My wife's wrinkled nose showed better than any words everything she thought about her new life.
We were paupers compared to her Trojan relatives. We didn't have hundreds of slaves and a huge palace.
We had a fortified estate, fields and a herd of horses. And most of the time I didn't smell of perfumes but of horses, the foundation of our life.
"Well, it's quite nice here," Creusa said timidly when the maids brought in chests with her things and a few caskets with jewelry.
Third fact about my wife: she had some sense of tact.
"Make yourself at home!" I waved my hand regally, allowing her to survey chambers of twelve square meters, no less. "These are your quarters now."
Seven by seven paces, walls of clay brick dried in the sun to the state of stone, and a tiny window under the roof where sunlight got in.
In winter we'd stuff it with rags, otherwise you could freeze here.
In the corner was a stone hearth whose smoke went out through a hole under the roof.
A bed knocked together from sturdy boards, covered with a mattress, stood in the corner. It didn't qualify as a double bed—sleeping together wasn't customary.
Here the house was divided into male half and female half. This was now the female half.
"I'll put my spinning wheel here," Creusa looked around and pointed to the far corner. "My husband should look elegant."
She glanced at me and added with naive pride. "My fabrics are the tightest of all that the king's daughters weave. I'm not some lazy girl like Lysianassa and Aristodema, my shuttle doesn't skip threads! And my patterns are the most beautiful of all! You know what coverlet I wove? Let me show you now."
And the girl rushed to the chest from which she pulled out a huge scarf on which some flowers bloomed red.
Hellish work by modern standards. The girl must've sat for at least a month to show me her treasure.
"Come here!" I pulled her to me and sat her on my knees. "Were you taught anything else besides weaving? Kissing, for example."
She blushed, but the reason for embarrassment wasn't that it was shameful, but because she didn't have the skill yet.
Here the topic of relations between the sexes was considered quite ordinary, without stupid taboos.
In the east there were even temples of Ashtart where women served their goddess by giving themselves to the first person they met.
There was nothing like that here, but there were no hypocritical stupidities either. Relations between men and women were pleasing to the gods because they led to the appearance of new life.
By local standards Creusa was considered quite an adult woman already—she was raised as a wife and future mother. My spouse could weave and keep house, and she was definitely not a small, helpless girl.
"Mother told me how to do everything," she answered and lowered her eyes shyly.
"Then show what they taught you," I pulled her to me and kissed her, and she timidly responded.
About thirty minutes later, when we lay pressed against each other, she suddenly said.
"I didn't understand something..."
"What exactly?" I asked lazily.
"Why aunt Andromache, Hector's wife, cries so often. It's not scary at all, and even a bit pleasant."
Her heated girlish body trustingly pressed against me, and her head lay on my shoulder.
Creusa was short, sturdy, with perkily protruding young breasts.
We were already married, yet I didn't even understand how I felt about her. It definitely wasn't love. And what kind of love could there be when we'd only known each other for three days and hadn't talked for even half an hour in all that time.
"Tell me," I suddenly remembered. "Do you have a sister Cassandra?"
"Yes," Creusa propped herself on her elbow and stared at me with a surprised look. "She's my mother's eldest daughter. She has a twin brother, Helenus—he's a priest, divines by bird flight. Cassandra is six years older than me, but they're in no hurry to marry her off. Why do you need her?"
"Why aren't they marrying her off?" I tensed up.
"She's strange," my wife shrugged and put her head back under my arm. "She says the Achaeans will come soon and burn Troy. Can you imagine? That's why nobody wants to take her as a wife. They say she calls down misfortune."
"Is she a haristalli? Or does she serve in the temple of the goddess Inara?" I asked with considerable surprise. "Does she predict the future?"
"No," Creusa shrugged carelessly. "She's no priestess! She just wanders around the markets too much and eavesdrops on merchants' conversations. That's what father said. Actually, he usually says Cassandra is the least stupid of the women living in the palace, but he doesn't believe the Achaeans will go to war. He's managed to negotiate with them for many years. Says we have too profitable a trade with them."
Cassandra!
Prophetic Cassandra. The soothsayer cursed by Apollo.
She never made mistakes, but nobody believed her.
Turned out she was just a person with an analytical mind capable of putting two and two together. But in this society, where a woman was only required to spin, bear children and keep domestic slaves in line, such people were considered black sheeps.
So she hadn't married, though she'd reached a very respectable age. Here at twenty-five they were already becoming grandmothers.
"My lord," Creusa said timidly. "If you fulfill your duty once more, I'll more surely conceive. A woman is like the Moon, and now I'm at full moon."
"Once more?" I thought about it.
I hadn't been noted for such feats in my past life. But here? Here everything was fine.
That's what youth, good ecology and constant physical exercise did.
"Well if once more, then once more," I turned her on her back and greedily fumbled over her yielding body. "Come to me, little wife..."