Now Hecuba is staring into the mirror, mouth slack.
“What is it?” I ask. There must be something wrong with the mirror.
Helen takes the mirror from Hector’s mother and hands it to me. “Do you see, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”
I look into the glass. My reflection is . . . odd. I’m me there, but also not me. My chin is stronger, my nose smaller, my eyes bolder, my cheekbones higher, my teeth whiter . . .
“Is this what you’ve all seen?” I ask. “This idealized reflection of yourself?”
“Yes,” says Helen. “Aphrodite’s looking glass shows only beauty. We have looked upon ourselves as goddesses.”
I can’t imagine that Helen could be any more beautiful than she already is, but I nod and touch the surface of the mirror. It’s not glass. It feels soft, resilient, rather like an LCD screen on a laptop computer. Perhaps that’s what it is and inside the carved backing might be powerful microchips and video morphing programs running algorithms of symmetry, idealized proportions, and other elements of perceived human beauty.
“Hock-en-bear-eeee,” says Helen, “let me introduce two others we’ve brought here this morning to judge whether you speak the truth. This younger woman is Cassandra, daughter of Priam. This older woman is Herophile, ‘beloved of Hera,’ the oldest of the Sibyls and priestess of Apollo Smithneus. It was Herophile who interpreted Hecuba’s dream lo those many years ago.”
“What dream is that?” I ask.
Hecuba, who, it appears, will not look at Herophile or Cassandra, says, “When I was pregnant with my second child, Paris, I dreamed that I gave birth to a burning brand that spread its fire to all of Ilium, burning it to the ground. And that child became a rampaging Erinyes—a child of Kronos, some say, the daughter of Phorkys say others, the offspring of Hades and Persephone say still others—but, all acknowledge, most likely the daughter of deadly Night. This Erinyes of flame had no wings, but it resembled the Harpies. The smell of its breath was sulfurous. A poisonous slaver poured from its eyes. Its voice was like the lowing of terrified cattle. It bore in its belt a whip of brass-studded thongs. It carried a torch in one hand and a serpent in the other, and its home was in the Underworld, and it was born to avenge all and any slights against mothers. Its approach was heralded by all the dogs of Ilium barking as if in pain.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s quite a dream.”
“I perceived the Erinyes to be the child later named Paris,” says the old hag named Herophile. “Cassandra also saw this, and recommended that the baby boy be killed the moment he emerged from the womb.” The old priestess gave Hecuba a scalding look. “Our advice was ignored.”
Helen literally steps between the women. “Everyone here, Hock-en-bear-eeee, has had visions of Troy being put to the torch. But we do not know which of our visions arise merely from anxiety for ourselves, our children, and our husbands, and which visions are gifts of true sight from the gods. So must we judge yours. Cassandra has questions for you.”
I turn to look at the younger woman. She is blonde and anorectic, but somehow still stunningly beautiful. Cassandra’s fingernails are bitten short and bloody, and her fingers are always twitching and intertwining. She can’t stand still. Her eyes are as red-rimmed as her nails. Looking at her reminds me of photos I’ve seen of gorgeous movie starlets in rehab for coke addiction.
“I have not dreamt of you, weak-looking man,” she says.
I ignore the insult and say nothing.
“But I ask you this,” she continues. “I once dreamt of King Agamemnon and his queen Clytaemnestra as a great royal bull and cow. What does this dream say to you, O Prophet?”
“I’m no prophet,” I say. “Your future is merely my past. But you see Agamemnon as a bull because he will be slaughtered like an ox upon his arrival home to Sparta.”
“In his own palace?”
“No,” I say. I feel like I’m in the crucible of oral exams at Hamilton College, my undergraduate alma mater. “Agamemnon will be killed in the house of Aigisthos.”
“By whose hand? At whose will?” presses Cassandra.
“Clytaemnestra’s.”
“For what reason, O Non-prophet?”
“Her anger at Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigeneia.”
Cassandra continues to stare at me, but she nods slightly to the other women. “And what do you dream of me and my future, O Seer?” she asks sarcastically.
“You will be savagely raped in this very temple,” I say.
None of the women appears to be breathing. I wonder if I’ve gone too far. Well, this witch wants the truth, I’ll give her the truth.
Cassandra seems unfazed, even pleased. I realize that the young prophetess has been seeing this rape for most of her life. No one has listened to her warnings. It must be refreshing for her to hear someone else confirm her vision.
But her voice sounds anything but pleased when she speaks again. “Who will rape me in this temple?”
“Ajax.”
“Little Ajax or Big Ajax?” asks the woman. Cassandra looks neurotic and anxious, but also very lovely in a vulnerable way.
“Little Ajax,” I say. “Ajax of Locris.”
“And what will I be doing upstairs in this temple, Little Man, when Big Ajax of Locris ravages me?”
“Trying to save or hide the Palladion,” I answer. I nod toward the small statue just ten feet from me.
“And does Little Ajax go unpunished, O Man?”
“He’ll drown on his way home,” I say. “When his ship is wrecked on the Gyraean Rocks. Most scholars think this is a sign of Athena’s wrath.”
“Will she bring doom to Ajax of Locris out of anger at my rape or to avenge the desecration of her temple?” demands Cassandra.
“I don’t know. Probably the latter.”
“Who else will be in the temple upstairs when I am raped, O Man?”
I have to think a second here. “Odysseus,” I say at last, my voice rising at the end like a student’s hoping his answer is correct.
“Who else besides Odysseus, the son of Laertes, will be witness to my defilement that night?”
“Neoptolemus,” I say at last.
“Achilles’ son?” interrupts Theano with a sneer. “He’s nine years old back in Argos.”
“No,” I say. “He’s seventeen years old and a fierce warrior. They will call him here from Skyros after Achilles is killed, and Neoptolemus will be with Odysseus in the belly of the great wooden horse.”
“Wooden horse?” says Andromache.
But I can see from the dilated pupils in Helen, Herophile, and Cassandra that these women have had visions of the horse.
“Does this Neoptolemus have another name?” asks Cassandra. She has the tone and intensity of a dedicated public prosecutor.
“He will be known to future generations as Pyrrhos,” I say. I’m trying to remember minutiae from the BD scholia, from the Cyclic poets, from Proclus’ Cypria, and from my Pindar. It’s been a long time since I read Pindar. “Neoptolemus will not sail back to Achilles’ old home on Skyros after the war,” I say, “but will land in Molossia on the western side of the island, where later kings will call him Pyrrhos and say they are descended from him.”
“Will he commit any other acts on the night the Greeks take Troy?” presses Cassandra.
I look at my jury of Trojan women—Priam’s wife, Priam’s daughter, Scamandrius’ mother, Athena’s priestess, a Sibyl with paranormal powers. Then this vision-accursed child-woman and Helen, wife of both Menelaus and Paris. On the whole, I would prefer OJ’s jurors.
“Pyrrhos, known now as Neoptolemus, will slaughter King Priam that night in Zeus’s temple,” I say. “He will throw Scamandrius down from the walls and dash the baby’s brains out on the rocks. He will personally drive Andromache to the slaveship. This I have told the others already.”