‘There is nowhere to go,’ Helen said.
I looked at her. Her free hand rubbed anxiously at the back of her neck, her brows drawn together and her eyes brimming with concern. Concern for me, I realised. My parents, my sisters, my surviving brothers, they were all gone far back towards the gates, with the crowd and with the horse. Only Helen stayed here for me. And I could see how much it cost her, how her eyes darted back and forth along the horizon, searching for danger. If any Greeks besides Sinon had stayed on the beach to keep watch, what would they do to Helen if she was out here unprotected? The vision of the farmhouse evaporated, and the world rushed back in around me. My breath wouldn’t come. I could feel it, her fear, infecting me: the press of a thousand watchful eyes, the silent masses of an unseen army ranged against us, waiting for their chance.
She was right. I wouldn’t make it to the nearest settlement, to any nearby village that hadn’t been razed to the ground by the Greeks already. I didn’t want to die out here alone. I let her pull me back up the sand, casting one more look back at the empty beach and the silent sea. If there was death in that direction and death in the other, what should I do? Where should I go? Who was left to help us?
My brother Hector had been Troy’s protector and defender until Achilles cut him down. I stopped for a moment, stood still, ignoring Helen’s exasperation as I thought of it.
Hector, prince of Troy, was dead.
Now the city had only me.
I was the only one who could see this threat; I was the only one who knew how and when Troy would fall. Apollo had given me this curse for a reason. Helen had called it a gift once before; what if she was right? I swallowed back the bile, the tears, the pain from the visions that wracked my body. Today was the moment that it would have meaning; Apollo had given the knowledge to me alone, and that meant it was I who stood between Troy and the doom I had foreseen when Paris strolled carefree from the mountains, our death in his hands. I, Cassandra of Troy, I could save the city. I could save my family – and I could save myself.
20
Cassandra
There was a fierce edge to the celebrations across the city. The horse stood garlanded with ribbons in the central square of Troy, and all around, the people danced and cried out their heartfelt joy. They sobbed and howled and shouted at the star-sprinkled sky; the heady blend of disbelief and exhaustion and elation all mingling together in a release of ten years’ worth of suffering so suddenly brought to an end. A madness possessed the city, one so seductive that I almost felt as though I could succumb to it myself, as though for once I didn’t need to stand apart from my family and my people, that I could lose myself to this gleeful intoxication of the senses alongside them.
But I knew what awaited, and my heart ached with sorrow. Their happiness was an illusion, a deception woven by our enemy, who waited so patiently for their moment.
It was long into the night by the time the revellers gave in to their fatigue and turned towards the waiting comfort of their beds, tear-stained faces shining with relief that tomorrow, for the first time, they would not wake to the hollering of war cries echoing beneath the city walls and the monstrous clashing of bronze ringing across the air.
I had hidden myself in a corner, tucked at the side of the square outside the temple of Athena, to which the horse had been brought. As the last of them left, the fragments of their final songs drifting behind them, I uncoiled my stiff and aching legs and hurried as fast as I could across the square. I held a torch to the sacred flame that burned in perpetuity before the temple entrance, and its resinous head bloomed at once into crackling fire, the long cone of its body slippery in the palm of my free hand. In my other hand, I held the axe I had taken hours before. With this, Hector had held the Greeks at bay until even he had been overwhelmed by the force of Achilles’ wrath. He had wielded it as though it were nothing; for me, it was heavy and awkward, but between the flames and its blade, I knew that the hiding Greeks would have no escape.
The horse was built of dry wood; the reeds entwined around the base of its legs to hold them together was perfect kindling. I would need to work fast, build up more parched and thirsty fuel from the fire-bowls in the square around the base of each leg before I set the torch to it. Then, imprisoned within its belly, by the time they smelled the burning, they would face a panicked drop to the ground amidst the blinding smoke, to where I would be waiting with the axe.
I must be quick; who knew how long they would linger, giving our people time enough to sink into bleary sleep, their senses deadened to the warning sounds of ambush? And I must ensure the fire would take hold quickly, to give the hidden soldiers no way to climb down through the rampaging flames. I took a deep breath and, torch aloft, made my way hastily towards the towering hulk.
I worked fast, scattering more kindling on the ground, and then knelt at one foreleg. I stared up at the curved wood above me, imagining for a moment that my eyes could penetrate its thickness and see the soldiers crouched there, poised to rain down destruction on our sleeping city.
My jaw set with silent satisfaction as I lowered the torch and flames began to lick at the first wooden limb.
‘Cassandra! No!’
The shout came a fraction of a second before he barrelled into me, the heavy weight of his body crushing the air from my lungs so that I lay dazed for a moment against the stone floor of the square. He was stamping out the fire, and I clawed at his legs, trying to pull him back, but there were more hands on my body, and I screamed and tried to lunge away, but they held me fast. Someone yanked the axe from my clenched fist, the torch was extinguished and kicked away. As they pulled me back, I saw only a pathetic little wisp of smoke rising from the horse’s leg.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ My father’s voice.
I struggled against the guards that held me. ‘Burn it!’ I screamed. ‘Burn it now!’
It was Deiphobus who stamped out the flames, Deiphobus who had knocked me aside. He turned, panting slightly from his exertions, to face Priam. ‘You were right,’ he said grimly. ‘She was waiting in the shadows to harm it.’
I twisted and turned, but the hands that clamped my arm held fast in an implacable grip. ‘It is full of Greeks! You must believe me! Please, burn it – please!’
‘And bring down the rage of Athena, right into the heart of Troy!’ My father clutched at his head as though he would pull the sparse grey hair right out of it in exasperation at me. ‘Was it not enough to see what happened to Laocoon and his sons?’
Foam was bubbling at my lips as I screamed, pure fury coursing through my body. My brother’s fist struck me, a starburst of pain exploding in my temple, and my shriek subsided to a shocked whimper.
‘Do you truly think there are soldiers in there?’ Her voice spilled cool from the shadows, taking us all aback.
‘Helen?’
She stepped forward, into the square. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, her eyes serious and set upon the great horse. The flames from those torches still burning cast a flickering light across her face as she turned it upwards, contemplating.
‘We will not damage this horse!’ The anger frayed Priam’s voice, and I could hear the catch of exhaustion and despair as he spoke, desperate to avert yet another catastrophe from boiling over and engulfing us all. ‘We brought it here for our protection; we will not tear it apart on the say-so of a dead priest and a madwoman!’
Helen shook her head. ‘No need to tear it apart to find out what you want to know,’ she said, softly. Her steps were purposeful and measured as she made her way steadily closer.