Beacons burned across the valley, bright flames in the darkness proclaiming the momentous importance of the day. Smoke would be rising from every shrine, carrying the savour of the pure white bullocks whose throats had been slit, taking it up to the Olympians through the black skies.
I had noticed that Agamemnon alone held himself apart from the celebrations. No doubt he was preoccupied by the impending invasion of Mycenae. And Helen’s new husband would be gone within days, off to fight alongside his brother. They had an army, and I knew that Spartan soldiers were renowned for their skill and ferocity. There was little to worry about. But it was there, in the back of my mind, the sneaking, treacherous worm of a thought. If the battle didn’t go in favour of the brothers, if they didn’t come back, then nothing would have to change. Helen and I could go on a little longer, as we’d always been.
I shook my head, as though I could dislodge the idea altogether. It would all change, even more so. A hundred men had come to marry her, the next one would take Menelaus’ place in an instant.
And then I saw him, half hidden in the shadows.
His head turned at the same moment, and our eyes met. I saw his surprise and confusion, a mirror of mine.
‘I didn’t realise anyone else was out here,’ he said, making to withdraw.
‘Why aren’t you inside?’ I asked. I hadn’t spoken a word to Agamemnon so far, and I certainly shouldn’t be starting a private conversation with him, unseen in the darkness, away from everyone else. But something about the stillness of the night, the shouts of laughter drifting over from within the palace, the feeling I had that everything we’d known so far was about to come to an end, one way or another, made me reckless.
He hesitated.
‘Don’t you want to celebrate with your brother?’
His heavy brows were drawn together. He looked wary and unwilling to speak.
I sighed, suddenly impatient. ‘Or will you wait until after you’ve conquered Mycenae?’
‘What do you know about that?’
I felt a little victory in having prompted him to reply. A breeze rippled across the water, and I felt a yearning all at once for something I couldn’t name. So much was happening – weddings and war – and none of it involved me. ‘I know what Thyestes did,’ I answered, ‘to your father and to you. How he stole your kingdom.’
He nodded curtly. I could see he was about to walk away, go back inside.
‘But what will you do about the boy?’ I asked.
Agamemnon looked at me incredulously. ‘The boy?’
‘Thyestes’ son,’ I said. ‘Will you let him go?’
‘What does it have to do with you?’
I wondered if I’d gone too far, if I’d genuinely shocked him. Everything about this conversation was wrong. But I’d started it now. ‘It’s a Spartan army that you’re taking with you. Whatever you do, it’s in Sparta’s name, too.’
‘Your father’s army. Menelaus’ army.’
‘It just seems wrong.’
‘To you. It can be dangerous, though, to let a son grow up with vengeance in his heart.’ He was looking out over the river, his whole stance radiating discomfort, but he glanced back at me briefly. ‘There is a curse on my family; it has to be ended.’
‘Can it be ended like that? What if it angers the gods more?’
He shook his head, dismissing my words. ‘You want to be merciful,’ he said. ‘You’re a woman. But war is the business of men.’
I bristled at that. ‘You have Sparta,’ I said. ‘You’ll take Mycenae. And all those men in the hall, all the fighters and rulers and princes who came for my sister, they all just swore loyalty to your brother. You have a chance to unite so many kingdoms together behind you. The power will belong to you – so how could one boy be a threat, however vengeful he grows up to be? What could he do to you? With so many at your command, surely you could be the greatest of all the Greeks.’
That caught his attention. ‘An interesting point,’ he mused. ‘The greatest of all the Greeks. Thank you, Clytemnestra.’
And then I saw it, just before he stepped back between the columns, back towards the sounds of revelry from within the palace. Just the flicker of a smile, curving his stern mouth at last.
2
Cassandra
Every word I speak is unwelcome. My throat is raw from the words that are torn from me when I touch someone, when I look into their eyes and see the blinding white truth. My prophecies rip out my insides, but still they come, unbidden, even as I quake at the consequences. My listeners curse me, they chase me away, they say I am mad, and they laugh.
But when I was a child, I could not tell the future. I was preoccupied only with the concerns of the now; with my most treasured doll and with how best to adorn her – for even she could be swathed in the richest of fabrics and bedecked with tiny jewels. My parents were Priam and Hecabe, king and queen of Troy, and our luxuries were legendary.
My mother, however, had visions. A blinding flash of knowledge, bestowed no doubt by one of the many gods who smiled upon us and helped us avert misfortune. Perhaps even Apollo himself, for he was said to love my mother as one of his chosen favourites. She bore my father many children, and he was granted many more by his concubines. When her belly swelled with yet another, we readied ourselves for a familiar joy. When the time came for the baby to be born, my mother settled herself to sleep, anticipating as usual pleasant dreams of what this new child would be.
Not this time. A child of seven, I was roused by shrieks that tore apart the night and chilled my small bones to their marrow. I rushed in to where she crouched, her midwives hurtling down the corridors in fear that something was horribly awry.
Although the sweat plastered her hair to her forehead and she panted like a hunted animal, it was not the pains of labour that tormented her. Pushing away the helpful hands that sought to soothe her through the birth that was not upon her after all, she cried with a hollow desolation, the like of which I had never heard in my cosseted little life.
I shrank back. The room was busy, confused with the chaos of women, and I hovered uncertainly in the shadows cast by the thin torches that the women lit. The narrow orange flames flickered and twisted, and, on the stone walls, monstrous dark shapes cavorted grotesquely with their snaking rhythm.
‘The baby,’ my mother was gasping, and the violence of the passion that had seized her initially seemed to be ebbing away. She allowed the women’s ministrations, but as they eased her back on to her couch, softly assuring her that the baby was not coming and that all was well, she shook her head and tears streaked across her face. The dark hollows below her eyes and the stringy tendrils of hair made her look not like my mother.
‘I saw him – saw him born,’ she was rasping, but as the women murmured that it was only a dream and nothing to cause concern, I saw her imperial dignity returning. She silenced them all with a wave of her arm. ‘My dreams,’ she went on, ‘are not just dreams. It is known.’
A hush fell over the chamber. I did not move. The stone wall at my back chilled my flesh, but I stayed frozen against it. At the firelit centre of this eerie circle, my mother spoke again.
‘I pushed him into the world like the babies I have borne before him. I felt the burning of my flesh once more, and I knew this pain and that I could bear it again, like I have done before. Only it was different this time – the burning, it felt . . .’ She paused, and I saw her knuckles tighten as she twisted her fingers together. ‘The blaze of his birth, it burned longer and more fiercely than any I could imagine. I felt the blistering of my skin and I smelled my own flesh charred and blackened.’ She swallowed, a harsh sound in the silence. ‘He was no baby; he was a torch like one that you hold, his head a roaring flame, and all about me was smoke, consuming everything.’
I felt the tension, the growing tide of anxiety in the chamber. The women’s eyes flickered to the mound of my mother’s belly.