Cassandra. Kerry Greenwood

trained Andromache especially hard, stating that she of all the maidens would need to know how to fight.

      Even at ten Andromache was tall and strong. I could hear Myrine shouting at her to keep her wrist tensed against the pluck of the string, and scolding her for allowing it to skin her inner arm. Andromache drew and loosed again. She would not cry. Andromache never cried.

      Then I heard a cry and a thud. Instantly I was up and running for the centre of the field, where two young men had been wrestling.

      I ducked past Eleni, who was leaning on his spear, circumnavigated Hector and slid to a halt next to the fallen, whom I recognised as Sirianthis. He was a hapless boy, always hurting himself. I could have guessed that my first broken bone would be Siri. His mother put it down to her having spent most of her pregnancy tripping over things. He was a pleasant boy, though, and everyone liked him. He tried very hard and never minded the other boys laughing at him.

      He was lying on the ground, curled around his injury, clutching his upper arm and trying not to cry. I recognised the strange fish hook shape of his body on the dusty ground and said, `Siri, I need a broken bone. All you've done is dislocated your arm.'

      `Sorry,' he panted. `It hurts. Can you fix it, Cassandra?'

      `Of course, but if you had to hurt yourself couldn't you have broken something? I don't know if Tithone will think that this counts. I'll get Hector. It will be all right in a moment, Siri, I promise. Who are you?' I asked the other boy.

      He turned a shocked face up to me and said, `Maeron, lady. I didn't mean to hurt him.'

      I ignored this. `Go and get your tunic, lie him on his back with the tunic rolled up between his shoulder blades while I fetch my brother.'

      Hector, who was about to cast the spear, put it down again and followed me to where Siri lay whimpering. The stretched-out position strained all his displaced sinews, those strings which knit a muscle together. Hector leaned down and stroked the hair from the boy's sweating face.

      `It will stop hurting soon, little brother,' he said soothingly. `Maeron, sit beside him and hold him still while I pull. No, grab the other shoulder and brace yourself.'

      `Hector, Hector, let me,' I begged, hauling on his elbow. `Thithone said I had to do this before I can see the mystery.'

      Hector looked at me sternly. `A warrior must not be left unattended because of the healer's private purposes,' he said. `But you may give me orders, Cassandra, if you do so right away.'

      When my brother called me Cassandra like that he was seriously displeased and I quaked. But I knew the procedure and ordered, `Take his wrist in your hand, brother, and put your foot under his arm pit. Now pull gently until the arm goes back into the socket.'

      I had seen this several times. It was always fascinating. As Hector pulled on the arm, the shoulder joint moved under my hand, from an ugly displaced lump to the shape of the boy's proper shoulder. All medicine, said Tithone, was restoring the body to its proper shape and condition. There was a click, Siri bit back a cry, and Hector laid the restored arm across the boy's chest.

      Hector looked at me. I remembered what remained to be done.

      `Wriggle your fingers, Siri,' I ordered. `Can you feel your hand?'

      `Yes, Princess. Thank you.' Maeron was holding Siri close and I perceived that they were lovers. I blushed to think that I had just ordered poor Maeron about, as though he was a dog, when he must have been worried about Siri. And Hector was angry with me. This healing was more difficult than it looked. It involved people; mere knowledge of methods of healing did not begin to cover it.

      `Now, Cassandra, what next?' asked Hector. Luckily, I knew.

      `I bandage his arm to his side and send him off the field to rest, taking broth and marshleaf infusion to soothe the inflammation, and he is not to move his shoulder for three days. I can apply oil of mint to cool the joint and reduce the swelling and he must be watched for fever,' I parroted, making a bandage from Maeron's tunic. Hector bent his head in approval I watched Maeron help his friend to his feet and they limped off the field, passing into the city through the Scamander Gate, which was nearest to Siri's house.

      `Now, Cassandra, we must talk. Or rather, you will talk to me while Eleni goes with Polites to practise the use of the spear thrower.'

      `Eleni went, glancing back at me in compassion. Hector was very seldom angry with us but when he was he did not rage or slap. Rather he was sad and measured and his every word sank into the heart and stung like a thorn.

      `Oh, Hector, I am so sorry...' I began.

      Instead of hugging me, he asked gravely, `Why are you sorry?'

      `I shouldn't have thought of Siri as a task I had to do in order to see childbirth. I'm fond of Siri, but I treated him like a thing.'

      `You want to be a healer, don't you?'

      `Yes.'

      `Then you must know that all your patients are people, and you have to love them. Not all the time, Cassandra, and not for ever. But while they are in your care then they must have your whole heart. Otherwise you will never heal them.'

      `But Hector...' I ventured closer to him and took his hand, `that can't be right.'

      `Why not?' he was relenting enough to argue and I felt instantly better. We began to walk back towards the city of Troy. The walls shone white in the morning, the walls, the height of three men, built by Heracles the hero in recompense for his massacre of my grandfather and his sons.

      `The best healer of these sorts of injuries is Myrine the Amazon,' I stated.

      `Yes,' Hector agreed.

      `But Myrine is rough,' I protested. `She grabs and heaves and swears at them, curses them for foolish men, closes wounds with her fingers, pressing hard enough to make them cry out, and then she curses them again for weaklings and children.'

      `She tended me when I fought that boar,' said Hector. `Her harsh words recalled my courage and her hands were skilled and strong.' I saw the scar down the outside of his thigh where the tusks had sliced his flesh. `She sucked out the dirt and poisonous saliva with her own mouth, swearing by Hecate that I was the clumsiest hunter she had ever met. Can you doubt that she loved me then?'

      I thought about this, reviewing what I had seen of Myrine the Amazon. It seemed unlikely but it was true. She did love her patients. I nodded.

      `Go then, little vulture,' said Hector, patting me. `Tell Tithone you have replaced a dislocated shoulder and beg her, from me, to consider this equivalent to the task she set you.'

      To salve my conscience, I went first to the small house in the first circle where Siri lived. His mother greeted me and gave me a small clay bird as a present for tending her accident-prone son, and I went off to find Tithone in a very guilty state.

      I told her what had happened and she listened without a word. Then of all things, she laughed, a bright and joyous laugh, almost like a girl's. It came strangely from Tithone's aged face, and I was disconcerted.

      `Aren't you angry with me, Lady?' I asked. She hugged me to her bony bosom.

      `Ah, little daughter, more years away than you can count I did the same thing, and my brother called me a vulture too. You will be a fine healer, Cassandra, if you keep the great warrior's advice in mind. You may not like your patients, or approve of them, or let them become close to you. But while they are yours, you must love them. Hmm. Your lord brother is a fine man, a fine man. Troy is fortunate in its captain. How was Siri?'

      She just assumed that I had been to see him. She was always right, Tithone my teacher. I liked her anyway.

      `He is a little feverish. I gave him poppy broth and his mother has oil of mint for the swelling. I will go and see him tomorrow.'

      `I'll send someone tonight. The condition of the young changes faster than with adults. They heal faster, but they also deteriorate faster and they die quicker. Remember that.'

      `Yes, Lady.'

      `Recite