The Firebrand (27 page)

She was not Hecuba’s daughter, but Priam’s by the most important of his palace women. Strictly speaking, by court etiquette it was for Kassandra first to claim sisterhood; but she was not interested at the moment in preserving protocol. She warmly returned Creusa’s embrace and said, “May Earth Mother and the Bright Ones bless you, Sister.”

“Can you see good fortune for me, Kassandra—you who are a prophetess?”

“I will know that when I have seen your husband,” said Kassandra elliptically.

“When you have seen him, I think you will envy me,” Creusa said.

Kassandra smiled and said, “Indeed I hope so, Sister. Mother told me how handsome he is.”

“And he is rich too, and a prince in his own country,” said Creusa. “Surely no woman can be luckier than I.”

“Do not say such things, lest the Immortals be jealous,” reprimanded Charis. “Remember the fate of the woman who said her spinning was as fine as that of Pallas Athene, and Athene made her a spider, who should spin her webs forever to be torn down by housewives!”

“Come, come,” said Andromache, who was the first of the bride-women. “Let us finish dressing her quickly, or the men will all be drunk before she comes. Kassandra, your fingers are nimblest; will you put the flowers in her hair?”

Kassandra quickly tied the blossoms into a wreath and fastened them into Creusa’s bright curls.

“Now she is ready; let us lead her down.”

Taking her by the hands, the women surrounded the bride and led her down the steep staircases of the palace, holding her carefully lest she stumble and begin her marriage with a false step—the worst of omens.

They lifted up their voices in the oldest of marriage hymns, the one to Earth Mother, and Kassandra felt surrounded with as much joy and gaiety as if it were her own wedding.
For once,
she thought,
I can be as carefree as any other young girl.
She was briefly aware that others did not observe themselves in this way; what was the difference? But for once she had an answer to that painful sense of difference.
I am a priestess and need not be like the others; if I can somehow manage to seem like the rest, it is enough.

THEY WERE at the very threshold of the feasting hall when they heard a cry of surprise and welcome.

Priam called out,“Odysseus,you old cheat! Right enough, you know just when to come to sample our best wine for a wedding! Come in and have a drink, old comrade!”

Kassandra reached out and pulled Creusa back.

“Let our father welcome his guest first.”

Creusa said sulkily, “I didn’t want that old pirate at my wedding!”

Andromache whispered, “I have heard all my life of the stories he can tell; he has sailed farther than Jason and has many traveler’s tales. He visited my mother in Colchis and brought her a mother-of-pearl comb that he said was given him by a mermaid.”

“Perhaps he has brought you a wedding gift too, Creusa,” Kassandra said. “In any case, even the Gods must show hospitality. Let us go in.”

She sang the first line of the hymn to the Maiden, always sung at weddings, and the other girls joined in. Priam looked up and beckoned them forward. Kassandra saw a handsome young man, tall and slender, with curly light brown hair and with a scattering of dark freckles just gilding his face. She supposed, from the ornate crimson tunic he wore, that this was the bridegroom. Just approaching the high seat was a short, burly man of middle age with crisply curled hair and a red face, weather-beaten and hook-nosed, with deep-set blue eyes that seemed to look out on immense distances. She supposed, even before she saw the recognition in Andromache’s eyes, that this was the famous seafarer and pirate, her father’s old friend Odysseus.

The seafarer turned and cried out, “What a bunch o’ beauties, old friend. These cannot all be your daughters, Priam; or can they? I seem to remember you’ve somewhat more’n your share of womenfolk.”

Priam summoned them to him with a wave of his hand.

Kassandra found herself enveloped in a great bear hug.

“Your second daughter, isn’t it? Is this the bride? Well, why not, in the name of all the demons?” He smelled of salt air and faintly of wine. She could not be offended by the embrace; it was as kindly and enthusiastic as a gust of the sea wind. “You’d like one as beautiful as this, wouldn’t you, Aeneas, my friend?”

Kassandra could see that Aeneas’ eyes rested on her with appreciation, and that Creusa was almost crying.

She pulled back from Odysseus, gently, and said, “Don’t, sir. I am not for any man; I am a virgin of Apollo Sun Lord, and content to be so.”

“Hellfire!” His swearing was as enormous as everything else about him. “What a waste, Beautiful! I’d marry you myself, except I have a wife already back in Ithaca, and Hera, my protecting Goddess, is a Goddess of marital fidelity; I’ll have trouble with Her if I go sniffing round other women. Not that I haven’t had my share; but I couldn’t marry anyone else—and besides, you want some beautiful young fellow, not an old walrus like me.” She giggled; with his huge mustaches, he really did look like a walrus.

“And this is Hector’s bride?” he said, turning to Andromache. “Hector, you won’t mind if an old man kisses your wife, will you? Customary in my part of the world, you know.” He took Andromache by the arms, patted her bulging belly. “Can’t get close enough to you now for a real kiss, can I, girl? Well, some other time, maybe.” He kissed her smackingly on the cheek.

“I brought some things in my pack—loot from a Cretan ship: bride-gifts for your daughter, Priam, and gifts for that fine grandson this pretty girl here’s going to give you in a few days—no? And since this one won’t marry, I’ll give gifts to the Sun Lord’s Temple for her.”

“In Apollo’s name I thank you, sir,” said Kassandra courteously, but Odysseus pulled her down to sit at his side.

“Here, sit beside me, drink from my cup; you’re the only unattached girl here, and such flirting as I can do before your father and mother will do you no harm, hey?”

“My sister, Polyxena, is not married,” Kassandra said with a glimmer of mischief, and Odysseus said, laughing, “Won’t be long, if I know your father, my girl; Polyxena’s pretty enough, but just between you and me, I like a girl with a little more meat on her bones. You’ll do just fine.”

She took his cup and mixed his wine, and when the servers went round, she filled his plate; she found herself feeling a kindly warmth for the old man.

Priam said, “Now tell us your news, Odysseus. And I need your advice, too, friend: I have had an offer for Polyxena from Akhilles, son of Peleus. If you were in my place, would you accept? He is noble, and I hear that he is also brave—”

“Brave he certainly is,” Odysseus said, “but he has no pleasure except in killing. If I had a daughter, I’d cut her throat before I married her off to that madman.”

“He has the strength of Herakles—” Hector began.

“And many of his faults,” Odysseus interrupted. “Like Herakles, he’s no man for women; takes a fancy to one now and then and is likely to kill her in a moment of madness. I sailed with Herakles—just once. That was enough; I got tired of his moping over his boyfriends and his sudden rages. Akhilles is too like him for my taste. There are enough fine young men in Troy—or even fine honorable Akhaians, if that’s what you want for her. She looks like a nice young girl; find her someone else. That’s my best advice.” Then he shouted to a servant and requested that his chests be brought into the hall, and from each of them he lifted out strange and beautiful things, presenting them lavishly to Priam and to his sons and daughters. For Hecuba there was a little cup, no larger than a closed fist, of beaten gold.

“From the House of the Bulls in Crete,” he said. “I found it myself in the remains of what was once the Labyrinth; the Gods know how it escaped the earlier looters.”

“Maybe some God preserved it for you.”

“Maybe,” said Odysseus. “See the bulls?”

Hecuba looked admiringly at the cup, then passed it round the admiring circle of women. Kassandra examined it in her turn, exclaiming over the finely chiseled carvings: a bull in nets as finely incised as thread, with young men in a chariot, and a cow to lure the bull.

“But this is a priceless treasure,” she said; “you should keep this for your own wife.”

“I have just as many fine things again,” Odysseus said with great good nature, “for my wife and my son. Never think I would give away
all
my best.”

For Andromache he had a golden comb, and for Creusa a bronze mirror with gold-washed beads about the edge.

“A mirror fit for Aphrodite herself,” he said. “I got this when I spent the night in the cave of a sea-nymph. All night we loved, and when we parted in the morning she gave me this because she said she’d never look in it again if she wasn’t beautiful enough for me to stay with her.” He winked and said, “So now you’re a bride and can make yourself beautiful for your husband.”

Kassandra’s gift was a necklace of blue beads which looked like glass, oblong in shape, and simply made, held by a plain gold clasp at the ends.

“It is a small thing,” he said, “but I seem to remember that priestesses are not allowed to wear elaborate ornaments, and this is simple enough, perhaps, that you may wear it in memory of your father’s old friend.”

Touched by the words, Kassandra kissed him on the cheek as she would hardly have dared with her own father.

“I need no gifts to remember you, Odysseus; but I will wear this whenever I am permitted. Where was it made?”

“In Egypt, the land where Pharaoh rules, and the Kings build great tombs which make the whole city of Troy look like a little village,” he said, and she was so accustomed already to his fantastic tales that she did not know for many years that for once he was speaking only the simple truth.

The gifts bestowed, he asked Priam, “When are you going to make me free of the straits, so that I can come and go without paying taxes like those other Akhaians?”

“You are certainly different from the others,” Priam temporized, “and I would be ungrateful indeed if after so many gifts I should extort more from you, my friend. But I cannot allow anyone and everyone to travel through my waters. The tax I ask of you is only to tell me what is happening in the world faraway. Is there peace in the islands where those Akhaians reign?”

“There will be peace there, perhaps, when the sun rises in the west,” Odysseus said. “As with Akhilles, the Kings think of warfare as their greatest pleasure. I will go to war only when my own lands and people are threatened; but they think of battle as a pastime more virtuous than any games . . . the great game at which they would gladly spend all their lives. They think me unmanly and cowardly that I have no love for fighting, though I am better at fighting than most of them.”

“For years they have been trying to provoke us to war,” Priam said, “but I have made a policy of ignoring insults and provocations, even when they stole my own sister. You live among the Akhaians, old friend; if they make war, will you too come against us?”

“I will try not to be drawn into any such war,” Odysseus said. “I am bound by only one oath. When the woman who is now Queen of Sparta was wed, there were so many suitors that none of them would yield to another, and it looked as if only a war would settle the matter. Then it was I who created a compromise, and I am proud of it.”

“What did you do?” Priam asked.

Odysseus grinned hugely. He said, “Picture this: perhaps the most beautiful woman who ever borrowed the girdle of Aphrodite, and so many men standing about calling out what gifts they would give to her father, and offering to fight for her, with the winner to take bride and dowry of Sparta . . . and I suggested that she herself choose, with all her suitors swearing an oath they would protect her choice.”

“Whom did she choose?” asked Hecuba.

“Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus—a poor thing; but perhaps she thought he was as wise and strong as his brother,” Odysseus said. “Or perhaps it was just out of love for her sister, who had been married to Agamemnon the year before. Sisters marrying brothers . . . it creates confusion in the family, or so I should imagine.”

“Yet if Aeneas had a brother, I should be willing to marry him,” Polyxena whispered into Kassandra’s ear, “if the brother had but half of his good looks and kindliness.”

“So should I,” Kassandra whispered back.

Hecuba murmured in a fussy voice, “It is rude to whisper, girls; speak to the company or be silent. Anything not fit to be said aloud is not fit to be said at all.”

Kassandra was tired of her mother’s strictures of courtesy. She said aloud, “I for one am not ashamed of what we were saying; we said only that either of us would willingly marry a brother to Aeneas, were the brother anything like him.”

She was rewarded with a swift blazing look from Aeneas. He said, smiling, “Alas, daughter of Priam, I am my father’s only son; but you make me wish I were twins or even triplets, for I would willingly share a marriage cup with all three of you. What about it, my lord?” he asked Priam. “Is it fitting for me to have as many wives as you do? If you are eager to marry off your daughters, I will gladly take all three of them, if Creusa gives me leave.”

Polyxena dropped her eyes and blushed; Kassandra heard herself giggle. Creusa reddened and said, “I would rather be first and only wife; yet the law permits you to have as many wives as you will, my husband.”

“Enough; this is no jest,” Priam said. “A King’s daughters, Son-in-Law, are not to be lesser wives or concubines.”

Aeneas smiled in friendly fashion and said, “I meant your daughters no insult, sir,” and Priam answered, gripping his hand in a friendly, somewhat drunken clasp, “I know that well; late in a banquet when the wine has been round a few times more than is wisest, jests far more unseemly than that may be forgiven. And now perhaps it is time for the women to take your bride away, before the party grows too rough for maiden ears.”