“Can’t you?” she retorted. Like her, he was still in his day robes.
“The death of those carried young to the Elysian Fields is tragedy beyond measure,” he said sadly. “To have them die before one’s eyes is a burden greater than Atlas, who holds the whole world on his shoulders.”
Periander wrapped one arm round her shoulder and squeezed. Together father and daughter watched the moon dance on the sea.
“We old folk find consolation in the knowledge and wisdom that comes from maturity, but it is always the young that we envy, Cassandra.” He sighed heavily. “You have so much to give.” He placed a kiss on the top of her head. “So much to lose.”
She watched him walk away, stroking his beard in thought, though it was only later, much later, that she realised he wasn’t talking about a young general collapsing dead at his feet.
He had been talking about Cassandra’s mother.
What befell Periander’s wife befell most of the Delphic prophetesses. One day the Oracle was sitting in her sanctum, dispensing riddles as usual. The next, she was a gibbering wreck. Drooling, moaning, writhing, screaming. She saw visions — terrible, marvellous, hideous visions — but these were the visions that killed her. Slowly and painfully, they would torture her to death while she frothed at the mouth, suffered spasms, amnesia, until the final convulsion came as a blessing.
Cassandra was just a baby when her mother had died. She only ever knew her through her father’s memories, but from what he told her, she would have loved her. They shared the same dark hair and eyes, he said, the same sense of joy and laughter.
“Ah, but she was a wonderful actress,” Periander would remind her. “The minute she donned those robes and mask, she became Apollo’s virgin bride, waiting for her adoring bridegroom.”
Then he would explain how it wasn’t that the Oracle was a fraud. Just that Mighty Apollo couldn’t sit there, day in and day out, with nothing else to do but assure this merchant that his investment was sound or that poet that his next work would be a masterpiece. When the gods spoke, mortals knew it, Periander reminded her solemnly, and when Apollo did speak through the mouth of the Oracle, then the poor creature was doomed. But by maintaining the pretence, such was Delphi’s standing in the Greek world that men came from all over to receive the god’s approbation, undergoing various rituals to win Him over. It was vital their trust in Him was upheld.
Backed by a massive administration ranging from the Governing Council to the countless scribes that toiled to keep the mountain of files up-to-date, the Oracle hosted Games to rival Olympia and held musical competitions that would turn Orpheus himself green with envy. And thus, for the thousands of pilgrims who flocked to the shrine hoping to have a curse lifted or find love, found a new colony overseas or sue for peace with their neighbours, the Oracle represented stability in a changing and unsettled world.
“You, child, are even better than your mother,” Periander would tell her, and for her part, Cassandra was proud to contribute to the miracle that was Delphi. Rich or poor, every petitioner went home reassured that, if he sacrificed here or did penance there, Apollo would surely be with him. The emancipation of slaves was particularly rewarding for her. You couldn’t ask for more than to give a man happiness.
And so, watching her father prostrate himself before the shrine of Zeus, the moonlight turning the lines in his face into chasms, her heart ached for the man whose wife had died after hearing Apollo’s voice, and who had never got over the loss. And now, to add to the tragedy, his daughter’s prophesies had been brutally sabotaged…
As he rose and poured a libation to the King of the Immortals, God of Vengeance and Justice and Honour, she realised with a start that her mother would have been the same age Cassandra was now. In her twenty-fifth summer.
Despite the throbbing heat of the night, the Oracle shivered. And wished Jason would hurry.
Zeus is the first, Zeus is the last, Zeus is the god with the divine thunderbolt.
The hymn kept going round in her mind.
Zeus is the head, Zeus is the middle, of Zeus all things have their end.
As she gazed down over the hillside, across the building works in various stages of construction, at the statues that lined the Sacred Way, Cassandra knew that she would remember this night for the rest of her life.
It was the night she walked into womanhood.
Behind her, the Shining Cliffs lived up to their name, glistening white in the moonlight. Riddled with caves and rich with fountains and springs, they were the playground of Pan, home to the Muses, and the stairway to the pinnacle from which those convicted of sacrilege against the gods were flung to their deaths. From the grove of holm oaks, an owl hooted softly.
Not a seer like her father, or a prophetess as was made out, Cassandra nevertheless saw the picture clear in her mind.
The king who rules the city-state from which I come is a weak man. Laertes’ words floated back to her. He puts the good of himself before the good of his people.
The files had backed up this assessment, but weak and self-serving doesn’t mean stupid. One by one, as Hercules tramped round the heavens, the pieces fell into place.
Laertes’ king hadn’t trusted his general an inch, and when Laertes set off on that long trek to Delphi, the king knew there could be only one question which needed an answer. Not about to give up his dynasty, he duly despatched his own man, an assassin, to ensure Laertes would not return.
Leaning her back against a pillar, Cassandra realised she’d never know for certain. Had the assassin travelled a different route, which took longer? Had he been caught in a storm out at sea? Taken ill? Who knows, but whatever happened, he must have arrived in Delphi well after Laertes had registered his petition and paid his admission fee. Prowling round on padded feet, enquiring in whispers, the assassin would have noted the power that one gold statuette held, shooting Laertes up the queue of merchants and military men, athletes and musicians, much less the scores of humble smallholders. And the assassin would have quickly realised that, if the Treasury could be bought, so could individuals. It was his nature to probe and investigate. To determine which priest drank from gold goblets at home. Which acolyte kept an expensive mistress. Whether the Guardian of the Keys had run up debts.
From the moment Laertes set foot outside his own country, he was a dead man. It had only been a question of timing. Cassandra understood. This was the way of the world. It was the next part she had trouble comprehending. The fact that the murder had not only happened in her world, but that the killer specifically intended to discredit the Oracle.
And she did not mean the assassin.
His job was over once he’d established who could be bribed, and for how much. Even the method of execution was out of his hands.
Poison…
Extracted from the deadly nightshade, whose juice induces dry mouth, impaired speech — all the things, in fact, that she had witnessed from inside her sanctum, before Laertes’ eyesight failed and he’d found difficulty breathing, prior to lapsing into unconsciousness and finally death. The heat from the column diffused into her backbone. It all came back to that tiny phial of liquid that had been fed to him inside the temple, she reflected, and that was the sad part. Inside the temple. For in this killing, timing was crucial. And, standing beneath the stars and the moon that saw everything, Cassandra knew that the hand that had delivered that fatal dose of belladonna belonged to someone not only familiar with the temple, but who knew the sanctum inside out. Who understood not only the mind of the petitioner, but also the intricacies of the disorientation process — and was in a position to play on both. Manipulating the timing of the drug, so that Laertes wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, whilst ensuring that the Oracle’s suspicions would not be aroused, either. Someone, in short, who knew she would set the supplicant a riddle. And be discredited when Laertes collapsed of natural causes…