Cassandra

by Hilary Bailey

  A harpist had arrived on his mule that day and was staying at the palace. When we had eaten he sang a tale about the creation of the world by a great goddess, then a ballad concerning a woman who protected her husband in battle by weaving a tapestry. Each time the husband was threatened, she would weave his escape into her web.

  I looked down and saw that Naomi had pushed herself through the feet at the table and was sitting gazing at the man as he sang. I could only see part of her shoulders, her bald head and one bright, brown eye as she leaned forward a little, all attention. The dog was asleep on the floor.

  Thirteen

  Troy

  We came to the end of winter. I was sixteen. At our looms, the women gossiped. ‘No sign of a child yet,’ they said of Helen.

  ‘However hard they try,’ said someone, laughing. They spoke of marriages. There was talk of marriage between one of my sisters and the mighty Sarpedon, a neighbouring prince. I fell into a dream and stopped work. My mother, thinking my fits of prophecy and other disturbances might be coming, though violently, to an end, had begun, dauntlessly, to try to reclaim me for marriage. This was why Naomi had been given to me, why I was at the loom, why I was tired, for I had spent the morning learning accounts and helping my mother with her correspondence. A long letter in the Akkadian language – language of the Hittite rulers and the common language of diplomacy – had to be composed, memorised and then, with the help of small memory-joggers, scratched on a piece of slate, then incised on to wet clay.

  The letter was going to King Suppiluliumas, the Great King of the Hittites. The slaves’ bird-tracks were my mother’s report on our Greek neighbours. The king was watching their incursions into territories he protected with an unfriendly eye. Hecuba also gave news of our harvests from which he would expect a share, as price for his friendship and protection. There was mention of a possible marriage between Deiphobus and one of his daughters in which my mother made it plain the princess concerned must be by his first, most royal wife, not some later consort. My mother wrote diplomatically that, although she understood that the Great King had many concerns (he was at war on both his eastern and western borders) a case might be argued for mounting a full-scale attack on the Greeks immediately. What she had in mind was driving Achilles from Miletus, further down our coast, and from the island of Tenedos, which he also held. She wished further to raid and burn some of the Greeks’ own coastal cities and burn part of their fleet She did not put the details explicitly in a letter which might be intercepted, but knew the king would understand what she meant

  ‘In his uncle’s time,’ she said to me, ‘the Great King could have been depended on for firm action. But Suppiluliumas was beleaguered by other enemies. In any case, the Hittites were not sea people and thought more naturally in terms of land battles.’

  The letter was composed, the tablets baked and a messenger sent off on a fast horse while they were still warm. I was especially interested in the reply for it contained warm regards to the Great King’s second son – from me. This meant my marriage to him was being debated. I would bring only a small dowry, for I had many sisters, but the advantages of the marriage would be clear on both sides. It would solidify the alliance. That my parents had so many children would be considered a bonus – there was less chance of the spouse being left childless if the parents of the bride or groom were fertile and all their children had lived.

  For my own part, I didn’t worry too much about the matter. If I married and did not have to go to the oracle’s cave, I would not be able to make a free choice of husband. I owed it to my family to marry who they wanted me to marry. It would be better if they chose a man I knew, because it would be easier to refuse the match if it seemed unbearable. On the other hand, the thought of a grand marriage into that great Anatolian empire was exciting. And for the rest, having been seen hitherto as destined to become an oracle, I was happy that any marriage plan for me was being considered. When I had understood, as a small child, I was destined for the cave and the blood-pit, I had panicked and wept for weeks. Helenus had told me he would do all in his power to prevent it, but we both knew that if that were to be my fate we could do nothing about it.

  So, that afternoon, as I stared at the green and blue stripes I was weaving, pushing the heavy wooden needle through the weave (Naomi on a stool beside me, inexpertly carding wool with a big wooden comb) I dreamed. Then, the needle stopped, the voices of the others grew softer, then silent. Just before that suspension of sound, light, movement which always preceded a moment of prophecy, I half-saw Naomi beside me sitting with her piece of carded wool suspended over the basket she was to put it in and realised, in one flash, I was doomed to see now more than I should, or wanted to. Then I whirled into grey fog.

  I saw the bay of Troy and the sea beyond the bay black with ships. I heard the sounds of disembarkation, men calling to each other, horses whinnying, the sound of piles of spears hitting the dock, the thud of boxes being thrown down. Then I saw huge camps, huts and tents, extending across the bay, chariots, horses tethered, fires with cauldrons suspended above them, armoured men going to and fro, shouting, calling. Then there were noises – screams, battle cries, the wailing of women, the terrible heat of fire, the smell of charred wood, burning clothes and flesh. My vision turned to flame. I could see nothing but red, as if looking into the heart of a fire, and hear nothing but the sound of crackling, cracking and burning.

  They told me afterwards I left the loom, stood in the middle of the floor, arms raised, screaming out these terrible visions. The women had stood back in fear against their looms. Then my sisters came towards me and others began to rush in from outside, but no one came quite near enough to touch me. It would have been wrong; bad luck to all of us. But – it must have been just before I fell – this awful vision ended and I felt pervaded by a piercing sweetness, an almost unbearable joy, a sensation unlike any I had ever remembered. Then, apparently, I fell.

  They said it was Naomi, who had at first had to be held back from rushing straight to me, who ran as I fell to where I lay stretched on the stone slabs of the floor. It had been she and my sister Polyxena who had half-carried me from the room to the ramparts that overlooked the sea. And there, water fetched by Naomi and a small breeze revived me.

  My mother took the return of my visions as final proof I was destined for the life of an oracle. One airless night, she commanded me to go with her and a servant to the oracle on her hill. Although I remember setting off in pressing heat and walking in darkness to the cave, I can remember little of the journey. I had set out afraid the oracle would tell my mother to leave me with her for ever men, as we began to ascend the hill to her cave I fell into terrible visions, seeing the dreadful final events which were to bring me to my farm on the Thessalian borders. I was unable to go any further. As the women bent over me on the path, my mother, I heard, hurried to the oracle, was let into that terrifying place, found her quite mundanely eating a meal with her unsexed attendant and was told to take me home. ‘I don’t need her,’ she is supposed to have told my mother. ‘She’ll be saved if she stays with you.’ (Later, it seemed a false prophecy and later still, a true one.)

  They brought me back, where I lay like a corpse for some days. When I revived, my first thought was happy. I was relieved for I’d believed the oracle would claim me. Meanwhile, no one knew how to interpret the oracle’s words. My mother took it to mean she did not need me then, but would later. My lessons ceased, because if I did not marry I would not require the skills for governing a large kingdom. As an oracle I could have a husband or lovers and bear children but I would not have a household, and after infancy the children would be taken away and reared by others, perhaps members of my family, so that my gifts would not be weakened by the day-to-day cares of ordinary life. It was a distinction, but one I did not want I had been reared in a great house and I wanted at that time to be head of a family, and a queen as my mother was. This I confided to Polyxena, but all she could say was, ‘It is your fate
. You must do what is ordained.’ She added in a friendly way, ‘Think of me. I may end up with Sarpedon, that great bear, or his brother.’

  ‘You could refuse,’ I pointed out. ‘I have no choice.’

  Then huge storms came and raged for two months. There was thunder and lightning, trees fell, roads disappeared in the floods, ships were lost and wrecked. The rivers on either side of the city burst their banks. Cows and sheep had to be rescued. A nest of young willows on the bank of the Scamander were carried away to sea. The time for the ceremonies came – we calculated the time by a moon we had scarcely seen for thirty days, except peeping through scudding clouds. We celebrated with fervour and prayed for the weather to calm.

  My arrival at the start of womanhood and my new position, as someone destined to take her place as priestess or oracle, meant I would play a part. I should make some explanation of our customs, though they are not so very different from those of our neighbours or of the mighty nations to the east the Assyrians, Babylonians, the Philistines.

  There are two main ceremonies, one in the autumn after the grain – corn in the better land, barley elsewhere – is harvested.

  At the harvest, in villages in the rural areas and outside the cities, after the last ears are reaped, a cry of lamentation goes up for the land robbed of its produce, as if we had wounded our vines and fruit-trees by plucking and cutting off their fruits, slain the corn with our sickles and left the earth bereft, as a mother of her son. There is a great sacrifice in the temples and fields, we grieve for the earth and the death of her children, her fruits. Though we are responsible and will profit by it we must acknowledge her loss, perhaps out of respect and also in case, grieved and wounded, she will refuse to grow anything the next year. In the fields we sacrifice an ox or a ram. In some parts of the country they sacrifice a red dog. These animals in days gone by were probably men or women and certainly after a series of bad harvests, or when disease has struck the crops or men, when nature seems to have turned against us, the sacrifice is sometimes still a human being. The ceremonies for the earth, the cries and lamentations, go on for days, the women being chief mourners. They cut their hair as if for the death of a person.

  The spring ceremony is as important, if not more so, for that is when we must implore the goddess to bring the new season in gently, produce the right conditions for the planting and growing of the grain for ourselves and grass for our beasts. During the ceremony we mourn the death of the young god, the son of the mother, and cry for him to return to us. It is a moving and terrifying ceremony. We sacrifice, our rivers are dyed red and loaded with red flowers where they grow. The women cut their hair, even shaving their heads to show the measure of their mourning, and, in an effort to bring back life, men and women couple in the temples and fields and the children born from these unions are named the ‘children of the goddess’.

  The goddess of our people is Hecate, tripartite goddess, in her youth a maiden, then a mother, then an old woman and in these three parts she represents both the life of men, from birth through maturity to old age, and also the life of nature, spring, summer, winter, growth, ripeness and harvest. Hecate is our goddess but also ourselves. When we sacrifice to her we sacrifice to life itself, to ourselves and the land, crops and animals which keep us alive, and we acknowledge our frail hold on life and fear of death.

  That year’s ceremonies were celebrated with passion, for the unusual storms made us fearful. By the time of the ceremony we had had weeks of wind and storm, had lived under lowering skies by day and had hardly seen sun, moon or stars. If the land did not drain and the earth warm soon, we would not be able to plant our wheat and barley in time, the sheep and cattle, hungry by the end of winter, would starve for want of fresh grass and their young would die.

  We conducted the ceremony in a storm. As we left the city the wind was high, the air misty with damp. Thunder rolled faintly, there was lightning over the hills to the north. We sacrificed on the hill, at the blood-pit and in the fields below Troy, where the sea was rolling in in huge billows. The spirit of the ceremony took over. We forgot wind and rain and screamed our pleas for the return of the god, earth’s child, Hecate’s child. I remember the dark, people running through field and mountain groves. As I stood in the grove by the blood-pit, dark, animal-masked figures all round me – I did not know them, was not meant to know them – I saw a great oak to one side struck by lightning. It caught fire and in the light of the fire I saw a man and a woman on the ground, coupling. I saw a man with a blood-streaked face, women sodden with rain, muddy, dancing in a circle, a boy banging a drum, the sound of piping. I fell to the ground and lay near the tree, watching its flames in the branches, smelling the smoke.

  The ceremonies went on for only two days, for the storms grew even worse and halted them. On the third morning, when I awoke, the day was clear and sparkling. I left the city. People were sprawled asleep in the temple, in the market-place, across the threshold of the gates, which had been left open. Even the most impious foe would not risk the curse which would come on him if he attacked the city at such a time. So I walked out in the sunshine. The air was warm, but my bare feet were cold as I squelched through the sodden pastures, where still-wet, dejected sheep huddled in groups. The horses had all been stabled for weeks, being too delicate to endure such weather. It seemed the ceremonies had driven off the storms.

  I sat down on a little mound, among the willows by the river and let the sun warm me. I turned my face up to it and listened to the sea, quiet now, further off.

  A tall figure came up over the ridge of land separating grass from sea and trudged towards me. At first he was black against the sparkle from the sea. As he came closer I made out the lean figure of a man of about thirty, black-bearded, with curly black hair, wearing a water-stained robe and small cloak over his shoulders in the Phoenician style. He had nothing on his feet. He seemed weary. He sat down beside me, without a word. There was salt crusted in his hair and beard. In my turn I said nothing. I could not have spoken. I had seen him before in the burning tree. I had felt his presence, known him, before I met him, on that afternoon when I collapsed by the looms. I wondered, perhaps, what his arrival meant, and then knew. He gazed out to sea, flat as a millpond now, though plainly it had put paid to his ship the night before. Then he turned to me, his dark eyes reddened with salt, and said something in a language I could not understand. I shook my head. In our tongue he asked, ‘This is Troy?’ It was only partly a question, more a request for confirmation. I nodded. He drew a deep breath of relief, but there was some sadness in it. He was still half in his memories of the day, or the night before, when the tempest had taken him. He had lost men, his ship or both, and was still, in his head, at sea, with his sails flapping in tatters, mast smashed, rudder gone, ship being battered hither and yon, perhaps lying on deck, clinging to whatever he could to avoid being washed overboard. He turned his face up to the sun, seeking its warmth.

  What I felt throughout my body was that warmth and sweetness I had felt before. I suspect that seldom, after a baby leaves the breast, does anybody feel that contentment again. I knew, whoever he was and whatever the consequences, I must and would have this man to love me.

  There was a thong round his neck and he put a strong hand to it, pulled it over his head and opened the salt-stained leather pouch attached to it, which had been hanging under his cloak. The Phoenician, a man of Canaan, as we would call him in our language, tipped the contents of the pouch into his palm and, picking out the largest pearl from the collection of about ten, handed it to me. ‘I am Arvad,’ he said.

  The pearl glowed like the moon through pale cloud and felt warm in my palm. I said, ‘It’s beautiful,’ and tried to give it back. He took it in his fingers, put it back in my palm and curled my fingers round it. Was he trying to buy me, I wondered? But I retained it, for I knew if I was to have him he would have to give me a gift. Then we waded hand in hand to the other side of the river and under a clump of willows, curtained on all sides b
y the overhanging, just-greening branches, he urged me to the ground, lay on me and took me roughly. Even as he did so I felt in him the haste and panic of men aboard a ship in a storm, the struggle, at first to keep a footing on deck, hasty glances at the sky to get direction from stars obscured by dark, fast-moving cloud, the final terror of losing control of the vessel, being overturned, crashing on rocks, being thrown into the turbulent sea.

  Afterwards I said his name. And he asked, ‘What are you called?’ An ordinary girl’s cunning made me say, ‘Alba.’ The whole world knew King Priam and Queen Hecuba had a gifted, afflicted daughter, prophetess or madwoman, and I did not at that moment want him to know I was the girl. I did not want to be exceptional, so I told him, ‘I am Alba,’ and he smiled and said, ‘Alba.’ I don’t think even then he believed me.

  I said, ‘I must find you food and shelter.’ I took his hand and led him to the city. It was sunny now, as if the storms had never been. There was still no one about. Going through the Dardanian Gate we met an old woman, mud to the thighs, carrying two chickens, more dead than alive, tied by the feet with a piece of rope. Inside the city few were stirring. People were still sprawled all over the temple flagstones. The market-place was sticky with grease in patches, bones and fragments of bread lay everywhere. A man, a woman and a dog lay tumbled in a heap beside a wall. A scatter of birds, feasting on the fallen crusts, flew up as we approached. A baby wailed inside a house, two children played with a crudely carved boat in a big puddle. They smiled and greeted us as we went past. There was a thin plume of smoke coming up from the forge, where the big, mute boy was probably trying to light the fire for the first time in days.