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The ship judders, lurches, throwing me against the side—I hear surf-wash through the timbers. On deck, men shout. The drum beats harder as the oars strain and creak in their locks, a rapid measure to pull towards shore.
Last night, or maybe tonight, Agamemnon tells me we should arrive in Argos the next day. His kingdom. He’s more thorough than he often is, when he takes me. Afterwards, as he holds me, he croons, “Back to my queen.” I wait until he falls asleep to pull away so I can sleep myself, away from being touched.
I shake off the memory. Or vision. It’s hard to tell which.
I kneel to finish bundling my few possessions. The other captives don’t help. They never do. They are Trojan and know me, or of me, and anyway are busy with their own tasks. I’m wrapping my older kerchief around my folded clothes when the keel scrapes sand, and the bucking ship throws me down. My sore left shoulder bangs against the pillar—I wince but don’t cry out. I learn that lesson soon after Troy falls.
No, learned. I know that’s a memory—my grief is too real. Troy is fallen, some weeks past, its walls red with flames and black with my father’s blood. Oh my brothers.
The ship comes to a stop. I right myself with my right arm, and refold my clothes. A soldier, Agamemnon’s captain, calls down into the hold for us. Thestylis goes first up the ladder, and Phylo and I follow.
I squint in the bright sunlight, take a breath to calm myself, then a second. Phylo points at the sun, “There it is.”
Oh—not the sun, but the citadel hidden beneath its bright rays. A palace. Agamemnon’s house. The hill it tops hangs above the harbor and the city beside it. I flinch my head away. I can’t bear to face palace walls that are as red as Troy’s.
We jump down onto the sand, and the captain leads us up the slope to where Agamemon is talking with some men. Townsmen, some of them, others dressed as servants or stewards of the palace. Many are shouting, a noise so thick it presses against me. One directs four slaves down to the ship, to carry out its cargo. Pillage from home. Gravel crunches under my feet as we approach the crowd.
A two-horse chariot approaches. The crowd pulls back, away from the trampling hooves, and it comes to a stop in front of Agamemnon. The mare snorts, shaking her head, as the gelding paws the ground. A woman in a crimson-embroidered cloak and golden circlet steps down and greets the king.
I stop short. It’s her.
I can’t stop staring. It’s not just that Agamemnon’s queen is nearly as beautiful as her sister, Helen. I don’t know my sister-in-law well—she rarely meets with me. Paris never likes me, not even before Apollo rips my sinews’ warp from the weft of time, and his wife, alone in a foreign land where many resent her, is careful to please him.
But this gorgeous face, I know. I do not, until now, have a name for her, but I see it often.
Most of my visions, I cannot tell where in time I am looking—whether past or future or some sort of now. But for things I see many times, I can piece together an order of events. Clytemnestra is from the farthest future. Am I near that end-point now? Or will I be with her for a while before my release? My thoughts tumble like rocks down a scree.
Agamemnon tells Clytemnestra to take me and the other slaves into their house. He grasps my arm, tugging my sore shoulder, and I barely hide my wince. “Especially this foreign girl,” he says, “for she was my army’s gift, the choicest flower of Troy’s rich treasure—Cassandra, daughter of Priam by his queen, Hecuba.”
She greets me without bowing her head. “Welcome to Argos. Your lot is not your fault, and our ancient house is not stingy—you will receive such usage from us as custom warrants for a war captive.”
It is too much, her gaze, and I tremble. Is this the same gaze as the Sphinx gives Oedipus? Or Medusa gives Perseus? Or simply entirely hers? It swallows me whole and I cannot reply.
After a moment, she tells a steward to take the other slaves up to the palace, then turns her awful attention to her husband’s captain.
Why do I feel awe? She’s not a goddess. Maybe she is like one?
But unlike Apollo, who I cannot look at, I cannot look away from her—cannot stop comparing the sisters. Helen is always poised, posed to show herself to advantage. Clytemnestra is alive. Her face expresses things I cannot understand, but that give her more life. This is a living, breathing, loving woman. An attractive woman. One I must please, alone as I am in a foreign land.
While I watch her, they talk, she and he and the men, and talk some more. Finally, Agamemnon turns to me, gestures towards the chariot. “Come, girl.”
From where I am standing, the hill palace is behind it, and I cannot look that way. I cringe, shaking my head. Even though it hurts my shoulder, I shudder in fear. The time to face it comes, but not … yet.
“Cassandra!” His voice is the growl of a guard-dog.
“Husband,” Clytemnestra says like a nurse soothing a cranky toddler, “there’s no room for her in our chariot. She can walk up.”
Agamemnon grunts, then gives a curt nod.
Clytemnestra glances at me again. “When she’s ready,” she adds, then follows her king into the wicker car. With a shake of the reins, the driver starts the horses, and gravel scatters beneath the wheels as the crowd scatters into the town.
I am left behind, below that looming palace, with a few men—porters bringing bales up from the ships, soldiers greeting families. So much noise. Too much. An older steward waiting beside me for … something. I cannot tell what. He watches me closely. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. And again.
Enough noise passes. I am … not ready—but I can do this. I look at the steward and nod.
His eyes narrow. “Cat got your tongue?” Then after a moment, “Or don’t you speak ours?”
I don’t understand what he’s getting at. What cat? I shake my head, and he sighs.
I take one last deep breath, then with the last of my courage look up at the palace itself.
So much grief. So much anger. So much blood.
“What is it?” the steward asks.
“Death,” I say with a hollow voice. The threads of time pull taut. “There is death here. Brother killing brother, father killing child.”
“Ah, so you can speak our language.” He nods. “And you’ve heard some of our history. Bad stuff, I admit, but it’s all behind us, thank the gods and our king’s strength.”
It is? I stare at the steward. I cannot read his lined face but I still try. I don’t think he is teasing me. I finally ask, “That’s … in the past? The brothers?”
He nods.
“The murdered children?” Another nod. “The husband, and the mother?”
He starts to nod, then pulls back. “The who—what?”
I almost forget myself and describe these killings—but if he doesn’t know them, they must be in the future. Never tell events to come, Helenus explains to me over and over—people don’t like to hear them, especially if they’re bad. A sharper pang of grief for my dead twin. I shake my head.
“Bah—enough’s enough,” the steward says, taking my arm. At least it’s my good arm, as he pulls me up the hill road towards the palace.
I try not to stumble. I try not to fear the red walls. I try so much.
The road is steep. As we approach the main gate, a woman comes out a door to one side—a servant’s port. But she’s no servant, not with that richly patterned chiton, nor that golden circlet. Clytemnestra.
My breath catches.
The queen asks, “She’s feeling better?”
I need to please her. I want to please her. I speak up for myself. “I am, my lady. It is—that is, I—” I don’t have the words.
“Overwhelmed, I’m sure.” She smiles. Possibly a real smile? “Ares and Eris are bitter masters.” She considers me for a heartbeat. “Your Argive is good.”
“Many traders come to Troy.” Argive, Lydian, Luwian, even Hittite, though I don’t speak much of that.
The old steward snorts. “Came.”
Grief for the past roils through me.
Clytemnestra nods. “Which presents us with a problem. I don’t know my husband’s plans for you, whether servant or concubine, but either way let’s get you cleaned up—you stink of bilgewater.”
I nod. But when she turns, I don’t move. Entering that place is harder than I can manage now.
“Well, come on,” she says, and when I don’t move, with an impatient sound she grabs my left hand and pulls.
I hiss in pain.
She stops, lets go of me—but not before my chiton’s bent pin comes undone on that shoulder, exposing my bruises. Her eyes go wide. I catch the falling cloth and try to hold it up, but she stops me. She stands close enough, I feel the warmth of her breath. I cannot look away from her dark eyes.
Her fingers barely brush my purpled skin. “Ares and Eris are bitter masters,” she mutters. In a softer voice, she adds, “I hadn’t realized. We’ll get that tended to while you bathe.”
Clytemnestra takes the pin from my numb fingers, straightens it, and tenderly refastens my chiton. Her touch doesn’t hurt. It burns.
Is this what my brother feels when he meets her sister? Does my home turn to ash in these flames?
Her voice still soft, she says, “I am guessing that once we clean you up, you’ll be pretty enough to tempt a man.”
Pretty enough to tempt a god. Those are Apollo’s luminous words. He hovers over me, over my nakedness. Pretty enough to tempt a king. Odysseus’s words as the warchiefs divide their spoils. Words of other people. Words of other times. But what about my words?
I whisper, “Or a woman?”
Clytemnestra’s eyes widen—then she snorts, amusement or derision. “We’ll see.”
Warmth coils through my body. Seductive warmth that makes me want to kiss her.
Before I can, she turns. Despite my dread and desire, I follow her through the gaping portal into a time I cannot see.