The Firebrand (36 page)

“Not very often,” Chryseis said blithely. “What else should a woman think about?”

“But you too are one of Apollo’s sworn virgins . . .”

“Not forever,” Chryseis said, “nor have I ever ridden with the Amazons, or pledged myself to hate men. I am a woman; I did not bid the Gods make me so, but since that is my lot whether I wish it or no, why should I not rejoice in it?”

“Being a woman need not mean behaving like a harlot,” said Kassandra, annoyed.

“I do not think you know the difference,” Chryseis said. “You would prefer to be a man, would you not? If the laws permitted, I think you would take a wife.”

Kassandra was about to give a sharp answer, then caught herself . . . Maybe Chryseis was right. She said stiffly, “We have all forgotten poor old Agelaus and his pyre. He must be consumed now; his bones should be put decently into an urn for burial. I will go; Paris is my brother, and I will do this last office of respect for his foster-father.”

All THE rest of the winter and into early spring the raids continued, day after day, and eventually, on each of the higher hills south of the city, Priam set up camps where his watchmen could see the approach of the ships and light warning beacons. So the Akhaians, landing, found nothing but bare walls and well-defended heights, and they got nothing but the journey for their pains.

Then Priam’s men took advantage of a long rainy spell to repair the outer walls and reinforce the great gates; when the Akhaians began to try to fight their way up the high streets into Troy itself, they could not enter. The lower city was a labyrinth of narrow streets built in steep steps, where a defender could easily kick an assailant’s feet out from under him.

“They are not finding this city quite the ripe apple for the plucking which they thought it would be,” Aeneas gloated, looking out over the palace wall at the streets black with Akhaians running up and down. Even Hector, for once, had been content to let the walls defend them, and most of the women in the city, it seemed, had come out to see the sight of the Akhaians’ frustration. Andromache was there with her now-toddling son, and Creusa had her infant daughter tied into her shawl. These alarms had now become so frequent an event that Hecuba no longer troubled to provide breakfast for the unwilling guests in the citadel after a night’s fighting; but when Hector issued handfuls of grain and flasks of oil to his fighting men, the rule was that any woman accompanying her husband could claim a similar share.

Kassandra stood by watching the distribution of rations and said, “Tell them to bring back the flasks.”

Hector protested.

“The flasks are not worth much; why be niggardly?”

“It has nothing to do with niggardliness. The potters go out to fight with the rest of the men. If this is to go on for long, there will not be enough of them to make more for every fighting day.”

“I see what you mean.” Hector gave the order, and no one complained. The storehouses of Troy were still high-piled with grain, and for the moment there was no shortage of food. Kassandra joined the women of Priam’s house in daily refilling the little oil flasks and pouring the rations of wine. Even at the end of winter there was plenty in the palace granaries; but Hector had begun to frown over them in concern.

“How shall we do the spring sowing if they raid us every day?” he asked one night at dinner in the palace.

“Surely they will not come during spring planting,” Andromache said. “At home in my country, all wars are suspended at planting and harvest to do honor to the Gods.”

“But these Akhaians do not fear the Mother,” Aeneas said, “and perhaps they will not honor our Gods.”

“But are not all the Immortals one?” Kassandra asked.

“You know that. I know it,” Aeneas said. “Whether those Akhaians know it—that is another story. From what I heard, it would not surprise me greatly if they felt war more important to them than any Gods.” He smiled at her and said, “Don’t worry about it, Kassandra. It is men’s business.”

“Yet if they come,” she said, “it is the women who will suffer more than the men.”

He looked surprised for a moment. Then he said, “Why, that’s so; I never thought of that before. A man faces nothing worse than an honorable death; but women must face rape, capture, slavery . . . It’s true: war is not for women, but for men. I wonder how a woman would conduct this war.”

Kassandra said with great bitterness, “A woman would have managed never to provoke it. Then, if the Akhaians wanted the gold and goods of Troy, they would have come against us knowing they were not fighting for ‘honor,’ but out of greed, which the Gods hate.”

“Remember, Kassandra, there are men who think of this war as a great playing field, a games-ground where the prizes are no more than laurel wreaths and honor.”

Kassandra nodded. “Hector runs into every battle as if he were to win a bronze caldron and a white bull with gilded horns.”

“No, you are wrong,” Aeneas said; “there is nothing foolish or reckless about Hector. It is only that we all must live under the rule of our chosen God; and Hector belongs to the God of battles. But his God is not my God; war may be a part of my life, but it will never be my only chosen life.” He touched her cheek lightly and said, “You look weary, Sister; there cannot be so much here for which you must fatigue yourself. The Queen has many women, and any one of them could do these small services. I think the Gods have ordained something more important for you; and we men may need your special strengths before this war comes to its end—whatever end the Gods have decreed for us.”

He turned away, stopping beside his wife. She saw him bend to look inside the shawl, touching the baby’s face with his finger; he said something, laughing, and turned away to go back to the men.

How different from Khryse,
Kassandra thought, watching him move down the hill.
I said it at his wedding: if my father had found me such a husband, I would have been glad.

She straightened her back wearily and bent again to the task of filling the little flasks of oil.

“Kassandra, you are spilling oil all down the edges; don’t fill the ladle so full,” reproved Creusa, coming to sit beside her. “What was my husband saying to you for so long?”

“He was asking how I should conduct this war if I were a soldier,” Kassandra said, surprised into truthfulness. But Creusa only laughed.

“Well, don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” she said scornfully. “I am not the sort of woman who is jealous if her husband says two words to another woman.”

“I told you the truth, Creusa; that was one of the things he said. Also, we were wondering what we should do if the Akhaians fail to observe the sowing-truce for spring planting.”

“Oh, I suppose because you are a priestess, and would know about such things,” Creusa said. “But even Agamemnon could not be as impious as that. Could he?” And when Kassandra did not answer immediately she demanded, “You who are a prophetess—you should know that. Could he?”

Kassandra could not answer; but she said, “I hope not. I do not know what they do, or how they serve their Gods.”

BUT BEING a prophetess was not enough; later the whole first year of the war became a blur in her mind of fires, raids, men screaming, burned alive from fire-arrows. A woman had wandered down unwitting into the Akhaian camp, and been abused by a dozen men. She was found screaming in delirium; the healer-priestesses of the Sun Lord’s Temple fought to save her, but on the first day she seemed well enough to be left unguarded for a moment, she flung herself from the high wall of the citadel, and someone too lowborn to avoid the task had to go down and retrieve her shattered and broken body from the stones far below.

A few days before spring sowing, the priests and priestesses rose to a joyous trumpet call from the palace below, and found the harbor empty of ships; the Akhaians had gone away, leaving only a long black strip of beach, dirty and fouled from where their tents had been.

There was rejoicing in the city, even as all Hector’s men went down to clean away their filth and debris. His son, little Astyanax, came too. Running about now, and prattling, he was a great pet among the soldiers; every minute he brought up some abandoned bit of rubbish he thought a treasure: a shining bronze harness-buckle, a wooden comb broken to a stub, a bit of used vellum on which someone had scrawled a crude map of the city. Kassandra took this from the protesting child and stood looking at it for a long time, wondering what enemy of Troy had made this.

“Give it back!” shouted Astyanax, reaching up for it, and Kassandra said, “No, little one. Your grandsire must see this.”

“See what?” asked Hector, taking the parchment from her hand and giving it back to the child. Kassandra bent and reclaimed it, disregarding the angry child’s howls.

“What is the matter with you, Kassandra? Give it to him. They are gone; there is no reason to care what rubbish they may leave behind,” Hector said. “No. Stop yelling, little son, and you shall have a ride in Father’s chariot.”

“They are not gone for long,” Kassandra said, “or, with
this,
would they have given up such an advantage?”

“You are making too much of this,” said Hector. “What do you want with it?”

She traced on it the familiar markings which she could not entirely read.

“Someone from Crete has done this; and I thought they were our allies. I must show it to him ...”Then she thought better of it and said, “Helen has a Cretan woman among her entourage; I will show this to Aithra.” As both a Queen and a priestess, if any woman knew this odd kind of writing, it would be she.

“Well, if you wish,” Hector said with a shrug. “I never knew such a woman for making much of trifles.”

But Aithra looked at it without comprehension and said that she had indeed seen such markings in Crete, but she had not been schooled to read them.

“I cannot even guess whose hand it may be,” she said. “Perhaps Khryse will know,” and Kassandra was ashamed to explain to the dignified woman why she did not wish to confront the priest.

But at last she took it to Charis and explained; Charis knew why she feared and disliked Khryse, and agreed to come with her while she consulted the priest.

Khryse examined it carefully, frowning, his lips moving, tracing the symbols with his forefinger; then he looked up and said, “This is no more than a map of the city; but the names are written on it. See? This shows the Queen’s chambers, the granaries, the great dining-hall, every part of the palace marked; see, and Apollo’s Temple, and here the Temple of Pallas Athene.”

“I thought as much,” said Kassandra. “Can you tell me who wrote this?”

“I cannot say who wrote this; but it was no friend of Troy. I can say only that it was probably not a Cretan,” said Khryse, “for we are taught to make the letters differently, just a little, in Crete.”

That much, Kassandra thought, she could have guessed. Later she took it to Priam, who paid little attention, though he at once recognized it for what it was.

“I cannot think of a dozen men outside Troy who could have drawn this; armed with this, it would be no task at all to find any place in Troy,” he said. “Only one who knew the palace and the city very well could have done it, and I cannot think that one of ourselves would have done so. Only . . .” Priam hesitated, then shook his head. “No; he is my sworn friend and has been our guest. I cannot believe that he would betray us.”

“Father, who?” she asked, and Priam, shaking his head, said “No. Only . . . No.”

“Odysseus?” she asked.

“Kassandra, do you really think my old friend could be so false?”

She did not wish to think this of Odysseus; but the possibility was there. She said only, “In war men forget other oaths, Father.”

“It may be. But he pledged to me that he would not be drawn into this war,” Priam said. “I will not accuse him unheard. Your thoughts are filled with poison, Kassandra.”

“Father, it was not I who thought of such a thing,” she said, “I only asked if that was your thought.”

“I am still certain that I wrong my old friend with such an idea,” Priam said, “and I shall wait to ask him to his face if this was his work.”

In her heart, Kassandra was certain; Odysseus, so she had heard, was full of such crafts and wiles. Yet she did not wish, either, to think he would betray his old friendship with Priam and with Troy.

There was not long to wait; the Akhaians had not been gone ten days when the ship of Odysseus was sighted in the harbor. Kassandra had come to the palace to visit Creusa and make a healing brew for her child, who was ailing with a summer fever, and afterward was summoned to the great hall. Aeneas came at once to greet her; as usual, he embraced her and kissed her cheek.

“Is it well with the child, Sister?”

“Oh, yes; there is nothing much wrong with her; I would do better to make a potion for Creusa which would cure her anxieties. Every time the wind changes, she thinks the little one is sick to death. At least Andromache has learned that babies have little upsets and it is better not to dose them too much: they will get better by themselves, and if they do not, there is time enough to call for a healer.”

“I am relieved to hear it; but be patient with Creusa, Sister; she is young and it is her first child. Come and have some dinner,” Aeneas said, leading her forward. Odysseus got up from the guest-seat beside Priam and came to Kassandra; he embraced her so hard that she flinched and gave her a great smacking kiss.

“So it is my beautiful best girl,” he said, “and what have you been doing these months of war? I have a gift for you: a string of amber beads which matches your bright eyes exactly; I have never known anyone else whose eyes are that yellow with just a glint of red in their depths,” he added, drawing out the necklace from the folds of his tunic and putting it round her neck. Kassandra sighed, taking it off and holding it between her hands, examining the shining beads almost covetously.