Cassandra

by Hilary Bailey

  There was a silence in the council. All thought of their own womenfolk, then their minds turned to Helen, Paris’ fatal bride, our unwanted guest There must have been a hundred weary men, some injured, in the torchlit hall, all thinking of this one woman. For months now she had barely been seen. She was unable to leave her house, which had become for her a kind of gilded prison. If she left her gates men spat on the ground as she passed and women hissed, ‘Murderess!’

  Twenty

  Thessaly

  We were two women, past youth, sitting at a dying fire. A dawn wind was getting up outside, blowing inland from the sea.

  ‘They call it the city of gold,’ Helen had reported, speaking of her son-in-law’s kingdom, Mycenae.

  ‘Gold’, ‘murderess’, ‘gold’, ‘murderess’ went the words in my head. I threw another log on the fire but, defying the laws of hospitality, said, ‘It’s late. I must retire soon. I keep country hours here.’ ‘Gold’, ‘murderess’, ‘gold’ – I heard. The impact of so many memories so suddenly aroused had worn me out. I did not need to sleep, but I needed to be alone, out of Helen’s presence, to think.

  I asked hypocritically, for I did not care, ‘Are your son and daughter well?’ I neither loved nor hated them, though I had reason to fear them. Who, with less cause, would not fear the children of parents such as theirs? Orestes, the king, was Agamemnon’s child – and Clytemnestra’s – and Hermione, his wife, was the daughter of Menelaus – and Helen. Two brothers had married two sisters – the children had then married each other, a cousin marriage. To inbreed, in such a family! If they had been animals any stockman would have destroyed them before he permitted it.

  I remembered Orestes, mad, naked, foaming at the mouth, running over our hillsides, with the men of the neighbourhood chasing him with sickles, old swords, wooden clubs, bent on catching and killing this dangerous madman. I didn’t know who he was then. I had opened my stable door for him so he could go inside. When they came to ask if I’d seen him, I lied and swore I’d seen him take the perilous path down the cliff to the sea. I didn’t tell Helen that I doubt if Orestes remembered what happened.

  Helen told me, stiffly, the king and queen of Mycenae were well. It appeared to me there was a difficulty, or worse, between herself and her son-in-law and daughter. I had the strongest instinct that soon Orestes would die. That would end the horrid line of Pelops, who had fathered Atreus, who had in turn fathered the dreadful Agamemnon and Menelaus, and whose other son had fathered Aegisthus, Clytemnestra’s lover, the man who had cuckolded and assisted in the death of his cousin Agamemnon. That whole line of bloody, violent, incestuous men and women, killers of anyone who stood in their way, was due to end, not before time. Those people killed as easily inside their own families as outside. A streak of madness ran in their blood. Perhaps I had felt some pity for poor Orestes, while he was raving, but I had none for him now he was sane and sitting on his father’s throne at Mycenae.

  The logs burned up, casting light into my quiet room. Helen looked about her, then back at the fire. ‘I envy you your peace of mind, your quiet life,’ she said. She feared her own future. She had denied my prophecies, but she was afraid anyway.

  After a pause, she said in a melancholy tone, ‘What we have seen – Oh, what we have seen, Cassandra! I shall never forget that winter of siege in Troy – the hunger, the smell – and how I was treated.’

  I said brusquely, ‘I’m tired. I must rest. Forgive me,’ and left her sitting alone by the fireside. As I walked out I heard her silently crying out to me, ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone.’ Perhaps she had never had any idea of herself except as an object of love to others. If she was alone, unloved, she felt she did not exist; solitude was to her like death. But I went to my room.

  Naomi was there soon after me. ‘What are you going to do? She must go. Have you told her she must leave? Will she betray us to her son-in-law – or Menelaus?’

  I shook my head. ‘She’s not interested in anyone but herself. She’s worried that Menelaus will die and without his protection the Greeks will take vengeance on her. They won’t have forgotten. The widows and orphans, the men crippled in that war – they’ll remember. If she were as beautiful as before she could find another protector. But not now – and I believe her son-in-law and daughter have rejected her. They don’t want her in Mycenae. Perhaps Orestes fears for his throne. He won’t take in Helen whom so many people hate, so she’s searching for a new king to save her. She must be a queen.’

  ‘I know that well,’ Naomi interrupted, ‘and if I had a king, I would give him to her myself to get rid of her. If only you had told her that a new princely lover awaited her, instead of prophesying her future as a beggar and outcast – if you’d told her a wonderful, new life lay ahead, she’d have been off at dawn tomorrow.’ She stared at me fiercely. ‘I’ve been talking to her menservants. They have no orders. They’ve been at Pylos. They’ve been in Mycenae, they’ve been over the mountains in the Epirus with your brother. They’re wondering when she’ll turn for home. They say, the two Spartans among them, she’s running from Menelaus; he’s mad and may kill her. They’re frightened for themselves. Supposing he follows her and finds her here? Do you want to see Menelaus at your door?’

  She stared at me angrily. I could not reply.

  ‘If she doesn’t go soon, we’ll be snowed in together – you, me and Helen. What a prospect. Just looking at her makes me feel mad. What memories doesn’t it bring back, all too much to bear. She’s a danger to us. You should kill her before she leaves here. I hope you sleep tonight. I won’t.’ Naomi departed then, with a threatening look. She was herself planning to leave, I know. Helen’s presence was a threat to her, as well as me. The doings of the mighty often involve the deaths of slaves and servants.

  It was not fear, though, which kept me awake that night, or even the sensation of having this alien visitor under my roof. Some might say, to avenge my family and cause them to rejoice among the summer fields and hills where they were now united, I should have taken a knife and killed Helen. But how could I, seeing a wretched future for her, deliver the blow which would set her free? And her fate was set No one could do anything about it What prevented me from sleeping that night were memories of that autumn and winter when the Greeks did not go home and the siege deepened – and I took the long journey east to Hattusas.

  Twenty-One

  Troy, Autumn

  We were hungry that autumn – fishermen could not go out to fish the coast, which was patrolled by Greeks. We could not reap the harvest we had planted. Farmers were robbed to feed the Greek army. Any supplies coming in were liable to be seized before they reached the gates. Only the courage of our countrymen, facing all dangers to reach us, saved us from complete starvation. We endured, waiting for the tunnel from the temple to the hills to be dug out. We would be able to make sparing use of it then, so long as the Greeks did not spot it.

  There were now over fifteen hundred people in the city. Our stores were dwindling. My mother added to her duties by going, each day, to supervise a dole of flour and oil to citizens and soldiers. Meat on the whole went to the soldiers; the children gnawed on the bones. Each day there were skirmishes. Because it had begun to rain the troops often fought in mud on that naked plain between the city and the sea, once a pasture of tall grass filled with our sheep and horses. We were worn with hunger and grief. At night the anvil played its one constant tune, and the soldiers sang.

  At the house of Paris a kind of frenzy reigned. The music was louder, so was the laughter, but it had an edge of hysteria. The citizens hated Helen. Now they began to hate Paris, once their hero.

  Yet another conference took place. Oh, the weariness of these meetings, analysis of the battle before, strategy and calculation. At first, after victorious battles, there was a kind of exultation in the air, jokes were swapped, men laughed, the defeat of the Greeks seemed near. Now they were growing tired, there had been too many deaths, the war had gone on too long.
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  This new conference took place one afternoon, the room, as ever, crammed with soldiers, some still in armour. That day the Greeks had chased our troops back to Troy. Now they were laughing not far from our walls. They cat-called and made obscene gestures if they saw a woman. Sarpedon, the huge Lycian captain, was furious. He turned on Hector: ‘Where were you? I was cut off, with four men, facing Diomedes and his followers. We barely escaped – had to turn and run like boys caught robbing a neighbour’s fig tree. I looked behind me and saw Diomedes, leaning on his sword, laughing at me.’

  Hector said, ‘I was surrounded.’

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘We were attacked when they saw we would go to your aid.’

  Sarpedon sighed. ‘Maybe, maybe. It was a disgrace, though.’ He looked round sharply. ‘Where’s Paris? He should be here.’

  Aeneas answered for his friend, ‘Nursing a blow on the shoulder from a man of Rhodes.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been talking to my men, and we want Helen to go back to her husband,’ Sarpedon said bluntly. He was no diplomat ‘You’re his friend – you go there to drink his wine and dance to his music. Tell her. Tell her to go.’

  Aeneas flinched, but said nothing.

  ‘My brother is her husband,’ announced Hector, with dignity, disliking Sarpedon’s tone.

  Sarpedon gave a crude laugh. Hector’s ready temper began to rise. Meanwhile my father and Anchises were arguing tactics. Archos, the merchant, was suggesting abandoning the city silently by night and fighting a guerrilla war in the countryside. ‘We’re pinned down,’ he said. ‘It’s against nature to wage war like this.’

  We had all grieved when it was plain the Greeks were prepared to winter in Troy, almost despaired when it became plain that the Hittite Great King was prepared to consider himself neutral, sending no reinforcements to us. Now the war was static and views about how to change the situation many and various.

  At that point a woman, a corn merchant from the town, came in. She shouted, ‘Hear me! Hear me!’ A mixture of authority and demand in her tone silenced the mumbling discussions. A rough ring formed round her, though my father, mother and Anchises did not move from their seats. Archos craned over their shoulders. The woman, Rhoda, addressed the crowd. She said, ‘We’ve had enough. We’re starving. People keep flooding in to take what little food there is. My daughter’s child died last night. There’s no trade. Our savings are gone. It’s all right for you, the warriors. You who have money and land behind you, who fight for glory. What happens to us, starving slowly, watching our sons die in your battles, our babies die of hunger? What’s next, do you suppose? I’ll tell you – disease. We have famine here. Disease follows famine as night follows day. What shall we do then? I tell you – give up the city before there’s no one left to defend it. Make terms. The Greeks will let us live if we give in.’

  The crowd began to hurl insults at her. Deiphobus shouted, ‘So you’d give in to them, would you?’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ the woman bawled back. ‘I’ve got a granddaughter to bury. She won’t be the last of my family I bury, if this goes on. Unless I die first. Who cares about surrender? Negotiate – life’s what matters, not victory, not at this price.’

  ‘Silly woman – why don’t you leave the city?’ someone called.

  ‘And get captured and taken to Greece as a slave?’ she shouted back.

  ‘If we give up the city that’ll happen anyway.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Rhoda shouted. ‘Oh no. Not to me. I’m a skilled woman. The Greeks would need me to sell corn, mill and bake. All men need bread, believe me.’

  My mother stepped forward and took her by the arm. She said something quietly to her, which appeared to calm the woman. I was swaying by the fire. I heard my voice, my prophetic voice, start to speak. ‘I see the mountains,’ was what I heard myself say. Others heard the rest. Then the familiar cold and blackness engulfed me.

  I awoke with Polyxena bending over me, bathing my face. Rhoda, her face stiff with horror, was nevertheless chafing my hands. As my eyes rolled round I saw a ring of faces round me. My eye caught a young man still wearing a dusty helmet, a bearded old man, his narrow eyes hostile. And Hector, impatient and furious. Polyxena was hauling me to my feet, Rhoda was on my other side. They helped me from the room and laid me outside on the flagstones.

  Aeneas was bending over me. ‘Idiot,’ he hissed. ‘Can’t you control your fits?’ He looked at Polyxena. ‘Can’t she control these fits? Do we have to be subjected to this at such a time?’

  Polyxena said in a low voice, ‘It is a gift.’

  ‘No doubt,’ he said, ‘but not one we need at present. This shouting, roaring about defeat – visions, pictures of the city in flames – what good is it?’ He turned. I heard his rapid pace away from me.

  I asked, ‘What did I say?’

  ‘The usual thing,’ Polyxena answered. She was trying to be kind, in spite of herself. It was plain I’d horrified the assembly – interrupted a council of war with terrifying visions of defeat. My own head was full of images of fire, soldiers rampaging through the dark streets, the screams of the wounded, blood running over the stones. I was desolate. I closed my eyes, my head swimming. I would have to go away. What use was I?

  I heard Rhoda saying, ‘She told us what we feared to hear.’

  Polyxena was twelve years old. She muttered, ‘Lies and nonsense. And you should not be talking of surrender, either.’

  ‘You’re just a girl,’ scolded the woman, ‘carried away by talk of fighting and victory.’ Then she, too, went away.

  ‘Leave me alone, Polyxena,’ I asked, and she did. I stumbled to my feet, went to the city walls and leaned across. It was dusk. A cool breeze blew. Below, at the shining edge of the sea, lay the Greek fleet By the ships, the Greek army was lighting fires. Small figures moved to and fro. Sounds came to me, a horse’s whinny, a shout. At this time of day before the war, our ships would have been coming calmly over the waves into harbour, while below the city walls horses and sheep would have been standing in the grass as the light faded.

  My mother came up to me. ‘They’ve found another spy in the town,’ she said; and even as she spoke I heard screams, then a silence.

  ‘What have they done?’

  ‘Cut out his tongue.’

  The big beam across the gates was flung back, the gates scraped open, there was a shout, then they closed. A small figure below began a lurching run, down to the Greek lines. The figure weaved a hundred yards or so with buckling knees, then fell and lay writhing on the ground.

  ‘The tunnel’s nearly finished,’ Hecuba told me. ‘It goes a quarter of a mile in the direction of the hills. If we use it carefully we can get in supplies by night, perhaps send out small raiding parties to surprise the enemy.’

  ‘Good news,’ I said. Then, pausing, I told her, ‘Mother, I remember speaking of the hills just now, before I lost my sense of what I was saying. I think it was a message that I should go to the Great King at Hattusas and ask for his help. We have had his message that no reinforcements will be sent. We fear he has agreed with the Greeks to support neither side in this war. But we’re weakening and breaking up. Someone must go and persuade him that if he lets Troy fall, sooner or later he’ll have to face the Greeks himself, when they attack him. Someone must tell the Great King what is happening here, appeal to him in the name of our old friendship. You know this.’

  She nodded. ‘Suppiluliumas, unlike his father, is not a wise man. He’s heavily pressed. He relies on us to repel the Greeks alone. The decision is shortsighted, disloyal. He might be persuaded.’

  ‘I should go,’ I said. ‘You cannot spare a single man who can bear arms.’

  She had known I would say that. She sighed. She was very weary, I knew.

  ‘And,’ I added, ‘if my visions persist I’m likely to become almost as unpopular as Helen – people are beginning to reject even Paris. They’ll begin to falter if they see Paris as a destroyer while I – I become a voice eternally
crying defeat. They must stand by the royal house. I will be better out of the city.’ What I said was true. It was also true that I could not bear the wounds and the deaths any longer, or the constant, lowering hunger, the exhaustion, the imprisonment in the city. It was not that I wanted to risk my life, just that the price of keeping it seemed too high.

  ‘It’s a long and dangerous journey to take when all the while your visions tell you the war is lost to us whatever you do.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s our only chance.’

  She nodded. ‘Wait until the tunnel’s open – you can be the first person through. Someone will have to go with you.’

  ‘Naomi.’

  ‘You need a better escort than that.’

  ‘We can’t travel in state. The Greeks are all over the countryside. And you can spare no men. Give me that half-Hittite slave Advenor employs in the stables. He’ll know the country. We’ll promise him release if we get there. But I must go soon or the snows will come and I’ll be stranded in Hattusas until spring.’

  My mother looked at me sadly.

  ‘Your sons face death daily. The whole city faces death if we lose the war,’ I told her.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘That is why I cannot dissuade you. You must go.’

  The distance from Troy to Suppiluliumas’ high capital is six hundred miles or so as the crow flies, but the traveller setting out from Troy at that time would normally strike south and follow the route along the coast before turning east to penetrate the mountainous areas of the Hittite kingdom. This makes the journey longer but easier, and safer, since the first hundred miles of the journey is, or used to be, through friendly country. The rest of the journey is along the caravan route leading through Hattusas and right to the Taurus mountains. It is protected all the way by Hittite forces. We would take the longer route – Naomi, I and the slave, whose name, so far as we could make it out, was Nisintas. Naomi protested when told he was to be our only bodyguard. She knew him. ‘You can’t understand what he says, but that’s deliberate, in my opinion. He mutters and stumbles in his speech because he doesn’t want to speak to anyone. He sulks. His only virtue is that he’s a hulking brute and that could turn against us. An offer of freedom when we reach Hattusas may seem less certain to him than hitting us over the head in some remote spot before we get there. Or he could just run away, leaving us with no bodyguard.’