‘This prince will destroy the city,’ he said. His voice was soft, like an echo spiralling from the depths of a cave, but so very cold. ‘If he is allowed to grow up, I see Troy consumed by fire, a fire he is destined to start. The child must not live.’
No one questioned him. It seemed that he confirmed what Hecabe knew already; the reason she had woken screaming from the nightmare. And after all, this baby would be one of many sons born to Priam, with plenty of daughters besides. To lose one of so many children and save his city from ruin might seem to be a price worth paying.
Neither my father nor my mother could bring themselves to pay it, though. When my brother, Paris, was born, they could not bear to fling that tiny baby from the high walls of Troy, or to smother him with a fine piece of cloth, or even to lay him down on the empty mountainside and walk away. They gave him to a shepherd instead; told him to leave the child to be taken by the cold night air or the ravening teeth and claws of whatever wild animal might be passing.
I wonder if they told the shepherd why he was to do it. If he knew the future of Troy depended on the hardening of his heart to that mewling, pitiful cry. I wonder if he tried; if he set the baby down on the scrubby hillside, if he took a step and then another before he turned around. Did he look at Paris’ tiny nose, his bald head, his soft arms reaching out for comfort, and dismiss the words of the seer as superstition and nonsense? How could a baby bring down a city he might have wondered. Perhaps his wife was barren, their home never blessed with children. Perhaps he thought that if he kept Paris outside the city walls and raised him as nothing more than a herder of goats, Troy would be safe. Its great stone towers, its mighty oak gates bolted with iron, its wealth and power must have seemed impervious to harm.
My brother lived in secret. He grew from defenceless infant to young man and none of us dreamed of his existence on the mountains outside Troy. No one spoke again of Hecabe’s nightmare, and that whole night would have taken on the quality of a dream itself, except that I remembered the scrape of stone against my back as I edged away from Aesacus. I could not forget the milky film that streaked his eyes, and the scent of smoke. The pity I felt for that soft little bundle that days later I saw carried from Hecabe’s chamber by a weeping slave, mixed with the relief that my mother had dreamed no such dreams about me.
I did try to talk to her about it once, long after it had happened. My voice was timid, and I could see that my hesitancy irritated her. I was curious about her dream, what quality it had to make her trust the seer so readily, what magic it had to make her know it was the truth. I suppose it was insensitive, looking back, but I was wrapped in the selfishness of youth, and I wanted to know.
‘You weren’t there, Cassandra,’ she snapped. The instant dismissal wounded me, and a flush bloomed in my cheeks. I only felt the recoil of my own pain, not a thought for what I was asking her to remember as I pushed on, eager to understand.
‘I was,’ I protested. ‘I remember Aesacus and the fire – I remember what he said.’
‘What? Speak up, girl,’ she commanded. She hated how quiet my voice was. As a child, I rarely made it through a sentence without being told to start it again and say it more loudly, more clearly.
No one ever asks me to repeat myself now.
I tried, haltingly, to describe the room and the rituals of the seer, but she shook her head sharply. ‘Nonsense, Cassandra, another of your imaginings,’ she said. Her tone stung. I think she noticed the hurt stamped across my face because she softened then, put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed me briefly. She spoke more gently. ‘It was not like that at all. Aesacus took my dream to the oracle, and he heard the prophecy there. Your mind has run away with you again. You must learn to hold back the wilder excesses of your imagination. Perhaps if you spent less time alone . . .’
‘Apollo only comes to you when you’re alone, doesn’t he?’
She drew back and looked hard at me.
I squirmed a little, unused to such scrutiny.
‘Is that what you want?’ she asked.
The note of doubt in her voice rattled me. Why would anyone not want it? If you could see into the future, know what was going to happen, if you could protect yourself against it – why did she make it sound as though it would be absurd to want such a gift? ‘It’s just – I’m your daughter, if the gods send visions to you, I wondered if they might – if I might . . .’ I trailed off, thrown by the worry writ across her face.
‘The gods act as they do according to reasons we cannot know,’ she said. ‘Apollo loves Troy, I am the queen – any vision that comes from the god is for the good of the city. It isn’t a gift to me; it isn’t something I sought out. It isn’t for us to ask for such a thing.’