joy.
We cried when they left, and Nyssa rushed in with two priests and took us into the temple. I remember it chiefly because they gave us honey. We had never tasted such sweetness before.
The Lady Queen Hecube was our mother and the Lord King Priam was our father. They were magnificent, golden, and distant as clouds. Nyssa looked after us, the royal twins. She was fat and skilled and loving. Her eyes were black, as was her hair, and her skin was like the sea foam at the water's edge, where it is pale brown and crinkly. She was an Achaean and she taught us her language, as well as our own and the words for the gods, which were in an old and holy tongue. Nyssa's only child had died, and when we were born the Lady Hecube had given us into her arms. She loved us as if we were her own.
Eleni and I were quick - or so Nyssa said - and we liked words and names. We would play word games between ourselves, learning the dangerous lesson that words can be used to cloak thoughts as well as reveal them.
`What is Achaean for the father god?' eight-year-old Eleni would ask me as we lay down for our compulsory sleep in the heat of the day.
`Zeus, the Sky Father, Compeller of Clouds,' I rolled the title over my tongue.
`And the Trojan?'
`Dionysius, Vine-Clad. What is the Achaean for the mother?'
`Hera. I think.'
`Yes. And our mother?'
`Gaia, mother of all. But Cassandra, there is another lady other Achaeans have, Nyssa told me when you were out with the herb gatherers. What were you looking for in the marsh, anyway?'
`Roots of comfrey, for wounds. What did Nyssa say?' I settled more comfortably into the curve of my twin's side. He was not interested in herbs, and I was. It was the first time we had not both been occupied in learning the same thing and he was a little jealous. So was I, of him, for getting any new stories out of Nyssa.
`Artemis.'
`Well, what does she do?'
`She's a virgin and she hunts things. Her priestesses are virgins, too.'
This struck me as odd. `Why? What special virtue lies in virginity? Are they barren?'
I was working with the healers, and they were all women, as it was well known that women keep the secrets of birth and death. Are not the sisters Clotho, Lachesis and Athropos the spinners of fate? Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis measures it, and Athropos cuts it. Maiden, mother and crone; no state is good in itself. They all have their season and their power.
`I don't know, twin. That was all Nyssa said.'
I rolled over and idly examined our room. The sky blue paint was peeling away from the plaster where the ceiling joined the painted fresco of tritons and sea-creatures. Poseidon Earth-Shaker had originally been painted in one corner, blowing a conch, but he had been painted over when Laomedon the king had banished the god from the city of Tros. You could still see the outline of a broad-chested man with blue hair under the later fishes.
`Do you want to be a virgin all your life?' asked Eleni, and I pulled a handful of his corn-coloured hair.
`You know I don't. I want to marry you.'
He laughed and said, `Even to follow a goddess?' I thought about this. `I don't know,' I said. Eleni turned to me and I saw his blue green eyes glint in the cool light. `I would not be a virgin to follow any lady,' he said. He kissed me lovingly. His mouth tasted of green herbs, fresh and unripe.
`It will be six years before we can marry,' I said wistfully. `When we are fourteen.'
`We shall go up to the temple,' said Eleni, his arm around me.
I sighed on his breath, `And tell the Lady Gaia and the Lord Dionysius. I will have a purple chiton and a himation of gold.'
`I will have a purple tunic and a mantle of gold,' he kissed me again,
`Because we are the royal twins,'
`And the snakes gave us the gift of prophecy,'
`And they will bless us,' I stroked Eleni's neck, where the hair sprung rough from the nape.
`They will marry us to each other,' he whispered into my ear, making me shiver pleasantly.
`As Pharoah marries his sister,'
`As Pharoah marries her brother,'
`And we will be together for ever and ever,'
`And death shall not sever us.'
Strophe and antistrophe, this was litany. We loved each other with a pure love which was all encompassing. If Eleni loved something, then I loved it also. We kissed with eight-year-old passion which had nothing of the flesh in it, and fell asleep, as we always did, with our arms around each other, Eleni's head and mine on the one pillow, each mimicking (Nyssa said) the attitude of the other.
We dreamed, and this is what we dreamed: the coming of a new god, a flesh-eating demon, who ate up Troy and belched fire. We woke screaming.
`Demon! I saw a demon!' Eleni grabbed wildly for comfort and I seized him tightly, witless with shock. We clutched each other close and found a little comfort in our embrace. `Dreadful,' I panted. `He's coming to eat us!'
`And there were shades, grey ghosts - did you see them?'
We shuddered strongly. We had been taught that the dead, after remaining for three days until they are properly burned, go on to join the gods in the meadow playground where it never snows and wind never blows, to lie down with their loved ones in sweet grass and sleep or wake as they like, with the proud horses of the City of Horses beside them. Never to return, impossible to summon, no longer concerned with us, to be properly mourned and with all suitable ritual to be dismissed to their deserved rest in the fields of heaven. But Eleni and I, with one mind and sight had seen grey shadows like men and women, draped in shadowy cloth, wandering mindless through grey streets, lost to their earth and their former selves, with no memory.
`Their lovers,' he choked, and began to cry, and our tears mingled and rolled down into our hair, `they passed each other and never knew that they loved.'
`The children,' I said, crying freely, `the children and the mothers not touching, not knowing...'
We cried together, speaking the vision for the first time. Previously they had been playful, funny, charming things, scenes of places far away, and sharing them in our minds had been enough. Now we were seriously disturbed and words gave us structure and took away some of the horror.
`A demon god, on a throne, lord of demons, an eater of people,' my twin sobbed into my breast.
`Blood on his jowl and on his hands, dripping,' I shook with terror and disgust.
`Smoke from the burning of dead animals and men all around him; he snuffed it as though it smelt sweet as incense,' whispered Eleni.
`Horrible,' I agreed. `He's coming to eat Troy.'
`Yes. We are his sacrifice - that's what it means - the soldiers are coming to make a burned offering of Troy to their demon.'
`The
