‘He was well rewarded.’ It was more of a smirk than a smile.
I was about to speak, but I saw his eyes dart to the entrance from the anteroom. I turned quickly. ‘Elektra?’
She stood awkwardly, framed between two columns.
‘Elektra?’ I said again. I heard the sharpness in my tone, the irritation I never managed to suppress. There was nothing but waiting in our lives now; did she have to add to it by lingering in silence before beginning any conversation? It pressed on the raw edge of my nerves and made me harsh, although I had resolved, time and time again, to be more soft, more patient.
‘Is Hector truly dead?’ she asked.
‘He is,’ I answered.
‘Then the war will end at last.’ Her voice cracked.
‘Troy cannot stand without its greatest warrior,’ I said.
She lifted her eyes to me. ‘Then my father will come home.’
‘He will.’
Her gaze slid to Aegisthus, and I felt him tense behind me. The silence stretched taut and quivering in the hall. I could not stand it. ‘Is that all?’ I snapped.
‘That’s all,’ she said, a slight smile lifting her mouth as she looked at Aegisthus, and she walked away.
My head ached. I turned back to Aegisthus. I wished I could crawl back into my bed and sleep the day away. The smoke from the fire in the central hearth stung my eyes, and I saw him through a watery haze. ‘So. No word should reach Agamemnon of – the situation here in Mycenae, before he arrives.’
The grey wisps spiralled towards the opening in the roof, escaping into the sky.
‘No word will reach him. I am sure of that.’ He shifted his gaze towards the cluster of guards that I had passed at the entrance.
I remembered the whispers outside the palace walls in the depths of night. The shifting sound of something heavy dragged across the ground. Aegisthus’ face, different now.
His demeanour, now that the wait was nearly over, was not more anxious, as I had anticipated. He wasn’t shrinking away. He looks ready, I thought.
And I wondered why that did not bring me any comfort.
19
Cassandra
‘Paris is wounded! He is wounded!’
The shouting echoed up and down the gathering dusk through the streets of Troy. In the temple of Apollo, I turned my head towards the sound, startled.
Paris had been a dead man walking since Hector had fallen. He’d had his moment of glory on the battlefield the day that one of his arrows had miraculously lodged itself deep in Achilles’ foot. The poison-coated tip had done its work from there. It was the first time my sleek, handsome brother had distinguished himself on the battlefield; here, in the dying days of war, when it seemed that barely anyone cared any more what happened. Achilles, when his wrath had burned out, had fought a bleak and desultory fight. His grief shone from him; the baleful heart of a star collapsing into white ashes. He roamed the plains in search of his own death; that was why Paris’ arrow was at last able to find its target. Achilles welcomed it. And so, Paris was fêted briefly in our halls; at the meagre remnants of the feasts we used to have that Priam and Hecabe attempted now. Hector’s empty chair, Andromache’s blank face, my parents’ glazed eyes – it only made the contrast to those past celebrations more stark.
I had lost track of the days some time ago. Now the shouting resolved itself into clear words and I understood. So, today was Paris’ time to die. Ten years too late.
My parents would grieve. For them, I would go to the palace, even if there were no words of solace left. But when I stepped out from between the pillars, into the soft evening air, it was Helen that I saw.
‘Where has he fled?’ she asked.
I thought for a moment. ‘When he arrived at Troy, he left a wife behind him,’ I said. ‘Oenone, a nymph of the river. They dwelt in the mountains before he left to seek a different prize.’
She looked at me steadily. ‘Will she help him?’
Oenone. I saw her face, ravaged by tears when he left. Twisted with anger when she learned where he had gone and why. I could see Paris, bleeding and limping up the paths they had walked together once, begging for her healing skills, a decade after he had abandoned her.
I shook my head. ‘She will not.’
Helen looked away.
‘He should have died on that mountain as a baby,’ I said. The words jarred in the gentle breeze. They were not what I meant to say.
‘He will die there today,’ she said.
I gave a stiff, jerky nod.
She reached out her hand and touched my shoulder. I looked at her slender fingers, the gleaming pink oval nails. Her touch was warm. Kind. I wondered why she seemed to be comforting me when it was she who was newly widowed, her position in Troy more precarious as she had no husband to claim her, no brother-in-law to protect her. I had heard it said that if Paris fell, she would be given in marriage to Deiphobus, one of Priam’s few surviving sons, one of my last remaining brothers. How Helen felt about it, I had no idea. But no worry or anxiety creased her forehead, and I could see only sympathy in her eyes.