The Firebrand (53 page)

“Perhaps not; but he would get used to it, I suppose, as I have gotten used to keeping indoors and spinning until my fingers are sore,” she said restlessly. “Now that you have returned, Kassandra, perhaps we can manage some excursions outside the walls . . .”

“If the Akhaians allow it . . .”

“Or if they get tired of sitting outside the walls and throwing rocks at the guards,” Andromache said. “That is about all they have accomplished in the last few months; though once or twice they have tried to storm the walls, and even brought extra-long ladders. But Hector had the idea of emptying the big soup kettle boiling for the guards’ dinner over their heads, and they went down a great deal faster than they had come up, I assure you.” She laughed heartily. “Now they always keep a great kettle of something boiling up there, and if it is something no worse than soup, the assailants are lucky. Last time it was oil, and they have not tried again since then; ai, the screams we heard that night from the Akhaian camp! All their healer-priests were out chanting, and sacrificing to Apollo, until past dawn. That will teach them to come sneaking up the wall when they thought all the guards were sleeping!”

“You do not bear weapons now—but you have not lost your taste for warfare,” Kassandra commented.

“I have a child to protect,” Andromache replied; and Kassandra remembered that she herself had indeed been ready to kill when the soldiers threatened Honey.

“And I many children, but they are all of an age to fight for themselves,” Hecuba said. “And now, Kassandra, tell me: when you passed through the country of the Amazons, did you encounter our kinswoman? And had Penthesilea any message for me?”

“I saw her only on the outward journey,” Kassandra said, and told her mother about the meeting with the Amazons, and how many of the women had chosen to settle into villages with men. Then, more troubled, she told about the starving Kentaurs on the return journey, and that she had seen no sign of any women of the tribes.

“May the Goddess be with her,” said Hecuba fervently. “I have no sense that she is dead; and I think I might know. We have been as close as if we were twins; but she is four years younger than I. It is not beyond all possibility that one day we may see her in Troy.”

“May that day be far off,” Kassandra said, “for she told me that if the war went desperately against us, she would come and end her days in Troy.” And with a curious flicker of the light, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud, she saw Penthesilea riding through the gates of Troy . . . in triumph, or in defeat? She could not tell; the vision was gone, and they spoke of other things.

At last she rose and stretched herself. “I sit like any old gossip among women,” she said, “and I have duties awaiting me in the Sun Lord’s house. But it has been good to gossip and be idle”—and, she thought, to talk of women’s matters like the raising of children. She had once thought it must be very boring, but now, having a child of her own, she was beginning to understand that such woman’s talk could be absorbing.
But to speak of nothing else for a lifetime . . .

“It is not every day that you return from a journey of such length,” Andromache said. “Helen will want to see you, and show you her babies—and Creusa to show you your namesake. She is more like Polyxena than like you, with red hair and blue eyes—and as pretty as if Aphrodite had laid the gift of beauty in her cradle. She will marry a prince, if this war leaves any of us alive to think about marriages.”

“I think no one will ever call my little one beautiful,” Kassandra said, “but to a mother I suppose even the plainest children are lovely. In any case, I intend, if the Gods are kind, to send her to Penthesilea to be brought up a warrior. I still wish I might have been.”

“Oh, you cannot mean that, Kassandra,” said Hecuba, coming to embrace her in farewell.

“Can I not? Mother, if any of Imandra’s gifts have survived the Akhaians, I will send them to you as quickly as the cart can be unloaded,” she said, and took her leave. Andromache said she would walk with her a little way.

“For I get out so seldom, and Hector is always very troubled if I go out alone; but he cannot refuse me the chaperonage of his own sister,” she said discontentedly. “I often walk with Helen, but she did not come today: Paris took a small wound in the last fight—nothing to worry him, but enough to give him a good excuse to stay indoors and be cosseted. Otherwise I am sure she would have come to greet you.”

After a short distance they parted, Andromache returning down to the palace and Kassandra turning up toward the Sun Lord’s high house.

She had started across the courtyard to check on the snakes when she encountered Khryse. He looked weary and worn; there were new lines in his once-handsome face, and lines of dull silver in his fair hair. It was hard to realize that there had been a time when in this Temple there had been those who considered him nearly as handsome as the Sun Lord Himself.

He recognized her at once, and cried out in welcome.

“Kassandra! We have all missed you,” he exclaimed, and came quickly to embrace her. She would have recoiled, but it was not unpleasant to see a familiar face and to know herself so welcomed; so she allowed the embrace, but at once regretted it, and managed to twist her face so that his kiss fell only on her chin.

Quickly disentangling herself, she retreated out of reach.

“It seems that all has gone well with you while I was absent,” she remarked. “You look well and thriving.” Not for worlds would she have told him that it was his face in an oracle which had prompted her to return to Troy.

“But that is not true,” he said. “Never again shall I have health or joy until the Gods choose to restore to me my poor dishonored child.”

“Khryse,” said Kassandra gently, “is it not near upon three years that Chryseis has been in the camp of the Akhaians?”

“I care not if it is a lifetime,” Khryse said passionately. “I will mourn and protest and cry out to the Gods—”

“Cry, then,” Kassandra said, “but expect not that They will hear. It is your own pride you mourn and not your daughter,” she went on sharply. “I saw her this morning in the Akhaian camp; she seems well and happy and content, and when I asked if I should try to arrange for her exchange, she told me to mind my own affairs. I truly think she is content to be Agamemnon’s woman, even if she cannot be his Queen.”

Khryse’s handsome face grew dark with wrath.

“Have a care, Kassandra; you say this to hurt me, and I believe not a word of it.”

“Why should I wish to hurt you?” she asked. “You are my friend, and your daughter was like my own child. Think only of her happiness, Khryse, and leave her where she is. I warn you, if you press further in this matter, you will bring down the wrath of the Gods upon our city.”

His face twisted in anger.

“And I am supposed to believe you have my good at heart? You care nothing for me—I who have so long loved you . . .”

“Oh, Khryse,” she said, holding out her hands to him in absolute sincerity, “please, please, don’t begin to talk of this again. Why must you think I wish you ill because I do not desire you?”

“Then what would you do if you did wish me ill? When you have destroyed any kindness I might have in my heart . . .”

“If such kindness is destroyed, why do you say it is my fault? Cannot a man take any woman seriously unless she is willing to lie with him?” she asked. “I speak to you in all friendship, Khryse; do not press this matter.”

“You are willing to see my daughter disgraced, and insult offered to Apollo—”

“In the name of all the Gods, Khryse, the question is not what you feel, but what your daughter feels,” she said in exasperation, remembering Chryseis’ proud look when Patroklos had turned to her for help in translation. But she did not wish Khryse’s anger to make more trouble; there was already enough bitterness, and this could only make it worse. She spoke with what friendliness she could summon. “If you do not believe me, why not go down to the camp of the Akhaians—they will honor Apollo’s truce for His priest—and ask her for yourself if she feels disgraced. If she wishes to leave Agamemnon, I swear to you, I shall go to Priam and leave nothing undone to have her released or exchanged. But if she is happy with Agamemnon and he with her . . . Believe me, she is no prisoner; they were calling upon her to translate when they took my waiting-women from me, and they are elderly women who truly do not wish to remain in the camp of the Akhaians. But I promise you: if Chryseis wishes to return, I shall do everything I can before the King and the Queen.”

“But the disgrace—my daughter to be Agamemnon’s concubine . . .”

“Cannot you see that you are unreasonable? Why is it so disgraceful for her to be Agamemnon’s woman? And if this makes you shudder so with shame, why were you so eager to convince me that it would do no harm if I should be
yours
? Is it different for your daughter than for Priam’s daughter?” she asked harshly, losing patience at last. Now he was really angry, and she was just as well pleased; it meant she need no longer fear that he would try to grab at her.

“How dare you mention my daughter as if she were like you?” he charged her angrily. “You do not care what happens to my daughter. As long as you can follow your own unnatural ways and refuse to give yourself, to humiliate a man—”

“Humiliate you? Is that what you think?” she said wearily. “Khryse, there are hundreds of women on this earth who would be happy to give themselves to you. Why should you choose one—perhaps the only one—who does not want you?”

“I did not choose to desire you,” he said, glaring at her, “but I find I wish for no other. You have bewitched me, out of some evil wish to humble me; I . . .” He stopped, gulped and said, “Do you think, sorceress, that I have not tried to break this spell you have cast on me?”

For a moment Kassandra almost pitied him. She said, “Khryse, if you are under a curse, some other has done it and not I. I swear by Serpent Mother and by Earth Mother and by Apollo Himself, whom we both worship, I bear you no malice and no evil will, and I will entreat any God to free you from any such spell. I want no power over you, and I would bless your manhood, provided you find some other woman on whom to exercise it.”

“So you still have no pity on me? Even knowing what you have brought me to, you still deny yourself to me?”

“Khryse,” she said, “enough. I am awaited above, and I must show myself to Charis and to the priestesses. I wish you good night.”

She turned away, but he muttered between his teeth, “You will be sorry for this, Kassandra; even if I die for it, I swear you will regret this.”

Lord Apollo, was it Your will that I give myself to this man I dislike so much?
And she wondered, almost frightened at her own thoughts,
Even if Apollo demanded it, would I have given myself to Khryse?

But He had not demanded it. And Khryse—he was always a troublemaker; must she be part of his troublemaking?

KASSANDRA LAY awake much of the night, mentally going over her argument with Khryse, wondering what she should have said. Surely he would at last have seen reason, had she been able to find the right words.

Finally she decided that in his current state he probably was not capable of reason at all. Was any man, when a woman was concerned? Certainly, Paris had not shown much reason when it was a question of Helen . . . and he already had a virtuous and beautiful wife who had given him a son, and from what she had heard, that was what men wanted most.

But it certainly was not only men; women themselves seemed to lose all reason when men were concerned. Even Queen Imandra, who was strong and independent, and Hecuba, who had been brought up as an Amazon, had shown little reason when it was a matter of their men.
As for Briseis, or Chryseis,
Kassandra thought, almost with contempt,
they are like puppy dogs, rolling over with all four feet in the air if their master but gives them a pat.

She shifted her weight on the bed to make room for the serpent which coiled slowly around her arm. It was good to be sleeping in a bed rather than on the hard floor of the cart; and with her last thought she reminded herself to check the cart and make certain which of Imandra’s gifts, if any, had survived the Akhaian soldiers. Their fear of serpents might have kept them from exploring the depths of the cart.

She woke at sunrise. Honey was playing at the foot of the bed, letting the serpent flow around her waist and down along her arms. She bathed the child and found her some breakfast, then went to the top of the Temple where the first rays would strike the heights of Troy. She thought she should go up to the Temple of the Maiden today, and greet her friends among the priestesses there, and perhaps offer thanks for her safe return to Troy. But before she had a chance, she noticed Khryse among the assembled priests come to greet the sunrise. He looked even worse than the night before, his features swollen and his eyes reddened as if he had not slept.
Poor man,
she thought,
I should not taunt him or expect him to be reasonable when he is in so much misery. It may not make sense for him to suffer like this; but when did that ever stop anyone from suffering?

Charis was speaking with him; she saw Charis point to one and then another of the priests, saying, “You, and you, and you—no, not you, you cannot be spared.” As Kassandra approached them, Charis beckoned to her.

“I understand from what Khryse says that you actually saw his daughter in the Argive camp yesterday when you passed through. Are you certain it was really Chryseis? It has been some years, and she was a growing girl when she—left us.”