Cassandra (6 page)

`While he is in that mask he is the god,' he hissed. `Sit down, Chryse!' When I struggled, he said coldly, `Diomenes!' At the sound of my real name I sat still and listened. `He is the god, and she needs a child. It may be that there is no fault in her, but that her husband is barren. However good the soil, it needs fertile seed. The god will give her a child. Will you behave if I let you go?'

I nodded and he released me. I was shocked and said nastily, `What of the impotent man? Do we mate with him, too?'

`No need. His impotence is in his mind. The mind is our province, little brother. There. The birth is imminent.'

Païs' cries had changed. She was panting. Shudders were running up and down her body. Her legs twitched. Two attendants lifted her gently onto a stretcher and carried her up the direct path to the outside world. They moved at a brisk jog trot and I followed them, blinking and crying in the sudden sunlight. They laid Païs in the cool temple of women and her attendant priest Achis caught the baby as it emerged, blue and red and ugly, on a burst of blood. I felt ill.

He then wiped the creature clean, and tied and severed a throbbing blue cable which attached it to the girl's body. There seemed to be blood everywhere. It was the first birth I had seen and after the revelation that there were no gods, it was too much for me. I sat down suddenly and closed my eyes.

I heard a thin wail and Achis' voice crooning `There, there, little man! Mother,' he urged gently, `here is your son.'

Païs gave a tired laugh. I heard the swish of a cloth on the marble floor. The slaves were cleaning up, as a mess is distasteful to the god. Achis hauled me to my feet and I was led outside.

`Overcome by the mystery, little brother?' he asked lightly, smiling. He knew what went on in the fraudulent dark. I hated him, violently and suddenly. I shook off his hand and ran, tears streaming down my face, into the temple and slid, falling in an ungainly heap at my master's feet.

I did not look up but held onto a fold of his robe as the whole story tumbled out - the soldier removing the spear point and the barren woman mating with the priest in her sleep and the Achaean screaming. He heard it all, in grave silence. Then he raised me to my feet and dusted down my tunic.

`Was it possible to remove the metal from Milanion's face?'

`No, Master.'

`Why not?'

`It was too firmly fixed, Master, and the muscles had contracted.'

`So the only way it could be removed was to make him sleep.'

`Yes,' I agreed dubiously. `But we could have just drugged him.'

`Yes, we could. Then where would have been the story?'

`The story, Master?'

`If consulting a god is as easy as ordering a wheel fixed, would men believe in it enough for it to work?'

`I don't know, Master.'

`Would the Achaean have screamed in any other place?'

`No, Master.'

`And the barren woman, would she have accepted a lover?'

`No, Master.'

`And the birthing woman - would she ever have allowed a man to touch her?'

`Probably no, Master.'

`Well, then. We need to heal, Chryse. It is our great task.'

`But, Master...' I grabbed a fold of the dark robe, `Master, there are no gods.'

`You saw a god yourself, once, little brother.'

`That was Death, Master. There are no gods but Death, then,' I said mulishly. He smiled at me and patted my shoulder.

`Every asclepid knows that, Chryse,' he said sadly.

 

`You have saved him from death and removed him from belief,' commented Poseidon. `And your maiden is in love with her twin brother. I don't understand how those two can ever come together. Meanwhile, what about my revenge? Is Troy to stand?'

`Troy will fall,' said Apollo absently, staring down into the water at Diomenes asleep in the temple. `Have patience, Sea God.'

`Troy will not fall' said Aphrodite with equal certainty. `See how brave she is, how beautiful! Your puppet will surely love my daughter Cassandra as soon as he sets eyes on her.'

`Then he shall not set eyes on her. There is another he shall see first,' chuckled Apollo.

I was not supposed to see the mystery called childbirth until I had become one of the Mother's maidens with my first bleeding of sacrifice blood. But I teased my teacher Tithone so incessantly that she set me fifteen pectoral herbs to learn perfectly and said that after I had managed a broken bone all by myself, I could come to watch Clea give birth. She was expected to do so very soon.

I was twelve and convinced I knew everything.

I spent a week annoying my twin by insisting on haunting the exercise field, where the young men practised fighting and the maidens shot their bows. Eleni only stopped complaining when Hector gave him spear-throwing lessons along with Polites, our brother, who was four years older. This was an honour and Eleni stripped and took to the field with as much pride as any Trojan warrior. I giggled at the contrast between slim fifteen-year-old Polites, with his long oiled thighs under the war skirt, Hector as tall as a tree and little Eleni with his stumpy ungrown shape. However, I did it privately and behind my hand.

I was waiting for someone to hurt themselves. Childbirth is the great female mystery and I was eager to see it. I was not a nice child.

I sat watching the warriors, instructed by Hector, practising with the spear. Our Trojan spear is shorter than the common, but heavier, with a barbed bronze head. It is used for stabbing at close quarters and can be thrown a long distance with a spear thrower, a longish piece of wood with a crook at the end. This is a Trojan skill and takes learning, but it can cast a spear three times the distance that an unassisted man can throw it.

I wriggled into a more comfortable seat with my back against the sun-warmed wall of the temple of Apollo, the sun god aspect of the Lord Dionysius. He rules prophecy, so he was my god. I felt very comfortable in his temple but was always on the brink of falling asleep when there, and I wanted to watch. I pinched my wrist and sat up straighter.

The maidens, a flutter of coloured tunics, were further away, near the little hill, between the city and the river Scamander. I could see a purple tunic among the pale green, ochre and rose. It was probably Andromache, our playmate and destined wife of our brother Hector. She resembled Eleni and me, being pale skinned with dark golden hair and the grey eyes which marked the god-touched, although she had not shown any sign of prophecy or skill in healing. In fact, she had no interest in healing but was good at arms. The elders thought that she might be protected by War, him whom the Argives call `Ares'. The Amazon Myrine, who was of course War's child, trained Andromache especially hard, stating that she of all the maidens would need to know how to fight.

Even at ten Andromache was tall and strong. I could hear Myrine shouting at her to keep her wrist tensed against the pluck of the string, and scolding her for allowing it to skin her inner arm. Andromache drew and loosed again. She would not cry. Andromache never cried.

Then I heard a cry and a thud. Instantly I was up and running for the centre of the field, where two young men had been wrestling.

I ducked past Eleni, who was leaning on his spear, circumnavigated Hector and slid to a halt next to the fallen, whom I recognised as Sirianthis. He was a hapless boy, always hurting himself. I could have guessed that my first broken bone would be Siri. His mother put it down to her having spent most of her pregnancy tripping over things. He was a pleasant boy, though, and everyone liked him. He tried very hard and never minded the other boys laughing at him.

He was lying on the ground, curled around his injury, clutching his upper arm and trying not to cry. I recognised the strange fish hook shape of his body on the dusty ground and said, `Siri, I need a broken bone. All you've done is dislocated your arm.'

`Sorry,' he panted. `It hurts. Can you fix it, Cassandra?'

`Of course, but if you had to hurt yourself couldn't you have broken something? I don't know if Tithone will think that this counts. I'll get Hector. It will be all right in a moment, Siri, I promise. Who are you?' I asked the other boy.

He turned a shocked face up to me and said, `Maeron, lady. I didn't mean to hurt him.'

I ignored this. `Go and get your tunic, lie him on his back with the tunic rolled up between his shoulder blades while I fetch my brother.'

Hector, who was about to cast the spear, put it down again and followed me to where Siri lay whimpering. The stretched-out position strained all his displaced sinews, those strings which knit a muscle together. Hector leaned down and stroked the hair from the boy's sweating face.

`It will stop hurting soon, little brother,' he said soothingly. `Maeron, sit beside him and hold him still while I pull. No, grab the other shoulder and brace yourself.'

`Hector, Hector, let me,' I begged, hauling on his elbow. `Thithone said I had to do this before I can see the mystery.'

Hector looked at me sternly. `A warrior must not be left unattended because of the healer's private purposes,' he said. `But you may give me orders, Cassandra, if you do so right away.'

When my brother called me Cassandra like that he was seriously displeased and I quaked. But I knew the procedure and ordered, `Take his wrist in your hand, brother, and put your foot under his arm pit. Now pull gently until the arm goes back into the socket.'

I had seen this several times. It was always fascinating. As Hector pulled on the arm, the shoulder joint moved under my hand, from an ugly displaced lump to the shape of the boy's proper shoulder. All medicine, said Tithone, was restoring the body to its proper shape and condition. There was a click, Siri bit back a cry, and Hector laid the restored arm across the boy's chest.

Hector looked at me. I remembered what remained to be done.

`Wriggle your fingers, Siri,' I ordered. `Can you feel your hand?'

`Yes, Princess. Thank you.' Maeron was holding Siri close and I perceived that they were lovers. I blushed to think that I had just ordered poor Maeron about, as though he was a dog, when he must have been worried about Siri. And Hector was angry with me. This healing was more difficult than it looked. It involved people; mere knowledge of methods of healing did not begin to cover it.

`Now, Cassandra, what next?' asked Hector. Luckily, I knew.

`I bandage his arm to his side and send him off the field to rest, taking broth and marshleaf infusion to soothe the inflammation, and he is not to move his shoulder for three days. I can apply oil of mint to cool the joint and reduce the swelling and he must be watched for fever,' I parroted, making a bandage from Maeron's tunic. Hector bent his head in approval I watched Maeron help his friend to his feet and they limped off the field, passing into the city through the Scamander Gate, which was nearest to Siri's house.

`Now, Cassandra, we must talk. Or rather, you will talk to me while Eleni goes with Polites to practise the use of the spear thrower.'

`Eleni went, glancing back at me in compassion. Hector was very seldom angry with us but when he was he did not rage or slap. Rather he was sad and measured and his every word sank into the heart and stung like a thorn.

`Oh, Hector, I am so sorry...' I began.

Instead of hugging me, he asked gravely, `Why are you sorry?'

`I shouldn't have thought of Siri as a task I had to do in order to see childbirth. I'm fond of Siri, but I treated him like a thing.'

`You want to be a healer, don't you?'

`Yes.'

`Then you must know that all your patients are people, and you have to love them. Not all the time, Cassandra, and not for ever. But while they are in your care then they must have your whole heart. Otherwise you will never heal them.'

`But Hector...' I ventured closer to him and took his hand, `that can't be right.'

`Why not?' he was relenting enough to argue and I felt instantly better. We began to walk back towards the city of Troy. The walls shone white in the morning, the walls, the height of three men, built by Heracles the hero in recompense for his massacre of my grandfather and his sons.

`The best healer of these sorts of injuries is Myrine the Amazon,' I stated.

`Yes,' Hector agreed.

`But Myrine is rough,' I protested. `She grabs and heaves and swears at them, curses them for foolish men, closes wounds with her fingers, pressing hard enough to make them cry out, and then she curses them again for weaklings and children.'

`She tended me when I fought that boar,' said Hector. `Her harsh words recalled my courage and her hands were skilled and strong.' I saw the scar down the outside of his thigh where the tusks had sliced his flesh. `She sucked out the dirt and poisonous saliva with her own mouth, swearing by Hecate that I was the clumsiest hunter she had ever met. Can you doubt that she loved me then?'

I thought about this, reviewing what I had seen of Myrine the Amazon. It seemed unlikely but it was true. She did love her patients. I nodded.

`Go then, little vulture,' said Hector, patting me. `Tell Tithone you have replaced a dislocated shoulder and beg her, from me, to consider this equivalent to the task she set you.'

To salve my conscience, I went first to the small house in the first circle where Siri lived. His mother greeted me and gave me a small clay bird as a present for tending her accident-prone son, and I went off to find Tithone in a very guilty state.

I told her what had happened and she listened without a word. Then of all things, she laughed, a bright and joyous laugh, almost like a girl's. It came strangely from Tithone's aged face, and I was disconcerted.

`Aren't you angry with me, Lady?' I asked. She hugged me to her bony bosom.

`Ah, little daughter, more years away than you can count I did the same thing, and my brother called me a vulture too. You will be a fine healer, Cassandra, if you keep the great warrior's advice in mind. You may not like your patients, or approve of them, or let them become close to you. But while they are yours, you must love them. Hmm. Your lord brother is a fine man, a fine man. Troy is fortunate in its captain. How was Siri?'