Hecube, the queen, that unless Low Town was cleansed we would have a plague. In the autumn sun it stank, and flies rose from the unpaved gutter in the centre of the alley.
`Blessing upon the house,' said Tithone, entering a hut made of reeds and driftwood. It was dark inside. I could make out a woman and a baby, and someone else stirring in the blackness. The woman was hushing a newborn, which cried with an incessant grating voice that set my teeth on edge.
`Revered one,' said the mother, `you are welcome.'
`Fire Lady of the Goddess,' said a man's voice. `You are welcome to the hearth.'
Tithone did not even mention my presence, but took the baby out of the mother's arms and carried it into the street. I followed her.
In the street she unwrapped the baby and showed it to me. It was dreadfully deformed.
Ten days old, perhaps. The face was a mask of horror, without eyes, the skull monstrously huge, the arms and legs missing. I bit my lip and did not say a word.
`It will die,' she said matter-of-factly. `Now, hear the mother's tale.'
We went back into the hut and the woman hushed the monster against her breast and asked, `What of the baby, Revered One, Mistress of the Pillar?'
She was awarding Tithone some of the titles of Isis, the Lady of the Egyptians. From her accent, delicately slurred, I took her to be a true Egyptian, not one of the Peoples of the Sea who have settled on the Nile delta and who still speak Danaan.
`He will die in three days,' Tithone said without emphasis. `The gods will take him home. You must spend a month in the Temple of the Mother and then you will be cleansed.'
`We offended the gods,' the woman wailed, and her husband came and held her tightly. `We offended them by leaving the River Land and coming here.'
`Why did you leave?' asked Tithone. The young man answered, stumbling in his speech as though he had lately learned our language.
`Isis knows that we are sister and brother, and loved each other from our one birth.' They were twins! I bit my lip harder. `Bashti and I came down the river and there were the People of the Sea. We left our father because he had sold Bashti to one of the Danaans, curse them with many curses! They caught us and forced my sister, my spouse, then left her for dead, like prey. Me they blinded. She brought us here to windy Ilium, then lay with me after it was clear that she had not conceived a monster of those beast-men. But their seed has corrupted her blood. I hear the wrongness in the child's cry. I have felt its wrong-formed body. We are cursed. Better she had left me to die in Egypt.'
`Better I had died there under their hands,' said the woman bitterly.
`No. Death is never better, daughter,' said Tithone gently. `Wait till this child dies and you are cleansed, then go and lie in the temple of Dionysius and you will conceive a child who will be clean and whole. You, man, must only lie with your wife when she is pregnant. Thus will the curse be removed. How do you live, daughter?'
`We are weavers,' she said, hope beginning to dawn in her voice. I could not see her face. `We have skill to make the finest linen, the pleated gauze that the Pharaohs wear - they call it "woven air". But we cannot afford flax fine enough for good cloth.'
`Come up into the city when the child dies,' said Tithone. `Come to me and I will talk to the mistress of the weavers and she will find you a stone house. Such skill is valued in Troy. Blessings be upon you,' and she went out.
I followed her until we were standing on the bank of Scamander, the river of Troy. Flax and papyrus reeds lined the edge, piping with the bird's cries.
`It was not Danaan's? I asked in a voice as small as the birds'.
`No, daughter.'
`But I could do that - lie down with the god and only lie with Eleni when I was pregnant - could I not do that?'
`Healers must deal with the situation as it is, daughter. Could I tell them that their love was cursed, that the corruption in the woman's blood was the closeness of her birth to her husband?
I would merely have given them both up to death by despair. Their love is the only thing they still have left to them after such long and painful voyaging. This way, they will not conceive any more monsters and can stay with each other. But you, Princess, are not yet compromised. And even if you were' - she knew me well, Tithone my mistress - `even if this night you and Eleni defied the most solemn edicts of the gods of Troy, I would not allow it to continue. After cleansing on barley bread and water for three moons, you would go to the maidens and Eleni to the youths, and you would not see him again until after both of you were safely married to someone else. I could mention to your father, Priam the Lord King, that an Achaean marriage might keep the peace a generation more. Do you want me to do that?'
`No,' I whispered.
My heart was breaking.
Suddenly a god was with me - Apollo the Archer. Sunlight blinded me; heat burned my skin. He was tall, beautiful beyond belief, golden as molten gold from the furnace. He laid one hand on my breast, and I melted in his fire. His voice spoke not in my ears but in my head and reverberated in my womb, which contracted into a knot. Something like a finger penetrated me. `You are mine, Cassandra,' said the great voice. `My ears and eyes in Troy, my woman, my bride. I will lie with you and fill you with my fire. I am yours, and you are mine, Princess.'
Sweet, sweet, piercing sweet, the touch of the god. I opened my eyes and he was gone, but there was a scent of honeysuckle in the filthy street. I trembled as I stood and Tithone bore me up. I leaned on her stringy shoulder, blinded by the light.
`Which god?' she asked, and I heard myself say, `Apollo.' Tithone grunted.
`Go back to your twin, most favoured of Priam's daughters,' she said. `Talk to him. Explain.'
I don't remember walking back to Nyssa's house, but about an hour later I found myself lying beside Eleni in the afternoon heat, trying to explain.
He stared at me, and we embraced with desperate closeness. We clung for an hour, not consoled by the touch of skin on skin. We would never be lovers. I was the daughter of Priam and the bride of Apollo. Eleni and I could not evade our destiny. If we broke all the laws of the gods and of Troy we would only bring forth monsters.
Then a vision came to Eleni, which I shared. He had flung himself over onto his back, out of my arms, and a golden woman appeared, lying beside him. My twin's eyes widened. She was beautiful beyond compare, glowing with life. Her hair hung down and brushed his breast and left delicate scorched lines where it touched. She laid both hands on his shoulders as she leaned over to kiss his mouth. I heard his breathing shorten and his pulse raced in the wrist I held in my hands.
`Mine,' said the woman. `Eleni, you are my husband, the creature of my heart.' I was suddenly reminded of someone, a mortal woman like myself. The bones of the face and the way she framed words; the curve of the mouth and the way her hair hung down as though it flowed like water. I could not catch the resemblance. Eleni was transfigured. He was as beautiful as the goddess. She reached up and unpinned the chiton. Naked, she was perfect. Eleni gasped something and held out his arms. Ishtar the goddess knelt over my brother and her smooth flank and thigh touched mine, the golden skin as hot as metal. For a moment she towered over us, Eleni supine and me clutching him from the side. Then she bent and kissed him; once on the mouth, once on the belly, once on the phallus.
Then, as I lay and
