Goddess of Yesterday: A Tale of Troy

  My head ached from the cold. I asked for a kerchief or a veil.

  “No,” said Thea. “The goddess must always have your shining head in sight. Every day you must prove again that for her sake you have given up your beauty and set aside your hopes for a husband and a family.”

  O Euneus. I did hope for a husband and a family. All winter I pretended and I hoped. But all I will have of you is memory and all you will have of me is one bead that wasn't even mine; it was Hermione's.

  I thought of the puppy I had held for one afternoon. Anthas. Flower. I would never see a flower or a puppy again.

  Down we went into the treasury of Troy. Wet rooms gleamed in Thea's torchlight as a courtyard gleams after rain. There sat the tribute taken from generations of ships passing through the Hellespont.

  “Here,” said Thea, “do we keep bronze and tin, iron and gold, silver and copper. It must not turn dim and dull. Every day you will circle, polishing the possessions of the Palladium.”

  I did not bother to address my goddess of yesterday. She does not dwell in the underworld and does not care about metals precious to kings.

  If I am fortunate, I thought, and die at fifty as most women do, I will pass thirty-seven years rubbing the sides of ingots. “I am a fine needlewoman,” I said brightly. “In the goddess's honor—”

  “No,” said Thea. “The daughters of King Priam embroider for the Palladium. Your service is like your head, bare and humble.” She stroked my scalp. “This is most unusual, my child. Your head is as smooth as a baby's bottom. No stubble. Did you use some special herb upon it?”

  “The gods took my hair. It will never grow back.”

  “You are doubly blessed,” said Thea. She led me down a tunnel whose ceiling got lower and lower until she was bent double, barely able to hold her torch in front of her. I crept behind. I could not bring myself to ask where I would sleep. Every surface was hard, wet and cold. I was beginning to realize that I would not be given a torch. I imagined myself in this dark slimy world. Eventually I would have to lie down.

  At a swollen place in the tunnel, Thea paused and straightened a little. The tunnel continued, too narrow for a woman the size of the priestess. Sitting on a low pedestal before us was an idol, flecked with gray and streaked with black. The idol had neither face nor body. It was another Palladium.

  For a long time, Thea and I knelt. When she backed away, I was too full of prayer to mind. I prayed for the real Callisto in death and for my Pleis in life. I prayed Hector would survive the war and Andromache would have the child she wanted to name after the Scamander River.

  Without the torch of Thea, I could not even see the Palladium before me. I ran my fingers over its scarred and terrible surface and I bargained with the goddess. “O Ancient One, I shall serve you all the days of my life. You serve Pleis. He is a prince. Let him live.”

  There was nothing around me but cold and silence. There would not be light again. Not unless Thea returned to rescue me. Not unless I disobeyed and crept back up the tunnel, desperate for light and company.

  I heard whimpering and knew it was mine.

  I reached inside my ugly robe for my Medusa, to whom I had clung through every trial and sorrow. She was warm from my flesh.

  After a long time, I sang to my goddess.

  O goddess of yesterday…who guided me over the hazy sea… who held me safe in strange fortresses and slept with me by night… O goddess, be with me now.

  Fragrance filled the cavern.

  It was soft, like mint or early morn.

  Come, it said.

  I tucked my Medusa into my sash and crawled away from the idol, and on down the dwindling hole of the rest of the tunnel. My gown tore under my knees. The passage grew so narrow that I would have to back up to return. Wet rocks scraped my back. I crawled through an inch of icy flowing water. With my fingers I explored the floor ahead of me and always there was more tunnel.

  And still the fragrance called.

  The floor began to slope sharply down. I crawled with my hands far below my knees, pitching forward, but without room to fall.

  The fragrance filled my nose. I felt the soft touch of leaves.

  “O goddess of yesterday,” I whispered.

  I was out of the tunnel, and I was out of Troy, a thousand feet from the citadel and far below it. Hundreds of torches lit the great walls. It was more magnificent than the sky.

  I did not fully emerge from my hole but peered through grass as a rabbit peeks from the clover. The sweet scent I had followed was hay; the first cutting of the season. By moonlight I could see it drying in heaps.

  There were many gods to thank. Many bargains to be struck. When I had finished praying, I turned myself around, rooting like a rabbit, and crawled back up the tunnel, my knees bleeding and my hands raw, up and up the slippery dark. When the tunnel was high enough that I could get off my knees, I felt the walls until my fingers found the idol.

  “Let me pass, Ancient One. I am in the safekeeping of another god. I will bring you flowers on my return. You have not seen flowers before. I know, because at your feet there are no wilted petals, no dry blooms, no trace of honor. I will honor you.”

  I crawled on.

  And then I could stand and then there was light.

  FROM THE PALLADIUM STEPS, I watched priests and priestesses still circling funeral pyres. They had been honoring the dead all through the day and all through the night, and still there were more dead to be celebrated.

  Hundreds of Trojan soldiers were awake, standing on the battlements, staring at the distant campfires of Menelaus. I hoped they were thinking of the soldiers from rugged Olizon and planning to kill them. At least Nicander would be avenged.

  Never had a city been so well lit. Every door had its torch. Every corner, every wall, every stair, every tower. The blessed safety of dark did not exist. Nor was Troy asleep. Grief and fear were too acute for rest.

  If I was caught I would be twice killed: once for leaving the temple precincts and once because I was the Greek princess.

  My novice's tunic was harsh cloth, badly spun brown goat hair. It smelled barny and was partly rotted from dragging for years on wet floors. I tore several inches off the bottom for a scarf to cover my head, which must have gleamed like marble in the torchlight. My knees showed, cut and bruised from crawling. Perhaps I would look like a squire, wounded with my master in the battle.

  Since I could not creep and could not hide, I marched firmly down the temple steps, crossed the square and threaded around a row of wounded men. Down the steps that clung to the walls of Hector's palace I went, down the steps fastened to the side of Priam's palace, and into the alley that led to the house of Paris.

  I studied the door. It would be open, but I could not risk using it. I hoped I was strong in the magic tonight. I picked all the flowers in the front-door jugs. Then I circled the house, went to the window and boosted myself up onto the sill. I had just swung my legs over when I heard murmuring voices.

  Paris and Kora.

  I dropped back into the alley and crouched.

  “It still hasn't worked,” muttered Kora. I looked up. She was so big that her shoulders and head were above the sill. One glance out the window and she'd see me.

  “We don't need the quicksilver anymore,” whispered Paris. “Just leave the boy among the wounded.”

  “What if he walks away or cries out?” said Kora.

  “That will be good. I want him noticed.”

  Kora grunted in confusion.

  “Kora, he's the son of Menelaus. All I need is one raging widow, one vengeful son, one grief-crazed brother. Then the boy will die by the sword.”

  It was a good plan. It should work well and quickly. Any of the Trojan wounded and any of the Trojan nurses would recognize Pleis.

  “Won't Helen want to know how the child got out of the house?” whispered Kora. “She'll hate me. I'll be killed for not keeping an eye on him.”

  “I'll explain that away,” said Paris.
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  No, you won't, I thought. You'll let Helen do anything she wants to Kora. You don't care what happens to a slave. You want to be rid of Pleis. Drowning didn't work, playing with your sword didn't work, poison didn't work. Another man's sword will work. How like you, Paris, to arrange for another warrior to fight even the smallest battle.

  Kora was suspicious. “How will you explain it to Helen?”

  “I will say I sent you on an errand,” said Paris irritably, “and we expected the child would stay asleep. He must have wakened on his own and toddled out into the street. These things happen.”

  These things didn't happen, actually. Pleis was not strong enough to pull open the front door and if he wakened on his own, he would try to find his mother.

  Sandals clip-clopped softly. One of them was leaving. Was it Paris, returning to bed?

  It would take Kora a few minutes to waken Pleis. She wouldn't want him sobbing; Helen might hear. As soon as Kora's head was no longer framed in the window, I would run to where the wounded lay. When she set Pleis down, I would get to him first. But there were no dark corners tonight in which to lurk. And if I hung about the streets, I would be sent on an errand. And what if Kora set him down earlier? And what if Pleis was recognized and attacked before I could get to him?

  I heard the little snuffling sounds Pleis made when he was half-awake. “There, there,” said Kora. “Stay asleep, little Greek.”

  I would have to do something far worse than tell a lie.

  I vaulted onto the sill. Kora had gotten Pleis to his feet. She was holding his little hand as he rubbed his eyes with the other.

  I launched my entire body at Kora, slamming my Medusa into her head. It cracked her skull. There was nothing magic about it. Stone is stronger than bone.

  When we came to the swollen part of the tunnel, I felt the wall in the dark until I found the idol and there we knelt.

  “You have given us passage, Ancient One. I will not betray you or Troy. Here are the flowers. As soon as I am able, I will make a good sacrifice in your honor.”

  Fragrance spilled out of the tunnel.

  Down the long wet slant we went. I had to push Pleis in front of me, because if he were to stop, I would not be able to reach back to get him.

  He was very slow. He was very scared. He was only two. “Calli,” he said anxiously, “sto.”

  “It's all right,” I told him. “We are strong in the magic.”

  It would be daylight when we reached the end of the tunnel. Kora's body would have been found. Pleis' absence known. But Paris would raise no alarm. Such would be suspicious. It was the priestess Thea who would raise the alarm. Did Thea know where this tunnel came out, even if she herself could never have used it? When we reached the end, would there be soldiers crouched around the opening?

  I wished Pleis did not have to go first. Whatever happened, it should happen to me first. But it was not to be.

  “Pretty!” said Pleis in amazement. “Pretty, pretty.” And he was gone.

  I put my nose into the fresh air and looked around. Pleis was halfway out of the flowers and into the field. I caught him by the ankle and he giggled and fell.

  I was trembling with exhaustion. So little sleep, so much fear and one terrible deed.

  It is war, I told myself. It is the battle I fight. The equation of life is very equal. For one to survive, another must die. Pleis will survive, Kora had to die.

  Nobody liked Kora, I told myself. She was planning to kill a child. Her death is proper and just.

  But even as Nicander had been stabbed in the back, I had killed Kora from behind.

  There was no glory in it. It was just an ugly truth from which I could never escape.

  We were enveloped in noise: an army in the morning, the waking voices of ten thousand men. I looked across the hay field where I had thought to go. Paphlagonians and Lycians and Dardanians were camped there. Carians and Mycians and Phrygians. Sharpening their spears for another battle. Finding their horses, leading them to the chariots.

  From the windy walls of Troy came Hector's great roar, instructing his troops.

  Pleis and I were trapped. Caught between two armies soon to clash. “Goddess of yesterday,” I breathed. “O be with us now and all the days to come.”

  A flock of sheep wandered near. They seemed to have no shepherd. Perhaps he had died in yesterday's battle. The sheep needed him and were calling. A lamb has a sweet little bleat, but sheep moan and groan like wounded men. The flock milled around, bumping one another and complaining.

  “Hold my hand, Pleis,” I said. “No matter what happens, do not let go my hand.”

  “Calli, carry me,” he said, holding up his arms. He was tired and confused and he had been so good. But I could not carry him because then from the battlements of Troy they would see exactly what they had seen the day before: the same girl pretending to be a boy; the same child on her hip; the same ridiculous attempt to escape.

  They would have us back in moments.

  I stepped among the sheep, dragging Pleis and singing, making of my voice a pipe. The sheep were glad to see a shepherd and came quickly to butt me in the side, and all of us together went into the fields of hay. Pleis didn't like the great dirty sheep pressing up against him and began to sob. The sheep bleated louder.

  I am a silly shepherd boy, I told myself. I've forgotten that there's a war. I see nice long grass over by the river, perfect for my flock.

  I herded them forward, pushing against their heavy sides, and they were slow and annoying in the way of sheep. I rammed forward and some hurried to stay with me and some lost interest and some ran ahead.

  We were in the no-man's-land.

  Beyond the river, the Greeks were massing for battle. Behind me, the Trojan allies gathered.

  From the tangled thickets and long fields we had just left came the shrill whistle of two fingers in the mouth. The call of the real shepherd. My sheep muddled nervously. “Don't leave me,” I sang to them.

  The flock left, bolting back the way we had come.

  A girl as thin as a twig and a boy no higher than a flower walked alone at the edge of a marsh.

  The wind that batters Troy flung my tattered gown around my knees and tore my makeshift scarf from my head. I snatched at it, but the wind—ally of Troy—was too quick. My naked head gleamed in the morning sun.

  From the high thin tower came a high thin cry. “Stop them!”

  I had forgotten Cassandra, who knew everything. Who knew me.

  “Child of the island!” screamed Cassandra. “Son of Menelaus!”

  I was sobbing as I stumbled over the ruts of war. Weeping as I ran, I dragged Pleis roughly. I would be tearing his poor little arm from its socket. “I am a friend to Menelaus, Cassandra,” I admitted to the princess on the tower. I did not raise my voice. She who knew everything would surely hear me. “But I will not betray Troy, O princess. I have lied about many things. I am not lying about that. I owe Zanthus and you, I owe Andromache and Hector. I owe Troy. My task is to give a little boy back to his father. Betraying Troy, Cassandra, will go to Helen.”

  “Stop the shepherd!” screamed Cassandra. “That shepherd is friend to Menelaus.”

  I stiffened my back to armor myself against the spears to come. I hoped that Pleis and I would tumble together into death and that I could hold his hand against fear.

  But nothing happened.

  I could not help myself. I looked back.

  Cassandra was framed against the drenched-in-gods blue of a Trojan sky. The wind threw her dark hair in her face like a veil. The troops continued to gather. Hector continued to give orders. Only Cassandra was looking at us.

  She touched her fingers to her lips and cast a kiss in our direction, as an acolyte casts flowers before the altar or the king casts wine upon the sea. Blessing us.

  She had saved our lives. For she did know the truth: I would not betray Troy. Nor had she accused me of it. The moment she said who we were, nobody believed it.

  “
Little princess,” said Menelaus, kissing each cheek as if I were lovely and desirable. “What courage! To walk away from those mighty walls. To march right out the Scaean gate, carrying my son between the poised spears of princes. Truly you are strong in the magic.”

  No, I thought. I'm just a very good liar. Even to you. Even now.

  The lord of lords, Agamemnon, and his generals stared at me. Menelaus' captains came to look. His infantry and cavalry, spearmen and archers gaped at the ragged, bruised, scabbed and bald creature before them.

  There had not been a battle that morning after all. Menelaus said it was victory enough to have his son back. In vain did the Trojan armies assemble.

  Pleis had fallen asleep with his little head against his father's cheek, his hair wet from his father's warm tears. Some time passed before Menelaus could set him down and think of other things. “Anything you wish is yours, my princess,” he told me.

  It was a promise Menelaus could fulfill. He could give me anything.

  But the thing I craved most was not land or gold, not power or princes.

  “I wish to be forgiven for a lie. A lie that is a crime before god and king. I am not Callisto, daughter of Petra and Nicander of Siphnos. That princess died at the hands of the pirates. I was a hostage whose parents did not want her back. I stole a royal birthright, that I might not be abandoned or enslaved. In truth I am Anaxandra, daughter of Chrysaor and Iris, from an island without a name, just a rocky place in the sea.”

  The king stood at the edge of a sea white with foam.

  I stood at the edge of my life.

  I was as tired as Pleis. There were no soft beds or warm baths in a war camp. What will happen to me now? I thought dully. I cannot bear to sit in the tents of Menelaus as Troy is brought down.

  I had thought that Menelaus would answer softly, my future quiet between us, but his voice was as a trumpet, for all his men might hear. “Anaxandra!” said the king. “You are mistaken. You are noble of spirit and royal of heart. You have always been a princess.”