Cassandra (33 page)

`Itarnes, do you really think that this will work? Why torture the man?' grumbled Tiraes. `If the hand is to wither, it will wither.'

`And he will be no more a man,' said Itarnes crossly. `He's an Achaean, they cannot bear mutilation. It is this or leave him to kill himself - you know what they are like. There. Come back in a week, brothers, and we shall see whether he is to be alive or dead.'

The slaves carried the soldier away.

`Ah, Chry... Diomenes,' said Itarnes. `Stay with me while I wash my hands. You have the right reflexes - have you thought of surgery? I would be glad to teach you.'

`I... no, I haven't thought of it,' I watched as he scrubbed his hands in a lychnis solution and dried them on a piece of linen. The slave took the bowl away. `I haven't, but it might be interesting. Why, Itarnes, are you thinking of going to this war? Surely it will be over by the time you get there?'

`I don't think it will be over,' he said slowly as we left the temple. `I'm not going, no. But I think you'll... never mind. Come along. First principle of the knife; don't.'

`Don't?'

`If you can avoid cutting into flesh, then avoid it. It is a last resort. As soon as the skin is breached, all sorts of things can go wrong. There is inflammation, there is bleeding, there is putrefaction, swelling and death. Most of my patients die.'

`Then why do you do it?'

`The rest are snatched out of your favourite Thanatos' arms as if by a miracle.' He smiled.

`Oh.' I could not think of a useful comment. `How do we begin?'

`With the dead,' he said. `You have been to a dissection, haven't you? It is a terrible burden and a frightening thing, to take apart what the gods have designed and the Mother has made. Only we must understand, Diomenes. Understanding the world is our purpose in life, the reason why the gods gave us wits and hands. But it must be done prayerfully, with the breath held in awe.'

We walked to the mortuary. There was only one body there, an old man.

`Now, Asclepid, how did he die?' Itarnes asked me. I stripped back the cerements and felt over the body, gently, finding a large lump in the swollen abdomen and smaller ones all over the chest, in both armpits and under the jaw.

`Cancer,' I said. `The crab killed him. This is the first tumour; the others have multiplied as he weakened.'

`Good. When the priests call us this evening, you will see if you are right.'

I went to the deep pool in the river, put off my tunic, and swam in the cold water for a long time, until I felt cleansed.

That night, among clouds of incense, it was revealed as Itarnes peeled back the secrets of the old man's body that he had died not of cancer but of the Egyptian worm which makes cysts in the cavities of the belly and the lung. It was his spleen that I had felt.

A week later I watched as the Achaean flexed fingers which had not worked for a month, and saw the smile creep over his face of a man reprieved from death.

 

After three months I was as accomplished a surgeon as I was going to be, which was only ordinarily skilled, and Chryseis was at her time.

She went into labour at the dead watch, when the stars burn bright and the moon is down. I felt her shift clumsily to lay her head on my shoulder. She was sweating. A whimper escaped her close-tight lips and I awoke fully.

`It is beginning,' she said. `Stay with me.'

`Always,' I replied. `Sit up, dear heart.' I pulled her up into my arms so that we were leaning against the wall. `Keep warm and be brave, sweet maiden.'

She snuggled closer and my arms enfolded her. We lay like that until dawn came.

I sent for the priest of Demeter at noon. He came, an old man with wise eyes and a broken nose, which he always said he got as a present from a birthing mother. He talked to Chryseis, prodded her belly, and waited while one pain ebbed and another one came.

`Soon,' he said, and she sighed. Her eyes closed, those amber eyes which had always enthralled me. Her eyelashes lay ordered and dark on her pale cheek. I had changed her tunic twice. She was drenched in fluids, but she could not swallow.

`Call me again at dusk,' said Demeter's priest. `Give her milk and honey; I will make some infusions. Talk to her,' he added.

I sat next to my wife and began to talk, not expecting a reply, meandering my way through my travels, from Kokkinades to Tiryns, Tiryns to Midea and the Cyclopes, Midea to Mycenae, where Eumides the freed slave had comforted my broken heart. I wondered where he was, my Trojan. I remembered suddenly the taste of his lips, blood and starvation, as he kissed me in the street of Mycenae. I had not thought of him for a year. He had been afraid of being sacrificed, and I assured him that we did not do such things. Now Agamemnon had done it; spilled his daughter's blood for a wind to Troy. Chryseis replied sometimes, asking occasional questions, laughing at the description of the soot-covered smith and the cleaning treatment dictated by Asclepius. Each time she began a sentence, the pain would come again and she would break off and clutch my hand, gasp, and forget what she had been saying. So finally I just babbled, wittering on like an old man in the marketplace, for every pain hurt me, struck like a knife into my vitals, and it took all my hard-earned healer's self-command to make my voice work.

Even as she was, her hair draggling across her shoulders, her body swollen and deformed, her face twisted with anguish, tears flowing from her eyes, she was exceedingly beautiful to me.

At night I called the priest of Demeter again. He listened at her belly, lifted her onto her feet, jolted her so that she screamed, and muttered, `I'll make another infusion, Diomenes.'

I smelt it when he brought it. Pennyroyal, to expel a dead child.

I did not care about the child. I wished it never conceived. She was getting weaker; the pains were lessening as her strength was exhausted. I could not speak to her now, but I could sing, long, long ballads of gods and maidens, so old that half of the words were incomprehensible.

The night lasted a hundred years. By the oil lamp, I held her twisting body, wracked with agony, and I could do nothing.

Itarnes came at dawn the next day and I screamed at him to go away. I had seen the removal by knife of a child from a living mother. She had died immediately and the child had lived; I remembered a little hand curling up out of the bloody ruin of the womb. Itarnes limped away.

At noon my master came and I crawled out of the little house to his feet, so cramped that I could not walk. I sat down and stared blankly at him.

`You will drink this,' he gave me a cup of undiluted wine. I was so exhausted that I did as I was bid, and blinked. `You will eat,' he gave me a bowl of suppliant's broth and I drank it. Some force flowed back into me. I stretched. He pulled me to my feet.

`Chryse, she must be taken out of the sacred precinct,' he said gently. I understood slowly, shook my head and cried, `No! Master, no. Please.'

`It must be,' he said. Slaves carrying a litter went into my little house and I heard a shriek. I dived in and lifted her in my arms, then walked out into the bright sunlight.

I carried my wife to the fountain and sat down with her on the cool grass. Glaucus stood a moment, unspeaking, then went away. No one must die or be born in the tholos of Epidavros. I did not think that anything would be born from this tortured body. At dusk I heard someone coming in. It was Itarnes. `It is the only hope to save your child,' he urged `Let me use the knife, Diomenes.'

`The child is dead,' I said dully. `There is nothing to be done.

At dawn the next day I felt a change. I had long since ceased to speak or sing. Once I laid her down with her back to the tree, cocooned in my cloak, but she cried after me, so my presence was comforting her. I noticed that several slaves and the priest of Demeter were sitting three paces away from us, waiting. I had nothing to say to them. My throat had contracted too tightly for me to speak.

A cock crowed. The day began to lighten, grey with mist. Chryseis convulsed and screamed; I had never heard such a sound. Her legs flexed, cramped, flexed again. I bore her up as something was born on a gush and pulse of blood. I saw the afterbirth delivered; the womb was emptied; her burden was gone.

Someone gathered up the born thing; cloths were brought, and she sipped wine and water, lying in my arms. Blood glued my tunic to my body, warm blood. Chryseis was bleeding to death and no bark would staunch it. The attendants scurried away as I snarled at them to be gone.

I laid both hands on her belly and I called the god.

My cry rose to heaven, my thoughts ranged; I demanded, I summoned. I cast out my call, and there was nothing in the world which would answer me. Heaven was hollow and echoing. In my most desperate need I promised I would devote all my life to the sick; I vowed that I believed in the gods.

Just give me my Chryseis, Lord Pluton
, I cried.
Of all your bounty, you do not need her gentle presence in your dark kingdom. Do not let her wander voiceless with the shades, lost to me forever. Do not take her away from me, or I must follow for I cannot live without her smile. You healed the boy because of his lover; heal my wife because of me! I am Diomenes, God-Touched, Chryse, of the healing hands, your servant, your slave. Apollo, Asclepius, Demeter Protector of Women, all gods, hear and answer me!

There was no sound.

My back hurt, my belly flamed as if a fire had been lit there. I was back on the grass near the fountain, with my wife in my arms. Her body was heavy with escaping life, her limbs loose, her hands which tried to reach up and caress my face were too heavy for the delicate wrists to lift. I stared into the amber eyes as they found mine and the gaze locked.

`Chryse?' she said in that mimic's voice she had used when we first met.

`Chryse,' I whispered. `I love you.'

`I love you, husband...' Her voice was gone. She breathed her last breath into my mouth as I kissed her.

Her lips grew cold. The golden eyes had glazed.

I saw the gods at last - too late, too late!

The cloudy angel of death descended with a rustle of feathers, and Chryseis rose, naked and glittering, to lie in his everlasting arms. I saw her turn and snuggle into his downy breast, heave a sigh, and fall asleep. The angel laid one hand for a moment on my head as though he was blessing me, and then they were gone.

I was holding an idol resembling Chryseis, a carrion image. She was gone. However, when slaves came and tried to take her out of my embrace, I clung to her and I believe that I fought them.

I do not remember the rest of the summer.

I was kneeling at the window in the Scamander Gate tower when I saw that the Achaeans, who had buzzed around their camps like a swarm of bees for a week had suddenly split into groups, and I caught a runner and told her to find Hector straight away.

It was a bright morning and I shaded my eyes. The sun shot level shafts along the plain of Troy, dazzling the sight. Through a halo of dust I could see an army marching.

Trumpeters blew the general alarm. I heard feet running and the clang of armour as soldiers scaled the ladders. Soon the wall was lined with watchers.

`They're coming,' breathed Polites from behind me. `The whole of the Achaean army, I would say. Has Hector been summoned?'

`Hector is here,' said Hector quietly. `What is moving?'

`The Argive host,' I replied. `In armour, with chariots.'

`There is a herald.' He pointed out a red horsetail on the helmet of a tall man who rode ahead of the dust cloud. `A challenge, perhaps? Or a parley?'

Státhi stalked along the wall, interested in the moving, toy-sized chariots, and put out a questing paw to capture a horse and rider. Hector put him down onto the watchtower floor and he sat, wrapping his tail around himself, elaborately unimpressed.

`A parley,' said Polites. `See, the reversed shield.'

The Achaeans had huge shields, tall as a man, with cross-bindings of bronze in the shape of two fish, tied tail to tail. The red-helmeted one was carrying his shield sideways and had no weapons that we could see. The Argives usually bore a bundle of spears, light and pointed, unlike the Trojans' heavy brazen javelins with their wicked spade-shaped heads. This herald had no spears.

He walked his horse ahead of the army, which had halted in the idle of the plain, trotting right through the Place of Stranger's Gods and stopping under the Scamander watchtower, in front of the firmly closed gate.

`Men of Troy!' he called. `Is there one listening with the rank to parley with the Atreidae, lords of the land of Pelops, mighty warriors?'

`There is one,' said Hector equably. `Hector, Son of Priam, Prince of Troy. Your name, Argive?'

`Talthybius, Herald of Agamemnon Lord of Men, Master of Mycenae of the Golden Walls, and of Menelaus his brother, Prince of Sparta.'

`Speak, herald,' said Hector.

Talthybius took a deep breath and announced, `The Lords of Achaea, Menelaus and Agamemnon, demand the return of Elene, the most beautiful woman in the world, stolen from her husband by Pariki, Prince of Troy.'

`We do not have Elene, Princess of Sparta, as your masters must know,' said Hector. `She left my brother in Egypt, and she is still there. Go seek her, herald, at the delta of the Nile in the temple of Isis.'

`She was taken by your brother, Prince of Troy,' said Talthybius. `You must return her.'

`We cannot do that,' said Hector patiently. `News travels fast in the trading ports; they have been laughing for months at Pariki's abandonment by Elene. Ask them in Corinth and in Navpolion. This is not the cause of your war, Herald. Have your masters given you anything else to say?'

The herald looked up. His eyes glittered; for a moment I saw his long hands drip with blood and knew it was Trojan blood. I bit my lip and did not speak and the vision washed over me like a wave and was gone. I was becoming skilled in not speaking, but that did not preserve me from knowing.

`I stole her because you stole Hesione, Princess of Troy,' said Pariki's voice from the wall. `I lost her and you still have