Cassandra. Kerry Greenwood

We were discarding the dried, darkened or broken seeds and spilling the good plump ones through our fingers to winnow out the bits of leaf. I remember how it poured with a rustle into the basket at our feet.

      `You will become a healer, little Cassandra,' Nyssa cooed. `You have a quick eye.'

      She could sieve seed faster than me; her eye for imperfections was as bright as an eagle's for prey.

      `I think so,' I agreed sleepily.

      `You know that you cannot marry your brother, Cassandra,' she said quietly.

      It took a moment for the implications to sink in, then I sat up straight and grasped at the sliding tray.

      `I can't? Nyssa, I have always meant to marry Eleni! He wants to marry me!'

      `Yes, my pet, my lamb, but he can't.'

      `They do in Egypt,' I objected. `In Egypt brothers always marry sisters. The word for lover is sister. Aegyptus the sea captain told me.'

      `That is Egypt,' she said, taking the tray out of my shaking hands. `This is Troy. You are Priam's daughter, and you must marry where he directs. You cannot marry your brother. You may be given to anyone with whom your father needs to cement an alliance. That is the fate of the daughters of the king. You have always known that, my lambkin.'

      `I... but Nyssa, no, we are twins, we are the royal twins, it is different for us!'

      `Not that different, my golden one. You cannot marry your brother. I know that you have not broken your maidenhoods, you would not do that. But you are growing up, Cassandra, my bud, my flower, my little lamb. You must find your skills and then leave the Maiden for the Mother and when you do that you must live apart from Eleni.'

      `You're wrong,' I said insolently. Her brown wrinkled face contracted into a grimace that looked like pain. `I am a princess of the royal house of Priam and I shall do as I like. I shall marry my brother Eleni and no one shall stop me. No one.'

      I achieved a dignified exit, stalking out of the courtyard into the street, my new long tunic swishing behind me. Then I took to my heels and ran, half blind with fury, for Tithone in the lower quarter.

      I reached her street, skidded around the corner and ran into her house without even stopping, as is proper, at the threshold.

      Tithone was combing her hair. It was dark hair stippled with silver and it spilled around me as I buried my head in her lap and sobbed out the story.

      To my horror, it was true. I could not marry my twin.

      `But in Egypt...' I sobbed, clinging to the idea that somewhere there was justice. Tithone shook her head. The herb-scented hair lashed my wet eyes.

      `No, little daughter, it cannot be. Come. I will show you why. You will not speak until we are out of the house we are to visit, is that clear? Not one word, Princess.'

      Tithone called me `Princess' when she was most solemn and usually most angry. I nodded. My world was falling to pieces.

      Tithone bound up her hair. The common people thought that there was magic in her hair, and charms made from it were sold in the markets. She found this dryly amusing but took care that no one had a chance to cut a stray piece of it by binding it close to her head and wearing a veil. When I asked her why, she said, `If it is a charm it must be rare.'

      I walked behind her, muffling my wet face in a fold of my cloak. We descended the city, out into the ramshackle town which surrounded Troy.

      It had grown up largely because the city had expanded beyond its walls. Hector said it also harboured people who did not like the city's rules but who required the protection of the house of Tros and holiness of Ilium. Eleni and me - oh, Eleni my lost love! - had always been forbidden to come there, so naturally we had haunted the place, relishing the strange smells and weird gods and odd languages. There we had learned three phrases in Phrygian and lots of disconnected words, mostly obscene, in a babble of different tongues. Low Town was always interesting. Most of the sailors lived there. It was our favourite part of Troy.

      Near the altar to the strangers' gods we turned left, diving down a narrow alleyway redolent of rotting garbage and sewage.

      Tithone had often told Hecube, the queen, that unless Low Town was cleansed we would have a plague. In the autumn sun it stank, and flies rose from the unpaved gutter in the centre of the alley.

      `Blessing upon the house,' said Tithone, entering a hut made of reeds and driftwood. It was dark inside. I could make out a woman and a baby, and someone else stirring in the blackness. The woman was hushing a newborn, which cried with an incessant grating voice that set my teeth on edge.

      `Revered one,' said the mother, `you are welcome.'

      `Fire Lady of the Goddess,' said a man's voice. `You are welcome to the hearth.'

      Tithone did not even mention my presence, but took the baby out of the mother's arms and carried it into the street. I followed her.

      In the street she unwrapped the baby and showed it to me. It was dreadfully deformed.

      Ten days old, perhaps. The face was a mask of horror, without eyes, the skull monstrously huge, the arms and legs missing. I bit my lip and did not say a word.

      `It will die,' she said matter-of-factly. `Now, hear the mother's tale.'

      We went back into the hut and the woman hushed the monster against her breast and asked, `What of the baby, Revered One, Mistress of the Pillar?'

      She was awarding Tithone some of the titles of Isis, the Lady of the Egyptians. From her accent, delicately slurred, I took her to be a true Egyptian, not one of the Peoples of the Sea who have settled on the Nile delta and who still speak Danaan.

      `He will die in three days,' Tithone said without emphasis. `The gods will take him home. You must spend a month in the Temple of the Mother and then you will be cleansed.'

      `We offended the gods,' the woman wailed, and her husband came and held her tightly. `We offended them by leaving the River Land and coming here.'

      `Why did you leave?' asked Tithone. The young man answered, stumbling in his speech as though he had lately learned our language.

      `Isis knows that we are sister and brother, and loved each other from our one birth.' They were twins! I bit my lip harder. `Bashti and I came down the river and there were the People of the Sea. We left our father because he had sold Bashti to one of the Danaans, curse them with many curses! They caught us and forced my sister, my spouse, then left her for dead, like prey. Me they blinded. She brought us here to windy Ilium, then lay with me after it was clear that she had not conceived a monster of those beast-men. But their seed has corrupted her blood. I hear the wrongness in the child's cry. I have felt its wrong-formed body. We are cursed. Better she had left me to die in Egypt.'

      `Better I had died there under their hands,' said the woman bitterly.

      `No. Death is never better, daughter,' said Tithone gently. `Wait till this child dies and you are cleansed, then go and lie in the temple of Dionysius and you will conceive a child who will be clean and whole. You, man, must only lie with your wife when she is pregnant. Thus will the curse be removed. How do you live, daughter?'

      `We are weavers,' she said, hope beginning to dawn in her voice. I could not see her face. `We have skill to make the finest linen, the pleated gauze that the Pharaohs wear - they call it "woven air". But we cannot afford flax fine enough for good cloth.'

      `Come up into the city when the child dies,' said Tithone. `Come to me and I will talk to the mistress of the weavers and she will find you a stone house. Such skill is valued in Troy. Blessings be upon you,' and she went out.

      I followed her until we were standing on the bank of Scamander, the river of Troy. Flax and papyrus reeds lined the edge, piping with the bird's cries.

      `It was not Danaan's? I asked in a voice as small as the birds'.

      `No, daughter.'

      `But I could do that - lie down with the god and only lie with Eleni