6

The Greeks and the Trojans continue farming for two weeks while I stay with Cassandra. My ribs continue to ache, though less and less as the days pass.

We sleep in her nook in the women’s quarters. I sleep in a bed! Under me is a thin mattress made of reeds on top of mesh webbing. The webbing sags and hugs me. In the middle of the night, I wake up sweating.

Village women and Amazons sound alike when they snore!

I eat bread, scones, and thin porridge at meals and continue to dislike it all. One evening, we’re served slices of roasted ox. That’s better!

Every morning, Cassandra sends a servant to Troy’s sacred grove to carry offerings to a lesser god, as she tells me. When I look puzzled, she says, “The great gods are never neglected. Everyone gives them gifts. I favor one of the lesser gods, who”—she smiles wistfully—“feels hurt if he gets nothing.”

Another strangeness of these people is their many gods.

Cassandra spends a few hours every day at her loom with the other women. I don’t know why the Trojans need so much cloth. Cassandra is weaving a tapestry of Hector doing battle outside the wall of Troy. In her worried imagination, the war is going ill, because the Trojans are up against the city.

I don’t know how she did this, but the air shimmers between Hector and the wall. He’s in full armor, wearing his round iron helmet. Only his feet aren’t woven yet. His visor is up—which it wouldn’t be during battle. I think Cassandra loves him too much to hide his face. He’s thrusting his sword at someone outside the tapestry. I feel his energy, his strength, the force of his lunge. His expression is calm.

We Amazons have no fabric as elegant as woven tapestry. But I prefer our felt for its usefulness—warmer for the weather where we live and easier to make, because felt almost makes itself.

While they work, the women compliment one another on their weaving. They talk about the weather or how tall some child has grown. Their children are with them or are playing in the streets. The older girls help their mothers, who tell them what to do. Soon, I stop hearing words and their voices become the bubbling of pigeons. I cease listening to Cassandra too, who, rather than joining the conversation, murmurs a stream of predictions: who will speak next, who will leave her loom to card or spin, who will stretch or scratch an itch.

It seems like coincidence that she’s always right. The women’s actions are so limited that they are sure to do one of the things she names.

The women never praise Cassandra’s cloth or Helen’s, whose loom is two away from hers. Unlike the others, Helen weaves lazily, as if she were moving through honey cake.

Men visit her so often that chairs are kept in a semicircle around her loom. Sometimes a dozen crowd in. I wonder if anyone is farming.

We’re close enough to hear the conversation. Some men shower Helen with compliments; some boast about themselves; some relate their latest doings; some sit in silence. Some come daily. Some stay for a few minutes, some for hours.

Occasionally, the wife of this man or that one leaves her loom to ask her husband to see her weaving or to go somewhere with her.

Among those who come early every day and stay late are Cassandra’s brother Deiphobus and her twin, Helenus. Except for a narrower forehead with deep frown lines on Helenus, Cassandra and her twin have the same features. Deiphobus has all the forehead Helenus lacks and more. Neither one sits. Occasionally, one of them speaks to Helen, never to each other. Helenus’s voice goes down at the end of each sentence, making a thud. The brothers always leave together, as if there were a signal.

Cassandra sometimes giggles when they come and when they go. Once, she says, “Hate binds them. If they could endure each other, they’d be apart more often.”

I don’t understand.

Helen smiles, gazes into the faces of the men around her, drags the shuttle slowly through her warp. Her husband, Paris, isn’t there nearly as often as Helenus and Deiphobus are.

Cassandra says Paris was once enchanted and was exceptionally handsome then. “Helen followed an illusion. Now she has to follow a mere man.” She chuckles. “A very mere man.”

Although I hardly know him, I guess what she means. He’s more or less handsome, nothing extraordinary. His skin looks spongy, like felt when it’s wet. If I push a finger into felt, the cloth doesn’t bounce back. I haven’t tried poking Paris!

He tells rambling stories about herding goats and sheep on a nearby mountain, interrupting himself to ponder details, such as whether three lambs or four had wandered away or if the shepherd who searched with him was named Rocus or Nisus. During his stories, I look away to yawn. Helen yawns openly. Once, one of the seated men fell asleep and almost slid off his chair.

Hector, my comrade-in-arms, is never dull. He comes to the women’s quarters daily, sometimes with his son, Nax. He does no more than wish Helen a good day before he heads for Cassandra and me. Helen’s eyes follow him, as they follow no one else.

I always jump up. He’s older and should sit if he likes. When Nax is there, he puts him in the chair instead. Otherwise, he keeps standing, and the seat stays empty.

I often think I’m hearing a poem when he speaks. He tells us of farming: the slow rhythm of the oxen at the plow, the scent of the breeze, the idle clouds, the circling hawks. And he regales us with Nax’s antics.

Hector is the only male I’ve ever gotten to know or even spoken with. If our band might make an exception—which we won’t—and let him in, he’d be a credit to us.

Andromache, Hector’s wife, sometimes joins us. She’s the only woman other than Hecuba who is friendly to Cassandra.

Once, when Helen’s visitors are joking loudly, Hector says to his wife, “Cassandra is as beautiful as Helen, don’t you think?”

I wonder how these people judge. To me, Helen has the showy beauty of an iris, while Cassandra reminds me of my favorite flower, the shy winter rose with its soft colors and long bloom.

When she’s feeling affectionate, Pen calls me her pear tree, because, she says, I’m hardy, strong, and, above all, useful. Sometimes she adds as an afterthought that I’m pretty.

“Cassandra is much lovelier. What’s more, she weaves cloth, not webs.” Andromache touches her husband’s cheek. “Helen seems to have no power over you, my love.”

He smiles at her, and I feel happy.

After Hector leaves us, Cassandra always brushes at her eyes.

I grow irritated at her gloominess. “If you’re sure he’s going to die, why don’t you do something?” What might a Trojan woman do? What would work on Hector? “If you ran away, I’m sure he’d search for you. I’d help you find a good—”

She waves away my idea. “I can’t save anyone.” Her voice is hoarse. “It’s my curse that I’m just a sardine.”

How can I be her friend when I don’t know how to help her? Or understand half of what she says?

She tells me that she and I are the only females who can leave the women’s quarters except on extraordinary occasions. Even her mother, the queen, who often goes downstairs to the kitchen or other rooms, rarely steps outside.

Cassandra takes me through the streets and alleys of her city, where boys and girls toss balls and chase one another. At least Trojan girls have freedom when they’re young. I’m only a little too old for their games.

As we wind through an unpleasantly narrow lane, Cassandra tells me the history of Troy. “Really a legend,” she says. “We believe my father and his children are descended from Zeus himself”—their main god—“and Electra, a goddess who became a star after being a mother.”

I say, “Our first mother—”

“—was born of a she-wolf, and her father was a lion. The beasts didn’t like the hairless creature, so she raised herself, thanks to Cybele.” Cassandra winks.

I scowl, thinking through what just happened, which seems proof that she can’t prophesy. “If you can predict the future but can’t change it, how could you stop me from saying what I was about to say? If you really can see the future, wouldn’t you know that you would interrupt me?” I’m getting confused, but I keep going. “If you interrupted me in the future, how would you know what I was going to say? Someone told you about the first Amazon.”

She throws up her hands. “It’s complicated. I can change little things that don’t matter.”

Silly!

She says, “The Amazons’ beginning is as remarkable as ours, and your ancestress is more laudable.”

True. I smile, glad she’s my friend.

Sometimes we leave Troy and walk half a mile to the lazy Scamander River. The distance hardly troubles my ribs. I’m healing. I take off my leggings and wade in up to my chest while Cassandra swims. She says she’d teach me to swim if I weren’t injured.

I’m not eager. Amazons don’t swim. “Maybe after my first battle.”

“Your first battle will be your last.”

Annoyed, I splash her.

Treading water, she says, “I wanted to stay indifferent to you.”

How sad she looks about my death that won’t happen.