LITMIR.BIZ

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men.

      'It's a long story and this is an exposed place for tales. Let us in, maiden, and we'll tell you all about it,' said the golden man calmly.

      I did not know what to do. A memory was trying to surface in my mind. I had seen that golden hair, that cool profile, somewhere before. A long time ago. When?

      I had been waiting at the gate of the city with my mother and my sisters when Iphigenia was alive, when I first saw Argive Elene, the most beautiful woman in the world, or so she seemed to me, a little girl. We were handing out coins and bread to those who had survived the plague. There had been a very riotous bard called Arion, and a bearded Master of Epidavros called Glaucus. Prince Odysseus, who had just left, had brought me a sea-shell the colour of sunset from a shore on the other side of the Pillars of Heracles.

      Yes. The memory was becoming clear. I do not like memory and try to avoid it if I can. But here it was. A sunny day, and the procession of cured ones are coming, led by a boy no taller than me, a boy with straight golden hair and tired eyes. Diomenes. They called him Chryse, 'golden', and he was made a healer priest because of that battle with the plague of Apollo on the hills outside Mycenae.

      I winced and said, 'Chryse?'

      'Princess,' said the golden man. 'Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, you know me. I am Diomenes, called Chryse the Healer, Priest of Asclepius. This is my friend Eumides, who was once a slave in this very city. We must enter. Help us, or at least do not call the soldiers.'

      I stood in thought, rasping my palm over the clean edge of the tiled wall. They stared up at me, the dark man and the golden. I was powerful. I could scream - it was my duty to scream - and even amid the rejoicing the armed men would run to my aid, bronze weapons clattering on marble, and cut the intruders down on my order.

      I exclaimed in pain. A sharp edge of tile had cut my hand. A little blood dropped onto the stone. It was an omen.

      I did not speak but stepped away from the wall. The grappling hook flicked up, grounded, scraped and held under the weight of two climbing men.

      They were over the wall in an instant, the agile Eumides hauling Diomenes up by the arm. They were taller than they had seemed on the ground. They loomed over me and I backed up until I came flat against a wall. The usual draperies were gone to furnish the Triumph, and the stone was very cold. The sun had not reached the megaron yet.

      'Princess,' said Chryse, 'allow me.' He took my hand and turned it to examine the palm. There was a thin cut, already closing. His touch did not disgust as much as that of men usually did. His hands were deft, and he bound my wound with a strip of linen from his bag.

      'Maiden,' begun Eumides hurriedly, 'we must find the Trojan prisoner Cassandra, daughter of Priam.'

      'The captives will be brought to the Great King's hall, the audience chamber. Who is this Princess? Has my father taken a concubine?'

      'Not if Princess Cassandra had anything to do with it,' grinned Eumides. I flinched away from his knowing smile.

      Chryse Diomenes noticed this and said gently, 'She is a Priestess and has prophesied the death of Agamemnon your father. She has spoken truly for all of her life and she said in the gateway that a woman would kill both her and the King.'

      'How do you know?'

      'We heard her. We've followed the army from Troy, travelling among the traders. Watching all the way, looking for a chance at rescue,' said Eumides impatiently. 'We won't fail now, eh, brother?' Chryse took the offered hand and held it and I perceived that they were close - very close. Speech came to me in a rush. For some reason I wanted to help them.

      'The King goes to bathe. I will show you the place. There's a server's door in a narrow passage, I know how it can be done. They'll bring the Trojan slave there to be purified if she's lain with the King. There will be no one else there, just my mother; she said she would tend him herself and she's sent all the slaves away. You can take her, this Trojan Princess. We don't need Trojan women here; Troy has fallen and is dust.'

      They said nothing. The knowledge I had suppressed smashed through the barriers that guard me against feeling. This prophetess was telling the truth - they said she always did. My mother was going to murder my father. I froze, trying to find words, then gabbled, 'Save my father, Healer, you must save him.' I pleaded with him, even touching his shoulder in the suppliant's gesture.

      A line of pain divided his smooth brow. 'We can try, Princess, but Cassandra prophesies truly, and we may not succeed.'

      'We have to try, come, hurry!' I said. I ran through the maze of the women's quarters and they followed me, too slowly.

      The palace of Mycenae may not have a labyrinth, like the fabled Palace of Minos, but it has been added to by successive kings since Perseus, and it is said that no one can find their way through unless they were born here.

      The passages are unlit, except by occasional light wells. They dip below ground at unpredictable intervals, have distracting flights of stairs which seem to lead nowhere and odd corridors which conduct the poor lost ones out of their way and then strand them in the wine cellar. Without my help the men panting behind me would have been utterly confounded, but I had been playing in the mazes of the city since I was a child, and knew them like my own hand.

      I slid to a halt before the water-carrier's door. I heard voices, one calm and one cold.

      'Come, Princess,' said the cold voice, 'Will you not walk on the cloths? My Lord does so. Is it for his slave to disobey?'

      'I will not walk on the sacred tapestries,' said the other voice. I heard in it exhaustion and determination. This was a woman who knew she was going to die, had accepted it, and would not be further compromised. If she said she would not do something, then she would not do it.

      Eumides and Diomenes leaned forward, listening. On both faces was an identical eagerness and joy, so that for the first time they looked alike. They loved her, this Trojan slave who was my Royal Father's concubine. I shivered and tasted metal in my mouth. The corridor was musty and damp and stank of mould.

      'My Lord, will you not order your slave to tread in your footsteps?' insinuated Clytemnestra the Queen, my mother. I could imagine the flush of malice on her cheek, my beautiful mother with the long ringlets of ebony hair, the pale, skilled, pink-tipped fingers. There was a time when I thought her more beautiful than Elene, wife of Menelaus of Sparta.

      I found the catch and allowed the door to open a little way. Eumides and Diomenes pressed against me, and I had no room to recoil from their warmth.

      Three figures were standing on the steps leading up to the great bath. There was my mother and there was my father, armour removed, clad in a stained tunic.

      He was not a giant as I remembered. He was an ordinary man, man-sized, an old man sagging at the belly. His black beard and hair were streaked with grey. I could not see his face.

      'Enough, woman, let the slave do as she likes,' he grunted. Then I knew it was indeed my father. Just so had he grumbled if his wine was too hot, or his favourite horse had been badly groomed. I think I almost smiled at the memory.

      He was standing on the sacred tapestries, brought out only on festivals, which only the priests were allowed to handle. She had tempted him into blasphemy. The Gods would never forgive her. Neither would I.

      If I could have reached her, I would have killed her then.

      The slave stepped back, allowing the King and then the Queen to pass up the stair to the bath. The Queen was a tall woman of no particular beauty. Her hair hung loose like a maiden's and her face was as still and white as a statue before the painter has applied the tincts of nature. She looked like a Kore, Persephone the Maiden, in a green chiton, laden with gold jewellery.

      I heard Eumides and Chryse draw in a breath when they saw her. She raised her head and cried out in an unknown tongue.

      Eumides shoved the door open and plunged onto the stair. I followed and Diomenes came behind.

      The King was plodding up, oblivious.

      At

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