He had exploded silently into her midnight room, whitening upon her pupils till they vanished, his laurel-scented palm across her mouth, forcing her animal shout back down her throat. In its frizzmad nest of black hair Cassandra’s babyface was more than startled, whiter than lilies, colder than moon. Tense and trembling beneath him, her sleepwarm body, still that of a child, confirmed his desire, stoked his lust, told him seductive words and solar charm would be a waste of time. He required a pillow for grip and purchase, a fumble through the blankets to spin and fork her into position, an index-fingered frisk to find her eyelash-of-an-entrance, and he would cavern her virginity wide as the Hot Gates, flooding her with his dazzle till she ran like butter. But the child was quick, and mouse-smart, and while he struggled drooling with the bedclothes she bolted, reappearing like a magician’s assistant at full tilt for the open door. He howled, and flew, and caught her on the balcony, full grown god long-arming her at the waist and bearing her to the wall, smack and smack of shoulderblades on stone.
I have brought you a gift of sun, little girl, god-paw hooking nightie over bud-breasts.
Cassandra whispered no.
Honor me with a mouthful of yeses, little brat, god-phallus nudging her midriff with its thick-shafted, clammy-capped need.
No, frowned Cassandra.
God braced, poised, and paused, as moonlight slid along a looking glass of cloud.
Look away, sister, said Apollo over his shoulder, then leaned and hoarsed a halo round the fray of black hair, frowzed and defiant even as he probed and roved: your next word seals your fate, little princess.
NO, shouted Cassandra, as god wheezed, and lunged, and painted her knees with a hailstorm of moony sperm. Silence. Then a child’s hammering heart, encircled by the sound of runaway horses, a god’s panting breath dying rhythmic down again to silence.
Then no it is, Apollo spoke, into the stone above her head.
And left.
Cassandra, shivering in her wrench-ripped nightie, cold seed dripping puddles round her feet, a vision of the future ghosting into shimmer through her scald-bright tears.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
My raving beauty, the god Apollo calls her, nibbling her chaste hem in his mouse disguise. Cassandra has learned to ignore him, knowing he only comes to bait and gloat, still smarting at the stunned fury of her NO. He has punished her love of truth, her laughable love of chastity, with the gift of prophecy, and has cottoned up the ears of Troy. She walks beneath the great horse and the mouse scampers beside her. The thing, the evil thing, dragged into the city’s center mere hours ago, and she has watched the sun in its fall along the huge wooden planks, crow-barred from a Greek ship, the only mast not to have crossed the horizon back to its home.
Thin as a matchstick, Laocoon’s spear hangs from the horse’s belly, the thrower and his sons dissolving even now in the serpent’s vengeful gut.
I can’t even begin to guess what you see, beauty.
The mouse crawls over her foot, peeps up at her with its dirty white whiskers. Cassandra sends it sliding across the mosaic, turning like a star to disappear in a pool of sunlight, shimmering pool of urine-colored gold. What Beauty sees is Ulysses and his killer elite, a dozen times a dozen of the fastest, leanest, meanest of the Greeks, faces charcoal-blackened for the coming night, weapons muffled in cloth, ropes for the descent looped across their shoulders. She stares at the wooden horse and they seem to stare back through it, smiling through the narrow eye-holes of their deathlike helmets.
Cassandra closes her eyes and sees her enemy driving his rat chariot into the middle of the unending sea. Before Apollo rises on the other side of the world, all Troy will live and die the truth she warned them of. She opens her eyes and sees the shadows moving across the stone, afternoon fading into twilight, gold shallowing to purple, the profile of the wooden horse cast in darkness on her father-king’s great palace. The city is subdued, exhausted in its relief. Ten long years and now the priests have called for humility in victory, for silent remembrance of the many dead. Tomorrow they will celebrate and let the sea wash its beaches clean of blood.
Cassandra shudders at the savaging to come, no longer shuddering for the city, but for herself. It will be Ajax who takes her first. Upon the altar of Pallas Athene, too far gone in his butchery and lust to do his raping on the temple floor, and thus alleviate the double-horror of his blasphemy. The goddess’ gray eyes do not move as she stares down upon her altar. Ajax, whom the Greeks call great-hearted, whom they love above all their heroes. Above Ulysses, who riddles them till they are stupid; above Achilles, now immortal and blown to smoke across the sea, who frightened them even as he shouted in the ranks beside them; and loved far above the vicious brother-kings who brought them to her city’s walls, who lapped up every drop of glory like a dog its vomit, who directed them into the chomping maw, to roar their lungs out in the steam and stink of reservoirs of blood. What Apollo the mouse could not steal, Ajax will take by force, stripping her on the sacred stone and grunting out his hammering pleasure till it echoes round the temple walls, one earthquake more among the many. And then the other heroes will come, to jeer, and comment, and encourage, and queue for the continued trashing of her beauty. And when these are done, the lesser heroes, the sub-heroes, the cowards who pranced and drove their blades into the already dead and dying, they too will, fly-like, claim a turn. Her virgin’s blood, spilled by Ajax, will be mingled with the blood which drips from the armor and hands and hair and mouths of her tormentors, the blood of her murdered brothers, her raped sisters-in-law, till all the royalty of Troy runs down her body like a crimson dress. And as they rape, the warriors of Greece inform her of her losses, and wittily replay the sobs of Hecuba as Priam sealed their love’s embrace with a gift of old man’s gore, and meter out with thrust and fist how Andromache cursed and pleaded, stormed and begged, while they swung her baby boy, dead Hector’s toddling pride, by his chubby leg, four storeys up, and when his mother offered all she had, all of herself for them to use as they would please, they snarled and laughed that they would take her anyhow, and let her little boy drop into the darkness.
And when it’s done someone will tear a child’s skirt into strips, to bind Cassandra’s wrists together and lead her to the holding pen for royal prisoners, the many princesses and the single queen, reduced to slavery in a single night. Her fellow women will not recognize her, glaze-eyed, black-maned, her limping nakedness a running sore of solid red. And those that do will start away, afraid to meet her stare, remembering every warning which fell from her lips and how they had coaxed her, shushed her, smiled at or mocked her, and had not believed.
Cassandra sits in the last light of Troy’s last day, waiting for the city to begin its last dream. She rolls two grapes towards the mouse who crouches on the step beside her. One grape is wrinkled, nearly black, the other perfect, glistening its thick sweetness through green and tender skin. A crust of bread to draw the mouse closer, and a bit of cheese, balled to a size no bigger than a child’s knuckle.
What is it you weep for, beauty?
Myself, Apollo. I weep for myself.