Elektra(7)

Neither my father nor my mother could bring themselves to pay it, though. When my brother, Paris, was born, they could not bear to fling that tiny baby from the high walls of Troy, or to smother him with a fine piece of cloth, or even to lay him down on the empty mountainside and walk away. They gave him to a shepherd instead; told him to leave the child to be taken by the cold night air or the ravening teeth and claws of whatever wild animal might be passing.

I wonder if they told the shepherd why he was to do it. If he knew the future of Troy depended on the hardening of his heart to that mewling, pitiful cry. I wonder if he tried; if he set the baby down on the scrubby hillside, if he took a step and then another before he turned around. Did he look at Paris’ tiny nose, his bald head, his soft arms reaching out for comfort, and dismiss the words of the seer as superstition and nonsense? How could a baby bring down a city he might have wondered. Perhaps his wife was barren, their home never blessed with children. Perhaps he thought that if he kept Paris outside the city walls and raised him as nothing more than a herder of goats, Troy would be safe. Its great stone towers, its mighty oak gates bolted with iron, its wealth and power must have seemed impervious to harm.

My brother lived in secret. He grew from defenceless infant to young man and none of us dreamed of his existence on the mountains outside Troy. No one spoke again of Hecabe’s nightmare, and that whole night would have taken on the quality of a dream itself, except that I remembered the scrape of stone against my back as I edged away from Aesacus. I could not forget the milky film that streaked his eyes, and the scent of smoke. The pity I felt for that soft little bundle that days later I saw carried from Hecabe’s chamber by a weeping slave, mixed with the relief that my mother had dreamed no such dreams about me.

I did try to talk to her about it once, long after it had happened. My voice was timid, and I could see that my hesitancy irritated her. I was curious about her dream, what quality it had to make her trust the seer so readily, what magic it had to make her know it was the truth. I suppose it was insensitive, looking back, but I was wrapped in the selfishness of youth, and I wanted to know.

‘You weren’t there, Cassandra,’ she snapped. The instant dismissal wounded me, and a flush bloomed in my cheeks. I only felt the recoil of my own pain, not a thought for what I was asking her to remember as I pushed on, eager to understand.

‘I was,’ I protested. ‘I remember Aesacus and the fire – I remember what he said.’

‘What? Speak up, girl,’ she commanded. She hated how quiet my voice was. As a child, I rarely made it through a sentence without being told to start it again and say it more loudly, more clearly.

No one ever asks me to repeat myself now.

I tried, haltingly, to describe the room and the rituals of the seer, but she shook her head sharply. ‘Nonsense, Cassandra, another of your imaginings,’ she said. Her tone stung. I think she noticed the hurt stamped across my face because she softened then, put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed me briefly. She spoke more gently. ‘It was not like that at all. Aesacus took my dream to the oracle, and he heard the prophecy there. Your mind has run away with you again. You must learn to hold back the wilder excesses of your imagination. Perhaps if you spent less time alone . . .’

‘Apollo only comes to you when you’re alone, doesn’t he?’

She drew back and looked hard at me.

I squirmed a little, unused to such scrutiny.

‘Is that what you want?’ she asked.

The note of doubt in her voice rattled me. Why would anyone not want it? If you could see into the future, know what was going to happen, if you could protect yourself against it – why did she make it sound as though it would be absurd to want such a gift? ‘It’s just – I’m your daughter, if the gods send visions to you, I wondered if they might – if I might . . .’ I trailed off, thrown by the worry writ across her face.

‘The gods act as they do according to reasons we cannot know,’ she said. ‘Apollo loves Troy, I am the queen – any vision that comes from the god is for the good of the city. It isn’t a gift to me; it isn’t something I sought out. It isn’t for us to ask for such a thing.’

I felt shame spread through me. She was the queen of Troy; I would never be. I had older brothers who would rule our city and the wife of whichever of them became king would take my mother’s place. Perhaps this woman would receive the queen’s visions then, the dreams Apollo sent for the greater good of Troy. I felt so small and so stupid that I wished I could disappear. ‘I didn’t mean—’ I began, but my mother was shaking her head. The conversation was over without me knowing how to say what I’d meant in the first place.

‘Go and play, Cassandra,’ she said firmly, and I went.

But no one wanted me near, not really. All the other girls seemed so sure, so certain of themselves. I felt like a reed swaying in the wind, never daring to say what I thought aloud, not wanting to face scorn or laughter. Hecabe’s dream, though, and the seer – that I was certain of. Perhaps she preferred to remember it differently, but I would never forget that night; it was seared into my very bones.

I could never make myself understood, even then, and my mother was a busy woman. She had no time to try to understand me. If she had seen what I was to become, seen a vision of me and not just Paris, I feel sure she would have hurled my infant form on to the rocks herself. But no one peered into ashes to divine my future. No one intervened to try to stop me from becoming what I became.