Ritsa pulled me back. “He’s always here, scrounging for food, but what can you do? I can’t turn him away, he’s her brother.” Back in the living quarters, she said, “Do you want to wait? She shouldn’t be long—they’ve been asleep hours already.”
“I’ll give it half an hour.”
Under the tapestry of vengeful Artemis, we sat quietly. After a while, I noticed that Ritsa had nodded off—she was permanently exhausted, poor woman. My gaze fell on the tapestry again. It told the story of Acteon, whom Artemis changed into a stag when he tried to force himself on her—or, in another version of the story, stumbled upon her accidentally while she was bathing. As the cloth swayed in a draught, Acteon seemed to be fleeing in terror from his own hounds, though there was no hope of escape; he was only a foot away from their slavering jaws. Ritsa was snoring slightly, her head slumped forward onto her chest. I closed my eyes and settled back into my chair. Immediately, behind my closed lids, I saw Cassandra and Helenus entwined on the bed. They looked like lovers; perhaps that’s what I found disturbing—though I suspect few lovers ever achieve that degree of intimacy. All those months before birth, aware, however dimly, of each other’s presence…What a bond that must forge. And yet, as boy and girl, man and woman, the whole trajectory of their lives must have been pulling them apart.
A few minutes later, I heard the front door close and another moment later Cassandra came into the room, blinking and yawning, her hair still tousled from sleep. She took a step back when she saw me, but Ritsa struggled to her feet and introduced us.
“Oh, yes, I know who you are.” Cassandra had curiously bright, hyper-alert eyes and a habit of staring straight at you without blinking. She always seemed to be groping after the meaning of words. This had the odd effect of making her seem stupid, which was certainly not true. At last, after quite a long silence, she went on, “My father told me about you.”
“Priam did?”
“Yes, when he came back to Troy with Hector’s body. He said you’d been very kind.”
Once again, I was touched to think Priam had remembered me. For a moment, I was blinking back tears.
We sat at the table and Ritsa produced bread and some cheese. Cassandra ate very little. She was making small grey pellets with the bread, rolling them between her thumb and forefinger. I noticed she had rather masculine hands: the bones prominent, a network of raised blue veins like drowned worms under the skin. At last she looked up. “So, what brings you here?”
I said I was trying to see all the women who’d arrived in the camp from Troy.
“Oh, you’re the welcoming committee, are you?”
“Not exactly.”
“So, you’ll have seen my mother?”
“Yes, she’s very concerned about you.”
“Bit late for that.”
“She’d like to see you.”
“Not possible, I’m afraid. Nobody’s allowed in, I’m not allowed out…I’m buried alive here.” The silence went on so long, I didn’t think there’d be any more from her, but then she said, “I just want this bloody awful wind to stop.” She put her head in her hands, peering at me through her fingers like a frightened child. “You know what really scares me? They’re going to ask me why they can’t leave, and I won’t know what to say…I don’t know!”
“They won’t ask you—they’ll ask Calchas.”
“Will they?”
I did my best to reassure her, pointing out that Agamemnon had his own priests and seers—of whom Calchas was by far the most important—but I might as well not have spoken. Those unblinking eyes stared straight through me.
“Anyway, isn’t it obvious why the gods are angry?” Ritsa said. “Look at what happened. Temples desecrated, children murdered, women raped…”
Cassandra ignored her.
I said: “Some people say it’s because of what happened to you.”
“What about it?” Hostile now.
“Well, wasn’t that an offence against the gods?”
“It was an offence against me. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it.”
She went back to making pellets out of bread. But then a minute later it all came bursting out of her. How she’d been walking home from the palace when she’d heard a clash of weapons in the streets and taken refuge in the temple of Athena, hiding behind a huge painted statue of the goddess. How Little Ajax had found her there and dragged her out. How she’d clung to the statue, bringing it crashing to the floor beside her. How all the way through what happened next, she’d stared into the owl-eyes of the goddess, refusing to admit that the body below her neck still belonged to her. I remember I did that, the first few times with Achilles.
“You know the worst thing?” she said. “I was on my period. Made no difference, he just pulled the bloody clout off me and threw it away…I wouldn’t have wanted my own sister to see that.”
I was struggling to find something to say.
Cassandra took a deep breath. “Look, what happened to me happened to hundreds of women. As soon as they heard the fighting, they ran to hide in the temples, and the Greeks knew where to look for them. There wasn’t a temple in Troy that wasn’t desecrated.”
Bugger the temples, I thought. What about the women?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ritsa shaking her head. I nodded to show I understood, but then Cassandra held out her hands towards me, slightly raised so her bracelets fell back to reveal the raw skin underneath.
“They tied me to the bed. They needn’t have worried—I’m not going to kill him. It’s his wife who’ll kill him.” Her voice was dreamy, abstracted. “She makes him a hot bath, she gives him a cup of the finest wine, tells the maids to rub oil into his back, and then when he’s half asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm, she throws a net over him, she raises the axe and HITS HIM HITS HIM HITS HIM…” She banged the table with her clenched fists.
I tried to think of something to say to calm her down, but my mind had gone blank—and it was too late anyway. She was on her feet, pacing up and down, arms flailing, spit flying, bouncing off the walls. It was essentially the same rant I’d heard once already, in the arena, on the day the Trojan women were brought down to the camp.
“Let her be,” Ritsa said. “She’ll wear herself out.”
Gradually, Cassandra became calmer. At last, white-faced, she walked towards me. “You must have seen my mother?”
“She’s very concerned,” I repeated.
Her mouth twisted. “Huh. Do you know, whenever I look at my mother, I see hairs growing out of her heart?”
And with that she turned on her heel and left the room. As the door closed behind her, Ritsa shrugged, even managed a slight smile, though I felt she was being more tolerant of me than I deserved. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Not your fault.”
“Yes, it was.”
“All right, it was.” She patted my shoulder. “You see why I turn a blind eye when she sneaks that brother of hers in? What else has she got?”
“I just hope she doesn’t give you a bad night.”
She didn’t bother replying to that. At the door, we hugged, and then I set off to walk home. As I reached the other side of the yard, I turned to look back, but Ritsa had already gone inside and closed the door.
16
It was too late to see Hecuba—and anyway, I had no good news to give her—so I went straight home. As soon as I entered the compound, I knew at once that something was wrong. Groups of men were huddled together in the yard, many of them looking over their shoulders, their eyes fixed on the door of Pyrrhus’s hall. What’s going on? I heard the question run from mouth to mouth, but nobody seemed to know the answer.