The happiest memory: outside in a courtyard, my father lifting me up in his arms. I was fascinated by the golden clasp at his shoulder that held the fine woollen edges of his purple cloak together; how it glinted in the sun. A little gem sunk into the centre, with two tiny figures embossed upon its surface: warriors in combat.
He had a pair of daggers made of bronze that I loved to look at. The blades were inlaid with gold and silver. One was decorated with sea creatures, shining tentacles looping across the surface. The other, my favourite, was a scene of men hunting lions. I loved to trace the tiny bright gold spears, the silver shields, the snarling face of the lion. He laughed, pleased at my interest.
An evening when I couldn’t sleep. The distant sound of my parents arguing somewhere in the palace, my mother storming from a room. The only word I heard distinctly was Helen’s name.
7
Cassandra
In Troy, I had grown used to walking out of step with everyone else. But I had never known what it was to be shunned. The other priestesses pitied me at first for my madness, but they soon grew impatient with my wild claims to have been visited by the god himself. I saw how their faces pinched when they looked at me, the sympathy draining from their eyes. It was replaced by suspicion, exasperation and, finally, a cold disinterest. I suppose they thought I lied for the attention, and they grew tired of hearing me.
They had brought me to the palace after it had happened, my hair wild around my face.
‘Who has done this?’ I heard Priam ask. ‘What’s happened to her?’ He was poised, alert, ready to command his guards, to hunt down any perpetrator. The image of it was ridiculous; I thought of his armed men marching up the sides of Mount Olympus, and laughter erupted from me.
‘She’s hysterical,’ Hecabe said, wringing her hands together. ‘Take her to rest, summon a healer for her.’
I pushed at the women around me, shoving their solicitous hands away before they could bear me off. ‘It was Apollo.’ I stood as straight as I could, trying to stop my legs from buckling under me. A murmur of disquiet rippled through the women, a note of irritation that I was still clinging to this nonsensical story. ‘It was. He came to me, in the temple. He was there.’ I knew what I looked like – a madwoman – and I couldn’t force my tongue to shape the words that would make them believe me. Everything sounded absurd and impossible; I could hear it myself, and the more I tried to make the truth sound believable, the more preposterous it became. ‘He kissed me,’ I said. ‘And then—’
My mother drew her breath in sharply, her face frozen as she stared at me.
‘He gave me his power,’ I continued. ‘I saw so many things, all at once.’
‘What things?’ Priam asked.
‘I – I don’t know, exactly. It was a blur; I couldn’t see it clearly.’
Already, his eyes were sliding away. ‘Perhaps the seer could interpret?’ he asked my mother doubtfully, but she shook her head.
‘The god doesn’t visit us,’ she said. ‘His messages don’t come like that. What is there for a seer to interpret in what she’s saying? If it was a dream, then perhaps – but this, this is a fantasy. It’s an insult to Apollo to say this. We risk his anger in even hearing it spoken.’
Panic flared in my chest. ‘I know he comes to you in dreams, but it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t come to me in another way,’ I cried.
‘No!’ She stood, a quick and convulsive movement. ‘Don’t say it; don’t repeat it!’ She smoothed down her dress, breathed deeply and closed her eyes for a moment, gathering her calm. ‘I told you once before, Cassandra, it is not a gift. I serve the god. Perhaps he has chosen me sometimes to be the vessel for his message, for a seer to interpret and understand what he wants us to know, but I would never dare to say that he comes to me, that he would show himself to me.’
The answer thickened in my throat. How could I tell them why he had shown himself to me and not to her? I looked around the room, from one doubting face to the next, and then back to my parents. It pained me to see the mingling of love and frustration in their eyes. The powerful desire they had for me to go away, to keep my wild stories to myself. I let them tend to me, to bring the healers to try to calm me, to cure the madness they were sure must have overtaken me. Lying in the dark solace of my bedchamber, I wondered if the memory would recede, if it would become shaky, if the herbs they crushed for me and made me drink would dull the chaos of visions in my brain.