The Firebrand (79 page)

BEFORE HER lay the plain of Troy in the early sunlight. Within the city no one was stirring; outside, a few torches guttered weakly against the sunrise.

The silence was absolute. Even the distant line of the sea beyond the Akhaian earthworks lay dead calm and molten as if the very tide itself had ceased to pull upon the land. The reddish overcast of the sky was like faraway flames swallowing the last dim flicker of the setting moon. It was again as in her dream: the wooden Horse before the walls seemed to rear upward, pawing with monstrous hooves at the city.

She screamed, hearing her own voice die unheard in her throat, and then screamed again, pressing against the silence until at last, she could hear her voice as if it were tearing her throat open: “Oh, beware! The God is angry and will strike the city!”

It was as if behind the dead silence she could hear great roiling waves of sound as if Apollo and Poseidon, in their struggle for the city, had broken the deadlock and Poseidon had thrown the Sun Lord down.

Her screams had not been unheard; already women were flocking out of the buildings in all stages of undress.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

Kassandra was dimly aware of what they were saying.

“What is it, Kassandra?” asked Phyllida calmly, speaking to her soothingly. “Can you not tell us quietly what it is that you have seen?”

She was still screaming out words. She tried to listen to herself—for she was as confused as her hearers, and it seemed as if her head had been cloven with an ax—and she thought,
If I were listening, I would believe I was mad too.
Yet in spite of the confusion, one part of her mind was clear, with the icy clarity of despair, and she struggled to bring that part into focus and to ignore the part that was a chaos of panic and terror.

She heard herself crying out, “The God is angry! Apollo cannot conquer the Earth Shaker; the city walls will be destroyed! Our own God will do what the Akhaians could not do in all these years! We are lost, we are destroyed! Hear and flee!”

But of what use was a warning? It was upon her that no one would escape, that she could see only death and disaster. . . . She became aware that she was fighting Phyllida’s restraining hands and her friend was saying gently to one of the other priestesses, “Give me your sash to tie her, lest she do herself some hurt. Look, her face is bleeding where she has scratched herself.” She passed the cloth carefully around Kassandra’s hands.

Kassandra said desperately, “You need not tie me; I will not hurt anyone.”

“But I fear you will harm yourself, my dear,” Phyllida said. “Go, Lykoura, bring me wine mixed with syrup of poppy seeds; it will calm her.”

“No,” Khryse said, striding toward them. He roughly shoved Phyllida away and pulled the sash from Kassandra’s hands. “She needs no drug; no soothing draft can calm her now. She has had a vision. What is it, Kassandra?” He laid his hands on her brow and said in a strong, stern voice, looking compellingly into her eyes, “Say what the God has given you to say; I pledge by Apollo, none will lay hands on you while I live.”

But you are as powerless now as your Sun Lord,
she thought frantically.

“Listen, then,” she said, trying to silence her beating heart with the pressure of her clasped hands at her bosom. “The Earth Shaker has overthrown the Sun Lord as He will overthrow our city. We will feel Earth Shaker’s rage more strongly than we ever have before. Not a wall, not a house, not a gate, not the palace itself will escape.

“Warn the people to flee, even into the arms of the Akhaians! Cover the cooking fires; make sure no lamp is near to the stores of pitch or oil. Let no one remain within doors, lest his body be broken by falling stone.”

Khryse said sternly, turning toward the women, “We may still have a little time. Go quickly and release the serpents, any that have not taken flight already. Then two of you go to the palace and inform the King and Queen that we have had evil omens and bid them flee to open ground. They may not heed, but we must do what we can.”

“It will avail nothing,” Kassandra cried out, trying to stop herself even as she spoke. “None can escape the wrath of Poseidon! Let the women take refuge in the Temple of the Maiden; She may have some pity on us.”

“Yes, go,” Khryse said to the women. “Take the children there, and remain beneath the open sky till the quake subsides ; there perhaps you can hide from our foes if they break into the city. There are great spoils to loot in Troy, and they may not climb that far.” He held Kassandra as she began to recover her senses; in her head there were sharp pain and a drowning sensation, as if she looked out at the world from deep underwater. “I must go, Kassandra, and do what I can to spread the warning. Do you want that soothing draft? Will you take shelter in the Sun Lord’s courts or will you go down to the town? What can I do to aid you?”

She found that Khryse’s voice came to her as if across the plains and legions of the dead; but when she spoke, her own voice was calm.

“Thank you, Elder Brother, I need nothing. Go and do what you must, and I will go and make certain my child is safe.”

Khryse walked away, and Kassandra went to her room. Honey slept there, still curled in blankets, but Kassandra noted that the snake was gone. Wiser than humans, it had sought refuge in some secret place known only to the serpentkind. Kassandra bent and gently shook the child, waking her. Honey put her arms up to be lifted, and Kassandra dressed her quickly. Somehow she had to get the child safely out of Troy before the invaders broke through the walls.

She said, “Come, darling,” and took Honey’s hand. “We must go quickly.”

Honey looked confused, but obediently trotted along beside Kassandra as they crossed the compound. Hurrying up toward the Maiden’s Temple with Honey’s hand in hers, she stumbled, and strong hands picked her up.

“Kassandra,” said Aeneas, “it has come. This was your warning?”

“I thought you had left the city,” she said, trying to steady her voice.

“Surely you cannot stay now,” he said. “Come with me; I shall find a ship bound for Crete—”

“No,” she said. “Come—quickly. The Gods have forsaken Troy.”

She led him swiftly into the innermost shrine of the Maiden’s Temple; there were a few priestesses there, and she cried out to them: “Quickly, extinguish all the torches—yes, even the sacred flame! The Gods have deserted us!”

She herself, releasing Honey’s hand, took the last torch and crushed out the fire that burned before the Maiden, and as the priestesses were rushing out of doors, she tore down the curtain.

“Aeneas, this is the most sacred object in all of Troy; take it.” She drew forth the ancient statue, the Palladium, and wrapped it in her veil. “Carry it across the seas, wherever you may go. Build an altar to the Goddess and establish the sacred fire. Tell the truth of Troy.” He moved as if to draw away the veil and behold the sacred object, but she stayed his hand.

“No, no man must look upon it,” she said. “Swear you will carry it to a new Temple and there consign it to a priestess of the Mother. Swear!” she repeated, and Aeneas looked into her eyes.

“I swear,” he said. “Kassandra, you can have no further reason to remain. Come with me—a priestess should be the one to take this beyond the seas.”

He bent to embrace her; she kissed him wildly, then drew back.

“It cannot be,” she said; “my fate lies here. It is yours to leave Troy unwounded and alive. But go at once, and all our hopes and all our Gods go with you.”

“You must not stay here—” he began.

“I pledge to you, I shall leave Troy before the sun rises again,” she said. “It is not death that awaits me; but I am not free to go with you. The Gods have decreed otherwise.”

He kissed her again and took the wrapped bundle.

“I swear it by my own divine lineage,” he said. “I will do your will—and Hers.”

Kassandra’s eyes blurred with tears as he hurried out of the Temple.

She had hardly crossed the court when inside her head she heard a great roar. The ground swayed beneath her feet; she stumbled and fell with Honey in her arms, and lay still, her body pressed against the suddenly unstable earth which rippled and bounced beneath them. Her only emotion was not fear but rage:
Earth Mother, why do You let Your sons play this way with what You have made?

The movement seemed to go on forever, under the frightened sobs of the child in her arms. Then it subsided, and she realized that the sun was still only a fraction above the horizon; the quake could hardly have lasted more than a few moments. Honey’s crying had subsided to a soft hiccuping.

Kassandra looked behind her, and saw that the sound she had heard had been the walls of the Sun Lord’s house collapsing inward. Hardly a building in the enclosure was still standing. Of the main building where they dwelt, no more than a heap of rubble was left. Certainly nothing could be salvaged from there. There was a muffled screaming; someone had been trapped inside under the fallen stones. Kassandra looked helplessly at the pile—she could not with all her strength have budged a single stone—and very soon the sound ceased.

Somewhere in the gardens, a bird began to sing.

As if in answer, the ground seemed to shudder and rock again, and then was still. Stunned, Kassandra walked toward the vantage point where last night she had looked down on the plain.

The great gate and front wall of Troy had fallen, and in the midst of the battered rubble of wall and gate, Kassandra saw the wooden Horse lying, one leg raised grotesquely as if it had indeed kicked the wall down with its great hooves. The torches had set the scaffolding on fire and it was burning fiercely; but against the Horse itself, the flames licked in vain. Flames were rising from the poorer quarter with its wooden houses. It was the vision she had seen first as a child, the vision no one had believed: Troy was burning.

Through the gap in the fallen wall, Akhaian soldiers were already pouring in in floods, rushing into still unfallen houses and leaving laden with everything they could carry. Where could she hide? More important, where could she take Honey? One building within the compound of the Sun Lord’s house was still standing: the shrine. There might be food there, remnants of the offerings of the day before. She was conscious, to her own shock, of a sudden fierce hunger. She went inside, and paused: if there should be another quake, the building might collapse. Then she saw that the statue of the Sun Lord had fallen, and beneath it, crushed, lay a human figure. Approaching with a numb curiosity—there was nothing to be done—she saw that it was Khryse who lay there.

At last,
she thought;
now the God has truly struck him down.
She knelt beside the fallen man, closing the wide-open eyes, then rose and passed on.

In the room behind the statue, where the offerings were kept, she found loaves of bread—quite stale, but she ate one, dividing it with the little girl, who seemed stunned and did not cry. She thrust another into the fold of her robe—she might need it—and stopped to consider. The Akhaians were already plundering the lower town. Had the palace fallen? Had they all been killed—her parents, Andromache, Helen? Were there any Trojan soldiers left alive to halt the sack? Or were she and her child the only ones left alive to watch the devastation?

She listened for any sound that would prompt her to think that someone else remained alive in the Sun Lord’s house, but there was only silence. Perhaps people still lived in the palace below. Had they heard the warning in time to get out into the courts or gardens?

Although the sun was now quite warm, she shivered. Her warm shawl—every stitch of her clothing except the shift she stood in—was buried in the ruins of the Sun Lord’s Temple.

She should go down to the palace; although she was aware of the Akhaian soldiers in the city, she was desperately anxious to know if her mother still lived. She picked up Honey and began to run down the street.

The way was blocked with rubble and the debris of partly fallen houses: the people she met were mostly stunned-looking women, like herself half-clad and barefoot, and a few half-armed soldiers who had risen early to join Deiphobos. When they saw she was heading for the palace, they followed her.

The palace had not collapsed. The front doors had, and some of the carvings had fallen away, but the walls were still standing, and there was no sign of fire. As she approached she heard a loud wailing, and, recognizing her mother’s voice, began to run. On the flagstones of the forecourt, heaved up and uneven now, she saw Priam lying—dead or senseless: she could not tell. Hecuba bent beside him, wailing; Helen, wrapped in a cloak, Nikos at her side, and Andromache, clutching Astyanax in her arms, were with her.

Andromache raised her eyes to Kassandra and said fiercely, “Are you content, Kassandra, that the doom you prophesied has come on us?”

“Oh, hush!” said Helen. “Don’t talk like a fool, Andromache. Kassandra tried to warn us, that is all. I am sure she would rather have left all this unspoken. I am glad to see you unharmed, Sister.” She embraced Kassandra, and after a moment, Andromache followed suit.

“How is it with Father?” asked Kassandra. She went and bent over her mother, gently lifting her up. “Come, Mother, we must take refuge in the Maiden’s Temple.”

“No! No, I will stay with my lord and King,” Hecuba protested, her wails turning to sobbing.

Andromache embraced her, and then Astyanax came and put his arms around Hecuba, saying, “Don’t weep, Grandmother; if any harm has come to Grandfather the King, then I will look after you.”

“Hush, love,” Helen said, as Kassandra knelt beside her father, taking the cold hand in hers, and raised a closed eyelid. There was not the faintest stir of motion or life; the eyes were already filmed over. She knew she should join Hecuba in ritual keening, but she only sighed and let his hand fall from hers.