The Firebrand (86 page)

“There is not that much good fortune left in the world,” Kassandra said, “but it will not change tomorrow nor the day after.”

“So you are still gifted with the Sight?”

“Not all the time, nor for many things,” Kassandra said.

“So what do you want of me, Kassandra? I can give you gold, clothing, shelter—you are my kinswoman, and you are welcome to remain in my house as a daughter—that would be most pleasing to me. I know the Temple of Serpent Mother would hail you as the chief of their priestesses.”

Klytemnestra too had made her such an offer; but she knew it was too late to spend her life within walls.

“Or if you wish,” said Imandra, “I will do as your father should have done long since, and find you a husband.”

Kassandra said fiercely, “I am as little inclined as ever to be some man’s property. In less than a year with Agamemnon I had a lifetime’s worth of that.”

Zakynthia suddenly interrupted; she came forward and fell prostrate before Imandra.

“O Queen,” the rough voice entreated, “it was laid on me by the Goddess to come to this city for your help. The Gods have called me to found a city, and I cannot do it alone. At first I thought the Goddess had sent me here to know if any of the Amazons yet survived, for She sent me a vision that only such a woman could assist me in this task.”

“And who are you?” asked Imandra.

“My name is Zakynthos,” said the one Kassandra had known as Zakynthia. “Is there none left of the Amazon women who could help me to found a city where the Goddess is served without Gods or Kings? I would not have an ordinary wife after the fashion of the Akhaians, but one who can serve as a priestess in the city. Yet I have heard there are no more such women.”

“No,” Kassandra said, “no Amazon survived that last battle, in which Penthesilea died.”

“I cannot accept that,” Zakynthos said, putting back the veil he had worn as a woman. “Now I am free of my vow, I will search the world over if I must.”

“What was your vow?” Imandra asked.

“To live as a woman until I came here to Colchis, so that I might know the life women must lead,” he said. “Before I had worn women’s garb three days, I knew why women must go in fear, and so I sought protection from the Trojan princess—and in her company as we traveled I discovered why women seek to be free of men. She needed no man’s protection or help.”

“Yet,” Kassandra said warmly, “the protection you gave me—sharing my journey and my burdens . . .”

“But it was not because I was a man,” Zakynthos said, “and again and again, I swore I would search the world over, if I must, for a woman in whom the Amazon’s spirit still lived.”

“And so,” Imandra said, “have you not found one?”

“I have,” said he, and turned to Kassandra, “and I have come to know her well.”

Kassandra laughed and said, “I have long outlived any desire for weapons, Zakynthos. Yet—how will you found your city?”

“I will sail far to the west into the great sea and there find a place where a city can be built,” he began. “Outside these accursed isles where men worship Gods of iron and oppression . . .”

Listening, Kassandra could not but remember Aeneas; this had been his desire too. She would willingly have helped him fulfill it, and Zakynthos seemed to have been fired by that same spirit.

“I seek a world where Earth Mother will be worshiped in the old ways,” he said with enthusiasm. “It is She who has given me this vision, a dream of a city where women are not slaves, and where men need not spend their lifetimes in war and fighting. There must be a better way for both men and women to live than this great war which consumed all my childhood and took the lives of my father and all my brothers—”

“And of mine,” Kassandra said.

“And of yours.”

Zakynthos turned and knelt again before Imandra. “I beseech you as this woman’s kinswoman, give me leave to take her in marriage.”

Imandra said, “But marriage is one of the evils which came with the new ways; who am I to give her to you, as if she were a slave?”

Zakynthos said with a sigh, “You are right. Kassandra, we have traveled far together; you know me well. Will you continue to travel with me—to build a world better than Troy?”

Kassandra, thinking of their long journey together, said slowly, “But, like other men, you will want a son . . .”

“I have carried your son at least half this long way in my arms,” he said. “If I can be a mother to your son, do you doubt I can be a father to him too? For I think if I sought the world over I could not find a woman more suited to my purposes. And I think perhaps it would suit your purposes too,” he added, smiling. “Do you wish to sit here at Imandra’s court and spin thread?”

“It does not trouble you that I was forced to be Agamemnon’s concubine and that I bore him a child? All men will know,” she said. He smiled very gently, and again she thought of Aeneas.

“Only as much as it troubles you,” he said. “And as for the boy, he is
your
son, and you have seen how well I love him. Someday we may have others for whom I can be both father and mother as well . . .” His voice was very tender as he added, “I would like to have a daughter like you.”

She had spent too much of her life with the idea that she could never marry; yet this war had taken all her kindred and she had no place of her own. And the Amazons too were gone, as Troy was gone.

Their new city might be one where men and women need not be enemies, where the Gods were not the implacable enemies of the Goddess. . . .

If Troy could not last forever, there was no assurance that the new city would. But if for her lifetime’s work she could have a share in building a city where men did not deform their sons into fighters so that they need not follow cruel Gods into battle, or their daughters into men’s playthings, then her life would be well spent.

She remembered the young girl she had been, seated in the Sun Lord’s house and dealing out wisdom to the petitioners. What had she said then?

I give such answers as they could give if they could trouble themselves to use such wits as the Gods gave them,
she remembered. But she had added,
Before I speak, always, I pause and wait in case the God has another answer to be given.

She listened within her heart, but there was only silence, and the memory of a God’s burning smile. Might a day come when like any dutiful wife she would see the face of the God in her husband? She looked at Zakynthos. He was no Sun Lord, but his face was honest and kind. She could hardly imagine a God speaking through him, but at least what he said would not be cruel or capricious. Agamemnon had been no worse than Poseidon; Paris had set Troy aflame at the bidding of a Goddess more cruel and capricious than any man. The worst of men, in her lifetime, had been no worse than the best of Gods. And what evil they had done, they had done at the bidding of Gods made in their own image.

She listened, but no God’s voice spoke to forbid her; she knew at that moment what her answer would be, and already her heart was racing forward across the great sea to a new world which, if it was no better than the old, would at least be as much better as men and women could make it.

“Let us go, Zakynthos, to search for our city. Perhaps one day those who come after us will know the truth of Troy and its fall,” she said, and took his hand in her own.

Somewhere, a Goddess smiled. She did not think it was Aphrodite.

Postscript

THE
Iliad
has nothing to say of the fate of Kassandra of Troy. Aeschylus in his
Agamemnon
presents her as a sharer in his death at the hands of Klytemnestra; it was regarded as perfectly permissible to introduce characters from the
Iliad
if their fate had not become a part of that poem. Euripides shows Kassandra as one of the Trojan captives; interestingly, she is the one woman who suggests revenge on their captors, but it is also made clear that she is insane. Yet another dramatic appearance shows Kassandra as leading the women of Troy in a heroic mass suicide.

However, tablet #803 in the Archaeological Museum in Athens reads as follows:

I WISH to acknowledge especially the help of my husband, Walter Breen, who assisted materially in the research for this book, and whose knowledge of classical Greek—both language and history—was of invaluable help in creating this story, particularly including the quotation from the Athens museum which ends this book, providing historical basis for the fate—and the very historical existence—of Kassandra of Troy, from whose viewpoint this story is told.

Readers will be likely to raise challenges: “That’s not the way it happened in the
Iliad.
” Of course not; had I been content with the account in the
Iliad,
there would have been no reason to write a novel. Besides, the
Iliad
stops short just at the most interesting point, leaving the writer to conjecture about the end from assorted legends and traditions. If the writers of Greek drama felt free to improvise, I need not apologize for following their excellent example.

One further apology:Walter’s knowledge of the language persuaded me, in the name of linguistic “correctness” and rather against my better judgment, to use classical transliterations rather than the more familiar Latinized forms; hence Akhaians for Achaeans (the term “Greek” was not known then), Akhilles for Achilles, and worst of all, Kassandra for Cassandra. To me the difference is appalling and changes the whole meaning of the name and character. A cow or a crow would not, after all, be the same creature if called a kow or a krow. To those whose aesthetic sensibilities are as acute as mine, and to whom the look of a name on the page alters its very essence, I can only express my apologies. Linguistics and aesthetics are, after all, very different philosophies, and the discordances between them will never be resolved—at least, not by me.

I also acknowledge my debt to Elisabeth Waters, who on the many occasions when I was “stuck” with the “what happens next” blues never failed to help me find the most constructive answer, and to the other members of my household who suffered all through the fall and the sack of Troy with me.

—MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY