I would have moved from my Nyssa's house to the Temple of the Maidens, where the Trojan women were taught rituals, songs, herbs and skills which they might not have learned from their own mothers. This includes spinning, carding, weaving, dyeing, embroidery - we are famous for the beauty of our textiles - and some house-making, metal smithing and tiling. After a few years in the temple, the maidens specialise in whatever it is that they are best at. We are the well-skilled maidens, we Trojan women, and men come to marry us from all over the world, even the Achaeans who dislike our customs and say we are too free. Men come seeking Trojan wives from as far as the Black Mountains on the borders of Caria, where the language is utterly strange.
Those who have no skills are still valued, because we are also, they say, the most beautiful women in the world.
Some, of course, never marry. They stay with the maidens to teach or carry on their own trade or become priestesses of the Maiden. A few go every year from Troy to wander with the Amazons, the women who fight like men. Our friend Andromache would have gone with them if she had not been promised to Hector.
The fate of the women of the royal house is stricter than that of the common people. We must marry where we are given, if there is a political reason. No other women in Troy are so constrained. Others can make their own marriage agreement with their new husband. The daughters of Priam must go where we are sent. Our reward is peace for the city of Troy and for that we would do anything.
Still, it has its advantages. Because I was a princess, and also a royal twin, I was allowed to stay with my brother Eleni and Nyssa our nurse for longer than the others.
At night, in our common bed, Eleni and I discovered new things about ourselves. I was growing breasts. Eleni, in the course of a year after I had seen Clea's child born, had grown tall and slim, and there were other developments, with which we played and gave each other pleasure.
I remember the surprise I got when after handling the papyrus-root phallus, it spurted seed. It smelt of wormwood. I was afraid I had hurt Eleni, but his skin was flushed and he gasped with pleasure. I reached the same delight when Eleni's exploring fingers happened upon the thing which the Trojans call the goddess' pearl. The pleasure was so strong that I felt that my bones had been filled with honey.
Sweet Eleni, sweet twin, so close to me that we were one flesh. But never one flesh in truth. We knew that I was still a maiden and must remain so until the sacrifice to Gaia, otherwise the goddess would curse both of us. Our seed would wither, our bones ache, our sight dim, and the children of such an unholy union would fail in the womb and die untimely. We knew that if Eleni made full union with any woman before he had cut his hair for the father Dionysius and made the sacrifice of wine and honey in his temple he would sprout disfiguring seed and no one would marry him. We ended our nights locked in each other's arms, flushed and sticky but still technically virgins.
Oh my own Eleni. His face on our pillow in the morning light was so young, unlined and pure, his hair lapping my shoulder, his mouth open against my breast. I was twelve before I found out that I could not marry him.
Nyssa told me. We were sorting wheat seeds, a peaceful occupation, sitting in the shade under the vine. The vine leaves made patterns on the marble floor, dark green outlined in gold. We were discarding the dried, darkened or broken seeds and spilling the good plump ones through our fingers to winnow out the bits of leaf. I remember how it poured with a rustle into the basket at our feet.
`You will become a healer, little Cassandra,' Nyssa cooed. `You have a quick eye.'
She could sieve seed faster than me; her eye for imperfections was as bright as an eagle's for prey.
`I think so,' I agreed sleepily.
`You know that you cannot marry your brother, Cassandra,' she said quietly.
It took a moment for the implications to sink in, then I sat up straight and grasped at the sliding tray.
`I can't? Nyssa, I have always meant to marry Eleni! He wants to marry me!'
`Yes, my pet, my lamb, but he can't.'
`They do in Egypt,' I objected. `In Egypt brothers always marry sisters. The word for lover is sister. Aegyptus the sea captain told me.'
`That is Egypt,' she said, taking the tray out of my shaking hands. `This is Troy. You are Priam's daughter, and you must marry where he directs. You cannot marry your brother. You may be given to anyone with whom your father needs to cement an alliance. That is the fate of the daughters of the king. You have always known that, my lambkin.'
`I... but Nyssa, no, we are twins, we are the royal twins, it is different for us!'
`Not that different, my golden one. You cannot marry your brother. I know that you have not broken your maidenhoods, you would not do that. But you are growing up, Cassandra, my bud, my flower, my little lamb. You must find your skills and then leave the Maiden for the Mother and when you do that you must live apart from Eleni.'
`You're wrong,' I said insolently. Her brown wrinkled face contracted into a grimace that looked like pain. `I am a princess of the royal house of Priam and I shall do as I like. I shall marry my brother Eleni and no one shall stop me. No one.'
I achieved a dignified exit, stalking out of the courtyard into the street, my new long tunic swishing behind me. Then I took to my heels and ran, half blind with fury, for Tithone in the lower quarter.
I reached her street, skidded around the corner and ran into her house without even stopping, as is proper, at the threshold.
Tithone was combing her hair. It was dark hair stippled with silver and it spilled around me as I buried my head in her lap and sobbed out the story.
To my horror, it was true. I could not marry my twin.
`But in Egypt...' I sobbed, clinging to the idea that somewhere there was justice. Tithone shook her head. The herb-scented hair lashed my wet eyes.
`No, little daughter, it cannot be. Come. I will show you why. You will not speak until we are out of the house we are to visit, is that clear? Not one word, Princess.'
Tithone called me `Princess' when she was most solemn and usually most angry. I nodded. My world was falling to pieces.
Tithone bound up her hair. The common people thought that there was magic in her hair, and charms made from it were sold in the markets. She found this dryly amusing but took care that no one had a chance to cut a stray piece of it by binding it close to her head and wearing a veil. When I asked her why, she said, `If it is a charm it must be rare.'
I walked behind her, muffling my wet face in a fold of my cloak. We descended the city, out into the ramshackle town which surrounded Troy.
It had grown up largely because the city had expanded beyond its walls. Hector said it also harboured people who did not like the city's rules but who required the protection of the house of Tros and holiness of Ilium. Eleni and me - oh, Eleni my lost love! - had always been forbidden to come there, so naturally we had haunted the place, relishing the strange smells and weird gods and odd languages. There we had learned three phrases in Phrygian and lots of disconnected words, mostly obscene, in a babble of different tongues. Low Town was always interesting. Most of the sailors lived there. It was our favourite part of Troy.
Near the altar to the strangers' gods we turned left, diving down a narrow alleyway redolent of rotting garbage and sewage.
Tithone had often
