THE MEASURE OF GRIEF

Originally, I was going to put something old up here, but I started writing this last week and I’ve got 22,000 words so far. It’s the first story of what I’m calling my Trojan Cycle. I’m excited about the whole project, and I have to tell you, I wasn’t thinking I’d be putting this up for you to read so soon. But that’s the thing about Substack, it not only motivates you, it makes you complete your tasks.

Let me explain what this is about, briefly. I found an obscure name of some Trojan prince, and thought: Hey, wouldn’t that be cool if I followed some kid when he’s about ten, and Helen comes to Troy with Paris. And then the War breaks out. He grows up under the shadow of war, and tells his tale as an old man. He escapes the city by joining Aeneas.

It leaves everything open for me, and believe me, I’m diving right in…

STANZA I

I

I haven’t always been blind, I’ll have you know. By that I mean, it wasn’t inflicted on me as a punishment for whatever crimes I may have committed—and there have been a few, I hazard to say—but it wasn’t visited on me by the gods as a sentence for having offended them, either. So there’s that. No, the gods have always been good to me. It was a more natural progression. I suppose you could say that Time steals a man’s eyes away just as surely as it steals his strength. My eyesight worsened as I aged, until finally, one day it just went blank. It’s not darkness I live with, but a grey fog so thick I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.

I’ve traveled to a great many places in my life, and seen a great many of this world’s wonders. I’ve seen grasslands that stretched beyond the horizon where the Amazons roam; and desert lands; Phoenicians; the temples the Egyptians have erected. I’ve fought in wars, loved women, had children—buried some—and all the while kept one thing in my heart that meant more to me than all the others.

Troy.

You see, I too was a prince once upon a time. My foster-mother famously bore my father nineteen children. They’re all gone now. Some died, some were taken away as captives, some were exiled, like myself, lost and forgotten even though the poets still sing about us in their songs. The poets also say that my father had fifty sons and fifty daughters. Poets like round numbers like that, I find, because they make for better songs. My father had fewer children than that—still, it was more than enough to fill a palace, but not enough to satisfy a poet, it seems. No, the poets lied about that, just as much as they have about other things.

Troy is the one place I find myself returning to again, and again, in my dreams. I quite often think of the days of my youth. The older I get, the more I find myself lost in my memories. I remember playing in the shadows of the city’s great walls—walls that were built by the gods themselves, people said—where I was burying something at the base of those big stones like an invading army seeking a way inside. I was into it up to my elbows.

That was the moment the Minas To’rca—the Golden Horn—sounded and I looked out at the sea over the walls where Hella’s Bridge stood like a shadow in the distance.

It was a ship.

It was more than just a ship. I knew it was the trade delegation returning from Sparta. I could see that by the blue sail. It was the colour for the House of Priam. It had been gone seven months. I was up on my knees by then, looking up at the wall when the Guardsman sounded the horn for a second time.

We waited as the answering blast resounded across the harbour.

There was a cheer that went up around us. When I looked out to sea again, I saw the ship was closer still as it was rounding the cape. She carried both sail and oars, as one side of the ship was rowing and the other side held their oars aloft as the ship’s long prow cut round the cape until it disappeared from view.

“It’s Hector then, isn’t it?” I heard someone saying behind me, and looked up to see Helenus talking to someone coming up from behind. He was my father’s son from his First wife, and was the last person I wanted to see me. He’d be sure to call Maisal Suetor if he should chance to see me. He also had a twin—I knew that—and looking over my shoulder saw Cassie struggling down the hill behind him.

She was still wearing Apollo’s Veil, made of a single slip of saffron silk she wore as a novice in the Temple of Apollo. The saffron dyed folds caught the breeze and flowed about her, melting to her form underneath, and I turned my eyes away for some reason. Some said Cassandra possessed the Gift, but that she’d offended Apollo somehow. I didn’t understand any of it; not then. All I knew was that Helenus studied birds while Cassandra frightened grown men. As my father’s son, it was expected that one day Helenus would be the High Priest; I wondered what they had in mind for Cassandra.

“You don’t have to have the Sight to know that,” she said, mocking him. “You just have to have sight, isn’t that right Ant?” she said, looking directly at me.

You have to understand this about my sister, sorry, my half-sister, Cassandra. She was seventeen at the time, and I was a child of ten, who had, what I felt, was the freedom of an indentured servant. I felt for certain that I’d been found out and looked up at Helenus who was staring down at me.

He was dressed like a priest, complete with cape and cowl, staff, and mace of office. His face was painted with a soft blue sidsil, like a robin’s egg I thought, thinking it was perfect for his round face. He looked like he should have been on the stage during some festival or other, I’d seen once upon a time.

I didn’t think she knew me, let alone my name. I know Helenus didn’t. But I’d long adored her. She had long, raven-dark hair that hung down her sides in a combination of ringlets and curls, and her eyes. The deepest, darkest of blues set against a thin, sculpted face, powdered white with sidsil. She held you with her eyes. She held you from the moment you looked into her eyes and she told you things you didn’t want to hear. And she was always doing that, it seemed.

“Friend of yours?” Helenus asked.

She shook her head. “You’re not my friend, are you Ant?” she smiled. She looked at Helenus with a slight tilt of her head. “He’s our little brother,” she said, and held a hand out for me. “Come on then. Won’t do to have a prince of Troy digging alongside the wall in the dirt,” she said. “A boy in search of his treasure? I wonder. Is that what you are, Ant? A treasure hunter? Well, how about us let’s go see Hector?”

“I’m not allowed to go down to the water,” I said. It looked like whatever she had painted on her face was beginning to crack. Every time she smiled, the lines on her face darkened.

“Alone,” she said. “You’re not allowed to go down to the water, alone,” she emphasized. “But you’re not alone now, are you? You’re with us. Besides, I need someone to help me walk on this road. This thing I’m wearing isn’t made for long treks.”

“You’re not seriously thinking of taking him with us?” Helenus asked, looking at me and shaking his head.

“Of course I am,” she said. “I need someone to help me keep my balance.”

“You should have picked someone else.”

“What someone else?”

“Someone else who’s not our brother,” Helenus said, looking at me. I’ll admit, he was tall. Taller than most of the people we passed on the road to Lower Troy. And he was loud and blustery like a stage actor who doesn’t understand direction, or what his lines are.

“Not our—Is it that you don’t sense it, or you just don’t care?”

“Rather cryptic that, even for you,” Helenus laughed.

“Have you at least looked? Did you see it?” she asked.

“See what?”

“Look at him again and tell me what you see,” she said. “Look at him, the same way you look at me. Inside me. Here,” she said, pointing at her head. “And then tell me what you see.”

Helenus looked at me and closed his eyes briefly before opening them with a frightened start. He looked down at me again and shook his head as if he was answering a question only he could hear; it almost looked as if someone was talking to him and I was the only one who couldn’t see.

But I could see Cassie nodding.

“I was the same,” she said, and I wondered when that had happened.

“He’s a nobody,” Helenus said, dismissing me. “Just another bastard prince of Troy,” he added, turning to look at Cassie again. “Well, guess what? I can name about thirty of them off the top of my head.”

“And what about the rest?” she asked.

“What do you mean the rest?”

“Daddy has more kids than just us, you know.”

“I know…but really? Do they even count? I don’t think they should count, and secretly, deep down, and I know you know it; they’re not blood.”

“You really should pay attention to what’s going on around here sometimes,” she said, and started me walking in front her so she could put her hands on my shoulders as we descended the steep Road of Lions. She was taking careful steps, the sculpted shoes she was wearing not looking very comfortable. We were heading toward the main gate—the Scaean Gate—the gate everyone called The Lions Gate because of twin embossed lions sculpted to look as if they were holding the gate posts up. The stones of the wall were a faded red, but the lions were covered in bronze that had been burnished so bright it caught the sunlight as if it were a beacon to the gods. I’d only ever seen the Lions one time in my life—just two moons before—and couldn’t take my mind off that night while we waited for Helenus to catch us up.

“You shouldn’t believe everything you see,” he said to Cassie, out of nowhere.

“So I’m right then?” Cassie laughed.

“I didn’t say that,” he said too quickly, turning to look down at me again. Cassie looked down at me as well, only she smiled. I looked up at her, feeling shy, and she laughed again, softly, as if it was something she meant to share with me only.

“Look, you can’t go about saying you saw these horrible things coming.”

“Horrible? It was war, Hel. Tell me you believe in what I saw?”

“You can’t say these things to the people the way you have in the past. Your visions haven’t been sanctioned by the high Priest. By the holy vows, Cassie, you’re still a Novice. If you stand outside the law and speak out, you’ll have to face the council. They won’t let you speak, and you know it. And I won’t either. Not this. I’ll do everything I can to stop you. I’ll see you outcast if you keep this up.

“You’ll be fine, Ant,” she said, looking down at me. “You don’t have to worry about anything.”

“I’m not afraid,” I said.

“You should be,” Helenus said to me over his shoulder.