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,
