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

Rough hands grabbed her and turned her over. A brutal, bearded face with a broken nose and merciless eyes – the face of the man the Greeks called Little Ajax. The large brown snake coiled around his shoulders hissed at her hatefully. Then the man’s mouth opened in a wide, lascivious grin from which unintelligible words came spilling over her. She looked away, knowing what would follow. The slap was far harder and much more painful than her vision had allowed her to guess at. It made her cry again, sobbing hysterically as she remembered what came next. Fingers curled about the neckline of her dress, slowly to make sure of the grip, then pulled hard. She felt the material tighten around the back of her neck before it tore, and then there was more pain as his fingernails scraped across her chest and broke the skin. He kept on ripping the soft, weak cloth, exposing her breasts to the cold air of the temple, revealing her stomach and pubic hair. She closed her legs tightly, pointlessly, and stared up at the smoke-stained ceiling where the faint outline of gold-painted stars still gleamed, the only stars visible that night. The man spoke again, urgently and harshly – the voice of a man used to being obeyed. But she did not obey and this time he punched her, filling her head with a ringing pain that vied against the pain of her knees being forced apart and the man pushing himself between them. He fumbled and she shut her eyes, more fearful now than at any other time in her life. Then he was inside her, hurting her, and fresh tears pumped down her cheeks, trickling into her ears and hair as she prayed and prayed and prayed for release. Even though she had foreseen that no release would come.

When it was over and, laughing, he had gone, she lay and listened, not even bothering to cover her nakedness. She had done it often as a child: lying still and attuning her ears to the sounds of the night. The fighting was almost over, but in the absence of resistance the destruction of the city was only now coming into its fullness. In the temple, she could still hear the women being raped, although their distressed protests had grown weaker. And then she felt something change – a new presence her earlier vision had not extended to. Men were entering the temple, but these were not a violent rabble: they were cool-headed and disciplined. For a moment she thought they might be Trojans, victors who had driven the Greeks out of the city and were restoring order. The sound of swords being drawn and the desperate cries of the rapists as they were executed gave her hope, such warming hope that she dared not turn and look in case it was destroyed. Then she heard commands, Greek commands, and her hope was conquered by returning fear. At least before she had been given foreknowledge of what would happen to her, down to the last, cruel detail of what Little Ajax would do to her. But this was different. She no longer knew what was coming, only that it was not her death. That she had already foreseen.

More commands, followed by running feet. A helmeted face stared down at her, then she was being lifted by strong arms and carried across the temple floor. Her head lolled, catching glimpses of the aftermath of the desecration that she had heard so vividly: a dead soldier slumped against a pillar; two little boys lying in pools of blood; a naked woman, dragging herself on her hands and knees over the flagstones. Then she was being lowered to her feet, forced to stand despite the weakness in her limbs, and not caring that the torn remains of her dress hung like parted curtains, revealing her nudity.

She saw a man before her. There were several men, but he was the one her eyes focussed on. He had long brown hair that had a red sheen in the torchlight, a neatly tended beard and a handsome but mature face with cold blue eyes. His breastplate was a rich working of gold, blue enamel and tin, with a pure white tunic beneath and a red cloak about his shoulders. As she looked at him, trying to remember where she had seen his face before, he removed the cloak and swept it around her to cover her nakedness. His eyes bored into her, strangely fascinated.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, speaking in the Trojan tongue.

She looked up at him but could not muster the strength to answer. Another man stepped up to the Greek’s shoulder – an old man with a grey beard and a wise face – and whispered Cassandra’s name in his ear. She heard Priam’s name uttered alongside it and knew the old warrior was stating her royal lineage.

‘You remind me –’ the first man began, before faltering and shaking his head with a smile. ‘You remind me of my wife, but as she was when I first fell in love with her. That was many years ago.’

‘I’m no man’s wife, sir, and not destined to be.’

Cassandra folded the cloak tighter about her tired, abused body. The wool was warm and soft, but its vivid redness threw her mind back to the newest vision to haunt her dreams. She was in an unfamiliar room, looking down at herself sprawled on a rich bed covered in blood – her blood. In the next room was a naked man lying dead in a blood-filled bath, while a vengeful woman stood over him with an axe. That man, she realised with a sudden shock, was standing before her now.

‘Who says you will not be married?’ he asked.

‘The lord Apollo.’

‘Ah, a god,’ he said, reaching out and running a lock of her hair between his fingers. ‘Well, I am King Agamemnon and I am releasing you from his service –’

‘You misunderstand me, sir –’

‘And you fascinate me, Cassandra. You will come back to Mycenae with me as a gift for Clytaemnestra, my wife. Or, if you please me, as her replacement.’

Cassandra backed away and shook her head. Mycenae – that was the unfamiliar place in her vision, the place of her death.

‘She will kill you, my lord. She will kill us both.’

A frown flickered across Agamemnon’s brow, a momentary concern before the curse of Apollo smoothed it away with a smile.

‘You’re traumatised, and no wonder,’ he said, looking around at the defilement of the temple. He stepped forward and took her into his arms. ‘This has been a difficult night, but you have nothing to fear now. You’ll be safe with me.’

Chapter Forty-four

A MBITION’S E ND

Burning buildings were beginning to collapse now as Eperitus picked his way through the rubble-strewn streets of Pergamos towards the palace. After watching his father push Astynome into the pit of snakes and then make his escape, he had given up any hope of avenging his crimes. Strangely, though, the concept of him going unpunished was less bitter than he had imagined it would be. His relief that Astynome had survived was so overwhelming that, in comparison, the thought of killing Apheidas and wiping away the stain from his family’s honour seemed almost unimportant. Her words, too, had affected him. Her belief that the best way to defeat Apheidas was to be all the things he was not, and that to seek revenge was to become more like him, had struck deeper than he expected. Perhaps he feared keeping his father’s legacy of hatred and anger alive. After all, other families had carried the curse of their forefathers through generation after generation, just as Agamemnon and Menelaus were still suffering from the offences of their great-grandfather, Tantalus. The only hope of throwing off such a curse was to break the cycle of retribution. More than that, he was aware that with Astynome he had something to live for. The young warrior who had been exiled from Alybas all those years before, without a home, family or friends, no longer existed. He was older and stronger now, with a new homeland and new loyalties. The things that had driven his younger self – to see his family’s honour restored – had at last been superseded, if not fulfilled. And for a short while he had convinced himself they did not matter any more.