The Firebrand (31 page)

The man’s face brightened.

“I am grateful to the God for His advice,” he said, and Kassandra nodded to him courteously, holding herself back by force from saying,
If you had used what wit the God saw fit to give you, you would have saved yourself the trouble of coming here; but since any sensible person could have given you such an answer, we might as well have a gift for it.

Later when Khryse asked her, “How do you know what to answer? I find it hard to believe a God would trouble Himself with such matters,” she told him that the priests had worked out proper answers to the commonest questions.

“But never forget to be silent for a few moments, in case the God has another answer to be given. Even the most foolish questions—from our point of view—the God sometimes sees fit to answer,” she warned him.

After a little, another man came, carrying a great basket of excellent melons, and asked, “What shall I plant in my south field this year?”

“Has there been fire or flood or any great change on your land?”

“No, Lady.”

She went into the shrine, sitting for a moment before the great statue of the Sun Lord, remembering how the first time she saw it as a child she had thought it a living man. When the God did not speak to her she returned and said, “Plant the crop you planted there three years ago.”

This answer could do no possible harm; if he had been rotating his crops as the headmen of most villages now advised, it would not conflict with their advice, and if he had not, it would make things no worse. As he thanked her, she felt the common exasperation; this was the safe answer for any farmer in any year, and she felt he should have known it without asking. But they would all enjoy the melons, anyway.

The morning went slowly, with only one question that gave her a moment’s thought; a man brought a fine kid as an offering, and said that his wife had just borne a fine son.

“And you wish to give thanks to the Sun Lord?”

The man shifted his feet uneasily, like a guilty child.

“Well, not exactly,” he muttered. “I wish to know if this child is mine, or has my wife been unfaithful to me?”

This was the question Kassandra always most dreaded; her year among the Amazons had taught her that a man’s suspicion of a woman usually meant that he did not feel himself worthy of a woman’s regard.

Yet she accepted the offering calmly and went into the shrine. Sometimes this question was actually answered, apparently at random,
If you are not certain, expose the child at once.
But there was no answer, so she gave the suitable answer for such occasions. “If you can trust your wife in other ways, there is no reason to doubt her in this.”

The man looked enormously relieved, and Kassandra sighed and told him, “Go home now, and thank the Goddess for your son, and forget not to make apology to your wife for doubting her without reason.”

“I will, Lady,” he promised, and Kassandra, seeing that there were no other petitioners awaiting consultation, turned to say to Khryse, “At this hour we should now close the shrine, and rest until the sun begins to decline; it is the custom to take a little bread and fruit before we return to see anyone who comes.”

He thanked her and added, “The Lady Charis told me you are the second daughter of King Priam and of his Queen. You are nobly born, and as beautiful as Aphrodite; how is it that you serve here in the shrine when every prince and nobleman on this coast and southward to Crete must have been seeking you in marriage?”

“Oh, not so many as that,” she said, laughing nervously. “In my case, the Sun Lord called me to His service when I was younger than your daughter.”

He looked skeptical. “He called you? How?”

“You are a priest,” she said. “Surely He has spoken to you.”

“I have had no such fortune, Lady,” he said. “I think the Immortals speak only to the great. My father—he was a poor man—pledged me to the God’s service when my elder brother was spared from the fever which raged in Mykenae a score of years ago. He thought it a fair bargain; my brother was a warrior, and I, he said, fit for nothing.”

“That was not right,” Kassandra said vehemently. “A son is not a slave.”

“Oh, I was willing enough,” Khryse said. “I had no talent for becoming a warrior.”

Kassandra laughed a little. “Strange; surely you are stronger than I, and I was a warrior for a year among the Amazons.”

“I have heard of the women warriors,” he said, “and I have heard also that they kill their lovers and their boy children.”

“Not so,” she said, “but men dwell apart from women there; male children are sent to their fathers as soon as they are weaned from the breast.”

“And had you a lover when you dwelt among them, beautiful Amazon?”

“No,” she said softly. “As I told you, I am sworn as a virgin to the Sun Lord.”

“It seems a pity,” Khryse said, “that so beautiful a lady should grow old unloved.”

“You need not pity me,” Kassandra said indignantly. “I am well content with no lover.”

“That seems to me the pity of it,” Khryse said. “You are a princess, and beautiful, and you are kind, too—so you showed yourself to my daughter; yet you live alone here and give yourself to these wretched petitioners and serve here as any lowborn maiden might do . . .”

Abruptly he pulled her close to him and kissed her; startled, she tried to push him away, but he held her so tightly she could not escape. Her mouth was surprised at the warmth of his lips.

“I mean you no dishonor,” he whispered. “I would be your lover—or your husband, if you would have me.”

She pulled away frantically and ran from the room, flying up the stairs as if pursued by demons, her heart pounding and the sound of her own blood beating in her ears. In Phyllida’s room she found Chryseis rocking the baby and singing to him in a small, thin voice. Phyllida was sleeping, but she sat up as Kassandra burst into the room.

Kassandra had been ready to pour out the whole story; but looking at Chryseis, she thought:
If I complain of him they will send him away; and then this child will be again at the mercy of the chances of the road.

So she said only, “My head aches from the sun; Phyllida, will you exchange duties with me this afternoon, and take the offerings in the shrine, if I care for the baby? I can send someone to fetch you when he needs to be fed.”

Phyllida agreed gladly, saying she was weary of staying indoors with the child, and it was really time he should be weaned anyhow. When she had gone, Kassandra put the baby to play in the sunshine, and sat down to think about what had happened to her.

She had panicked foolishly, she was sure; no priest of Apollo would have raped her in the God’s shrine.

Surely he had meant no real harm; she had felt no such revulsion as against the tribesman who had tried to ravish her when she rode with the Amazon band. If she had not run away, what
would
he have said or done? She would not have wanted to kill him; but would he have pushed matters that far?

She did not really want to know; she liked Khryse, and felt no real anger, only a sense of helplessness.
This was not for her.
She felt within herself the surge of dark waters, and knew this was not what the Goddess willed for her, either.

FOR SEVERAL DAYS Kassandra managed to avoid the duty of taking the offerings; but she heard from others that Khryse was making himself popular among the other priests and priestesses. Not only was he familiar with the secret craft of bees and the art of taking their honey (though she had been told that in Crete this work was forbidden to men and allowed only to special priestesses), but he was familiar with many of the arts known in Crete and Egypt as well.

“He has traveled in Egypt,” Charis told her, “and has learned the art there of marking tallies; and he has said that he will teach anyone who wishes to learn. It will greatly simplify our keeping of records, so that we can know at once what is in our storehouses without counting—even counting tally-sticks.”

Others told of his friendliness, of his many tales of his travels and of his devotion to his daughter; so that she began to feel she had behaved like a little fool. A day came when she returned to her ordinary duties, and when she entered the shrine and found Khryse there to work with her, she was ashamed to lift her eyes to his.

“I rejoice to see you again, Lady Kassandra. Are you still angry with me?”

Something in his voice strengthened her resolve, told her that at least she had not imagined what had happened between them.
Why should I be ashamed to meet his eyes? I have done nothing wrong; if there was any trespass, it was his, not mine.

She said, “I hold no grudge; but I beg you, never touch me again.” She was annoyed with herself, for she had spoken as if she were asking a favor, not demanding her right to refuse an unwanted touch.

“I cannot tell you how much I regret offending you,” he said.

“There is no need for an apology; let us not speak of it again.” She drew nervously away.

“No,” he said, “I cannot leave it at that. I know I am not worthy of you; I am only a poor priest, and you are a King’s daughter.”

“Khryse, it is not that,” she said. “I am sworn to belong to no man save the God.”

He laughed: a short, bitter sound.

“He will never claim you, nor be jealous,” he said.

“As for that, I should not be the first—”

“Oh, Kassandra,” he said, laughing, “I believe you innocent, but you are surely not innocent enough—or child enough—to believe
those
old tales!”

She interrupted him. “Let us not speak of such things; but whether it be true or false that the God may claim His own, I am not for
you
.”

“Do not say that,” he pleaded. “Never in all my life have I desired any woman as I desire you, nor did I think I could ever want any woman so much, until I beheld you here.”

“I will believe you if you say so,” she said, “but even if it is true, never speak of this again to me.”

He bowed his head. “As you will,” he said. “Not for worlds would I offend you, Princess; I am indebted to you for your kindness to my daughter. Yet I feel that Aphrodite, She who is mistress of desire, has bidden me to love you.”

“Such a Goddess sends only madness,” Kassandra said, “to men and women; I would never love any man at Her bidding. I am the Sun Lord’s own. And now say no more of this, or we shall quarrel in truth.”

“As you will,” Khryse said. “I say only that if you deny the power of the One whom all women must serve, it may be that She will punish you.”

This new Goddess is created by men,
Kassandra thought,
to excuse their own lechery; I do not believe in Her power.
Then she remembered her dream, but she shrugged.
I have had it so much on my mind, it is like dreaming of thunder when one hears the rain on the roof.

“There are worshipers in the Temple, and we must take the offerings; will you teach me your new method of tallying them in writing? I have seen the picture writing of Egypt, but it is very complicated, and once, years ago, an old man who had lived there told me that Egyptian scribes must study all their lives to learn it.”

“That is so,” Khryse said, “but the priests of Egypt have a simpler writing which is not so difficult to learn, and the Cretan style is simpler still, for each mark is not a picture or an idea, as on the tombs of the Kings, but a
sound,
so it can be written down in any language.”

“Why, how clever! What God or great man created this system?”

“I do not know,” Khryse said, “but they say the Olympian Hermes, the messenger God who travels on the wings of thought, is patron God of writing.” Khryse took out his tablets and tallying sticks. “I will show you the simplest signs and how to write them down; and then they can be copied on clay tablets, so when they dry we will have a record that will never perish and does not depend on any man’s memory.”

She learned quickly; it was as if something in her were crying out for this new knowledge, and she soaked it up as the parched ground absorbed rain after a long drought. So well did Kassandra learn the Cretan writing that she threatened to be quicker at it than Khryse; and then he insisted she must learn no more.

“It is for your own good,” he insisted. “In Crete no woman may learn this writing, not even the Queen. The Gods have ordained that women are not to be taught these things, for it will damage their minds, dry up their wombs, and the world will become barren everywhere. When the sacred springs are dry, the world thirsts.”

“This is foolishness,” she protested. “It has not harmed me.”

“Would you be able to judge? Already you have refused me, or any lover; is this not an insult to the Goddess, and a sign that already you have refused womanhood?”

“So you refuse me this out of pique at what I refused you?”

He looked bitterly wounded.

“It is not me alone that you have refused; it is the great power of nature which has ordained that woman is made for man. Women alone have that sacred and precious power to bear . . .”

It seemed so ridiculous that Kassandra laughed in his face.

“Are you trying to tell me that before the Gods and the Goddess gave men wisdom and learning, men could bear children, and that because man created other things he was denied that power? Even the Amazons know better than that. They do all manner of things forbidden to women here, yet they bear children as well.”

“Daughters,” he said scornfully.

“Many Amazons have borne fine sons.”

“I had been told that among the Amazons they kill male children.”

“No; they send them to their fathers. And they know all the arts which in tribes of different customs are reserved to men. So if women in Crete are not allowed to read, what has that to do with me? We are not in Crete.”

“A woman should not be able to reason like that,” Khryse protested. “The life of the mind destroys the life of the body.”