reason for this unannounced visit.’

  ‘Low stocks at home, as you said,’ Anchises said.

  ‘They’re roaming the countryside,’ said my mother. ‘That’s why they brought horses. Why are they doing that? They’re spying out the land.’

  ‘They want their harbour dues halved,’ said my father, ‘on the grounds that the volume of trade they wish to do will justify the reduction. They offer us a similar concession at Tyrins and other ports they command, but they know, as we do, that the reduction gives them access to all our surrounding territories and turns them into competitors, whereas our trade with them has always been limited.’

  ‘They prefer war to trade in any case. It’s easier to take what you want, paying only with wounds,’ said my brother Hector, coming suddenly into the room, greeting my father and mother on one knee as was customary. His voice was bitter.

  ‘I dread them,’ said my mother. ‘Anywhere you bite that apple you find a maggot.’

  ‘Pray only Menelaus or his brother don’t discover what Paris and Menelaus’ wife are doing,’ said Hector. ‘If that happens, there’ll be bloodshed.’ There was a silence. ‘We must acknowledge what’s happening,’ Hector said bluntly. ‘For if they find out lives might be lost, when the fighting starts.’

  ‘How can they not know?’ exclaimed my mother. Our customs were less ferocious, perhaps because each year Trojan men accepted into their families children conceived by wives at the January festival. Hecuba sensed a resistance among the Greeks to this practice. Their customs, originally much like ours, were changing. A Greek husband might kill his wife and her lover and be seen as normal by his friends. ‘Hector is right,’ she said. ‘If they find out, the consequences will be dreadful, worse than we could ever imagine in such a case.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ my father said, ‘they may never suspect. Greek women have little influence, even Helen. So they are rarely looked at. As for Helen, while present she’s almost like the image of a goddess. Her beauty is so startling you scarcely notice the woman underneath. Who she really is, none of us knows. I think even Paris doesn’t know.’

  I knew Paris treated the Greek queen somewhat like a child, from whom he expected no equal response, but also as if she were magical. I suppose she was. At any rate, she had made Paris, the man, disappear. Now he barely existed, blind to anyone but Helen, only alive when in her presence, a shadow when out of it He thought of no one and nothing else. I had always loved Paris more than Hector for the reason that Hector usually ignored me. Now I felt reassured by his solid presence. He might have lusted after Helen, but I doubted if he would have lost himself to her as Paris had. I doubted even if he would have risked everything for her, as Paris was now doing.

  I had been asleep in the stable next to Okarno one night when Paris and Helen came into the yard. I was so miserable in my bed in the women’s room, I had taken to escaping to the stables, just to sleep in the hay to the sound of the pony’s noisy breathings and shiftings. There was a small hole at the bottom of Okarno’s stable wall where the mortar had gone and I could take away some of the stones from outside and scramble in. That time I heard Paris and Helen’s voices, then their entry into the empty stall next door. Paris must have been giving generous presents to Advenor to let them go past him so silently. Hearing noises, I woke and looked through a crack in the wooden partition. I watched Paris light a torch he had with him and put it into a metal ring on the wall. They were very bold to use a light, especially on a wooden stable wall, where lights were forbidden by Advenor, except at times when a horse was sick or foaling at night and someone would be there to prevent fire. Paris really must have paid Advenor well.

  As soon as the torch was lit the two figures came together in an embrace so close they seemed to be struggling to bond their flesh together, and as that happened, their arms moved gently and the clothes seemed to fall from their bodies, until they were naked. Paris was then really in Helen’s body, as they still stood, eyes fixed on each other, their hips moving rhythmically. They sank into the straw, and the two bodies, Paris’ dark one, Helen’s whiter than the body of any woman I had ever seen, were lost to me. I stopped watching. After that came the gasping breaths, the murmured words, sighs, Helen’s scream, beginning loudly, then muffled, Paris’ long groan, and the act of love was finished.

  All the while I was removing the two big stones from the back of the stable as quietly as possible, realising they were unlikely to hear me, and timing my exit through the hole in the wall for their moment of climax. After that, again as quickly as I could, I replaced the stones, knowing that this time they would hear me, but perhaps be too absorbed in each other to notice, or to care. At any rate, neither could afford to raise a hue and cry at that time, and to the best of my knowledge they didn’t bother about it, for they went on using the stables as a meeting place. You could, if you looked, see the faint glimmer of their torch from some of the palace windows on some nights. Anyone seeing the light would of course think someone was up at night with a horse.

  That night altered my feelings about my brother. It diminished him in my eyes. Some might say that was because I had been a little in love with him before – as most people were – and that seeing him with Helen made me turn against him out of jealousy. That might be true, but truer still was that, knowing he was creating such danger for himself, his family and for all of us, I could feel only bewilderment and, finally, a certain contempt. In retrospect I conclude Paris had every virtue but good judgement. For this lack of sense we all paid – although perhaps only a man of stone could have resisted Helen once she offered herself to him. As for Helen, she believed herself to be a goddess; her beauty and high birth combine
d to make people treat her as such. I don’t think she could conceive of anything bad ever happening to her. She was twenty-eight years old and for half her life she had been able, through men, to move the world. My parents and their advisers, my brothers and sisters might wince at the sight of Paris and Helen in the room together, dread some moment when Menelaus became suspicious, and within seconds the Greeks got their swords out and began to hack and chop our flesh, but the happy pair, drugged by love and strangers to misfortune, believed they were safe forever.

  It must have been only a few mornings later in the great hall that my father stood up, kicked the fire – it was a cold, late spring that year – knocked the heel of his hand against his brow and said, as if to himself, ‘Will they never go?’ It was one of those hasty conferences, occurring by accident, when people arrive arbitrarily and serious discussion begins.

  There was no way of asking honoured guests to leave. There was no way a host, without loss of reputation, could hint to a guest even the possibility of a departure. Now ten people in the room debated urgently what to do.

  ‘Pile up rich gifts in their ships,’ Hecuba said. ‘If they stay on, pile up even richer gifts in their ships. Their greed will triumph in the end.’

  My father was a frugal man but he sighed and nodded, adding, ‘But just a few more days, whilst we wait for Deiphobus and some gain.’

  Hector said, hiding fury, ‘Mother. Bribery will only work for a short while. Then they will return.’

  ‘This cannot wait,’ Hecuba said. ‘Paris is being reckless. Menelaus and his brother are not stupid men. There could be bloodshed at any moment. Even as we speak a servant may be betraying them – one of Helen’s maids, Paris’ men. Tomorrow I shall order the treasury doors to be opened and start making noisy arrangements for the presentation of jewellery, a bronze cauldron for cooking, ornamented buckles – Advenor will have to find me ten good horses to be loaded, and a dozen bales of woollen cloth,’ she said. ‘And the two Cimmerian women slaves from the slave houses.’ She was resolute, seeing the death of Paris and her other sons who would go to his defence, foreseeing the Greeks might burn the palace. ‘They’re looking for a reason to attack us,’ she said. ‘We have to get rid of them before they find it.’