Goddess of Yesterday: A Tale of Troy

  She pulled me down a narrow lane paved in beach pebbles to another house. Its walls were whitewashed, shutters painted blue and yellow. From behind a wall a sycamore spread its branches. “Hector's mansion,” she whispered, as if it were a secret. We admired her future home. A huge tangled stork's nest covered the roof. It is a good thing to be greeted every year by a stork. She would have a good marriage.

  We whirled on until we came to the house of Paris. “It isn't ready yet,” Andromache told me. “The paint's still wet.”

  It looked very small. “How many rooms does it have?”

  “A fine hall, an inner chamber and a courtyard full of flowers.”

  Helen had given up the great palace of Amyklai for two rooms and a bit of sun on stone. I wondered where Pleis would sleep.

  “Now, this mansion belongs to a general who is not a son of Priam. He has to introduce himself that way. ‘I'm not one,’ he says. Here, dash up these stairs with me. Cassandra will be so glad to have company. She'll be desperate for everything we can tell her.”

  I was puzzled. “I thought she knew everything already.”

  “She can see the future,” explained Andromache, “but the present confuses her. And she's so lonely, it doesn't matter if you talk about things she already knows. She just wants you to come. She likes me because I talk so much. I try not to. Hector is already a little cranky with how much I talk. He has discussed with me the beauty of silence. But Cassandra never discusses the beauty of silence.”

  I thought Hector was a fortunate man. I thought perhaps the battle and the man of Andromache's name were both Hector, and I expected that she would be the victor. I said, “Does Cassandra know the past as well?”

  “I don't know. How interesting. You must question her.”

  Up on the highest battlement, Helen walked with a bent and silvery old lady. “Queen Hecuba,” said Andromache affectionately.

  So this was the queen who had had to put up with all those other wives. I pressed against the wall to keep from being seen by Helen. Pleis must be alone somewhere, I thought suddenly. It will be safe for me to go comfort him.

  Andromache hid from Helen too. “I think Helen will insist that the rules about Cassandra are kept. No visitors. No getting out of the tower. If you were Helen, would you want Cassandra shrieking from the top of every wall that you pollute the city?”

  “If I were the city,” I said, “I would not want Helen.”

  Andromache told me a real secret. “Hector says,” she whispered, “that Paris should have been stoned. And Helen with him.”

  I thought more highly of Hector. “Andromache, may we find Pleis?”

  She regarded me thoughtfully. “You love the little one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we'll find him.”

  The rooms in which Paris and Helen would live until the paint dried in their tiny house were in the same wing as Andromache's little space. The door was open. I stepped in.

  Pleis sat on the floor between two long-legged pale gray hounds. Their muzzles were sharp and graceful, and they were neither barking nor growling. They seemed willing to have Pleis lean all over them.

  Pleis was playing with a sword.

  Not a parade sword, not a toy sword, but a great hacking instrument of death. It was too heavy for him to lift. He did not yet know which end was the handle and which the killing tool. He was pulling it by the blade, his little face intent upon the task.

  A few feet away, Paris leaned on the wall, bright-eyed as a snake looking into a nest of baby birds. “Pick it up, son of Menelaus,” he said to the baby.

  “He might cut off his own hand!” I exclaimed. “Take your sword away from him.”

  “Well, well,” said Paris, straightening out of his slouch. “The island princess. Daughter of one who does not keep promises.”

  “You don't keep them either. By dining with Menelaus, you were promising him guest-friendship. You broke that promise.”

  “The last person who accused me of that,” Paris said, “is dead, isn't he? The king of Sidon, wasn't he? I left him a corpse, didn't I?”

  “Calli,” said Pleis happily, “sto.” The blade slipped out of his grasp and fell hard against his plump little leg. I cried out, but it fell flat side down. I moved to take the sword away from him, but Paris twisted my wrist behind my back. “Leave these rooms and don't ever come back. Or you will discover that I have a friend in need of a pretty little slave girl.”

  Andromache lifted the sword out of Pleis' reach and pushed the dogs away with her slippered foot. “So you are Pleisthenes,” she said, scooping him up and kissing his little face.

  Even though he was only two years old, this was a boy who would rather have the sword. He squirmed to get away from her.

  “Why, Andromache,” said Paris. He had not cared about me, but he was shocked to see her. “My dear future sister,” he said uncertainly. He released me. “What an unexpected pleasure. I'm so sorry Helen is not here to meet you.”

  It came to me that Andromache would outrank Helen. Andromache would marry Hector, the first son, the man who would be king when Priam died. Andromache would be queen of Troy! Helen would be merely another princess at the very end of a long, long row.

  “We will be sisters, Helen and I,” said Andromache, as if this pleased her; as if she and Hector had never discussed the stoning of Helen and Paris. “How proud Helen must be of her dear little son. Someday Hector and I will have a little boy as strong and sweet. There are so many good things happening, Paris. I see that you know my new princess friend, Callisto. We're going up to visit Cassandra now and we'll ask her what Callisto's future is.” She held Pleis high in the air so his tunic exposed his fat little tummy. She nibbled his belly button and tickled his ribs to distract him from the sword on the floor. He arched his back and giggled happily. “We're going to climb a tower, Pleis,” she told him. “A high tower with steps. Up up up up up. And Callisto is coming, too.”

  Pleis beamed at her. “Up up up up up,” he agreed.

  “That's very kind of you, Andromache,” said Paris courteously, “but his mother wants him to stay here.” Paris lifted Pleis out of Andromache's arms. I was relieved to see that Pleis didn't seem afraid of Paris. Just squirmy.

  Paris dropped him to the floor, inches from the sword blade. The dogs were startled but glad. They licked his face and Pleis collapsed in giggles. He had forgotten the sword. As soon as the dogs went back to sleep, he would find it again.

  Andromache spoke into the dust motes that shivered gold in the sunlight. “Do put the sword out of reach, my brother. You never were cleansed of blood guilt for the last little boy who died from your weapons. How awful were it to happen again.”

  Andromache was short and Paris was not. She had to stare up into his eyes, a small chubby girl ordering around a prince who had just ruined one king and slaughtered another.

  Eventually, Paris obeyed her.

  The stairs that went up inside the dark tower were narrow and without a rail. We climbed in single file. A flickering torch shot our shadows up the white plaster wall. At the top we came out onto that very slender wooden walkway. That ledge. I felt as if I were standing again on the cliffs of Siphnos. Certainly I was once again surrounded by pirates.

  Around us, the fertile land of Troy lay like a blanket neatly folded and then in the distance became a blanket shoved into a pile instead. Distant forests and deep glens went all the way to the long low escarpment I had seen when we had arrived. A sluggish mountain mother with her hill children crawling toward her.

  “That's Mount Ida,” said Andromache. “Very holy. There are many temples and shrines there, and every forest between is thick with oak and fir—”

  “Andromache! Oh, I'm so lonely, I'm so glad to hear your voice, they've locked me up again.”

  “Yes, Cassandra,” said Andromache through the door. “It's your own fault; you shouldn't have cursed Helen. Now I've brought new threads for you to weave. Glorious colors. Hector got them fr
om his friend Euneus, the king of Lemnos. Poppy red and dark pine green and marine blue.”

  “Thank you,” said Cassandra gloomily.

  “And I've brought a new friend. A lovely princess.”

  “I saw her while you were exploring the city,” said Cassandra. “Girl whose past reaches out of the sea like the hands of a skeleton.”

  “Cassandra, try to be pleasant,” said Andromache. “Callisto is from the island of Siphnos, chosen by Helen to take care of her little son on the voyage.”

  “Lies,” said Cassandra.

  She was right. I wasn't Callisto, wasn't from Siphnos, hadn't been chosen by Helen and never would be. But one lie Cassandra the all-knowing had missed: I wasn't a princess either.

  “Even now, girl from a bony isle, your parents search for you,” said Cassandra.

  “My parents search for me?” I was stunned. Could Iris and Chrysaor have forgiven me? Could my father be following me over the trackless sea? Or could I have misunderstood the past, as children do, blaming sorrow on myself when nobody else thought of it as anything but war?

  “They will not find you,” she said. Her voice was like spun wool, soft and thick.

  I thought of that lost life, on that lost isle. “Yes, they will, they must!” I cried. I pounded on the wooden door that kept the mad princess apart. “Cassandra, tell me this. If they cannot find me, can I find them?”

  A puffing soldier clomped up the narrow stairs. He was short and heavy, his leather cuirass badly worn and his buckles unpolished. His uniform had no medals, no ribbons. It did not appear that guarding Cassandra went to the best and the finest.

  “I'm sorry, Princess Andromache,” he said. “The princess Cassandra can have no visitors. You must leave.” He pointed to the stairs.

  Cassandra began sobbing.

  “Please let us stay,” begged Andromache. “Cassandra needs me. All she has is one window to see out of.”

  “The problem is not that I can see out,” said Cassandra. “The problem is that I can see in. Into people's hearts and futures.”

  “Go,” said the guard, nudging us toward the stairs. It was a very narrow ledge for nudging. We backed up. “Hector will throw me off this tower if I let that madwoman breathe on you,” added the guard.

  Andromache was furious. “That is not so! Hector is delighted that his future wife is friends with his dearest sister. Who said that to you?”

  The guard flushed. He stepped forward, and we had to step back or fall. But when Andromache had her foot on the stair, she refused to go farther.

  Finally the guard said, “Paris did. Maybe I misunderstood him, princess, but I didn't misunderstand about visitors. The king gave the order. You can't visit.”

  Andromache muttered something about Paris and went down the steep steps double speed. I paused on the second step. “Cassandra? Is Pleisthenes safe?”

  “Ah, my new friend,” said the princess of Troy, “you know the answer to that.”

  IT WAS JUST BEFORE DAWN when Andromache shook me awake.

  We stepped over the other two sleeping princesses and their maids.

  The torches in the palace halls had burned down. The scent of lamp oil and old smoke filled the corridors. We stepped around deep-breathing slave boys and over tired soldiers whose watch had ended. Some were wrapped in fleeces, some in wool blankets, some in ox hide. Some just curled on the floor like dogs.

  Andromache wound down one hall and up a stair and along another hall. “Since the Palladium must not be hidden from the sky,” she whispered, “the temple cannot be roofed and we who worship there cannot be covered. No one may wear scarf or veil, hood or turban.”

  I shrank in horror.

  Andromache patted my shoulder. She slipped into a side room, was gone several minutes, and emerged with the strangest thing I had ever seen. I was a head without hair— and this was hair without a head.

  She held it out to me, but I stepped back.

  “It's called a wig,” she breathed. “It's woven from the braids of slave girls. It was made for the mother-in-law of one of the princes. The poor thing is bald, which usually happens to old men. The shame is great, especially in this city, so her daughter had wigs made for her. Don't worry, she has another wig, and I'll get this one back before she misses it.”

  I stuffed my turban scarf inside my gown, where it rested in the pocket made by my sash, keeping Medusa company. The wig hair was shiny and black, and I felt safe inside the hair. My bristles poked upward and tried to unsettle the wig.

  We left the palace and went out into the pink half-light that comes before sunrise. We climbed to the north promontory on stairs cut very high; each step was an effort that strained the heart. When we arrived at the temple of Athena, we were panting.

  It was a slender graceful building, pillars as slim as the arms of a goddess. The endless wind of Troy sang between each pillar and around each beam, and the temple murmured to itself.

  We entered a sacristy, where a sleepy priestess gave each of us a pyxis. How often had Petra carried such a delicate vase, her right hand extending it toward the goddess, her left fingers blocking the hole at the bottom. With measured step and reverent head, Petra would have approached her altar. Her maids would have been carrying the flowers and her squire the flame.

  And yet the gods had not protected Petra when pirates attacked.

  How dare you? I said to those gods. How dare you accept her holy oil and reverence? How dare you accept any gifts of life—fruit and flowers, blood and flame—and not return the gift when it is needed? How dare you?

  The cold wind leaned down, murmuring a message from those gods: You will never understand us. Do not even try.

  I held my pyxis as far out in front of me as I could, mumbling my prayers. Then I slid my finger away from the tiny hole, letting the sacred oil fall drop by drop.

  As once a little girl had been horror-struck by a frozen boy in a strange courtyard, so was I horror-struck by this goddess. Her rock prison had saucers of gleaming black, ridges of black scar tissue and pockmarks of black disease. I could see where the head strained to be free, where the arms fought against the grip of the stone.

  An attempt had been made to pacify the trapped goddess. A spear was bound where its right hand might someday emerge from the rock, for Athena is a warrior. Laced where three stone fingers had gotten halfway out was a gold distaff, for Athena is a spinner.

  “Don't get closer,” breathed Andromache.

  I would never have gotten closer.

  The priestess took back each empty pyxis and we lifted our hands outward, as if to embrace the knees that were not there, and then we backed away.

  I knew then that Cassandra was wrong. Even the noise of Helen's name could not shatter the gates of Troy. No enemy could take Troy. This goddess was so much stronger than my goddess of yesterday. No man could desecrate this holy hill.

  The stables were vast affairs, with barns for hay and oats, corrals for foals and mares, training rings for the colts, and shelters for chariots, where the wheels were carefully laid against one wall and the folded cars on the other. The horses of King Priam lived better than most peasants.

  “Hector's horses are Golden, Whitefoot, Blaze and Silver Flash,” said Andromache. “I visit most days and feed them out of my hand.”

  I too would have eaten out of Andromache's hand. The moment we were out of that temple, she pulled me into a corner not yet lit by the sunrise, whipped out a scarf of her own and tied it over my wig and under my chin, so the wind could not pull off my stolen hair. I probably looked quite ordinary, although with dark hair instead of red.

  We were below the citadel now, far beyond both the first and second palisades. Dry pasture stretched for a mile until the ground became soggy and green, filled with reed and sedge and horses. Hundreds of horses wandered in marsh grass up to their bellies, around willows and young elms, thorn thickets and tamarisk.

  I had thought the plains were dull. Now I wept at the beauty of wild horses an
d tall grass.

  A silver river poured toward the sea, like an echo caught between stones.

  “The Scamander,” Andromache told me. “When we have our first son, Hector will name him for the holy river. Scamandrios.”

  I was so envious of her. She knew she was loved, that she would have a palace and sons, that she would be first among women in Troy.

  I too will be a woman soon, I thought. I believe I have turned thirteen years. I was born at the end of a summer, and summer is over. In fact, autumn is nearly over.

  “Oh, look!” cried Andromache. “Hector's riding Silver Flash.”

  I have seen chariot races, those wonderful displays of speed and power and daring, the driver in his race colors, the stallion with his mane braided. But now for the first time I saw a man on a horse's back.

  Riding a donkey or mule is merely a slow and bumpy way to get somewhere without using your legs. But riding a horse is an act of grace.

  “No stallion bred Hector's horses,” Andromache told me. “His horses were sired by the wind.”

  It shivered me. A mare alone in a meadow—and the breath of a god gives her a foal. But then, all Troy was godswept.

  Hector was not alone. A friend was riding with him, and I found it astonishing that such a rare and handsome skill as riding a horse was just play for Hector—like a ball game! He had invited a friend along.

  Hector's hair was hanging in loose untended curls and his black beard was even shaggier than before because of the high wind. He looked like a piece of a forested mountain, thrown down by a god.

  His friend, too young for a beard, had threaded his curls through the gold rings of a cap. The rings bounced against his back. Both men wore heavy capes against the chilly dawn and divided tunics, a piece for each leg.

  When Hector and his friend removed themselves from their horses by vaulting down, I could not contain myself. “Oh, sir, please, I beg of you. Will you take me riding? May I do what you are doing? May I sit on your broad-backed horse and speed like the wind? Oh, sir—”