She was lying to herself; I could see it. She had made a convincing case, but she was wrong. I opened my mouth to tell her so, but I looked at Paris’ face again before I spoke. I could see the fine shape of his bones, the exquisite beauty of his features jarring so discordantly with the horror he opened up within me, but the terrible jangle of despair and fear was beginning to separate into distinct notes, and I was distracted from my words. So much of it was still to come, but one strand of sorrow felt immediate. I saw a woman in my mind’s eye, weeping over the baby that gurgled in her arms. Flowers twisted through her hair, a spring bubbled beside her as though in sympathy, and the gnarled branches of an olive tree stretched over her like it wanted to offer her protection. No mortal woman: the spirit of the mountain itself infused her veins. The word for what she was came to me: Oread. Mountain nymph. The tears that she sobbed were for her husband, Paris. I knew it, and although I knew that a thousand women would wring their hands and scream in bitter grief because of this man in the years to come, this nymph cried now. Her baby reached up a chubby arm to bat clumsily at his mother’s face, and I saw his eyes open big and dark, just like his father’s.
Paris’ eyes were fixed on me, not the infant’s. The vision dissolved, leaving me only with the nymph’s name. Oenone. I could say it, see if the name of the wife he’d abandoned along with his newborn son brought a jolt of guilt to that calm, handsome face. I could feel the word dripping with poison on my tongue, but it caught in my mouth and I could not force it past my lips.
‘Take some wine, Cassandra,’ Paris said. The solicitude in his voice was real. How could he be so kind and so terrible all at once?
To the palpable relief of my parents, I sat down on a cushioned chair beside them, and I took the goblet that Paris slid towards me. The bronze gleamed, the jewels on its stem glittered, and the sweet scent of honey mingled with the rich aroma of the wine. I let it calm me and the conversation continued around me as I forced myself to look at nothing but the dark liquid.
‘And so, tell me why you are set on Sparta?’ my father was saying.
Paris leaned back in his chair. ‘If I tell you, I must warn you it will be a very strange story.’ His tone was light. He had no fear of their disbelief. They urged him to speak; my parents and my brothers and sisters all eager to hear him.
I wished him gone, swallowed up by the mountains that should have been his grave years ago. But he was so full of smiles, of joy, a bright beacon, and I, too, was drawn towards him, even as I shuddered at his presence.
‘I lived a simple life on the slopes of Mount Ida,’ he said. ‘I tended the goats and never dreamed of even entering this great walled city. I believed I was the son of a herdsman and nothing more. Until the day came when, before me on the mountainside, appeared three women – not human women, but goddesses. I knew them to be divine in a moment – they shimmered with radiance and their beauty was beyond compare.’
When I had told of my encounter with Apollo, I had been met with scoffing first, anger later. But everyone smiled at Paris’ story. I wasn’t sure that they believed him either, but they were happy to listen.
‘They were Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, and they told me they had come to me because they had heard of my honesty and my fair judgement. They wanted me to decide which of them was the most beautiful, for all three of them coveted a golden apple that would be awarded as the prize to the goddess I chose.’ He sighed, a dreamy smile spreading across his face. ‘They dropped their robes and revealed their nakedness to me so I could better decide.’
A flutter went around the table. I could see my brother Hector suppress a laugh, but Paris had sparked their interest surely enough and they all leaned forward to hear the details.
My mind was clearing. There was no fuzz of light at the edges of my vision, no blade of knowledge piercing deep beneath my skull. Paris wove his story, and I weighed his words. I found them light, insubstantial. I thought he spoke sincerely, but I could see he was a man of romance and ideal-ism. Such a man speaks poetry in place of facts and thinks he tells a higher truth when all he spins is fantasy. I did not think he lied exactly, but I remembered the menace and the power of Apollo, and I found that I could not imagine three immortals squabbling before a human man as he described.
‘Each of them tried to persuade me,’ Paris went on. ‘Hera offered me the kingship of a great city and Athena offered me success in war. But to rule is not my destiny, nor do I seek glory on the battlefield.’ He tossed back his hair, the firelight from the heaped bronze bowls around us glimmering off its jet-black shine. ‘I turned to Aphrodite, truly the most beautiful of them all, and I pronounced her the winner.’