Cassandra

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. I knew I should not put the sheep in pens where they would need to be fed and watered. I had so little confidence in the next day, now, I thought there might be no one to feed them; they might be better off fending for themselves on the hillsides. ‘But drive the old ewe with the shut eye in for slaughter,’ I told her.

  ‘I planned to see my man today,’ she told me. Her boy ran in and stared at her as she complained, ‘Things are not as they used to be. It began with your writings on the paper. It raised Helen, like casting a spell. Where will it end? I don’t like your looks. I feel trouble all round. Why can’t the woman go away? What’s on your mind? I’m too old for all this. I thought my troubles were over.’ She looked at me, as if I were deliberately rushing towards disaster.

  ‘You’re alive,’ I said. ‘You must want to see your man badly to walk four miles in snow. Stay, take care of the boy. Get a skin from where they hang. They should be ready now. Start making him a jacket and then finish the blanket on the loom. You may have to move quickly. Or not – I don’t know.’

  ‘I knew it!’ she said triumphantly. ‘You’re mad – dwelling on the old story. You’ve gone mad. And brought Helen down on us.’ As ever, foretelling brought blame.

  ‘Do as I say, Naomi,’ I said. ‘There can be no harm in making the boy a jacket – or finishing your work.’

  ‘Too old for all this,’ she said again.

  She was about thirty-two. Old age was a long way off. I repeated, ‘Do as I say,’ adding, ‘or seek refuge with your man if you like. You are free, as free as a slave can ever be. Come, Naomi, stay with me, if only for a little while. You were not born the luckiest woman in the world. Even slavery brought you a worse fate than a slave ought to expect.’

  She stared at me. The old Naomi revived. ‘If that’s how it’s to be,’ she said, ‘I’ll go over the hill today. With the boy. He can stay with his grandmother until matters are more in order here.’ Then Helen came in, and with an obeisance just this side of insolence, Naomi withdrew.

  ‘Will you eat?’ I asked Helen. The scarring of the once-beautiful face was more noticeable in daylight. She seemed to move with some difficulty. She sat down by the fire, saying, ‘No, sister. I have no appetite.’ She looked into the flames. ‘You have many children?’

  ‘Four,’ I said. I was stirring the pot on the tripod. I shouted for a manservant, who came and took it away. I gave him the lamb patties also – servants would feast this morning.

  ‘I have only a daughter,’ she went on. ‘And do your children love you?’

  Love – she’d used the word again. She used it too often. What it can have meant to her I do not know. I think in her mind she was always on a dais, with people looking at her, desiring her, admiring her, loving her.

  I responded, ‘I do not know if my children love me. As you know, among the kind of people we are – I was reared to be – loyalty and good faith are the most prized virtues. What do you mean when you say “love”?’

  She only sighed. I told her, as a farmer’s wife will, of my husband’s death, of my young sons and daughters. I spoke of Penelope, married to the harbourmaster at Pinios, ten miles down the coast; of Iris and her husband Telemon; of Phaon, the youngest, aboard his brother-in-law’s ship; of Dryas, the local smith. I did not mention Diomed, my eldest son, now twenty. To distract her, I said, ‘Your daughter is queen in Mycenae. You must be happy, a queen and mother of a queen. When you have a grandson he will rule both kingdoms.’

  ‘Are you bitter?’ she said.

  ‘One day I will tell you how I saved the life of your son-in-law,’ I replied. The snow was still coming down softly outside. ‘It seems we’re trapped here together,’ I remarked. ‘That’s very strange, isn’t it? We’ve not seen each other for twenty years. There’s little affection on either side – how could there be? – yet here we are. I must go to the loom. You will have to entertain me with tales, as women do. This blanket is worth a lamb, or some hens to me, at market.’ I wished to wound her. I continued, ‘We are poor folk here, you see. You will have to gossip to me, tell me stories, as I weave. Such terrible stories! But they are all we have to tell, aren’t they, Helen, these tales of violence and betrayal? Tell me – what did you think when you discovered your sister had deliberately ignored your appeal to approach your husband, try to effect a reconciliation, and get you safely out of Troy? And how did she pass the time in her palace at Argos, while we died in Troy?’

  ‘Like you,’ Helen said, ‘with weaving.’ She spoke grimly. For once there was something in her speech which commented on a life and a state of mind not her own. Her links to her dead sister must have been very strong. ‘Weaving,’ she reported and told me how Clytemnestra had spent that long winter, when I went first to Anatolia, seeking the support of the Great King, then returned to Troy. And again I heard the voice of Clytemnestra of Mycenae.

  Twenty-Four

  Mycenae

  My husband had spies in Troy, men and women who got messages to our generals down by the sea. One of these was Sinon, actually the son of Priam by a Greek woman, considered loyal by his family, but in fact an envious man. He was jealous of his brothers, especially those born of his father and Hecuba, favoured sons like Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Troilus, those who would inherit command of land and sea and make advantageous marriages, if Troy survived.

  The rage of the dispossessed, or those who feel they are, is fertile ground for treachery. Agamemnon’s cousin, my lover, was such a man. Of course Agamemnon promised Sinon the çity when the war was won. How many promises of that kind had he made – six, a dozen, twenty? But Sinon believed him, so, living in Troy as a warrior and taking his share of the fighting against the Greeks, he nevertheless crept out at night to deliver messages to the Greek camp about what was happening inside the city. He was particularly useful, since, as a warrior, he took part in the councils of war in Troy. Sinon came to me, in Mycenae. But now he could not return to Troy. He had left the city ten days earlier on a moonless night, telling the gateman he needed to go to a farm three minutes from the city to see his pregnant wife, an excuse he had given before, bribing the man with coins he had of course got originally from Agamemnon. He slid into the Greek camp, demanded to see Agamemnon, was admitted and found him fondling the slave girl he had stolen from Achilles. His general Ulysses was there, also with a girl, another captured Trojan. This lamentable history of looted and quarrelled-over girls, which had, of course, resulted in Achilles’ withdrawal from the war, was in my view proof that the army was deteriorating. They had been too long from home and victory seemed as far away as when they had landed.

  Sinon told Agamemnon and his general, that small, quick-eyed, strong man, that he had learned from casual conversation with the innocent Polyxena, Cassandra’s sister, that Cassandra had gone to appeal for regiments from Suppiluliumas. That secret could not be kept for long – they had pretended she was ill for a few days, until she’d escaped from the areas controlled by the Greeks. This information, which Sinon considered so important, made Agamemnon laugh. ‘We had assurances, many months ago from the Great King that he would not intervene in the war between ourselves and Troy. What difference will the arrival of that young woman, a girl mistrusted by her own people because she fills the city with cries that Troy will fall, make in Hattusas? Suppiluliumas sends no troops because he cannot. The arrival of the girl – if she does arrive and does not die on the way – will mean nothing. What is he to think when a young woman, foreteller of Troy’s doom, arrives to ask for his soldiers? That she is a fraud, an hysteric, who makes prophecies in which she herself does not believe? Or that she believes her own prophecies but insanely comes to beg for his soldiers so that they will die in Troy with the Trojans? But we’ll cut her off on the way back, never fear, and parade her body under the walls of Troy. Or I’ll take her for myself.’

  This treacherous man, by now traitor to both sides, told me that after this statement Agamemnon fell silent, thinking, then began to smil
e. He dismissed Sinon, after giving him a ring, saying casually, ‘This must be a new form of diplomacy. I must send for my own daughter and ask her to ride to Hattusas to argue for me.’

  ‘I cannot go back to Troy again,’ Sinon said in alarm.

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Agamemnon.

  ‘I shall be suspected. How long can I keep on creeping out at night? One day the gateman will betray me, I shall be seen –’

  ‘The man who wants to be a king – so brave,’ Agamemnon told him contemptuously.

  ‘Small chance to be a king, if I’m detected and killed.’

  ‘This is war. Death is part of it.’

  ‘I cannot go. Let me stay and fight with you.’

  ‘Return,’ said Agamemnon, ‘to Troy.’

  Sinon muttered, ‘There’s death in the city.’

  ‘What?’ cried Agamemnon.

  ‘A man and a woman died,’ Sinon said. ‘It could be plague. I don’t want to return.’

  ‘Two deaths do not make a plague.’

  ‘Don’t dismiss the news too lightly,’ interposed Ulysses.

  ‘Two dead in a starving city?’ Agamemnon said incredulously.

  ‘Well, we shall soon find out,’ the general continued quietly. He added, ‘Should I not go to Hattusas, in case Cassandra has gained some concessions from Suppiluliumas? And I might meet her as she was coming back and capture her. I could send her to you and continue the journey.’

  Agamemnon laughed. ‘Afraid of the plague? Or do you want to be the first to get your hands on Cassandra?’

  Ulysses shook his head. ‘She might succeed in her mission. The Great King might have second thoughts about sending reinforcements for Troy. He has no great love for us. Depending on circumstances he might find he can spare a regiment. Cassandra might persuade him. Who knows?’

  ‘I can’t spare you to chase Cassandra or go to Hattusas and back. Stay and fight.’

  Sinon had not left Agamemnon’s hut, for he had to persist in his argument about not returning to Troy. Over previous months he had supplied numbers of troops, casualty figures, details of strategies contemplated or decided on by the Trojans, and he thought now the information about Cassandra’s trip to Hattusas would be enough to earn him the safety of the Greek camp. But Agamemnon again ordered him out. ‘Return to Troy,’ he ordered.

  Sinon dared not go back. Instead he took ship directly back to Greece and true to his habits came first to me with information, expecting me to pay. First, he gave me news of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles over the Trojan slave Briseis – how often she shared his bed, what gifts he gave her. (Fool! I knew of it already, and if I had cared, like a peasant woman betrayed, about the fidelity of my husband, I would have gone to Greece, killed her, put on armour, fought with the warriors.) Then he told me of Cassandra’s journey to Hattusas and for that I did pay him. Also for his claim there was plague in Troy. If there was plague there, the Greeks might be able, at last, to capture the weakened city. Or, and it would take little, they might get plague themselves. When sickness strikes armies, the victory can often go to the side which loses fewest men to it. I let Sinon go and went back to my loom, weaving that light and beautiful cloak I would throw over my husband’s shoulders when, if, he came home.

  My dark, slender daughter came into the room. ‘News of my father?’ she asked eagerly. ‘How is he? How fares the war?’ Electra loved her father. Her marriage had been planned to the son of the King of Rhodes, to keep him loyal, but Agamemnon continually put off the wedding, and now said he wished it to take place after the successful conclusion of the war. I believe he did not want to give her to any other man. He believed his daughter was his just as he believed his wife was his and his kingdom was his. I, and even my deplorable sister, came from a different tradition, where the worship of the goddess prevailed, in regions often ruled by queens. I hated Agamemnon, hated the gods he had set on his altars beneath the ground. He believed he owned everything. He had killed one of his daughters and now clung, unnaturally, to the other. A madman.

  I had to conceal my relationship with Aegisthus from Electra. She suspected it, I know, and would have told her father, if she ever had evidence. She knew I disliked her, but maintained towards me a kind of ostentatious, dutiful obedience, a syrupy respect, as if she tried to move my heart towards her. An onlooker would have believed her a loving, pious daughter, but I knew the bad blood of my husband’s family. She would have killed me if she could. I told her the war went well, her father was a hero, I prayed for his return. She looked at me from under her eye lids. Such a look! Pretended affection and respect, masking spite. I got rid of her and went back to my weaving.

  Agamemnon would not believe sending an owned daughter to the Great King would have any effect, but I thought otherwise, that Cassandra might indeed get soldiers from him. Age-old ties of obligation and respect existed between Hattusas and Troy. Cassandra’s arrival, with reports of the war dragging on, and the Greeks dug in for the winter on their shores, might convince Suppiluliumas that the issue was in the balance. If he could not count on Troy to fight us off without his assistance, he might well send troops.

  As for the plague, I yearned to hear of Agamemnon dying, dried out, in pools of his own faeces – yet, if Troy was weakened through sickness, he could take it, and return a hero. I prayed for his death, cast spells for it, would lay hands on the most powerful sorceress in Greece to assure it, if I could.

  There had been no more messages from Helen. I did not envy her life in Troy. For the rest, I wished Cassandra well in her mission. I secretly offered sacrifices of blood, hair and bone to Cassandra’s goddess, Hecate, and prayed for her success.

  And so we went towards the shortest day of the year. Aegisthus was away putting down troublesome raids on our borders caused by those taking advantage of our lack of men. The land wasted without men to work it I offered sacrifices to Hecate. My daughter Electra went about the palace like a ghost, watching, spying, mourning her father’s absence, the madman’s daughter.

  But the Trojans still fought on, deaths, wounds and plague notwithstanding.

  Twenty-Five

  Hattusas

  In the great ceremonial hall of the palace of Suppiluliumas I stood on vast, cold flagstones, speaking of Troy. The king sat beside his wife on a throne with lion-heads carved into the wood. The hall filled with incense, like smoke. Huge walls were draped with costly rugs. Great stone images stood against them also.

  Suppiluliumas was small and strong-looking, cleanshaven, with braided hair. But the rest of him was all majesty, pomp and all the things which cloak the individual in power and make him more than a man, and inscrutable, as a man, to others. I had expected this. I had seen my own parents don that royal mask, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not, and had noticed that, although they were still my parents, at those moments they were much more than that – other than themselves. So it was, or more so, with the Hittite king and queen. Suppiluliumas wore an embroidered robe over trousers. His consort, in a gold coronet above plaited, henna-red hair, had on a long, gold gown. She had a round, expressionless face and small brown eyes. They sat at a higher level to me on their thrones and they were very still. They did not give, and did not want to, any impression that they were ordinary people. They were not ordinary people.

  I knew the Great King could decide to do anything with me: kill me, which was unlikely, unless some oracle decreed it, or keep me as a guest, a slave, a consort. I could do nothing but speak as appealingly as I could about my country’s plight and plead, as cleverly as I might, for assistance. He already knew my case – the messenger from Gordion must have brought that information earlier. Nevertheless, from my knees, my voice sounding very small and light in that huge space, I made my appeal humbly and finished speaking.

  Suppiluliumas’ hollow voice came booming at me, ‘We will send two regiments in spring. Can the city hold until then?’

  I crawled towards him, on hands and knees, as my mother had instructed me to
do. I reared up, my arms round his knees, and thought irrelevantly the movement was like that of one child trying to topple another from a stool.

  ‘Thank you, Great King,’ I said, raising my eyes slowly to him. Plainly he did not like this. I dropped them again.

  He said a deadly thing, ‘They say there is plague in Troy.’

  I could not feel my lips as I responded, eyes on the ground, ‘I know nothing of it All was well when I left.’

  ‘I must have reports of this. You will return with fifteen of my warriors as an escort. Fourteen will remain to fight; one must ride back immediately, before the snows, with a report on this matter. The others must not live inside the city if there is disease there. If there is sickness, no further troops will be sent while it continues.’

  I again glanced up at him briefly. His eyes were like black stone, obsidian, reflecting nothing. I looked down, stood, and backed away from him until I was a long distance away. Then a court official took my arm, turned me round and hurried me off, through lightly-falling snow, across the great courtyards and through the huge buildings of Hattusas. He handed me over to a woman with plaited hair under a veil of the thinnest material I have ever seen. They had brought me to the women’s house. I was scarcely conscious of this. As I had been taken through the palace I had heard nothing but ‘plague in Troy’ in my ears. Now, I reeled, and had to steady myself against the woman’s shoulder. She kindly took me to a room, where a great pool of hot water steamed. There I bathed, an army of other women standing near me. They seemed to be of many races. As I was washed they talked, asking me questions about my family and the war, asking me, also, if rumours of plague in Troy were true. I knew I had better answer them coherently – these were the Great King’s relatives, no doubt, wives, aunts, daughters, possibly his mother. I did not know how influential they might be. They dressed me and food was brought – I was still in a daze. Preparing myself for and going through the interview with the Great King had tired me greatly. It was so important. Hearing of plague in Troy had been a dreadful blow. Moreover, I was not speaking in my own language. I was also conscious that the all-powerful king might change his mind about the armies, although this was unlikely – he had given his public word – or might arbitrarily decide to do something else with me – marry me himself, marry me to another person, just detain me until spring.