Cassandra

by Hilary Bailey

  I told her we could not make the party any larger. With the countryside full of Greek patrols, my only hope was, at each step of the journey, to pretend to be a young woman accompanied by two slaves, going a short distance to visit her family. Any suggestion that I was King Priam’s daughter would endanger us all. The Greeks would give a good price for me. And no troops could be spared to guard us.

  Naomi was not satisfied. ‘Once we’re up in those mountains, he could sell us,’ Naomi told me. ‘You haven’t been a slave. I have. I am.’

  ‘You and he could form an alliance and hold me to ransom,’ I told her.

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘No one else can be spared,’ I repeated. ‘Even this Nisintas is needed in Troy because of his strength. Naomi,’ I said emphatically, ‘it is not right for you to argue with me. I am your mistress. You are a slave. And if I can’t persuade the Great King to help us, we will all be slaves. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Madam,’ she said, in no pleasant or subservient way. She knew we could die on the journey, one way or another; she was angry; she knew I needed her. Politeness was not her first concern.

  Thus we set out, the first people to go through the newly-opened tunnel, walking often at a crouch and in silence, because we were not sure how much could be heard through the ground over our heads, fearing any sound might carry up to a party of Greeks patrolling the darkened countryside. The air was thick and damp-smelling as we stumbled along, dreading that at any moment the roof of this untried tunnel might give way.

  Nisintas carried torches. Hecuba, my mother, came with us. My aunt, Queen of Lycia, was to meet her at the other end of the tunnel, with her famous champion, an African, big as a giant, who could fight two men at the same time. My aunt also brought money. Our funds were running low for we had no income through trade or taxes. We were now fighting our battle on behalf of all the coastal regions, and for the inland nations too. If the Greeks took Troy, the whole region would belong to them. This, aside from family feeling, was why the Queen of Lycia came in person with money and her famous warrior. They would set him at Agamemnon, in particular, hoping that if the leader were killed the alliance would crumble.

  We emerged gratefully on the hillside, pushing concealing brushwood away from the opening, climbing out, breathing in the night air. We were concealed by a clump of trees – oak, larch and wild fig. Through the branches we could see a sky full of stars. It was strange to breathe the clean air of the countryside, after the crowded, stinking city. A startled bird woke and began to sing. In the shadows among the trees stood my aunt, the huge African, Veribel, and the oracle herself, bent, in a red robe, her face painted white. It was an awe-inspiring sight. My aunt was so like my mother they might have been twins; the tall, black-faced man’s countenance was barely visible in the darkness; the oracle was tiny and bent, her face a white mask. My aunt stepped forward and embraced first my mother, then me. She had consulted the oracle before we arrived. ‘Good omens for the journey,’ she whispered. Nisintas was scrutinising the African. He must seldom have seen anyone so dark, or so much more powerful than himself. There was little time for speech. If a Greek patrol caught us they would have had a notable prize – two enemy queens, the Trojan oracle, a princess and two prime fighting men.

  The oracle came to me. She knew I dreaded her. She whispered, in that strange, man-woman voice, ‘You will return – but you already know you will.’

  Then, with no backward glances, we set off to the left, heading for the coast road, which we found not long after. We walked half the length of the straits which lay on our left, hearing the waves on one side, the stirring in the forest on the other. We each had a bundle of clothes and food. Nisintas had a big club also. We were moved by the quiet after the noisy crowded city; the air seemed very fresh. As to the rest, I think we all knew we might die on the journey but had lived with the thought of death for so long now that it made little difference. In any case Naomi and Nisintas had been slaves since their youth and their lives had never been worth anything at all.

  Dawn came up over the wooded hills on our right. When it was full light we stopped just outside a fishing village. Nisintas went ahead to be sure there were no Greeks there. Then we entered the main street. There were huts and small stone buildings on one side. The sea, and the shore where boats were beached lay on the other. Clear dawn light fell on an empty village. It was very quiet. All the doors of the low houses were shut. There was no one round the boats, no women washing clothes in the washing troughs, or carrying water, no children coming out to begin their day. We stood there, looking for a human face, when a door opened and out came a small, self-important man, barefoot in a robe with a pointed Phrygian cap on his head. This he seemed to wear as a mark of rank. In a bad Greek accent he said, ‘Welcome.’

  I spoke to him in the language of the country people, saying, ‘I have left Troy because of the war, to join my mother’s family among the Phrygians. These are my servants. We could not buy horses before leaving. They were all needed for the war. Do you know of anyone who has horses, mules or a waggon for sale?’

  He had a crafty air. I did not like him. He did not trust me. He told me, ‘The Greeks took the horses a month ago.’ It was impossible to tell if they had, or if the village had hidden what animals they had.

  ‘We would pay a good price,’ I added. Our journey would take us a month on foot. If we took too long and if the snows came early in the high fortress city of Hattusas, we might be cut off there till spring. He regarded me cautiously.

  ‘Your servants?’ he enquired, looking at Nisintas and Naomi.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. I knew he wanted me to identify myself, but I dared not. He could have been a friend of the Greeks, either bribed, or just a man who preferred to stay friendly with the strong. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘these are dangerous times. We need to be mounted.’

  ‘You speak our language,’ he said.

  ‘Evidently. Can you help?’

  Then a young woman ran out of the poor house from which he had come. She bowed deeply to me and whispered to the older man. I thought she had recognised me. If the short man, her father, chose to call out and get help in capturing me, we would be in serious trouble. Behind me, Naomi was muttering to Nisintas, who stepped forward, ready for a fight But the man bowed and said, ‘Lady, we have two horses left, both broken-down animals, too poor for the Greeks to bother with. You can have them for a price. I would give them, but times are hard now. Buy them, mount up and get away as fast as you can. Greek patrols and foraging parties come here regularly.’

  So we got two mounts, an old horse and a mare with cracked hooves. We plodded out of the village. By now a small crowd had assembled. In more formal times, I would have ridden one horse, Naomi and Nisintas the other, but to put too much weight on one of these sad beasts so I could ride alone would have been folly. Nisintas rode the mare; Naomi and I got up on the horse. And so we travelled on.

  There was another village further up the coast, but it was burned out, and by the signs of it, only days before. We had all seen the Greeks riding out in the mornings and returning at night with their booty – a sheep, a girl, a boy, a load of hay for their horses. Here was the reality of their expeditions – the low stone houses, more like caves with their roofs gone, the stones blackened, the population dead or fled, the narrow street empty of all life.

  As midday approached we became more wary and headed uphill into the trees, found a place near the river running seawards, ate and fell asleep. The horses grazed nearby. We woke near dusk, with the sun slanting through the trees above us. It seemed very strange to come from sleep and find myself on a hill with Naomi sleeping nearby, her head on her pack and big Nisintas sitting blinking about suspiciously, his club across his knees. I said, ‘There’ll be a moon. We should travel by night until we’re almost out of the river-country, in case we meet a Greek patrol or are recognised and sold to them as captives.’

  The country people, farmers and fisher
folk, were mostly on our side, but they and their families had to live in these disturbed times. If it was between betraying us or seeing their village burned and people killed, what would they do? It was better to travel by night when the Greeks, fearing ambush in a countryside unfamiliar to them, always returned to camp.

  We built a small fire to warm ourselves, for though it was still hot in the daytime, the evenings were colder. I sat, thinking little, except of the journey ahead, while Naomi talked to Nisintas. Under pressure from her he seemed to be speaking more fluently. Evidently he had gained a grasp of the demotic speech of Troy during his years of slavery. His silence was, as Naomi had told me, only because he preferred it to be thought he could not speak or understand. Naomi, who found it impossible to endure life if not in communication with those about her, was talking incessantly and asking him questions. I began to pay attention to their conversation. It wasn’t very reassuring. To begin with, Nisintas was no more a Hittite than I was, nor had Hattusas been his home – which meant the promise of release from slavery when we arrived was no very strong inducement. It emerged the big slave was the son of a Babylonian woman who had abandoned him to his father, an Assyrian merchant This man traded to and fro between Assyria and Hattusas across the Taurus range far to the east Nisintas had certainly been in Hattusas and had links there. He’d been captured ten years ago by mountain brigands, who had attacked his father’s caravan, killed the father and sold the son off to a man buying slaves for the Hittite iron mines – even at that age Nisintas must have looked strong. Then somehow he’d been sold again to a farmer on the plains between Hattusas and the sea. The farmer had a sideline as an ironsmith in winter, so for a few years Nisintas had been a farm labourer in summer and an apprentice at the forge in winter.

  By this stage, eavesdropping on what the two slaves were saying, I had become fascinated – also appalled. Here was a slave who, by his own account, understood metal-work and no one in Troy in time of war knew this. He’d been sweeping out stables and lifting bales of hay for years.

  He described the business of a forge – iron requires brick-lined furnaces and rapid work with the boiling metal and also demands higher temperatures and more work than bronze. He showed Naomi a horrid pit six inches long on his arm, where the hot metal had stuck. ‘Nearly lost my right arm,’ he said gloomily. It was apparently while he was an invalid that he had begun a relationship with the youngest daughter of the farmer. When the outraged farmer discovered his daughter sleeping with a slave, he sold him off in the slave market at Hattusas. From there he had been brought to Troy in a caravan and sold again.

  At this point Nisintas began to complain about Advenor, the guardian of our horses. Naomi interrupted by asking, ‘If you hated horses why didn’t you say you knew about working in metal?’

  He gave her his glum look and responded, ‘Why should a slave say anything? There’s nothing in speech, for a slave.’

  When we set off again, in darkness, down the hill and back to our route, I knew Nisintas had no special interest in being freed in Hattusas. There were no friends and family to greet him. He was with me under compulsion and as Naomi said, if it seemed a good idea to kill us, or sell us, or run off, he could easily do so. His frame of mind was unguessable now and, I suspected, always would be, to me at any rate. He was a slave and usually a slave can only be understood by another slave.

  So we went slowly along the coast, on our bad horses, clopping by night through quiet hamlets, where dogs barked, sleeping in caves or under trees during the day. I awoke one day and from the bushes in which we were sleeping I saw five Greeks ride past. One I knew to be Diomedes. He looked tired and had a big, unhealed gash running down one cheek.

  The moon was coming to the full. The nights were clear, the landscape was silver, as in a dream.

  Outside Brusa, which I calculated was beyond the reach of Greek patrols, the mare finally became so lame we had to lead her. My mother had said we would be welcomed at Brusa and helped to equip ourselves for the tougher part of our journey. We would get good horses and a waggon there. ‘Mules would be better,’ advised Nisintas. ‘They’re not so dignified, but only horses trained to those hills can manage them. These lowland animals could go lame, fall over the side of a precipice. You could purchase a horse for your arrivals, lady,’ he added encouragingly. ‘Ride it into towns – and lead it through the mountains.’

  At Brusa we found prosperity. The area lay fairly much outside the range of the Greeks at that time and the city walls were thick. The Queen of Brusa, as she styled herself (certainly her family had held the area for countless generations) was, though, not a happy woman. The gates were shut when we approached in mid-morning, and there were bowmen on the ramparts. I approached without fear, though Naomi quivered. I said, ‘What threat do we pose, even from a distance – two women and a man leading a lame horse? What they fear is twenty Greek horsemen, well mounted, with plumes flowing from their helmets. The Queen of Brusa is my mother’s father’s second wife’s child. She has the land and city through her own mother, Laodice of Brusa. She is also called Laodice.’ I had been drilled in all the diplomatic details of treaty, alliance and family before I left Troy. In addition to the family connection Brusa was a major city on the caravan route. Many Trojans had visited the city for trade purposes, and Laodice had sent twenty-five soldiers for the defence of Troy. She would help us – or so I thought.

  Naomi was not reassured (rightly, as it turned out). Meanwhile Nisintas walked behind, leading the lame horse and sulky as ever. I had to shout up at the ramparts. I named myself, because I had to and I thought it safe. We were instantly let in and whisked through cobbled streets full of traders and citizens to the great hall of the queen’s palace. Laodice was sitting on a large, carved, ebony chair at the head of the room, her two consorts beside her. The fire was lit and half a sheep was roasting on a spit; servants were going to and fro.

  The queen was a small, dark woman, wearing a long purple dress. Her consorts were Eldom, who I believe was her brother or half-brother, and a youth called Syr or Sor, I was not clear which. They have the habit in those parts of selecting annually a young man to be consort of the queen-priestess. In spring, at the end of a year, he is slain in the fields, to bring life to them. Sometimes, if he pleases the queen, they kill a surrogate, but the consort rarely survives more than a few years before it is his time to die. Sitting around the feet of the queen, on the floor, or on stools, were six or seven children, from a boy of about fifteen down to a little girl of four. Laodice had on her lap a curly-headed child of eighteen months, who stared, big-eyed, at us as we came in.

  I advanced and bowed respectfully, while Naomi and Nisintas sank down against the walls at the back. Laodice invited me to sit. A chair was placed opposite her and the two men. Laodice’s brother-consort Eldom was a thickset man, with full lips above a black beard. The other consort was slender and liquid-eyed with a charming, but wary, proud air. His lips were reddened. He had in some senses the greatest position in the kingdom for he was their fortune and their fate. On the other hand, his life was at the disposition of the queen and her priests and priestesses.

  ‘So,’ Laodice said, smiling. ‘A guest. I welcome you. An even greater pleasure in times when few travel.’

  I told her, as courteously as possible, but fairly briskly, about my mission to enlist the aid of the Hittite Great King to rid all our coast of the Greeks once and for all. I added news of the war in Troy and praised the courage of the men she had sent, all of whom were, when I set out, alive and uninjured. (In fact the troops from Brusa were not skilful or brave.) Though it was midday, the smoke from the fire seemed to thicken and the room became darker. Through the gloom I saw her smile. ‘I wish you well with your mission,’ she said. ‘It is most important. You must rest here and we will give you every help to continue the journey.’

  ‘I am grateful, and thank you,’ I responded, ‘but I know you will not take it amiss if my stay is brief. It is late in the year to be tr
avelling east, and my journey is urgent.’

  She told me she quite understood. ‘These Greeks,’ her brother said ferociously, ‘are as bad as the plague. They kill, they interrupt normal life. Our subjects on outlying farms tell us they cannot pay their taxes because the farms are continually robbed. Sometimes this is true.’

  ‘Any more young warriors you could send to Troy would be welcomed,’ I told him. ‘There’s strength in numbers.’

  ‘The young men we have here,’ he told me, ‘are needed for the defence of our own city. We have sent all we can spare.’

  I pointed out that if Troy were fully manned and supplied, the Greeks could be beaten and their city need never be attacked. I mentioned other allies who had sent more warriors – and braver, though I did not say so.

  ‘What do you expect?’ he replied. ‘The Greeks are at their throats – they’re not at ours – so far.’

  I glanced at the queen, and though she sat smiling pleasantly I could see she agreed with her brother in not wanting to send more troops to Troy. They would let us fight the battle for them, trust we would win and, if we lost, hope to be unaffected by the Greek presence on the coast If they needed to they would try to make treaties with their new rulers. I did not want to offend them by suggesting this was the case. I assured them that I understood their position.