‘Take some wine, Cassandra,’ Paris said. The solicitude in his voice was real. How could he be so kind and so terrible all at once?
To the palpable relief of my parents, I sat down on a cushioned chair beside them, and I took the goblet that Paris slid towards me. The bronze gleamed, the jewels on its stem glittered, and the sweet scent of honey mingled with the rich aroma of the wine. I let it calm me and the conversation continued around me as I forced myself to look at nothing but the dark liquid.
‘And so, tell me why you are set on Sparta?’ my father was saying.
Paris leaned back in his chair. ‘If I tell you, I must warn you it will be a very strange story.’ His tone was light. He had no fear of their disbelief. They urged him to speak; my parents and my brothers and sisters all eager to hear him.
I wished him gone, swallowed up by the mountains that should have been his grave years ago. But he was so full of smiles, of joy, a bright beacon, and I, too, was drawn towards him, even as I shuddered at his presence.
‘I lived a simple life on the slopes of Mount Ida,’ he said. ‘I tended the goats and never dreamed of even entering this great walled city. I believed I was the son of a herdsman and nothing more. Until the day came when, before me on the mountainside, appeared three women – not human women, but goddesses. I knew them to be divine in a moment – they shimmered with radiance and their beauty was beyond compare.’
When I had told of my encounter with Apollo, I had been met with scoffing first, anger later. But everyone smiled at Paris’ story. I wasn’t sure that they believed him either, but they were happy to listen.
‘They were Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, and they told me they had come to me because they had heard of my honesty and my fair judgement. They wanted me to decide which of them was the most beautiful, for all three of them coveted a golden apple that would be awarded as the prize to the goddess I chose.’ He sighed, a dreamy smile spreading across his face. ‘They dropped their robes and revealed their nakedness to me so I could better decide.’
A flutter went around the table. I could see my brother Hector suppress a laugh, but Paris had sparked their interest surely enough and they all leaned forward to hear the details.
My mind was clearing. There was no fuzz of light at the edges of my vision, no blade of knowledge piercing deep beneath my skull. Paris wove his story, and I weighed his words. I found them light, insubstantial. I thought he spoke sincerely, but I could see he was a man of romance and ideal-ism. Such a man speaks poetry in place of facts and thinks he tells a higher truth when all he spins is fantasy. I did not think he lied exactly, but I remembered the menace and the power of Apollo, and I found that I could not imagine three immortals squabbling before a human man as he described.
‘Each of them tried to persuade me,’ Paris went on. ‘Hera offered me the kingship of a great city and Athena offered me success in war. But to rule is not my destiny, nor do I seek glory on the battlefield.’ He tossed back his hair, the firelight from the heaped bronze bowls around us glimmering off its jet-black shine. ‘I turned to Aphrodite, truly the most beautiful of them all, and I pronounced her the winner.’
‘And what reward did the goddess of love offer you?’ Hector asked. Hector, the protector of our city, swiftly growing to be the finest soldier the world had seen – or so every man, woman and child of Troy believed. I wondered what he made of his younger brother’s disdain for war.
‘She told me how to bring harmony to Troy,’ Paris said, speaking more carefully. ‘Unity with those who would be our enemies.’
Although I had not believed him so far, I had thought that he believed what he was telling us – to some extent at least. Now, though, I was sure I heard his voice rise to a higher pitch, and I was convinced that he moved into absolute untruth.
‘It was Aphrodite, then, who advised you to go to Sparta?’ Priam asked doubtfully.
‘She did! She told me of my birth, the truth of my existence. She told me that Troy stands as a tempting jewel to the Greeks: to Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, who rules over Sparta; Agamemnon, who gathers the loyalty of all the scattered Greeks to himself. Aphrodite, who brings the peace of love and harmony to all, told me to go to Sparta with a delegation of Trojans to offer them the hand of friendship and avert any battles in the future. We can enrich one another if we cooperate rather than fight.’
If he had said it was Athena who advised him thus, perhaps it would have been credible. But everyone knew that Aphrodite had no care for peace or harmony, and it was not love between nations that excited her. I wondered why he strove to conceal the truth. Usually, I shrank from the pain of Apollo’s visions, but I yearned for the agony, to know what Paris truly intended and what plans he had formulated in the shade of Mount Ida.
Priam signalled to a waiting slave to pour more wine. ‘I cannot argue with the wisdom of the goddess,’ he said expansively. I knew he believed Paris’ story no more than I did. But he sat amongst us, so handsome and charismatic, so welcome after his years of exile, and no one seemed to care whether he spoke the truth or not. I felt the ache of unfairness in my belly. ‘What do you think, Hector?’ Priam asked.
Hector sipped his wine thoughtfully. ‘It is sensible to go to Sparta as friends. Menelaus is a man of honour, I hear. I can see no harm in such a visit.’
I saw Paris’ exultant smile. ‘You should not go,’ I said. Everyone ignored me, so I said it again.
My mother shook her head at me, a little warning to be quiet. But my words could not puncture her joy in this reunion with her son. They carried on talking of Sparta, speculating on what they knew of the city, of its riches, of the legendary beauty of its queen.
The wine tasted like dirt to me. I could shriek out my warnings, claw at my flesh, hurl my goblet right into Paris’ face, but they would still carry on as though I did not exist. No frenzy was upon me; no abyss of truth had been torn open in my mind. I had only the dull certainty of disaster; the presaging of doom that I had carried upon my shoulders since that day in the temple. I felt so very tired, and I wanted so much to sleep.
When the delegation sailed from our shores, I did shriek and howl at the departing ship. I could not stop myself then. I threw myself on to the ground and rolled, the blood from the flesh I clawed at seeping into the sand. Nobody bothered to restrain me. They walked back to the gates of Troy and left me screaming on the beach until the madness dissipated, and I could again see the world as it was instead of what it would be. I lay there, spent and drained, the sand gritty and damp beneath me as the breath shuddered from my body, and I prayed and prayed that the ship would be wrecked before it ever reached Sparta, that my brother’s body would sink to the ocean floor and rot.
But no one heard me; that was my curse. Not my family, and certainly not the gods.
I did not need Apollo to turn my vision white and play the scene out before me to know how it went. Helen, married to Menelaus for fifteen years. So long since a hundred men had bombarded Sparta with desperate entreaties for her hand. No such excitement in her life since. Everyone she saw had seen her before. Would she ever make anyone gasp in wonder again? Would she know what it was to dazzle and to charm and to see grown men stumble and grow red in her glorious presence?