The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘I’ve been responsible for the deaths of too many brave men already,’ Odysseus replied, ‘and not all of them honourably. It was because of me that Great Ajax killed himself. I’ve contrived the deaths of others, too, just to shorten this war and be able to go home. Worst of all, I’ve even dared to defy the gods so I can see my family again. These things must be atoned for, Aeneas, and maybe by helping you I’m taking the first step on a long journey back to virtue. Perhaps you will plant a new Troy – here in the ruins of the old or somewhere far away, but one that will last a thousand years and with a people that will preserve the honour of their ancestors. I don’t think that would be a bad thing. But now you must go, before the sun rises and exposes you to unwanted eyes.’

Cassandra lay between the feet of the statue of Athena, where the Palladium had once rested before the Greeks had stolen it. She was curled up in a ball, crying like a child as the sounds of murder and rape echoed around her from the walls of the temple. All night she had lain there, hiding from the drunken taunts of the Trojan revellers and yet fearing the moment when their celebrations would end and the belly of the great horse would open. And there she had remained, even when the dreaded clamour of destruction began to slowly filter through the closed doors of the temple. What else could she do? Her instincts had told her to run and hide, but her inner-vision told her there was no point. The thing that was destined to happen to her would happen here – Apollo’s prophetic gift had revealed it to her in all its horrific detail. There had been a time when she had tried to change the course of her visions, but the outcomes were always the same. Exactly as she had pictured them through the dark prism of her second sight.

And so she had waited, trembling with fear and stiff with the hard coldness of the stone. She had flinched when the doors of the temple had burst open and women and their crying children had come flocking inside, and yet she had not moved. And none had seemed to notice her, a small bundle of black clothing at the foot of Athena’s statue. Perhaps they had thought her dead, or more likely they had not cared for anything other than what their own fate would be. They soon found out. The crash of bronze from the portico, the shouts of dying men – a fight more ferocious than any on the battlefields of the previous ten years, as Trojans fought in defence of their families. The awful chattering of weapons had entered the temple, and from some of the female screams that followed Cassandra knew they had taken their own lives rather than be captured. And now, with the Trojan men overwhelmed, came the sounds of what it meant to be captured. Boys put to the sword. Girls screaming as their mothers and older sisters were brought down beneath packs of laughing soldiers. The sound of clothes being torn, men grunting and women sobbing. And then, at last, the thing she had foreseen happened.

Rough hands grabbed her and turned her over. A brutal, bearded face with a broken nose and merciless eyes – the face of the man the Greeks called Little Ajax. The large brown snake coiled around his shoulders hissed at her hatefully. Then the man’s mouth opened in a wide, lascivious grin from which unintelligible words came spilling over her. She looked away, knowing what would follow. The slap was far harder and much more painful than her vision had allowed her to guess at. It made her cry again, sobbing hysterically as she remembered what came next. Fingers curled about the neckline of her dress, slowly to make sure of the grip, then pulled hard. She felt the material tighten around the back of her neck before it tore, and then there was more pain as his fingernails scraped across her chest and broke the skin. He kept on ripping the soft, weak cloth, exposing her breasts to the cold air of the temple, revealing her stomach and pubic hair. She closed her legs tightly, pointlessly, and stared up at the smoke-stained ceiling where the faint outline of gold-painted stars still gleamed, the only stars visible that night. The man spoke again, urgently and harshly – the voice of a man used to being obeyed. But she did not obey and this time he punched her, filling her head with a ringing pain that vied against the pain of her knees being forced apart and the man pushing himself between them. He fumbled and she shut her eyes, more fearful now than at any other time in her life. Then he was inside her, hurting her, and fresh tears pumped down her cheeks, trickling into her ears and hair as she prayed and prayed and prayed for release. Even though she had foreseen that no release would come.