The Firebrand (3 page)

As she walked through a quiet street near the marketplace, a woman of the people, short and dark and coarsely dressed in earth-colored linen, darted out to touch her belly, murmuring, as if startled at her own temerity, “A blessing, O Queen!”

“It is not I,” Hecuba responded, “but the Goddess who blesses you.” As she held out her hands, she felt above her the shadow of the Goddess, like a tingling in the crown of her head; and she could see in the woman’s face the never-failing reflection of awe and wonder at the sudden change.

“May you bear many sons and daughters for our city. I pray you bless me also, Daughter,” Hecuba said seriously.

The woman looked up at the Queen—or did she see only the Goddess?—and murmured, “Lady, may the fame of the prince you bear outshine even the fame of Prince Hector.”

“So be it,” murmured the Queen, and wondered why she felt a small premonitory shiver, as if the blessing had somehow been transmuted, between the woman’s lips and her ears, into a curse.

It must have been visible on her face, too, she thought, for her waiting-woman stepped close and said in her ear, “Lady, you are pale; is it the beginning of labor?”

Such was the Queen’s confusion that for a moment she actually wondered if the strange sweating chill that seized her was actually the first touch of the birth process. Or was it only the result of that brief overshadowing by the Goddess? She did not remember anything like this with Hector’s birth, but she had been a young girl then, hardly aware of the process taking place within her. “I know not,” she said. “It is possible.”

“Then you must return to the palace and the King must be told,” said the woman. Hecuba hesitated. She had no wish to return inside the walls, but if she was truly in labor, it was her duty—not only to the child, and to her husband, but to the King and to all the people of Troy—to safeguard the prince or princess she bore.

“Very well, we shall return to the palace,” she said, and turned about in the street. One of the things that troubled her when she walked in the city was that a crowd of women and children always followed her asking for blessings. Since she had become visibly pregnant they begged for the blessing of fertility, as if she could, like the Goddess, bestow the gift of childbearing.

With her woman, she walked beneath the twin lionesses guarding the gates of Priam’s palace, and across the huge courtyard behind them where his soldiers gathered for arms-drill. A sentry at the gate raised his spear in salute.

Hecuba watched the soldiers, paired in teams and fighting with blunted weapons. She knew as much about weapons as any of them, for she had been born and raised on the plains, daughter of a nomad tribe whose women rode horseback, and trained like the men of the cities with sword and spear. Her hand itched for a sword, but it was not the custom in Troy, and while at first Priam had allowed her to handle weapons and practice with his soldiers, when she became pregnant with Hector he had forbidden it. In vain she told him that the women of her tribe rode horseback and worked with weapons until a few days before they were delivered of their children; he would not listen to her.

The royal midwives told her that if she so much as touched edged weapons, it would injure her child and perhaps the men who owned the weapons. A woman’s touch, they said, especially the touch of a woman in her condition, would make the weapon useless in battle. This sounded to Hecuba like the most solemn foolishness, as if men feared the notion that a woman could be strong enough to protect herself.

“But you have no need to protect yourself, my dearest love,” Priam had said. “What sort of man would I be if I could not protect my wife and child?” That had ended the matter, and from that day to this, Hecuba had never so much as touched the hilt of a weapon. Imagining the weight of a sword in her hand now, she grimaced, knowing that she was weak from women’s indoor work and soft from lack of training. Priam was not so bad as the Argive kings who kept their women confined inside their houses, but he did not really like it when she went very far outside the palace. He had grown up with women who stayed indoors at all times, and one of his most critical descriptions of a woman was “sunburnt from gadding about.”

The Queen went through the small door into the cool shadows of the palace and along the marble-floored halls, hearing in the silence the small sound of her skirts trailing against the floor and her waiting-woman’s soft footfalls behind her.

In her sunlit rooms, with all the curtains flung open as she preferred to keep them, her women were sunning and airing linens, and as she came through the doors they paused to greet her. The waiting-woman announced, “The Queen is in labor; send for the royal midwife.”

“No, wait.” Hecuba’s soft but definite voice cut through the cries of excitement. “There is no such hurry; it is by no means certain. I felt strange and had no way of knowing what ailed me; but it is by no means sure it is
that
.”

“Still, Lady, if you are not sure, you should let her come to you,” the woman persuaded, and the Queen at last agreed. Certainly there was no need for haste; if she was in labor there would soon be no doubt about it; but if she was not it would do no harm to speak with the woman. The strange sensation had passed off as if it had never been, nor did it return.

The sun declined, and Hecuba spent the day helping her women fold and put away the sun-bleached linens. At sun-down Priam sent word that he would spend the evening with his men; she should sup with her women and go to bed without waiting for him.

Five years ago, she thought, this would have dismayed her; she would not have been able to go to sleep unless she was encircled in his strong and loving arms. Now, especially this late in pregnancy, she was pleased at the thought of having her bed to herself. Even when it crossed her mind that he might be sharing the bed of one of the other women of the court, perhaps one of the mothers of the other royal children, it did not trouble her; she knew a king must have many sons and her own son, Hector, was firm in his father’s favor.

She would not go into labor this night at least; so she called her women to let them put her to bed with the expected ceremony. For some reason the last image in her mind before she slept was the woman who had asked her for a blessing that day in the street.

SHORTLY BEFORE midnight, the watchman outside the Queen’s apartments, drowsing on duty, was awakened by a frightful shriek of despair and dread which seemed to ring throughout the entire palace. Galvanized to full awareness, the watchman stepped inside the rooms, yelling until one of the Queen’s women appeared.

“What’s happened? Is the Queen in labor? Is the house afire?” he demanded.

“An evil omen,” the woman cried, “the most evil of dreams—” And then the Queen herself appeared in the doorway.

“Fire!” she cried out, and the watchman looked in dismay at the usually dignified figure of the Queen, her long reddish hair unbound and falling disheveled to her waist, her tunic unfastened at the shoulder and ungirt so that she was half naked above the waist. He had never noticed before that the Queen was a beautiful woman.

“Lady, what can I do for you?” he asked. “Where is the fire?”

Then he saw an astonishing thing; between one breath and the next, the Queen altered, one moment a distraught stranger, and the next, the regal lady he knew. Her voice was shaking with fear, even though she managed to say quietly, “It must have been a dream. A dream of fire, no more.”

“Tell us, Lady,” her waiting-woman urged, moving close to the Queen, her eyes alert and wary as she motioned to the watchman. “Go, you should not be here.”

“It is my duty to be sure that all is well with the King’s women,” he said firmly, his eyes fixed on the Queen’s newly calm face.

“Let him be; he is doing no more than his duty,” Hecuba told the woman, though her voice was still shaking. “I assure you, watchman, it was no more than an evil dream; I had the women search all the rooms. There is no fire.”

“We must send to the Temple for a priestess,” urged a woman at Hecuba’s side. “We must know what peril is betokened by such an evil dream!”

A firm step sounded and the door was thrust open; the King of Troy stood in the doorway, a tall strong man in his thirties, firmly muscled and broad-shouldered even without his armor, with dark curling hair and a neatly trimmed curly dark beard, demanding to know, in the name of all the Gods and Goddesses, what was all this commotion in his house.

“My lord—” The servants backed away as Priam strode through the door.

“Is all well with you, my lady?” he asked, and Hecuba lowered her eyes.

“My lord husband, I regret this disturbance. I had a dream of great evil.”

Priam waved at the women. “Go and be certain that all is well in the rooms of the royal children,” he commanded, and the women scurried away. Priam was a kindly man, but it was not well to cross him on the relatively rare occasions when he was out of temper. “And you,” he said to the watchman, “you heard the Queen; go at once to the Temple of the Great Mother: tell them that the Queen has had a dream of evil omen and is in need of a priestess who can interpret it to her. At once!”

The watchman hurried down the stairs and Hecuba held out her hand to her husband.

“It was truly no more than a dream, then?” he asked.

“No more than a dream,” she said, but even the memory of it still made her shiver.

“Tell me, love,” he said, and led her back to her bed, sitting beside her and leaning forward to clasp her fingers—hardly smaller than his own—between his callused palms.

“I feel such a fool for disturbing everyone with a nightmare,” she said.

“No, you were perfectly right,” he said. “Who knows? The dream may have been sent by some God who is your enemy—or mine. Or by a friendly God, as a warning of disaster. Tell me, my love.”

“I dreamed—I dreamed—” Hecuba swallowed hard, trying to dispel the choking sensation of dread. “I dreamed the child had been born, a son, and as I lay watching them swaddle him, suddenly some God was in the room—”

“What God?” Priam interrupted sharply. “In what form?”

“How should I know?” Hecuba asked reasonably. “I know little of the Olympians. But I am sure I have not offended any of them nor done them any dishonor.”

“Tell me of his form and appearance,” Priam insisted.

“He was a youth and beardless, no more than six or seven years older than our Hector,” Hecuba said.

“Then it must have been Hermes, the Messenger of the Gods,” Priam said.

Hecuba cried out, “But why should a God of the Argives come to me?”

Priam said, “The ways of the Gods are not for us to question. How can I tell? Go on.”

Hecuba spoke, her voice still uncertain. “Hermes, then, or whichever God it may have been, leaned over the cradle, and picked up the baby—” Hecuba was white, and beads of sweat stood on her brow, but she tried hard to steady her voice. “It wasn’t a baby but—a child—a naked child, burning—I mean it was all afire and burning like a torch. And as he moved, fire came and invaded the castle, burning everywhere and striking the town . . .” She broke down and sobbed. “Oh, what can it mean?”

“Only the Gods know that for certain,” Priam said, and held her hand firmly in his.

Hecuba faltered, “In my dream the baby ran before the God . . . a newborn child, running all afire through the palace, and after him, as he passed, all the rooms took fire. Then he ran down through the city—I stood on the balcony overlooking the town, and fire sprang up behind him as he ran, still flaming, so that Troy was burning, all on fire, from the high citadel to the shore, and even the sea was all afire before his steps . . .”

“In the name of Poseidon,” Priam murmured under his breath, “what an evil omen . . . for Troy and for all of us!”

He sat silent, stroking her hand, until a slight sound outside the room announced the arrival of the priestess.

She stepped inside the room and said in a calm, cheerful voice: “Peace to all in this House; Rejoice, O Lord and Lady of Troy. My name is Sarmato. I bring you the blessings of the Holy Mother. What service may I do the Queen?” She was a tall, sturdily built woman, probably still of childbearing age, though her dark hair was already showing streaks of gray. She said to Hecuba, smiling, “I see that the Great Goddess has already blessed you, Queen. Are you ill or in labor?”

“Neither,” said Hecuba. “Did they not tell you, priestess? Some God sent me an evil dream.”

“Tell me,” said Sarmato, “and fear not. The Gods mean us well, of that I am certain. So speak and be not afraid.”

Hecuba recounted her dream again, beginning to feel, as she told it, now she was fully awake, that it was not so much horrible as absurd. Nevertheless, she shivered with the terror she had felt in the dream.

The priestess listened with a slight frown gathering between her brows. When Hecuba had finished, she said, “You are sure there was nothing more?”