Cassandra (7 page)

She just assumed that I had been to see him. She was always right, Tithone my teacher. I liked her anyway.

`He is a little feverish. I gave him poppy broth and his mother has oil of mint for the swelling. I will go and see him tomorrow.'

`I'll send someone tonight. The condition of the young changes faster than with adults. They heal faster, but they also deteriorate faster and they die quicker. Remember that.'

`Yes, Lady.'

`Recite the pectoral herbs,' she said, and I brightened. This meant that she had accepted Siris's dislocation as my broken bone.

`Coltsfoot, mint, squillis, marshleaf, red poppy, thyme, vervain, comfrey, yarrow, sundew, ivy, hyssop, lungleaf, blackthorn bar, elecampagne,' I announced.

`How are they used?'

`For a cough in the chest which bubbles, Lady, an infusion of elecampagne, coltsfoot, lungleaf and thyme but not poppy.'

`Why not?'

`It stops a cough, Lady, so that the person can't spit out the fluid.'

`Good. For a dry cough?'

`Lady, honey and red poppy, marshleaf and sundew.'

`Good. Why do you use thyme?'

`Lady, it cools a fever and makes the lungleaf work better.'

`Good. Does marshleaf affect the cough?'

`No, Lady, it just soothes the insides.'

`Good. Now, Cassandra, tell Nyssa that you will be away for a while, collect your mantle, and meet me at Clea's house.'

I did not wait to thank her, but ran out of her house into the steep street. Eleni had returned from the field and was ready to console me, but I was alight with purpose and threw myself into his arms, laughing.

`You recover fast,' he said suspiciously. `Wasn't Hector angry? Ouch! Take care, twin!'

`Eleni, are you hurt?' I drew away and felt him over anxiously.

There were hot spots in his muscles, discerned with my fingers, but he did not seem to have broken anything.

`It's nothing,' he said grandly. `Hector says that all warriors have sore muscles after exercise.'

I clipped his ears affectionately and gathered up my mantle, the warmest one for winter. `Tithone's taking me to see Clea give birth,' I said to Nyssa. `She said to tell you I'd be missing for a while.'

Nyssa did not share my excitement. She kissed me sadly and when she drew away I saw that she was crying.

`Oh, Nyssa!' I said, conscience struck. `I won't be long. I promise.'

`It's not that, Princess. You are growing up. Soon you will leave me.'

`Never,' objected Eleni, hugging her from the left side as I embraced her from the right. `We'll never leave you!'

When I left he was comforting Nyssa by loudly and childishly demanding instant attention, a bath and massage for his battle fatigue. I love my twin very much.

 

Clea was seventeen. This was, Tithone had previously informed me, her first child. Her husband was a tall, strong Trojan and she was a delicate-boned Phrygian woman, so time and care would be needed to deliver her safely.

Naturally, I was familiar with the methods by which women receive the seed of men which grows in the womb. When I came to leave the maidens, I would sit as every other woman in the city had to sit, with a band of plaited horse-hair around my head in the Place of Maidens. There I would stay until a stranger dropped a golden token of the Mother into my lap and took my hand, saying, `In the name of Gaia'. Because I was a princess of the royal house, no arrangements with suitable boys could be made. I would have to lie down with a complete stranger, preferably a visitor to the city. We knew that the Maiden would infallibly be angry with the man who took one of the handmaids away. She would be even angrier with one who stole a princess. Therefore the foreigner. The lovers were always masked with the face of Dionysius, Lord of the Trojans. One such man would lead me away and by means of his phallus I would leave my allegiance to the Maiden and join my fate to the Mother.

I could not wait. The kisses and stroking hands of my fellow maidens were sweet, but they did not satisfy me. Some of them would never leave the Maiden; they had no wish to encounter the phallus of the Lord. Myrine the Amazon was one of these. Until I left the maidens I could not marry my brother and twin Eleni, my dearest love. Time moved too slowly for me.

Cleas was sitting, bent double, clutching her belly and moaning. Tithone came into the small house in the second circle and announced briskly, `The blessing of the Mother upon this place.' Then she proceeded to order Clea's neighbours to sweep her house clean while we moved Clea into the street to strip and wash her over the earthenware trap in the drain. The smaller houses in the circle did not have elaborate plumbing, as the palace and the large houses further up did. Still, they all had water piped from the triple spring which flowed at the very highest point in the city and they all had a privy which opened into the main sewer and was flushed with water - Priam had ordered all who built houses to see that this was so. Cities in such godless places as Achaea, Tithone said, had not discovered that filth and excrement breeds plagues in the miasma that surrounds them, polluting the air and poisoning the people, bringing swift vengeance from the god Apollo, who loathes such irreligious behaviour.

Troy never had a plague.

Clea's belly, which had ridden high, seemed to have changed shape. As we washed her with salty water and then with fresh infusions of hyssop, her neighbours cleaned her house, untying every knotted cord. We smoothed back Clea's hair and doused her three times with cool water to which soapleaf had been added. Passers-by touched her reverently on the belly. Touching a woman so close to the female mystery is supposed to bring good luck.

After that we led her back inside her house. Tithone began the incantations of the goddess, a long, long chant which I knew very imperfectly. As acolyte, I wrapped Clea in a red chiton and combed her long hair so that never a tangle remained.

I knew that Clea's husband was in the temple of the Mother and would remain there, dedicated to prayer, while Clea was in labour. If she lived, he would be garlanded by the priests and sent down the hill from the temple with rejoicing. If she died, he would remain there in mourning for a moon from waning to waning, eating only barley bread and speaking to no one. Unless he did this, he could never marry again.

If the baby died, the temple would take both of them for the same period, expiating the Mother's wrath and despair at the loss of her child.

I began to wonder if I really wanted to attend childbirth, but there was no turning back. The chant had begun, the woman was in labour, and I was acolyte and forbidden to look away, leave or be sick.

Tithone paused between cantos of the chant and began to talk to Clea. She was sweating and in pain. I had not realised that childbirth was painful. I thought it was a joy to bring a new creature into the world. Now I saw Clea was crying and her clutch on my hand was desperate. Tithone laid a hand on her belly, and asked gently, `How long since the brine came, Clea?'

`It was the time of the hottest sun,' gasped Clea. `I hurt!'

`Ah,' said Tithone. It was two watches since then - almost half a day. It seemed a long time to me. `The child in the womb lies in brine like sea water, Cassandra,' she said to me. `When it is ready to be born the sea water drains away, and the child struggles to break free. Lay your hand, here.'

I did so, and felt a strange pulsing under the drum-tight skin.

`A live thing wants to be free and reach the light,' said Tithone, `but it will take its time. What I must do, daughter, is continue to chant and you must massage her back, here and here' - Tithone always knew where it hurt - `and talk to her.'

`I hurt!' gasped Clea again. I laid both palms to the place indicated by my teacher and felt Clea's pain. It struck through my vitals and I gasped.

I had such a bond with Eleni. If he hurt, so did I - that is how I had known that his battle bruises were not serious. This was different. It was as though the Mother had decided to let me know how childbirth felt, though my own body was as yet unripe. My own unformed breast ached. My untouched womb contracted like a fist. I slid down until I was embracing the labouring woman as she sat on a backless chair, my face between her shoulder blades, my belly against her back. The muscles were as hard as rock under my fingers.

Tithone had been watching me; I think she knew that this might happen. She did not break off the chant, but touched me briefly on the head as though she was blessing me.

A creature was struggling to be born: a live thing, with consciousness of a vague sort, but with appallingly fierce drive and will. It did not care if it tore its mother apart in the birth; all its force was set on breaking free of the confining prison of the womb and I had to help it. Unconsciously, I embraced Clea closer, and began to breathe in her rhythm. Our hearts beat as one. When she groaned, so did I. When a contraction ripped her, it tore me also. Under my hands with the god-sight, I saw the little animal twist and claw with hands that had all their nails.

For the first watch it was only pain. I found later that Eleni in Nyssa's arms writhed in agony and nearly frightened her to death until she sent to Tithone and found out what I was doing. Thereafter she told Eleni that this was what his mother had borne to birth him, which subdued him for days.

Pain, after a while, transcends hurt. Clea was washed with waves, which I translated, once I had the trick of it, into force and pressure. It was not the same pain as a burn or a broken bone, which hurts differently, treated or untreated. This was more like an internal qualm which signifies that one has eaten too many unripe berries and the body is trying to be rid of the poison. Yet it was not that, for the woman was bearing the pain gladly, in order to be lighter of her burden and to bring alive to the goddess a new person.

At the point when I thought I might die of this pain, I looked imploringly at my teacher. She did not pause in her chant, but made a gesture which seemed to gather something up into a ball. I groaned through another contraction until I realised what she meant.

It was all one, birth and death and life. At that realisation I got the trick of translating pain into pressure and I got my mind back, so that I could consider what I was doing.

Troy is ruled by the tides. They dictate when Hector's ships can leave and when they can come in. They wash the beaches clean and bring fish and wrecks to our shores. The moon is mistress of the tides. They wax and wane as she becomes the maiden, mother and crone, vanishing to renew herself in the dark time we call the Night of Hunted Things. This birth was tidal: each new wave washed us further up as the sea-creature wriggled to be free and Clea strove to make her body into something from which it could escape.

Wash and crash, I conjured tides. I could hear the chant, though Tithone sounded very tired now. I called up the moon-dragged waters, salt and relentless, and felt the baby writhe under my hands. Clea cried out - it was then that I noticed she had been silent for a long time - and Tithone knelt between her legs.

With a wriggle and a flash and a cry of triumph from Clea and from me, the baby was born into Tithone's hands. There was an instant intoxicating sense of lightness and freedom, which could have come from either Clea or from the baby. I relinquished Clea into her neighbour's embrace and knelt next to my teacher. So small a thing, so perfect, smeared with blood and grease and opening its mouth to scream.

Tithone laid the baby in a dish full of warm salt water, still attached to its mother by a cord of marvellous complexity the colour of lapis lazuli and coral. No Egyptian worker could have made a twisted enamel so beautiful.

We lifted her and laid her on her own bed, the red cloth swathing her hips tightly. Tithone took her flint knife and a skein of white thread. She tied the cord and cut it, washing the baby clean of blood and grease. Clea panted and was delivered of a pad of flesh, then sagged back into her attendant's arms.

It was a girl child, a fact which would add to the rejoicing.

It was well known that the women of Troy, well skilled and strong, were sought in marriage by many men of the west kingdoms and commanded respect. I marvelled at the small hand which clutched my finger. The newborn opened dark blue eyes. She looked at me coolly, a creature well pleased with the outcome of its struggle, a warrior resting from battle.

Tithone took the baby up and carried her over to Clea, who lay exhausted, battered, and bruised. Blood was still seeping from her loins. She bared a breast for the baby and winced, then laughed, as the hungry mouth clamped shut.

`Go,' Tithone ordered the boy who had been sitting outside the door for the whole day and the whole night. `Tell the Mother that there is a new girl child in Troy and tell Clea's man that both of them are well.'

The boy, who was apprenticed to the priest of Dionysius, sprang to his feet and ran. I heard his hard bare feet striking the cobbles. It was almost dawn. My knees were sore and I was as stiff as a plank, but I was intoxicated with joy. Tithone joined me at the doorway as the sun began to rise in splendour and a cool wind sprang up. The sky was a sea of gold and rose.

`That is the mystery of birth, little daughter,' she croaked, laying a hard hand on my shoulder. `Are you glad to have it?'

`It is a terrible mystery,' I heard myself saying, `but yes, teacher. I am glad.'

Behind us, in the house, Clea's baby began to cry. I felt a jolt in my womb and put down a hand to investigate it. I brought back a palm marked with blood. I had joined the Maidens.

I hid for two days when I discovered that there were no gods. The master left me alone, ordering my friend Itarnes to bring me soup and bread. He tried to talk to me but I did not want to talk and eventually he went away.

I sat on my sleeping mat in my cell and thought. Sometimes I had to hold my head in both hands because it felt as though my skull was bursting. This was the first serious check my belief in the world had ever had. It was only when I tasted mistletoe in my broth that I realised that Master Glaucus was treating me for hysteria.