The Firebrand (32 page)

“You are even more of a fool than I thought,” Kassandra retorted. “If this were true, it would be even more important to teach no man, lest it destroy him as a warrior. Are all the priests of Crete eunuchs, then?”

“You think too much,” Khryse said sadly. “It will yet destroy you as a woman.”

Her eyes glinted with mischief.

“And if I should give myself to you, it would save me from that dreadful fate? You are kind indeed, my friend, and I am ungrateful that I do not appreciate the great sacrifice you are willing to make for me.”

“You should not scorn these mysteries,” said Khryse soberly. “Do you not believe that because the God has put desire for you into my heart, it is a message from the God that I should have you?”

Raising her eyebrows with scorn, Kassandra said, “Every seducer has spoken so since time began, and every mother teaches her daughter not to listen to such false nonsense. Would you have me teach your own daughter this kind of thing, that because some man desires her it is her duty to give herself?”

“My daughter has nothing to do with this.”

“Your daughter has everything to do with this; my conduct is to be a model to her of virtue. Would you wish her to give herself to the first man who pleads that he desires her?”

“Certainly not, but—”

“Then you are a hypocrite as well as a fool and a liar,” said Kassandra. “I liked you once, Khryse; do not complete the work of destroying all my goodwill toward you.”

She walked away from him and out of the shrine. All the while they had worked together, he had not for a single day ceased his importuning. She would endure it no longer; she would go to Charis, or to the chief priest, and tell him she would no longer work with Khryse, for he had but one use for her, and that she would not allow.

It was twilight; trying to soothe her own exasperation, Kassandra moved down the hill toward the enclosure where the priestesses were housed. As she passed by the building, a small sound in the shrubbery disturbed her; she turned and saw two figures, melted together in the shadows. On impulse she moved toward them, and the man broke away and bolted. Kassandra had not recognized him and did not really care. The second figure was another matter; Kassandra moved swiftly and caught young Chryseis’ arm.

The girl’s dress was mussed, tucked up almost to her waist, leaving her crotch bare; her mouth was swollen and bruised; her face reddened and sleepy. Shocked, Kassandra thought,
But she’s a child, a baby!
Yet it was clear that in what they had been doing—and there was certainly no doubt about that—the girl had been an all-too-willing participant.

Sullenly the girl pulled her dress down and rubbed her arm over her face. Kassandra finally burst out, “Shameless! How dare you stand there like that? You are a virgin of Apollo!”

Defiant, Chryseis muttered, “Don’t look at me like that, you sour, dried-up spinster; just because no man has ever desired you, how dare you reprove me?”

“How dare I?” Kassandra repeated, thinking,
And it was because I was concerned for this girl that I concealed her father’s offense! There is no need to speculate how she came by her behavior.

She said quietly, “Whatever you may think of me, Chryseis, it is not my conduct at issue, but yours; this is forbidden to the maidens here. You sought refuge in the Sun Lord’s Temple; you must then obey the rules under which the other maidens live.”

Perhaps,
she thought,
it would be wisest to send forth the worthless daughter and father together from the house of the God.

“Go into the house, Chryseis,” she said, as gently as she could, “and change your dress and wash yourself, or it will not be only I who chides you.” The girl had been placed in her care; somehow she must manage it that Chryseis was not a disgrace to the Sun Lord’s house, or to Kassandra’s teaching. As Chryseis went indoors, she thought,
It seems now that I am to be at the mercy of Aphrodite; will Chryseis too complain that she is under the influence of that Goddess whose business is to lure women into unruly and lawless love?

She raised her eyes to the face of the sun high in the heavens.

“We are in
Your
power, Lord Apollo,” she prayed. “Surely You are in charge of Your house and the hearts and minds of those who have sworn their lives to You. I mean no disrespect to any Immortal; but cannot You keep order in Your own place and Your own shrine?”

THERE WAS no immediate answer to her question; but she had not expected any. For several days she avoided the shrine, pleading illness; it seemed as if the Sun Lord’s house, once so happy, had turned hostile, for Khryse was everywhere. At last she climbed the hill to the very height of the city, and there she offered a sacrifice to the Maiden, patron Goddess of Troy; her thoughts were in turmoil, and she asked herself if this was disloyalty to the Sun Lord, whose priestess she was. Yet she had been called to Earth Mother and made a priestess there too.

When she had offered her sacrifice, she felt calmer, though the Goddess did not speak directly to her. She returned to the Sun Lord’s house and presented herself at the evening ceremonies, and when she saw Khryse among the priests and he smiled at her, she did not seek to avoid his gaze. It was not she who had done wrong; why should she feel ashamed?

That night her dreams were confused and dreadful; it seemed to her that a storm raged over Troy, and that she stood in the highest part of the city, at the citadel of the Maiden, somehow seeking to call the lightning bolts to strike her first, that they might not fall on those she loved. The Thunder Lord of the Akhaians strode across the great giant-builded walls, shaking His fists. The Earth Shaker, Lord of Troy, who had been called to be consort to Earth Mother, was striving and struggling to protect His city. There were the other Immortals too, and somehow she, Kassandra, had angered Them.
But I have done nothing wrong,
she protested, in confusion. If anyone had trespassed, it had been Paris. She called out to the Sun Lord to save His city; but He frowned and hid the brightness of His face, saying,
They worship Me also among the Akhaians,
and she woke with a cry of dread. When she was fully awake, she realized the absurdity of the dream—surely the Gods, who were all-wise, would not punish a great city for the foolish transgressions of a single man and a woman.

After a time she slept again; and again she began to dream. She thought she held Phyllida’s baby at her breast; and she felt again the mixture of melting tenderness with horrible revulsion and despair. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. She struggled to consciousness. The touch on her breast was still there, and a dark shape bent over her, save where the light of the full moon glinted on the golden mask of Apollo. But she recognized the touch of the hand on her breast, and she opened her mouth to cry out.

The hand quickly moved from her breast to cover her mouth. “You are mine, Kassandra!” an all-too-familiar voice intoned. “Would you deny your God?”

Kassandra bit the hand, which was removed with a most ungodlike cry, and sat up, pulling her tunic back into place. “I know the voice of the God, Khryse,” she snarled furiously at him, “and it is not
your
voice! Blasphemer, do you think that Apollo cannot protect His own?”

Her voice had risen considerably on the last sentence, and she heard in the hallway the voices of the other priestesses coming to investigate the disturbance. She threw herself from the bed, trying to reach the door, but Khryse blocked her way and pushed her against the wall. His attempts to hold her there, while largely successful, were not silent, and the room quickly filled with a crowd of women, including Charis, Phyllida and Chryseis. Khryse turned his head so that the mask stared at the group of women.

“Leave us.” His voice was deep and impressive. Phyllida first gasped, seeing the mask of the God, then, recognizing the man’s voice, regarded him and Kassandra with horrified comprehension. Chryseis giggled; the rest of the women looked uncertain.

Kassandra hit him, hard, in the stomach and broke away from his grasping hands.

“Vile priest!” she said in a gasp. “You dare use the semblance of the God to satisfy your lusts! You profane that which you do not understand!” She was shaking with a mixture of rage and horror. “By the Mother of All, I wouldn’t lie with
you
if you
were
truly possessed by Apollo!”

“Would you not, Kassandra?” A shudder passed through Khryse’s body; and then, unexpectedly—and unmistakably—the voice was that of Apollo.
You who are My chosen one—surely you cannot think I would fail to protect you from a vicious and foolish mortal?

Kassandra heard Phyllida’s cry of recognition; but the dark tide flowed over her and filled her, and she felt the surge of the Goddess rising within her. The last thing she heard was the voice of the Goddess:

Then she knew no more.

HER BODY was propped against the wall, and every inch of her skin felt as though it had been burned. Nails clawed at her cheek and continued to rip her tunic at the shoulder.

“Murderess!” Chryseis screamed in her ear. “You have killed my father! You think yourself too good for him—you think that because you’re a princess you’re better than the rest of us! You act as if you were not even human! Well, you’re not—you’re a beast and a filthy coward . . .”

Kassandra opened her eyes. Khryse lay on the floor, dead white and very still. Phyllida was bending over him. “He’s going to be all right, Chryseis,” she said soothingly. “The God has taken him, no more.”

But Chryseis was not listening. “She’s a witch! She cast an evil spell on him!”

Charis pulled the hysterical girl away from Kassandra and thrust her into the arms of two of the other priestesses. “Get this senseless brat out of here!” Chryseis’ screams echoed as she was dragged down the hallway, then mercifully faded into the distance.

Kassandra felt her body slide to the floor, but she could do nothing to stop it. Her eyes were open, but everything seemed far away and not quite real. Only a part of her self was in her body; the rest hovered over the scene, watching as Charis and the governess picked her up and laid her back in her bed. A novice brought a beaker of wine; Charis poured some of it down Kassandra’s throat. Briefly it warmed her, and pulled her a bit further back into her body, but she felt terribly, unendurably cold, as if most of her life force had fled. She could see that Charis was holding her hand, but she couldn’t feel the clasp of the woman’s fingers. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed by homesickness for the Amazon encampment, and for Penthesilea, who had been more of a mother to her than Hecuba ever had been or would be. Tears blurred her vision and dripped down the sides of her face.

“Hush,” Charis soothed, drawing up the blanket and tucking it securely about her. “Rest now, and don’t trouble yourself. Time enough to sort things out in the morning.”

Behind Charis, Kassandra could see Phyllida reverently pick up the mask of Apollo. Two of the priests came in quietly, conferred briefly with the governess, then carried Khryse out. His eyes were open, but he looked dazed and uncomprehending.

The priests were talking to each other as they passed her bed; Kassandra caught the words “genuine possession.” But whose? Khryse’s, or her own?

She woke just before sunrise, feeling as if every muscle and bone in her body had been beaten with cudgels; she lay motionless, thinking of what had happened.

One thing was certain: Khryse had—unlawfully—worn the mask of the God and had attempted to seduce her. She was not quite sure what had happened after that; she remembered Chryseis tearing at her and screaming, and then she remembered the voice of Apollo, breaking through the noise and confusion in the room, and the ill-fated words she had flung at Khryse.

“I wouldn’t lie with
you
if you
were
truly possessed by Apollo . . .”

Had she truly said those words to her God? Khryse had deserved them; yet her whole body tightened in grief at the thought that Apollo Sun Lord might have taken them to Himself.

Still, beyond fear or regret, she knew now the source of the dark waters: it was the Goddess who had claimed her. She had given herself to the God in all the sincerity of her first love; yet she had not been free.

The door opened and Charis came in, bending over her with tenderness.

“Will you get up, Kassandra? We are all summoned to the shrine, to discuss what truly happened here last night.”

Charis brought her some wine, and bread and honey, but Kassandra could not swallow; her throat clamped shut, and she knew that if she tried to eat she would be sick.

Charis helped her to draw on her dress and brush her hair. Kassandra pinned it loosely into a braid, and followed the older priestess to the shrine, where the priests and priestesses were assembled.

One of the older priests, who had known Kassandra since her childhood, called them to order, saying, “We must find out the truth of this unfortunate incident. Daughter of Priam, will you tell us what happened?”

“I was asleep and dreaming and woke to find a man in my room. He wore the mask of the God, but I recognized Khryse’s voice. He had asked me to yield to him before,” she said, “and I refused him.” She raised her head, looking into Khryse’s eyes. “Ask the lecherous blasphemer if he dares to deny it!”

The priest asked, “Khryse, what have you to say?”

Khryse looked straight at Kassandra. He said, “I remember nothing; only that I awakened in her room with this wildcat clawing at me!”

“You did not deliberately put on the mask of the God in order to deceive the girl?”

“Certainly not!” said Khryse indignantly. “I call Apollo’s self to witness—but I doubt He will come to accuse or defend me.”