Cassandra

by Hilary Bailey

  I was still awe-stricken. This was Helen, who had betrayed her husband for my handsome brother Paris and become, if not the only cause, at least one of the causes of his and all our deaths. Then she had been taken back, how or why none could tell, by her abused husband. Trying to conceal my feelings, I said, ‘Will you allow me to speak to my servant for a moment, to give instructions?’ I moved over to Naomi and told her to prepare beds in the big building beside the farm, where my sons had slept when the house became too small for them, to light the fire in the yard, get bread baked, fetch a fresh jar of the summer wine.

  In an undertone, as if asking about all this, Naomi hissed, ‘We are in danger now. Shall I prepare for a journey?’

  ‘No – or not yet,’ I told her.

  Then Naomi left. ‘Gifts for you,’ Helen said and her men came in bearing bundles. I sat down as they opened them, undoing the coverings to reveal a rug made of the skin of a brown and shaggy animal I had never seen before. Wrapped inside were a pair of painted vases. There was a woollen cloak in red, blue and green stripes, the dyes more vivid than anything I had seen for many a year, a bronze urn, finely worked with a picture of warriors on it, a bale of finely-woven wool, light as feathers. This booty lay, bright and sumptuous, on my wooden floor, the gleaming pot on the great skin rug, the cloak nearby. They were royal presents. There would be no way to return such gifts – they represented a life-time’s farmwork, dawn to dusk in summer heat and winter cold.

  I said, ‘You are truly generous.’ I poured her more wine, taking some myself. From the yard I heard the sounds of wood being hauled in, the clatter of grids and pots being set in place. Naomi set up the spit in the fireplace, speared the birds and hare on it. Their blood spattered into the fire. She glanced sideways at me, asking silently if I knew the reason for this visit. I signalled I did not know why the woman had come, without warning, at the beginning of winter. She wanted something, of course.

  ‘I hope your journey wasn’t hard,’ I said, ‘or dangerous.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have cared to venture much further east into these mountains,’ she replied.

  ‘With such costly and beautiful gifts, it might be dangerous,’ I agreed and then, because I had to ask, ‘I trust your husband is well.’

  ‘He grows older, as we all do,’ she said.

  I had an immediate image of a vast red-headed man, fattening, discontented, uneasy, surrounded by men who might have been glad to seize the throne. Together, he and his brother had decided to be great kings, commanding a mighty empire. Now Agamemnon was dead, his weak son reigning in Mycenae. Menelaus, with no son to follow him, was ageing. His wife now sat in my remote farmhouse, face painted, thinking – what? I didn’t know, except that it was nothing good. At all events, it was a miserable story. Of Menelaus’ and Helen’s only child Hermione I did not enquire.

  The gifts still lay on the floor. It was growing dark in the room. Perhaps Helen had been told by an oracle where I was, even urged to visit me. It came to me suddenly that she wanted her fortune told. It was incredible that this woman, who had done me and mine nothing but harm, would come to me like a village woman in a market-place finding a fortune-teller – but she had. I was sure of it. My mouth tasted of iron.

  I tried to keep wonderment from my eyes, as we sat opposite each other. Politeness demanded that we should eat before raising the issues between us. But her presence was unbearable to me. It threatened me. I did not want her there.

  ‘Time and fate have played tricks with both of us,’ she said finally. ‘You told me true when you came to me as a girl, screaming that I should go away. If I’d done as you ordered—’

  I interrupted her. ‘As you well know, that could not have happened. I was fated to be disbelieved.’

  ‘I wanted to know – is it still true?’

  ‘That I’m disbelieved?’ I asked her. ‘Is that why you tracked me down?’

  ‘I wished to see you,’ she replied. Royal dignity is like an invisible shield, hard to penetrate. For a moment I accepted her courteous remark, then the old farmer’s wife, accustomed to bargains, children’s and servants’ evasions, took over and I broke with politeness. I asked her, ‘Why? Did you want your fortune told?’

  My bluntness shook her, though she tried to conceal it. She reproved me, ‘Your circumstances have made you uncivilised.’

  ‘That’s so,’ I said. ‘Therefore I should like to know why you’ve made this hard journey to visit me. And how you found me. Let me be honest – I don’t seek out my memories. There’s much I prefer to forget. It may be said that by forgetting I fail in my duty to my family, I allow my parents to go unremembered, my brothers and sisters unrecalled, but remember, I’m believed to be dead, or was, so let it be as if I were.’

  ‘You’ve failed in your rites towards your kin, certainly,’ she told me.

  ‘My kin were mostly buried in the ruins of Troy,’ I pointed out. ‘I had no means of finding them – and, remember, our beliefs were not yours. I’m confident they wait to greet us all in the fields and groves of Hecate.’

  She flinched, imagining, I expect, her meeting with my dead kinfolk as a series of oaths and reproaches, my mother cursing her, my father’s terrible gaze, my dead brothers and sisters clustering round, squeaking and gibbering. Our beliefs were different and mine were the more merciful. The violent and greedy have their violent greedy gods – those who try to conquer and enslave others can only conceive of an afterlife on those terms. No wonder Helen feared the vengeance of the dead.

  But she hadn’t answered my question. She was still a royal personage, accustomed to the formulas, but I no longer was. I was a farmer and only used to farmers’ ways now. I asked her again bluntly, ‘Why are you here? How?’

  ‘I have visited Helenus,’ she said. ‘He told me you were alive and where you were.’

  ‘Helenus,’ I said. How sad I felt. She had been free to see him. She was fortunate. I did not dare see my brother though he lived only two days’ journey away. ‘How did you find him? And his wife?’ I asked. ‘Did they welcome you?’ I could not imagine how they would have greeted her.

  ‘They treated me well,’ she said.

  ‘How could they have?’ I demanded.

  ‘I think they pitied me,’ she said simply. ‘Especially Helenus’ wife.’

  ‘I wonder why – you seem – fortunate,’ I said, gesturing at her, at the gifts on the floor. ‘She’s very kind if she imagines your lot to have been worse than hers, a blameless girl who saw her first husband killed, then her own child, and nearly all her kin, then was passed from hand to hand like an old cloak. Why should she pity you? Am I to pity you then? Are we all? Why should that be?’

  ‘She pitied me as a woman,’ Helen said. ‘At least your brother and Andromache are safe, protected by Achilles’ kin.’

  I heard the screaming of a boar as it broke from the hands of huntsmen, ran round and round a glade spurting blood in all directions, bellowing, squealing. I saw Helen’s nephew, now Mycenae’s king, running through my yard half-naked, in darkness, screaming, mad with fear – and I laughed. I might have thought Helen, by revealing where I was, could destroy me and what I held dear, but I knew in my heart that whatever she did, or did not know, she could never harm me now. And if I thought she could, or would harm me, I think I’d still have laughed.

  She was startled and tried to speak. I interrupted. I taunted her, ‘What do you want, lady? I know what you want. You want forgiveness, but are too proud to ask for it. But more, like any servant on market day, you want your fortune told. You’ll get neither here – and as for the fortune-telling, my gift has flown. Was that why you visited Helenus? Your own oracles did not convince you? You needed a man whose visions had been right in the past. He told you as a boy you’d bring ruin on all of us – as you did. You know now he was right You were Troy’s ruin. You know him now for a true oracle. He called you a destroyer and you were. So, you must have thought, let him again foretell my future. Perhaps, you thought, i
t might be better this time. Perhaps he will be kinder. This is what you thought. Well – did he give you the prediction you desired? Perhaps. He was always kind. And his wife forgave you – she was kind, too, always. But you weren’t satisfied. Perhaps you came here for confirmation of his prophecies. Or perhaps he would not help you. You came to find me.’

  ‘You are very bitter,’ she said.

  ‘Like a snake, I lead my quiet life, harming no one until I’m disturbed. You tread on me and I bite you. I tell you, my gifts are gone.’

  I had been rude enough to make anyone other than a slave declare they would leave the house. But the Queen of Sparta did not move or show any rage. She said, ‘Surely not.’

  ‘I tell you, my gifts are gone.’

  After a pause she said, ‘Helenus told me otherwise.’

  I stood up. I said, ‘Lady. I have not seen my brother for many years. I cannot visit him as you can. He cannot visit me for fear of betraying me to others. Now you dare to come here. You tell me what he says of me. He does not know. Expect no kindness here.’

  There was a silence. The logs spat. There was a shout from the kitchen. Naomi came in to turn the spit She saw my face and did not speak to me, did what she had to, shot a glance at Helen and left.

  Helen leaned forward: ‘What do you see – what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I told her. ‘If he spoke, he was mistaken. We’re both older. My gift has gone. So, perhaps, has his own.’

  She leaned forward angrily. ‘I don’t believe you. Remember, I can betray you. I can have you captured and taken away.’

  ‘Being captured by King Menelaus is an old story – if he will do what you ask,’ I said unkindly. Instinct told me half her trouble – her roaming in search of forgiveness, oracles, the rest, however queenly she was, came down to the old story of an ageing woman whose husband may be asking her to leave his home. Or worse. As I thought, I saw in a half-vision that dreadful king in a great hall, lit by flares, heard the wild music of flute and drum players, saw naked men and women and boys, mad on wine, or the concoctions of herbs and mushrooms made by women to drive men into battle, or love. I saw mad and terrible deeds. The face of that evil man, Menelaus, came close to me, his eyes clouded with insanity, and I shut my own eyes, to blot him out. But I could still hear the drums and pipes. Naomi came in with bread and put it on the table. She ladled lentils into a wooden bowl. She returned to the fire to turn the spit I gestured towards the table, saying, country-style, ‘Will we eat?’ I did not apologise for the plain food. She rose and sat down.

  I and this painted queen ate, though neither of us can have had any appetite. We were chained together by a terrible past As we sat opposite each other, even Helen, a woman without guilt, must have remembered something, and I remembered too much.

  Seven

  Troy

  After the Greeks sailed away from Troy that spring with our gifts on their decks, and the last of our winter corn in their bellies, our own lives resumed their normal course. Those last years of peace were good – the rain was plentiful in spring, the summer was hot and there were no storms. Harvests were abundant. There were no diseases other than the usual among men and beasts and the harbour was busy with many ships. It was almost as if our visitors had never been. Even so, every autumn when the declining sun lay over the rooftops of the palace at the top of the hill which was Troy, gilding the walls and our two great towers, my mother would order some work to be carried out – the walls to be repaired and thickened at their weak points, more storage jars placed in the storehouses beneath the palace. These things indicated she did not believe the Greeks would be quiet forever.

  Helenus, now in the men’s house, was often not available. The men and boys there, in addition to their normal duties running the harbour, tending horses and other beasts, fishing and hunting at the right seasons, were working harder at their arms practice. After the Greeks left that spring my brother Deiphobus rode the six hundred miles north to Hattusas with messages of loyalty, which were returned, unequivocally, in letters they brought back before winter, along with many gifts of furs, and silver cups. I knew Suppiluliumas would ask for me to be a wife and that my mother would say I was too young. This also happened, and meanwhile we hoped for peace and prepared for war, as people do.

  Now I was nearing fifteen. I could have married; it might have profited Troy to have had me at the Great King’s court, as it turned out, but I knew my parents would refuse the offer. My mother was afraid of offending him by sending him a girl who was better suited to be a priestess, who might have a seizure at the wrong moment, give out accursed prophecies, become his enemy and suffer the fate of anyone who upsets a great king.

  The harvest in, normal autumn ceremonies took place on a bright day. Before dawn the traders around the city gates were up and frying fish, baking bread, waggons of food were coming in, shouts and cries reached the palace. Before midday there were thick crowds down below, people in country clothes wandering, staring, up and down the road from the bottom of the town to the top. My mother was absent, fasting, preparing herself for her priestly function, which gave the palace a holiday air – corners were not swept; the cooks in the kitchen fought, as cooks always will, but without interference.

  Helenus found me, as he often did, hiding in the stables. Old Okarno had been spared for another year, and it was only in the stable, with Advenor and a strong assistant at the gates with clubs, to hold off trespassers and thieves, that there was any peace. He slid down in the straw beside me and said, ‘They’ll find you here, in the end. But I know where we can both hide. Inside the temple, inside the shrine, where the black stone is, there’s what’s left of a tunnel. It’s by the back wall, caved in, but it once led out of the city, I believe. I don’t suppose people will remember it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘An old man showed me. It’s very dark,’ he warned me. ‘I only went in a little way.’

  My fear was that my mother would be guided to find me and take me with her to the ceremonies that night as a priestess. If this happened, while I was still so young, it would be tantamount to declaring I was the new oracle, who would then take over when the old one died, or lost her powers. I would have to stay in that cave on the hill with my visions for as long as I lived. So I ran, with Helenus, and got some rugs and some bread, and we went to the tunnel.

  I was at fault, of course. If my mother was guided to take me to the ceremonies, I had no right to refuse. If the goddess wanted me for herself and the people of Troy, I could not deny her. But being young I was prepared to try to deny my fate. I wished to marry, see other people, other places, be a queen at the court of a great king. Sometimes even an animal will not act according to what we think of as its nature. Such as a mare who will only mate with one horse, or a lamb which attaches itself to a person, not its fellow sheep. I thought I might be defying the wishes of the goddess; I knew I was defying the strength of my own, and Helenus’ visions. But I was young – young enough to believe, a little, I could alter my own fate.

  We went to the temple which lay just inside the city gates and crept unobtrusively past the priestess at the main shrine, where the great white statue of the goddess carved in marble loomed over the big court. Beyond it lay the sanctum. Inside, there was a smaller altar than the one in the main temple, and at the back a row of statues, very old, and a huge black stone on a pedestal, some ancient god, deeply sacred, almost forgotten. Helenus squeezed behind this pedestal. On the floor, masked by pedestal and sacred stone, was an entrance about four feet high, leading into nothingness. He slipped into it I followed down five broken steps. We huddled down there; the tunnel, which was stone-clad, was large enough for a loaded donkey to pass through. We had a little rush lamp with us and saw that for a length of about two hundred yards the tunnel was intact, but at some point, roughly where it met the city wall, there had been a cave-in. A vast pile of earth and slabs of stone blocked it almost completely.

  It was cold, and there was nothing to
do but sit on a rug on the stone floor with other rugs wrapped round us, reciting the old poems to each other. And later, when the light went out, we had no idea of what time it was. We ate some bread and fell into a doze. I said to Helenus, ‘You don’t need to stay.’

  ‘You couldn’t remain on your own,’ he told me. ‘You know that.’

  ‘But we don’t know how long to stay down here,’ I said. ‘It could be night by now. Or dawn next day.’

  He shook his head. It was good of him to keep me company. It was I they would put on the white horse, lead out of town in front of the huge procession and across the fields to the hill. I, not he, would have to stand by the altar for the sacrifice, face white with clay, mouth reddened, and bring the knife down into the struggling beast on the altar. Worse, if they’d decided it must be human. The drum would beat, pipes wail as the sacrifice gave its last thrust of life. As it died, the world would give a great shiver, readying itself for darkness and winter, then revival. Afterwards they’d roast the beast, drink wine, or eat the little cakes containing herbs which produced visions and transports. There would be hundreds of people there from castle and countryside, in masks of horses, animals, snakes. There would be wild music, feasting, dancing – and from me they would expect prophecy. I might never return home, be taken by the oracle into the cave for good, live permanently in that world which would suddenly go black, white and grey, freeze. I would be seized by cold myself, as in the very coldest of weather, when ice grips everything. And then would come visions, more and more, usually terrible and never believed. And that would be my life.