For the Most Beautiful (3 page)

‘You can't mean to
climb
it!'

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It's the only way. We wouldn't be able to get past the guards at the main gate, would we? Come on, Cassandra – it's not that bad, and Troilus will never find us. We might even win the game this time! Look …'

I stepped up a layer of blocks, found purchase in the cracks between the stones with my foot, then reached up with one hand to pull myself higher, like the lizards I had seen climbing the palace walls on a hot summer's day. ‘You see? It's easy!'

But Cassandra did not reply.

‘Cassandra?' I asked, twisting around to look down at her.

She was facing away from the wall, standing still and staring.

‘Cassandra, are you all right?'

And then I froze.

Three feral dogs the size of wolves had appeared at the other end of the alley, a hundred paces behind us, and were advancing down the narrow street, their sharp teeth bared, hackles raised. They moved stealthily, jaws curled in a low snarl, revealing sharp, pointed fangs, their wild, dark eyes fixed on us as if they would hunt and savage us as easily as hares caught in a thicket.

‘
Quick!
Climb up!'

Cassandra did not need telling twice. Whirling around, her blue eyes wide with fear, she snatched up her skirt and started to pull herself up the wall. I was moving fast – there were only two more large stone blocks between me and the sky … One more …

I looked back, my heart racing. The dogs had started to run and they were gathering speed, teeth bared, snarling, spittle flying behind them. They were fifty paces away now and the distance was closing, and Cassandra was still within their reach …

Cassandra was breathing hard with mixed terror and exhaustion as she pulled herself higher. I stepped down a layer to help her and reached out my hand to pull her up. ‘Come on, Cassandra! You have to keep climbing! Only one more – one more—'

And then we had reached the top of the wall, and the dogs were beneath us, snapping and leaping, jaws barely missing our heels as we scrabbled up and on to the broad rough stones that capped it.

‘Oh, Krisayis!' Cassandra breathed, as she pulled herself up next to me, her words ragged and uneven as she gasped for breath. ‘That was –
so – close
!'

I nodded, my heart hammering with fear and excitement. ‘I know.' I looked down at the dogs, snarling and jumping only a few feet beneath us, white teeth bared, and shivered slightly; then I turned, lowered myself over the far side of the wall and climbed down, dropping on to the grass of the sanctuary.

‘We didn't get hurt, though, did we?' I said, as Cassandra started down after me.

‘No,' Cassandra said, ‘but—' She faltered, looking over her shoulder at the ten-foot drop.

‘Here,' I said, moving forwards. I held out my hand to help her jump to the ground.

We gazed around us as we got our breath back, taking in our surroundings.

The temple was set above us on a slight hill, a tall, imposing structure of dark stone with bronze doors fronted by painted columns and set above an open courtyard, with a flight of steep steps. Around it were clustered several smaller buildings – a white-plastered dwelling, perhaps the home of the priest and priestesses, a wooden storehouse set against the wall and a workshop from which a faint smell of sand and dust drifted towards us. A single stone-flagged path wound up the hill towards the buildings, lined on either side by twisted old oaks and the sacred stone slabs of the gods, scattering the precinct like relics.

‘What now?' Cassandra asked. ‘Can we not go back to the palace, Krisayis?'

I felt a twinge of guilt at the pleading note in her voice. I knew that Cassandra did not like to leave the palace grounds and that she disliked disobedience even more; she was happiest when she was in the palace, surrounded by her brothers, in her familiar element. But then, I thought, I simply could not let this pass me by. It might be the only chance I had to find out about the life my father was determined to force me into before he succeeded in his plans, and all was lost.

I brushed my long hair off my face, gathered my courage and started off across the precinct with determination. ‘We are going to the temple of Apulunas.'

I was standing in the palace herb garden, surrounded by fragrant lavender in the shade of a pomegranate tree, waiting, tall and proud as a princess should be. But my heart was quivering in my chest, like a small, frightened bird.

He has to want to marry me
, I thought, standing there, trying not to show my desperation.
He has to. I must fulfil my duty before it is too late. I have to be chosen. I have to show to my family that I can still be a good daughter and a good wife and, if the gods will it, a mother of princes.

Above all, above everything, he has to want me.

I flicked back a stray lock of dark hair from my forehead, as my mother always told me to do, and tilted my slim figure slightly to one side, just like the statues I had seen of Arinniti, goddess of love. I could hardly remember a time when they had not told me I was beautiful. Indeed, my old nurse, Deiope, had sworn from when I was a child that I should make a great match and a great marriage. With my long, dark hair, pale skin and delicate features, she had often said I looked like the living embodiment of the women whose brightly coloured portraits decorated the palace walls, their black hair braided down their backs, their skirts tied tight around slim waists. If it had not been for the prophecy, no one would have been anxious at all.

But, because of the prophecy, nothing was certain any more.

I readied myself, drew myself up tall, like a queen, and tried to hide my quaking heart, which felt as if it had dropped all the way from my mouth to my slippered feet.

The small oak-wood gate of the garden creaked and I turned. It was my mother, the Queen of Pedasus, a woman known as much for the firmness of her hand in ruling our city as for her beauty. ‘Now, Briseis,' she said, without preamble, as she always spoke and especially to me. She walked towards me down the stone-lined path, straight-backed and stern, her flounced skirt brushing the herbs at the path's edge and sending the soft scent of lavender and thyme into the evening air. ‘It is my expectation that you do your best.'

I looked down at my hands, trying to be humble. ‘I do try,' I said meekly. ‘I did not ask for the prophecy. I did not want—'

‘Briseis, please,' my mother said, folding her hands in front of her in her most regal stance and gazing sternly at me. ‘Not this again. We each deal with the fate the gods have dealt us. You will be silent and let your beauty speak for itself. Perhaps this time, at last, the gods will bless us with good fortune.'

I touched my forefinger quietly to my thumb, sending a silent prayer to the goddess Luck that this might be so, then cast my eyes to the ground and tried to trust in my beauty and the gods.

There were sounds of footsteps on stone beyond the garden gate. I took a deep breath. My suitor was approaching – and, if he chose me, he would have the power to change my life for ever.

‘Your father … High Priest Polydamas … he will be so angry … if he knows you are here,' Cassandra panted beside me, as we climbed up to the temple of Apulunas. A slave dressed in a plain white tunic was brushing the steps with a broom, and he frowned at us as we passed.

I swallowed. ‘I know,' I said. ‘But I simply have to see what it is like for myself. I have to know. I have to know what it is to be a priestess, what my father is trying to give my life to when I reach my sixteenth year.'

Cassandra was still breathing heavily with the climb and did not reply. The steps were steep and each of them very high, as if they had been worked by the monstrous Cyclopes themselves.

I gazed up at the sky behind the buildings: turning pink now and shot through with gold as, drawn by the horses of Apulunas in his golden chariot, the sun started to dip down towards the mythical Garden of the Hesperides in the far west. ‘Oh, if only I were divine, like Apulunas,' I burst out. ‘Then I should be immortal, and no one could tell me what to do, least of all my father. I could just knock him over with my thumb, like this.' I illustrated, flicking the tip of my forefinger against the soft pad of my thumb. ‘He would never be able to force me to become a priestess.'

I sighed as the dream of immortality vanished before my eyes, and all that was left in front of me was the temple, its bronze doors glinting in the sunlight.

‘There must be more I can do with my life than lay it on the altars of the gods,' I continued. ‘Just because I am a woman, and the daughter of the priest, my father thinks—' I shook my head. ‘I do not see why he cannot understand that I—'

‘Indeed,' a disapproving, all-too-familiar voice interrupted me. ‘I do not understand. And
you
, daughter, are disobeying my command.'

We had reached the top of the steps. Standing in the gloomy shadows of the portico beside one of the blue-painted columns was the last person in the world I wished to see: a tall, stooping, grey-bearded man with a shrewd look on his face, wearing a priest's long white robes, which carried with them the scent of incense from the temple. He was nothing like me, with my curling hair and honey-brown eyes, but however much I wished at that moment it were not true, he was my father.

‘Good evening, my lord,' I said.

I did not need him to speak to know he was angry: the set line of his mouth and the single grim line across his forehead told me that. His dark eyes flicked to Cassandra. ‘Princess,' he said, with clipped politeness, bowing deeply towards her so that his long robes brushed the ground, and his laurel wreath – the badge of honour of the High Priest of Apulunas, protector of Troy – tipped forwards slightly on his thinning grey hair. Then he turned back to me. ‘What,' he asked slowly, in a voice of forced calm, ‘in the names of all the gods of Ida do you think you are doing here?'

I looked up at him. ‘I thought—'

‘You thought nothing,' he interrupted me forcefully. ‘I have told you again and again that you are not to enter the precinct of the Great God Apulunas before your sixteenth year. The rites forbid it. The customs of the god prohibit it. And yet, after all I have done for you, after all I have worked for, you choose to disobey me and the dictates of the Great God, whom I have promised you will serve for the rest of your life.'

I tried to bite my lip, to stay silent as a daughter should. I could not. ‘But, Father,' I said slowly, trying to make him see sense, ‘if you would only
listen
to what I am trying to tell you! I revere the gods as much as anybody, but – I do not wish to be a priestess!'

He looked as if he would interrupt, but I continued all the same: ‘Who could lock themselves willingly into the temple when there is a whole world outside? The gods are to be found in daylight, not in darkness – isn't that what the prophet Huwashi himself said? I wish to
live
my life, Father! I want to laugh with my friends, to dance in the palace at night and spend my days helping the people of Troy, like the king and princes do! I promise you, if my mother were here she would have—'

‘That is
enough
, I tell you!' my father thundered, cutting me off, his dark eyes sparking with rage. ‘I have heard enough! Is this all that fills your foolish head, Krisayis? Princes and dances and palaces? There is more to life, daughter, than mere court foolery and gold! And, if your mother were here, she would tell you the same as I: that it is the duty of a priest to listen only to the voices of the immortal gods, not the tattling speech of foolish women. You
shall
accept the destiny I have granted you and be
grateful
for it!'

I could feel tears of frustration welling at the corners of my eyes and immediately I blinked them away, hard. I would not let him see that he had made me weep.

But then Cassandra spoke: ‘High Priest Polydamas,' she said, her bird-like voice quavering a little – my father was a hard man when he was in a rage. ‘It was not her fault, my lord. We were playing with my brother Troilus. We were merely trying to find a place to hide when some wild dogs chased us. We ran here and – well – we had nowhere else to go. Krisayis did not mean for it to happen. She was protecting me. We had no choice.'

Cassandra felt for my hand and squeezed it, tight.

I felt my heart swell in gratitude, and squeezed hers in return.

My father paused, his thin chest heaving, looking us both up and down with the air of a man who had been winded halfway through a running contest. It was clear that, even in his rage, he would not contradict a princess, a member of the House of Priam.

‘Is this true, Krisayis?' he asked me at last, his teeth gritted, as if he begrudged every word.

I nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, Father,' I said. ‘We were only playing hide and seek and then the dogs came.' I stopped myself saying any more. We were outside the temple of a god after all, and I knew that the gods could hear a lie louder than a stone dropped in a still pool. At least I could say in all honesty that this much was true.

He stared at me as if he, too, like the gods, could discern the truth from a lie. ‘Oh, very well,' he said eventually, holding up his hands in surrender, though I could tell from his face that he did not want to believe me. ‘Very well, then. But you are
not
to enter the temple,' he said, stepping in front of me as I tried to peer around him.