Glyn Iliffe - The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

Philoctetes was the last ashore, where they laid him still sleeping on a litter. Shortly afterwards, two Greek horsemen arrived at the top of the beach and trotted down towards the Ithacans. Odysseus, who by his constant glances in the direction of the camp appeared to have been expecting their arrival, went to meet them. They spoke briefly, then the riders pulled their horses about and galloped off.

‘Agamemnon sent them,’ he explained, returning to the others. ‘They spotted our sail, of course, and wanted to know what we were up to. I told them to send Podaleirius; Asclepius’s son will know how to treat Philoctetes’s wound.’

‘Neither he nor his brother could cure him ten years ago,’ Diomedes said. ‘Why should he succeed now?’

‘Because it’s the will of the gods, my friend,’ Odysseus replied with a confident smile.

The smell of the wound grew in its offensiveness without the sea air to carry some of it away, but they were at least relieved of the archer’s intermittent fits of pain as he remained in a deep sleep until Podaleirius arrived on horseback, his leather satchel bouncing against his hip. The healer dismounted and, after a curt nod to the others, knelt beside the sleeping form. Repeatedly sweeping his long hair from his eyes, he undressed the wound and bent low to inspect it.

‘Bring me a torch,’ he ordered.

Eperitus fetched a brand from one of the campfires and stood over Podaleirius, wincing in disgust as he prodded and picked at the black sludge of rotting flesh on the top of Philoctetes’s foot. Podaleirius took a wooden bowl from his satchel and set it down on the sand.

‘You have water?’ he asked.

Antiphus knelt and filled the bowl from the skin at his hip, while the healer pulled out a cloth and unwrapped two sharp knives. He dropped the cloth into the bowl, then held up one of the knives so that it glinted in the torchlight.

‘Lord Apollo, grant me the skill to heal this wound,’ he whispered, then lowered the blade to the liquefied flesh.

Chapter Five

T HE E YE OF A POLLO

Cassandra pulled the cloak tighter about her shoulders in an attempt to keep out the cold west wind that haunted the plains of Ilium. Looking up, she could see a circle of tall plane trees at the top of the slope, their branches silhouetted by the waxing moon. She tipped back her hood to reveal a beautiful but melancholy face, her skin pale in the thin half-light. Her dark eyes contemplated the temple of Thymbrean Apollo with unease. As a girl she had encountered a young man there who offered to teach her the art of prophecy. In her naivety – partly enticed by his noble looks and partly thrilled at the thought of reading the future – she accepted and for months he had shown her the mysterious secrets of divination. Inside the shadowy temple, where the pillars were the boles of the trees and the ceiling the interlaced fingers of their branches, he showed her how to peel back the dark layers of her mind and use her inner eye to see far and wide, into things past and things yet to come. The knowledge was fearful for one as young as she was, but it quickly enslaved her, and when the man had taught her everything she needed to know he told her his price. Her virginity. She was at once horrified and excited by his impudent demand, but in spite of the way he made her heart race and her skin flush with desire she reminded herself that she was a princess of Troy, the daughter of King Priam, and she refused him. His handsome face became dark and terrible and in that moment he revealed his divine nature to her, transforming into a being of light and glory before her eyes. But Apollo did not rape her, as she had expected, or threaten to take back the gift of prophecy; instead he cursed her, announcing that her visions would continue but her words of doom would never be believed. And so it had been ever since.

She shuddered at the memory – and at the knowledge she would soon be calling on the god again. Inside the temple she would ask him to open the future to her. Though she had refused her body to Apollo, to have his divine spirit inside her was an experience much more intense and intimate than she imagined physical intercourse could ever be. And like sex, prophecy had its dangers. When a woman allowed a man to enter her body, she risked pregnancy and death in childbirth, but when she allowed a god to enter her mind she risked insanity. Yet it was a risk she had always been ready to take, and all the more so now as she sensed the end of the war approaching. Looking back over her shoulder she saw the River Scamander in the vale below – gleaming like a line of mercury as it fed into the great bay – and the high walls and towers of Troy rising up beyond it. She loved the city with all her heart, though few within it loved her; and if, by sending her inner eye farther than she had ever dared to go before, she would discover how to keep Troy safe, then the loss of her sanity was a peril she was prepared to face.

She climbed to the top of the ridge and entered a dark gap in the circle of trees. The floor inside was laid with heavy flagstones that had been polished smooth by the feet of countless worshippers and gleamed in the filtered moonlight. Cassandra did not wait for her eyes to adjust to the deeper gloom – she could have found her way around the temple blindfolded if she needed to – but walked up to the pale monolith at the far end of the temple. She dropped to her knees before the marble altar, letting her gaze hover briefly on the carved effigy of Apollo in the shadows behind it, then lowered her forehead to the hard floor. As she bent her body, the leather satchel at her hip slipped to the flagstones and she heard the contents twisting and thrashing inside, hissing in protest before becoming still again.

‘Lord Apollo,’ she whispered, feeling the blood rush to her head and the coldness of the stone against her skin. ‘Bringer of dreams. Receive my sacrifice.’

She pushed herself up with the palms of her hands and, still kneeling, fumbled with the tie of the satchel. It came free and she thrust her hand inside, grasping for the smooth, cord-like body of the snake. She caught it close to the neck and lifted it free, holding it at arm’s length so that it danced in anguish before the rough image of the god. A small woollen bag had been tied around its head to keep it from biting or attempting to escape. Cassandra unslipped the knot and pulled the bag away to expose the thin, triangular head with its dark eyes and flickering tongue.

She had been given the creature by Apheidas in exchange for her prayers. He had been a follower of Apollo all his life, and though he bred snakes for the priests to sacrifice to the god, he was no priest himself. The Fates had made Apheidas a soldier, a powerful commander in the Trojan army, and with the deaths of Hector, Achilles and most recently – so rumour from the Greek camp had it – Great Ajax, he knew the zenith of the war had been reached. The conflict had endured for ten years because of the valour of these three men, and without them the end would come quickly for one side or the other. And so he had approached Cassandra with his gift, out of respect for her devotion to Apollo, and asked her to pray on his behalf so that the god would help him with what he had to do.

Cassandra pulled the satchel over her shoulder and let it drop to the floor. Her cloak followed, revealing white priestess’s robes. The icy wind that penetrated the ring of trees took away the heat that the cloak had retained and she felt her flesh stiffen beneath the gauzy material. Gripping the snake, she held it down against the altar and drew a dagger from her belt. The blade gleamed and Cassandra’s gaze hung on it for a moment before moving to the crude idol in the shadows. This had been carved from the trunk of a living tree long ago, when the temple had first been established, and the ravages of time and the weather had left it so featureless that only the horn bow and the bronze arrow that it clutched in its lumpish fists identified it as Apollo.