For the Most Beautiful (6 page)

‘
Quick!
' Cassandra murmured again in anguish, as we bundled Troilus into the chest and tried to close the heavy lid. ‘Quick! You have to
move
, Troilus!'

We had just hidden him, and were trying to appear innocent, when one of the guards opened the door and entered, accompanied by King Priam's old herald, Idaeus. He was dressed in the deep purple tunic of the Trojan court, dyed with the purple shells of the murex found in the Trojan bay, and I saw his eyes flick around my chamber, taking in the intricate paintings of larks darting between lotus flowers on the walls, the large wooden chest in the corner, and the simple pine-wood frame and tumble of woollen covers that was my bed.

‘Princess Cassandra,' he said, kneeling to the ground and bowing his head.

Cassandra was still in her night-robe, her red hair dishevelled, and had her hand to her mouth. She looked as if she were exerting every effort she possessed to stop herself smiling.

I could feel the laughter bubbling in my throat, and forced myself to look down at the floor.

‘I come with a message from your mother, Queen Hecuba,' Idaeus said. ‘The ship of Prince Hector and Prince Paris has just been sighted. It is your mother's wish and her command that you attend her on the walls to welcome your brothers home after their long voyage from Sparta.'

‘My brothers have returned?' Cassandra asked, her hand dropping away from her mouth and a rare tinge of pink appearing on her usually pale cheeks. ‘Hector is home?'

Idaeus nodded. ‘The queen awaits you on the lookout tower,' he said.

‘Very well,' Cassandra said. ‘You may go. Tell the queen I shall be with her as soon as I am dressed.'

The herald stood and bowed himself out of the room.

The guard bowed then and left, closing the door behind him.

I moved to let Troilus out from the chest. He was a full head taller than I, and I gloried in the muscular firmness of his arms and chest as he climbed out, his clear hazel eyes, his fine profile and dark hair. He was a catch any girl in the cities around Troy would be proud of. And yet I could not help but feel a little shiver of fear run up my spine as he bent to kiss me full on the lips and I felt the warmth of his mouth on mine. It was such a great risk, such a very great risk, that I was taking.

‘Good morning, my love,' Troilus said, straightening up and giving me his sideways smile as if nothing had happened, as if we had not nearly been caught and my life put on the line. ‘And what message does our mother send us this morning?' he asked, turning to Cassandra and throwing his tunic over his head.

Cassandra was still flushed as she replied. ‘Our brothers are returned from Sparta, as you very well heard,' she said. ‘We are to go to the walls to greet them.'

Troilus lifted his silver-studded sword belt from a nearby stool and fastened it around his waist. ‘Hector and Paris home at last,' he said, smiling with us. ‘I have missed having Hector around the palace, and I cannot deny I am curious to see how Paris fared on his first diplomatic mission.' He bent down to fasten his sandals, then looked up at Cassandra and me.

He grinned at me. ‘I hardly wish to encourage the habit, but you'll need to dress,' he said, his eyes dancing as he took in my hair tumbling loose over my shoulders and thin linen shift. ‘I want us to be the first on the walls to welcome my brothers home.'

By the time I arrived in Lyrnessus on the day of my wedding, my old nurse Deiope in the chariot beside me, as custom dictated, my father and brothers riding ahead, I was half torn apart by nerves, quite certain that the meeting in the herb garden had been but a dream and that none of this would happen at all.

‘What if he changes his mind?' I whispered to Deiope for the hundredth time.

She laid her old, worn hand on mine and smiled at me, the wrinkles around her eyes creasing so that she resembled a dried brown walnut fallen from the trees of the Troad in the autumn months. ‘He won't,' she reassured me. ‘You have been as beautiful as the goddess Arinniti since you were a child, and on this day more so than ever.' She turned to adjust my flounced red-dyed skirt, tied tight around my waist with a saffron girdle and topped with a scarlet bodice edged with blue, then fussed over my hair, which was bound back in a mass of dark curls and covered with a saffron-yellow veil. ‘No man in his right mind could refuse you.'

‘But what if he listens to the prophecy?' I said, still uneasy, ignoring Deiope as she straightened my gold necklaces and checked the heavy gold earrings, shaped in delicate double spirals. ‘What if he has become afraid that he will kill my brothers and incur my father's wrath? What if he decides he doesn't want me, like the other suitors?'

‘I'd sooner swear there are no gods in the sky than that he'll do that, you mark my words,' she said, gently placing gold rings on my fingers. She gave my hand a little squeeze. ‘Doves nest with doves, just as crows with crows. Trust me, child, all will come right in the end. And when he sees you, there'll be nothing he won't do to have you as his bride.'

I did not have to wait long to see Deiope proven right for, at that very moment, our gold-embossed chariot was pulling up the long road into Lyrnessus, the musky scent of rock-rose and warm bay leaves heady on the evening air, the shadow of Mount Ida – the home of the gods, where Apulunas, Zayu, Atana and the other deities reigned – stretching over us and a deep purple sky receding into blackness in the west.

‘Welcome to Lyrnessus.'

Our procession had ridden through the gates and the main street of the lower city and come to a stop before the palace, a spreading expanse of buildings, columned porticoes and courtyards, surrounded by waving juniper trees. I could hardly have expected it, but Prince Mynes was standing there, his hand outstretched to help me from the chariot. He was quite as real as he had been ten days before. I felt a sudden heady rush of dizziness as my hand touched his, as if I were on a ship on a stormy sea, not stepping down on to a well-paved road. I murmured a word of thanks, my cheeks warm under my veil.

He gestured into the palace. ‘The ceremony will take place in the courtyard,' he said, as we walked through the gate and down the long, winding corridors, the procession of my mother, father and brothers, their nobles and slaves, streaming out behind us, the torchlight flickering on the brightly painted walls.

Mynes placed his hand on my arm, his touch gentle, and I felt a sudden thrill at the feel of his skin on mine. I could hardly believe this was happening, that I was to be married at last. I turned aside and gave Deiope a small smile, as if to say,
Perhaps you were right
, and saw my old nurse smiling back at me.

The courtyard of the palace, a long, open area at the centre of the buildings where ceremonies and games were held, was filled with priests and nobles and clouded with heavy incense when we emerged from the dim corridors. Oil-lamps and torches flickered everywhere in the open space beneath the light of the emerging stars.

Mynes led me over to the sacrificial altar, a large, square block of stone that stood at the courtyard's centre, and we stood there, he and I, as my three brothers, my mother, father and all our attendants filed around us to witness the ceremony that would mark my transition to womanhood.

The priest of Hymen, god of marriage, held his arms up to the skies, his robes shining white in the light of the moon.

And then our wedding began.

A few hours later, I was lying in our bed, waiting for Mynes to return from the anteroom with goblets of warm red wine. We had been escorted to our chambers by a dancing procession of girls singing hymns, carrying torches and scattering barley meal and rose petals to bless the consummation of our marriage. I smiled up at the dark blue canopy above, held up by four carved juniper-wood pillars, as I remembered how Mynes had taken me in his arms, so gently, how my lips had trembled as he kissed me and the pain mixed with soft, sweet pleasure as he took me for his own.

I am a woman now and a wife at last.

Mynes entered the room. I heard him set down the goblets of wine, then felt him lie beside me on the soft covers. He drew me towards him and kissed me deeply, and I felt once again the thrilling touch of his naked skin on mine.

‘What are you thinking?' he asked, smiling down at me, his arms around me.

I hesitated. I did not wish to spoil this most beautiful moment after our first love, and yet, I felt there was something I must ask, to make sure. To make absolutely sure.

‘You saved my life, choosing me,' I said, rolling over on to my belly on the bed and looking up at him. ‘There are not many who would have done the same. If you had not chosen me, I would have lived out my days in Pedasus, alone and barren, useless to everyone.'

I hesitated again, and then the question I had to ask spilt out of me, like wine from an overfull cup, before I could stop myself. ‘I don't understand – why did you choose me? Are you really not afraid of the prophecy? Don't you – don't you worry, that you will be forced to fulfil its terms, in the end?'

He considered me for a moment, and there was no trace of anger or fear in his honest brown eyes. The fires of the torches set on the walls in bronze brackets crackled beside us, a warm and comforting sound. ‘No,' he said at last. ‘It does not trouble me. It is not that I would deny the existence of the gods,' he added, ‘but why would they make us suffer? It is my belief that we make our own fate, and there is no one else who decides it for us.' He paused. ‘And as for choosing you, Briseis,' he said, and bent to kiss me again, ‘as soon as I laid eyes upon your beauty, I knew that you were my destiny. We shall, neither of us, worry about the prophecy any more. We shall make our fate together, my love, whether the gods are on our side or against us.'

I looked up at him, and it was as if all my cares, all the troubles I had ever had, dropped from my back, like the disappearance of a heavy load. And, as I melted once more into his passionate embrace and we whiled away the long hours of the night in love, I felt that, at last, I had come home.

I helped Cassandra to dress, tying her long, flounced purple-dyed skirt around her waist with a dark blue girdle woven with gold thread, fitting her embroidered bodice over her linen shift and tightening the slim ribbons behind her back. Her hair had been dressed for her by her slave Lysianassa with elaborate threads of pearls and covered with a fine veil scattered with beads of gold, and two curls of red hair framed her face. I stepped back to admire her.

‘You look lovely,' I said. ‘Your brothers will hardly recognize the beauty you have grown into while they were away.'

She shook her head. ‘I am nothing to you, Krisayis – I never have been – but you are kind to say so.' She smiled at me, the companion she had chosen above all others, to sleep in her rooms, to work with and to play with, almost as a sister, though I was only the daughter of a priest and a Larisan at that. ‘Here,' she said, and she handed me her burnished bronze hand mirror with its intricately carved ivory handle.

I stared at her. ‘I – may I?'

I had hardly ever seen my reflection in a mirror before: only the wealthiest people in Troy could afford them, and Cassandra's little hand mirror was kept carefully guarded by Lysianassa. I held it back a little, marvelling at how clear the reflection was in the polished bronze, far better than the water in the clay basin I used to wash my face. I smiled, and saw my eyes warm, turned my head and saw my curls falling down my back and the way my simple yellow bodice pressed invitingly against my breasts. Then I twirled a little on the spot, laughing at the way my pale blue skirt swayed about my hips.

At that moment, Troilus pushed open the door to Cassandra's chamber. ‘Are you ready?'

I stopped twirling, a little out of breath. Cassandra giggled and took my arm to steady me.

Troilus raised his eyebrows and smiled, then turned to leave. ‘We shall miss my brothers' return entirely if we do not hurry.'

The way to the lookout tower was long, through the winding corridors of the palace and up, up the stairway in the walls to the tallest tower on the northern wall of Troy that looked out over the two bays of the sea, one to the north beneath the cliff on which the upper city stood, the other further to the west, sweeping in a wide curve of blue. When we finally reached the top of the narrow stairway and climbed out on to the tower, we saw that Queen Hecuba and King Priam were already there, seated on two ornately carved wooden thrones, decorated with gold and blue-glass images of leaping dolphins under a shaded canopy of purple Assyrian silk that fluttered slightly in the faint breeze. They were accompanied by two of their five sons, Prince Aeneas and Prince Deiphobus.

Troilus and Cassandra walked quickly over to their parents and knelt at their feet for their blessing, while I touched my head to the ground behind them, as someone of lower rank should.

‘Son,' King Priam said, inclining his white-haired head towards Troilus' dark one. ‘Daughter,' he said, to Cassandra.

Cassandra and Troilus stood, and moved into the shade beside Aeneas and Deiphobus. Reluctant to leave, I gave Cassandra a little smile and a shrug, then moved to the side, as I knew I must, to join the small crowd of favoured nobles and chosen companions of the princes and princesses.

It was hot in the beating rays of the sun, and I peered out over the edge of the parapet, trying to catch a cool breeze coming up from the sea. I had always loved the view from the lookout tower – the highest point in the city, set at the edge of the high cliff on which the Trojan citadel lay. To the west, the tamarisk-lined Scamander river meandered out of the woods and through the rich plain of fields and olive groves, a woven blanket of rich green and black soil threaded with blue, before emerging on to the shore to join its waters to the western bay. To the north, the sea curved in towards the city to form the second bay, and beyond it, over the ridge of Rhoeteum, I could see the strait of the Hellespont, trading ships moving up and down on their way to the Black Sea, white sails spread like wings. When the Great God Apulunas had founded the city, he could not have chosen a better place in all the world. As I stood there, I smiled and thought, with a sudden flood of happiness,
I never want to leave Troy.