Cassandra (28 page)

The bull and the city feasted that night in Priam's palace. All of the furnishings had been packed away. Hector and Andromache were in their bridal chamber with Státhi and the cub. Any virgins and children among the sons and daughters of Priam had been hidden away from the revellers of Dionysius. Wine flowed from the cellars of Priam, though the king and queen were also behind a closed door. As master we had Dionysius' priest, Polites, my brother. We ate too much, and I fell asleep with my head pillowed on Iris' hip.

I woke to someone kissing me in the half dark and I kissed him back, assuming it was someone I knew, but when I opened my eyes it was a stranger, a young man with black eyes and swarthy skin, who gathered me into his arms, though not into a full embrace because that was banned until the third day. He was skilled, however, and I relaxed into the caresses.

We drank more wine and danced again, the dancers brushing against each other, kissing with open mouths, touching and fumbling under tunics crumpled and stained with wine.

The servers who had drawn lots to provide the cold food - for no fire must be lit until the sacrifice fire in honour of the Lord Dionysius - put out more bread and cheese and we ate and sang and slept again. My head was spinning with wine and the closeness of so many people. I drifted in and out of sleep, with kisses landing on lip and breast. Somewhere near me a woman was making the bird-like cries towards climax - ah, ah, ah! - but her breath gusted out in a frustrated sigh as her lover moved away. There must be no consummation until we had drunk the bull's blood, and that was a day and this night away.

I slid one hand along a male chest, up over a shoulder, found a mouth and pulled him into my arms. I wanted the weight on my body, the solid humanity anchoring what remained of Cassandra to the flesh which was supposed to give me comfort.

I woke in sunlight, wincing at the glare, shoved the young man away and crawled up the steps to the bull, who was lying next to the fountain. His gentle eyes examined me as I drank deeply and breathed in the sweet hay-scent of his breath. I staggered to my feet and embraced the bull, scratching him on the whorl of hair in the centre of his forehead and he lowed and nudged me.

O perfect bull, perfect sacrifice! The spring water hit what remained of the wine in my insides and I was drunk again and sat down dizzily, leaning my head against the bull's side. I fell asleep.

Two watches later the sun was westering and the Dionysius revellers were waking, groaning, getting to their feet. Polites signalled to the drummer and they began a low beat. The pipers raised their reed-pipes and the voices began, our invocation of the god of wine and madness: `Evoë! Evoë! Lord Dionysius, come!'

I was dragged into the dance, up the steps, around the bull, my hands clasped by strangers, wine fizzing in my head, my wits utterly gone, faster and faster as night began to fall. I found my feet and danced, my ivy wreath slipping, my tunic falling off my shoulder. The drums throbbed like a heart-beat. Strength poured into me like wine into a cup and the palace rang with cries and the god came.

As Polites brought the knife across the patient beast's throat and blood gushed out into the trough, I heard a divine voice laughing, calling, `Children, Bacchantes, I come, I come!' like a thousand brazen trumpets. The hall echoed and shook. I thrust my thyrsus into the blood, watching as the white wool turned red, gulped at the wine with its rusty tang, and kissed the nearest mouth. Dionysius was with us, in the dark of the temple, in the death of the gentle, wise-eyed bull who had fallen without pain or complaint.

I slipped down and rolled from under the dancer's feet, pulling at a thigh so that a man fell on top of me, kissing a blood-stained mouth and grappling with urgent hands at a shaggy head and a tunic which I tore.

I was splayed under someone and my sheath filled at last; an ache burst into a pain and I screamed and laughed and sucked at a breast while another phallus replaced the fallen one and hands gripped and palpated me.

Under the command of the god I was as flexible as seaweed, soft as clay, absorbing my lovers in the wormwood scent of semen and exhaled wine and blood. We were dragged to our feet by the drums and the wine and we streamed out of the palace like an army, weeping and laughing, hand in hand down the steep streets, crowned with ivy and drunk with Dionysius.

I was seized by strong hands and dropped to my knees, falling over an entwined couple. One man took me from behind as dogs mate, one lay under me sucking at my breasts, I kissed a woman's mouth, climax took me again and I sank under the blows of the god, weeping with relief and joy. I heard the others howling to Dionysius as I lay on my back grasping at a swarthy stranger's back, his laughing mouth closing on mine, biting at my lips. My fingernails tore a furrow down his face and I sucked his blood and felt his phallus inside me blossom in his pain.

I saw no faces, only mouths, eyes, teeth, hands, bodies. The long string of twisting bodies encircled the acropolis, our scent holding us together in a pack like wolves.

The doors of Troy were shut against us, the revellers under the cold high moon of spring. We were out in the streets and divorced from the sober citizens, intoxicated with wine and the god, free of all bonds and maddened.

I saw women lie with women, men with men. The street was littered with lovers. A boy sniffed the length of my body like a dog and growled as he coupled with me, baring white teeth. I bit into his shoulder as he joined with me, thrusting the sheath down on the phallus, sucking at him.

The god's last gift took my mind in the cool shadows under the Temple of Apollo, and I woke there in the morning still joined to a black-haired stranger who had fallen asleep in my arms.

I washed and anointed my bruises and dressed in a clean chiton. Dionysius had taught me that I could lose my mind and still be alive. That is a valuable lesson.

 

The next day, Polyxena went out to the Temple of the Pathfinder and the war began.

I was married to Chryseis, daughter of Palamedes of Mycenae, by my master, who joined our hands and blessed us. Then Itarnes swept me off to drink with the acolytes who boasted of their conquests of maidens as though they had, as Elene said, stolen something or done something clever. I did not want to drink and I found their voices wearisome. The only conquest in my life had been Elene's conquest of me, and I could never speak of it. I sang along with their bawdy songs, thankful that Arion Dolphin-Rider was not there. That bard has a fund of lewd songs which would have kept me up all night.

Finally they led me to the small stone house which my master had given me. The wives of other asclepids had anointed my bride with scented oils and draped her in a red veil. She looked very beautiful to me, sitting with her downcast eyes on the floor beside our bed.

For Mycenaean maidens must not presume to use their husband's goods without permission, or they will be beaten.

I found myself wondering about my mother, the Carian woman from a country where women are valued and honoured for their skill. How had she come to marry that rough goatherd, my father, and how had she felt, given away in a foreign ceremony to a man she did not know? Had she been afraid?

I took both of my wife's hands and raised her to her feet and into my embrace. My friends cheered as I kissed her, then mercifully they all went away and I could shut and bar the door. There were tears on her face as I folded back the veil.

`Chryseis,' I asked. `Is this by your will?'

`It would not matter if it was not,' she said in her quiet, clear voice. `My father has power of life or death over me, and he gave me to you. I am yours to do with whatever you will, Master.'

`Do not call me Master!' I held her at arm's length. `I am your husband, I am Diomenes - call me husband if you like, but not Master.'

`It is by my will, Diomenes, but I am afraid. You will hurt me. The women told me that it will hurt.'

I fervently but silently cursed all women except the one in my arms. `I will try not to hurt you,' I said. `I love you, my golden one.'

Her body relaxed into my embrace and a tendril of her hair tickled my nose. I sneezed and she laughed.

`A good omen,' she said. `Husband.'

I lay down on the sleeping mat and she lay beside me. With as much gentleness as I had and with all the skill I had learned, I began to teach my golden wife about love. I could not forget the eager embrace of Elene as she accepted me into her body. Chryseis was different; her breasts were smaller, higher, and her body hardened with labour. She was too frightened to respond to me, that first night. Despite all my care, I hurt her, and she cried. So did I. I kissed away her tears and she kissed away mine and we fell asleep mouth to mouth.

I woke at dawn. Her head was on my shoulder, her glorious hair arrayed across my chest. I felt as though the gods, in whom I did not believe, had awarded me another Diomenes, a female counterpart of myself. She was so close to me that I could not tell which heartbeat I heard, for they pulsed as one. I have never been happier in my life as the morning I woke with Chryseis in my arms and the spring sun shooting arrows under the door.

She was astoundingly beautiful, loving, gentle, with a hard edge of practicality. She was also remarkably unlearned.

The Argives teach their women nothing, no languages or arts, lest they be defiled by contact with the world and lose their maiden purity. Chryseis did not know that the sun was a ball of fire that warmed the earth; that the earth was round, cradled in the River Ocean; that different herbs had been signed for different illnesses. She had never seen a pot made, or wood carved, or fish caught.

She had spent all of her fourteen years spinning and weaving and dancing in the women's quarters of her father's house and had hardly poked her well-shaped nose out of doors in dread of the beating she would receive if she did. She had a head stuffed with a staggering array of old wives' tales and superstitions, and her religion consisted of sacrifices to the oldest form of the goddess, Hecate the Dark Mother, drinker of dog's blood.

But let loose in the relatively free atmosphere of Epidavros, where no social distinctions are allowed, she blossomed. She picked up basic Trojan in a month, Carian in two months, and spoke better Egyptian than me by the end of the year. She haunted the craftsmen until someone allowed her to try enamelling, and she produced such beautiful butterflies that Master Glaucus asked for one as a cloak brooch. She had been so constrained by violence and threat of social ruin that she had stopped asking questions; now she asked thousands, so that Itarnes begged for mercy. The old men called for her to sit by them in the sun because she listened to them so intelligently.

`The state is a matter of consent,' I heard old master Tiraes instruct her as she sat at his feet. `The king and the subjects all agree that one shall rule and others shall be ruled. Decisions taken by a king, therefore, bind his followers, but they cannot be forced too far, because then they will depose the king and seek another, better able to carry out their will.'

Chryseis thought about this, chewing a fingernail.

`I do not recall, Master, that any man ever asked the consent of women to sell or buy them,' she commented. The old man chuckled and patted her head.

`Women and slaves have no minds,' he quoted an old saying. `All body and no rationality. You are an animal, my dear - though a very clever animal,' he added, as though she had been a performing dog. Chryseis did not take instant offence but seemed deep in thought. She was about to say something which would devastate the old man's calm, so I decided to intervene.

`Come, wife,' I said. `I would speak with you,' and she farewelled Tiraes and followed me to the grove, where we sat down under a cypress.

`Diomenes, do you believe that women have no minds?'

`No, Chryseis. You are proof of that.'

`Then why did Master Tiraes say so? Is that what all men think?'

I surveyed my acquaintance - even my own Master. I nodded.

`That is unfair,' she said. `Entirely unfair.'

I had to agree. `But if women ruled,' I began, `if women ruled...'

`Well, what if they did? There are places where women are kings - Egypt, they say, and there are the Amazon who fight like men.'

`Yes.' Now I thought about it, I had no single reason why women could not rule. It was obviously out of the question but I could not explain why. `But it's impossible.' I tried to bluster. She did not get angry with me but resumed chewing her fingernail and examining me with her bright eyes. I could never persist in a falsehood under that clear gaze. `All right, wife, I have to admit it. I don't know why men think that women have no minds. You are right, it is entirely unfair.'

`You admit that I can think?' she asked in Trojan, and repeated it in Carian, Phrygian and Egyptian. I nodded. She kissed me.

`As long as you know,' she said, pressing her breasts against my shoulder, `then the others can think what they like. There is an old saying among the priestesses of Hecate, husband, just as convincing as the ones that old man has been spouting.'

`What is that?' I asked unwisely.

`A man is a fool attached to a phallus,' she said sweetly, and kissed me on the mouth to smother my reply.

 

Arion Dolphin-Rider came when Chryseis and I had been married four months. It was winter; that winter was wet and misty, generating rheums and agues and cloaking the temple with fog. I saw him come riding to the suppliant's gate, his singing robes dank with moisture.

I held his horse as he dismounted and wrung out his hair and beard.

`Welcome,' I said. `Welcome, Master Bard! Come within.' I handed the rein to a slave and took the old man's arm. `Come and get warm and I shall tell my Master that you are here.'

I took him to my house and sent a slave running for Master Glaucus. Chryseis rose from her seat beside the fire to greet him and he grunted with surprise.

`This is Palamedes' daughter, boy, the golden maiden? He underestimated her beauty, and I have never known him to do that before, the boaster! Beautiful lady, give me leave to sit down for I am overwhelmed by your presence. I had not thought to find a goddess in a humble asclepid's cell!'