For the Most Beautiful (10 page)

‘There is something I must tell you.'

I looked at her in surprise. A pink tinge was blossoming on her cheeks and her eyes were strangely bright. She took a deep breath, then said in a rush, ‘I have to tell you what happened on the walls when Paris and Hector returned home, Krisayis. I cannot bear it any longer. I have to tell someone.'

She looked excited and scared at the same time, the flush on her cheeks deepening. ‘Only – you promise you will believe me?' she continued, the words tumbling out of her mouth. ‘You won't doubt me? No matter what it is?'

‘Of course!' I said, taking her hand. ‘Of course I shall believe you. You are my dearest friend, my sister almost. How could you doubt it?'

She gave me a small smile, then took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘It began on the day my brothers came home,' she said. It was as if she were trying to say everything at once, and that now she had begun she could not stop. ‘I was standing on the walls, under the canopy, where you saw me. It was hot that day, and I felt dizzy. I was standing there, trying not to faint, when I realized there was someone behind me.'

I stared at her.

‘I turned,' she continued, her voice shaking, ‘and – and I saw—'

‘What? Cassandra – who was it?'

She looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Apulunas.'

It took me a moment to register what she had just said.

‘Apulunas?' I breathed. ‘The Great God Apulunas came to you on the walls of Troy?'

‘Yes,' she said.

I stared at her. ‘What did he look like?'

‘He was invisible. He told me I was the only one who could see him. And he – he … He wanted to have me,' she whispered, so quietly I could hardly hear her. ‘He told me I was beautiful, and he – he asked me to come to the home of the gods on Mount Ida with him. And when I refused … he cursed me. He cursed me with the gift of prophecy. He – he said that I would always tell the truth, but that – that –' she began to sob, and then she looked up at me, her eyes overflowing ‘– that no one would ever believe me.'

I gazed at her in horror, my hands over my mouth. ‘Cassandra, no – do not say such things – it is blasphemy—'

‘That is why he forced me to make the prophecy that day,' she whispered. ‘It was true, Krisayis. It was all true. Troy will fall. We are all ruined.' She paused. ‘Can you believe me?'

I looked at her, my hands still to my face, and she looked at me. There was a moment's silence.

‘Do you mean – are you saying he desired you?' I asked slowly.

She nodded.

‘And you refused him?'

She nodded again.

My mind was reeling with shock. For Cassandra to say that she had seen a god was one thing. But to suggest he had wanted to lie with her – a god, with a mortal, just like that, and not any god but the god who was the highest of all the divine beings, the god who was above all others in his goodness and purity, who guarded Troy with an ever-wakeful eye … It was impossible!

And yet Cassandra was my friend. And I had sworn not to doubt her.

‘I – I believe you,' I said, trying to put enough conviction into my voice to satisfy her.

Her eyes still shone with tears. ‘You do?'

I hesitated. ‘Yes.'

Great God
, I thought,
if you are listening, I pray you do not hear my lie.

It was towards the end of the afternoon. Mynes had been out hunting again, and he was just about to return. I was in our quarters, my hair wound up around my head with a swathe of dark blue cloth, preparing a bath for my husband when he came home. The brightly painted clay tub had been set up in the bedroom, surrounded by piles of linen towels, large pots decorated with black spiralling patterns for pouring the steaming water, and small jugs of fragrant olive oil. Wild rose petals had been scattered on the water to float on the surface.

I rubbed scented cedar oil into my hands to make them smooth, and then I knelt beside the tub at the foot of our bed, waiting for him to arrive home.

I waited.

And I waited.

But he did not come.

After an hour or so I stood up, my back and legs stiff from kneeling. I caught one of the slaves by the arm as she came in from the washrooms, her arms laden with fresh linen.

‘Phryne, have you seen Prince Mynes?' I asked. ‘I am afraid he may have been injured on the hunt. I expected him at least an hour ago.'

She looked at me, her eyes wide. ‘Have you not been told the news, my lady?' she said.

‘What – what do you mean?' I asked quickly, my voice faltering. ‘What news?'

‘An urgent message arrived from Troy about an hour ago,' she said. ‘Prince Mynes was summoned directly to a council meeting as soon as he got back. The king and his councillors are still in the Great Hall.'

I frowned. ‘Do you have any idea what the message was about?'

‘No, Princess.'

I let go of her arm and sank down on to the rugs on the floor. The rose petals on the water were still giving off a last memory of their pale, sweet scent. I rested my arm on the side of the tub, my fingers playing with the flowers, half submerged. The water was cold.

‘Do you love me?'

‘More than anything else in the world.'

I rewarded him with a kiss.

‘And shall we spend the rest of our lives together here in Troy, do you think?'

We were in the sleepy aftermath of love-making in Troilus' juniper-wood bed, cushioned on layers and layers of the finest woollen blankets and embroidered pillows in his private chambers in one of the large palace towers, as the dark veil of night fell around the city.

Troilus rolled languidly on to his back. ‘And watch you grow old and ugly?' he teased me, poking at the softness of my belly with his finger. ‘I'm not sure. I think I'd rather always have a beautiful woman by my side.'

I fought off the offending finger. ‘Who says I'll be ugly?' I demanded, sitting up in bed. ‘I – I might be— I will be the most beautiful matron you've ever seen, and then you'll be sorry,' I finished.

Troilus drew me back into his arms and caressed me. I smiled into his chest. ‘That's better,' I said, as his fingers worked their way down my back. ‘But it still doesn't make up for it.'

He laughed, then stopped, alert, his eyes darting over to the tower window overlooking the shore and the darkening plain. ‘What was that?'

‘What?' I asked, sitting up quickly. ‘Is someone coming? Do they know I'm here?'

He shook his head. ‘You didn't hear it?'

‘No.'

He got up, threw a light tunic over his head and went to the window.

‘What is it, Troilus?'

But Troilus did not answer.

I drew the woollen covers closer around my shoulders, slipped from the bed and moved over to stand beside him. I could just make out the ships of the Greeks beached in the Trojan bay to the west, silhouetted in the light of a thousand campfires, their prows sticking up into the night sky, like dark trees.

A river of dots of light – torches, probably, though they looked like fireflies from such a distance – seemed to stream away from the ships over the plain towards the forest in the south. They stretched as far as the eye could see; just audible, I could hear the dull, rhythmic tramping of thousands of soldiers' feet. ‘What does it mean?' I breathed to Troilus.

He turned to me, frowning, and gathered me in his arms again in a protective gesture. ‘It means,' he said slowly, ‘that the Greeks are hungry.'

I did not understand. ‘They're going hunting – at night?'

‘Not hunting, no,' Troilus said. ‘They are going to sack one of the cities of the Troad – Thebe, Arisbe, Percote … Who knows? Steal their gold, their women and their food.'

I felt a shiver of fear shoot up my spine. ‘But they are not marching on Troy, are they?'

He gave me a grave look. ‘Not yet, at least.'

‘Have the cities been warned?'

He nodded. ‘Oh, yes. The closer ones have been sent supporting armies, and my father sent messengers to those further from us to tell them to prepare for an attack, if it comes. But it is unlikely that the Greeks will go that far in a single night.'

He walked thoughtfully away from the window and climbed back under the covers. I nestled into his arms again, grateful for the closeness of him and the strong shield of him around me, and, though the rugs were warm, I shivered. I could not help thinking that somewhere, in a city out on the Trojan plain, there might be another pair of young lovers, just like us, innocently preparing for a night's sleep, not knowing. Not knowing that this was about to be their very last night of all.

Most of the gods are sleeping soundly in their palaces on Mount Ida, which looms large over the Trojan plain and is one of the summer haunts of the Olympian gods. They are snoring in beds plated with gold and cushioned with downy cloud; but there are two who cannot sleep. Hermes and Apollo are sitting at the edge of a gap in the wispy, moonlit clouds, looking north to the bright windows of the palace of Troy, the high walls ringed with torches and the flickering lights of the houses in the lower city.

‘It simply isn't fair,' Apollo is saying, in a hurt voice. ‘I offered her immortality – what more did she want?'

‘Well, you didn't exactly choose the best time to ask her, did you?' Hermes points out reasonably. ‘I mean, what were you planning to do? Whisk her away from the walls and hope that no one noticed?'

Apollo broods over the city on the plain below, and does not answer.

‘Oh, come on, Apollo. Cheer up. Cassandra is only one Trojan woman. There are plenty more where she came from. Or then again,' Hermes gestures to a line of torches, trickling away from the Greek camp by the sea, heading towards Mount Ida, ‘perhaps not. It seems the Greeks are missing female company quite as much as we are.'

Apollo does not remove his chin from his fist. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, they're on their way to sack a city, aren't they? Pity. So many pretty girls we could have chosen from, but …' he sighs ‘… we can't go down there tonight. Even I have some morals.' He pauses. ‘All right, I don't,' he says, in response to Apollo's raised eyebrows, ‘but seducing mortals while their city's being destroyed – it's too easy. They'll be so desperate they'll practically be throwing themselves on us.'

Apollo mutters something under his breath, and Hermes chuckles.

‘Oh, don't be so dramatic. There are plenty more fish in the Aegean. And speaking of which,' Hermes stands up, turning away from the city towards the southern slopes of Mount Ida and stretching lazily, ‘I thought we might pay a visit to Sicily. Cheer you up a bit. Visit some of those wood-nymphs Ares was talking about the other night.'

Apollo perks up at once. ‘I've always liked Sicily. The girls are much less highly strung there than they are around here.' He chances a glance back at Troy.

‘Well, let's go, then,' Hermes says, clapping his hands.

Without further ado, the two gods leap together from the edge of the clouds, speeding gracefully over the shadowy foothills of Mount Ida and towards the coast, like two shooting stars.

Apollo pauses, hovering in the air as they turn west to follow the coast, gazing down at a small city nestled in a bay by the sea, at the bottom of the mountain's slopes. The line of soldiers from the Greek camp is pouring towards it and, even as they watch, the gates set in the outer walls go up in a blaze of orange flames. ‘Which city is that?'