There must be something worthwhile in marriage, or why would all women be so eager for it? Then she remembered the words of Queen Imandra: that she was priestess born. At least this was a valid reason for her difference.
Kassandra’s eyelids were drooping, and she blinked and sat up straight, wishing this were over; she had been awake and traveling before daylight, and it had been a long day.
Priam had called Paris to his side, and they were talking about ships, the route for sailing to the Akhaian islands and how best to approach Agamemnon’s people. Andromache was half asleep. This was, thought Kassandra, the dullest feast she had ever known—though after all, she had not attended so many.
Finally Priam was proposing a toast to the wedded pair, and calling for torches to escort Hector and his bride to the bridal chamber.
First among the women, Hecuba led the procession with a flaming torch in her hand. It flickered and flared brilliantly colored lights along the walls as the women, with Kassandra and Polyxena on either side of Andromache, escorted her up the stairs, followed by every woman in the palace, Priam’s lesser wives and daughters, and all the servants down to the kitchen maids. The torches smoked and hurt Kassandra’s eyes. It seemed to her that they were flaming high, that there was a dreadful fire beyond the walls, even within the bridal chamber; that they led Andromache forth to some dreadful fate . . .
Clasping her hands to her eyes as if to shut out the sight, she heard herself screaming, “No! No! The fire! Don’t take her in there!”
“Be quiet!” Hecuba gripped her wrists till Kassandra writhed with the pain. “What is the matter with you? Are you mad?”
“Can’t you hear the thunder?” Kassandra whispered. “No, no, there is only death and blood . . . fire in there, lightning, destruction—”
“Be still!” Hecuba commanded. “What an omen at a bride’s bedding! How dare you make such a scene?”
“But can’t they hear, can’t they see . . .” Kassandra felt as if she brimmed with darkness and could see nothing but darkness shot through with fire. She pressed her hands against her eyes to shut it out. Was it no more than the smoking torches, distorting her sight?
“For shame!” Her mother was still scolding as she dragged her along. “I thought the princess of Colchis was your friend; would you spoil her bridal night with this fuss? You have always been jealous whenever anyone else is the center of attention; but I thought you had grown out of that ...”
They led Andromache into the bridal chamber. It too had been painted with sea-creatures so realistic that they seemed to wriggle and swim on the walls. Hecuba had told her at supper that workmen from Crete had been in the palace for a year, redecorating the walls in the Cretan style, and that the carved furniture was tribute from the Queen of Knossos.
On the table beside the bed there was a little carved statue of Earth Mother, Her breasts bared over a tightly laced bodice, a flounced skirt, a serpent clasped in either hand. Andromache, as the women were stripping off her bridal finery and putting her into a shift of Egyptian gauze, whispered to Kassandra, “Look, it is Serpent Mother; She has been sent from my home to bless me this night . . .”
For a moment the dark flooding waters inside Kassandra again threatened to swell up and take over. She was drowning with fear; it was all she could do to keep from shrieking out the terror and apprehension that threatened to strangle her: Fire, death, blood, doom for Troy . . . for all of us . . .
Her mother’s face, stern and angry, held her silent. She embraced Andromache with a numb dread, thrusting the beautiful little statue at her and murmuring, “May She bless you with fertility, then, Little Sister.” Andromache seemed no more than a tall child in her shift, her hair brushed out of its elegant curls and streaming over her shoulders, her painted eyes enormous and dark with the kohl smudged around the lids. Kassandra, still submerged in the dark waters of her vision, felt ancient and withered among all these girls playing at weddings without the faintest idea what lay beyond.
Now they could hear the chanting of the men as they escorted Hector up the stairway to claim his bride. Andromache clung to her and whispered, “You are the only one who is not a stranger to me, Kassandra. I beg you, wish me happiness.”
Kassandra’s throat was so dry she could hardly speak.
If only it were as easy to bestow happiness as it is to wish it. She murmured through dry lips, “I do wish you happiness, Sister.”
But there will be no happiness—only doom and the greatest grief in the world. . . .
She could almost hear the shrieks of anguish and mourning through the joyous singing of the marriage hymn, and as Hector, escorted by his friends, came into the room, the streaked red torchlight made their faces crimson with blood . . . or was it only the bones of their faces illuminated like skulls?
The priestess standing beside the bed gave them the marriage cup. Kassandra thought, That should have been my task, but her face was frozen in dread, and she knew she would never have had the heart to set it in her friend’s hand.
“Don’t look so woebegone, Little Sister,” Hector said, touching her hair lightly. “It’ll be your turn soon enough; at supper our father was talking of finding you a husband next. Did you know, the son of King Peleus, Akhilles, has made an offer for you? Father says there’s a prophecy that he’ll be the greatest hero of the ages. Maybe marriage to an Akhaian would settle these stupid wars—though I’d rather fight Akhilles and have the glory of it.”
Kassandra gripped frantically at Hector’s shoulders.
“Have a care what you pray for,” she whispered, “for some God may grant it to you! Pray that you never meet with Akhilles in battle!”
He looked at her in distaste and firmly removed her hands from his shoulders.
“As a prophetess, you are a bird of ill omen, Sister, and I would rather not hear your croakings on my wedding night. Get you to your own bed, and leave us to ours.”
She felt the dark waters drain away, leaving her hollow and empty and sick, without the slightest idea what she had been saying. She murmured, “Forgive me; I mean no harm. Surely you know I wish you nothing but good, you and our kinswoman from Colchis . . .”
Hector brushed her forehead with his lips.
“It has been a long day, and you have traveled far,” he said. “And the Gods alone know what madness you have been taught in Colchis. It is no wonder you are all but raving with weariness. Good night, then, Little Sister, and—this for your omens!” He took the torch beside the bed and swiftly crushed out the flame. “May they all come to nothing, just like this!”
She turned away, unsteady, as the remaining women raised their voices in the last of the marriage songs. She knew she should join in, but felt that for her very life she could not utter a single note. On groping feet she blundered away from the bed and out of the marriage chamber, hurrying to her own room. She fell on her bed, not even bothering to take off her finery, or wipe the smeared cosmetics from her face. She fell into sleep as the dark waters surged over her again, drowning out the remaining echo of the joyous hymns.
17
FOR MANY DAYS now the harbor had rung with the sound of hammers and adzes as the ship grew in the cradle where the keel had been laid, and harpers had come almost every evening to the Great Hall to sing the lay of Jason and the building of the Argo.
For weeks provisions had been loaded for the voyage, while sailmakers stitched with their huge needles on the voluminous sail where it was laid out on the white sand of the beach; to dry or smoke barrels of meat, fires burned night and day in the courtyard; baskets of fruits were brought, and great jars of oil and wine, and always more and more weapons. It seemed to the women that for months now all the smiths in the kingdom had been hammering away at arrowheads of bronze, swords of bronze or iron, armor of all kinds.
Dozens of Priam’s best warriors were going with Paris, not to make war but in case they encountered pirates in the crossing of the Aegean, whether the notorious plunderer Odysseus (who ca
me sometimes to Priam’s palace to sell his loot, or sometimes only to pay the toll Priam exacted of all ships northbound through the straits) or some other pirate. This expedition, laden with gifts for Agamemnon and the other Akhaian Kings, was not to be plundered; the mission, or at least so Priam said, was to negotiate an honorable ransom for the Lady Hesione.
Kassandra watched the ship growing under the builders’ hands, and wished passionately that she were to sail in her with Paris and the others.
On two or three days while the warriors were training in the courtyard, she borrowed one of Paris’ short tunics and, concealing herself under a helmet, practiced with them at sword and shield. Most people believed it was Paris fighting; since he seldom appeared on the practice field, she was not at once discovered. Even though she knew it was pretense, she enjoyed it immensely, and for a considerable time her long-limbed skill and muscular strength kept her identity unknown.
But one day a friend of Hector’s matched her and knocked her down, and her short tunic flew up above her waist. Hector himself came and jerked the helmet from her head; then, angrily, wrested the sword out of her hand, turned it edgewise and beat her hard on the backside with it.
“Now get inside, Kassandra, and tend to your spinning and weaving,” he snarled at her. “There is enough women’s work for you to do; if I catch you masquerading out here again, I will beat you bloody with my own hands.”
“Let her alone, you great bully,” cried Andromache, who had been watching from the sidelines; she had been fitting a crimson cushion to Hector’s chariot and tacking the last bits of gold thread on it. Hector turned on her angrily.
“Did you know she was here, Andromache?”
“What if I did?” demanded Andromache rebelliously. “My own mother, and yours too, fights like a warrior!”
“It’s not suitable that my sister, or my wife, be out here before the eyes of soldiers,” Hector said, scowling. “Get inside, and attend to your own work; and no more conniving with this wretched hoyden here!”
“I suppose you think you can beat me bloody too!” Andromache said pertly. “But you know what you shall have from me if you try!” Kassandra saw, in astonishment, the line of embarrassed crimson that crept upward in her brother’s face.
Andromache’s dark hair blew out around her face in the fresh wind; she was wearing a loose tunic almost the same color as her wedding gown, and looked very pretty. Hector said at last, so stiffly that Kassandra knew that he was stifling whatever he really wanted to say as not being suitable before an outsider, even a sister: “That’s as it may be, Wife. Nevertheless, it is more seemly for you to go to the women’s quarters and mind your loom; there is plenty of women’s work to be done, and I would rather you do it than come out here learning Kassandra’s ways. Still, if it makes you feel better, I shall not beat her this time. As for you, Kassandra, get inside and attend to your own affairs, or I shall tell Father, and perhaps he can put it in such a way that you will mind his words.” She knew that the sulkiness on her face reached him, for he said, a little more kindly, “Come, Little Sister, do you think I would be out here wearing myself into exhaustion with shield and spear if I could stay cool and comfortable inside the house? Battle may look good to you when it is only playing with spears and arrows with your friends and brothers, but look.” He bared his arm, rolling up the woolen sleeve of his tunic past the bright embroidered edgework, and showed her a long red seam, still oozing at the center. “It still pains me when I move my arm; when there are real wounds to be given and received, war does not look so exciting!”
Kassandra looked at the wound marring her brother’s smooth and muscular body, and felt a curious sickening tightness under her diaphragm; she flinched and remembered cutting the throat of the tribesman who would have raped her. She almost wanted to tell Hector about it—he was a warrior and would certainly understand. Then she looked into his eyes, and knew she would not; he would never, she thought, see beyond the fact that she was a girl.
“Be glad, Little Sister, that it was only I who saw you stripped like that,” he said, not unkindly, “for if you were revealed as a woman on the battlefield . . . I have seen women warriors ravished and not one man protest. If a woman refuses such protection as is lawful for wives and sisters, there is no other protection for her.” He pulled down his helmet and strode away, leaving the women staring after him, Kassandra angry and knowing she was supposed to be ashamed, Andromache suppressing giggles. After a moment, the giggles escaped.
“Oh, he was so angry! Kassandra, I would have been terrified if he had been that angry with me!” She drew her white shawl around her shoulders in the fresh wind. “Come, let’s get out of the way. He’s right, you know; if any other man had seen you”—she drew down her mouth into a grimace, and said with an exaggerated shudder—“something terrible would certainly have happened.”
Seeing no alternative, Kassandra followed her, and Andromache linked her arm through her sister-in-law’s.
Kassandra for the first time in days became aware of the prophetic darkness, filling her up inside.
While she had been on the field with a weapon, she had not been conscious of the thing which had made her cry out on the night of the wedding. Now, through that dark water she saw Andromache, and all around her something else, overlaid with a cold and frightening fire of grief and terror, but enough joy before the sorrow that it made her lay her hand urgently on Andromache’s arm and say softly, “You are with child?”
Andromache smiled; no, thought Kassandra, she glowed. “You think so? I was not sure yet; I thought perhaps I would ask the Queen how I could be sure. Your mother has been so kind to me, Kassandra; my own mother never understood or approved of me, because I was soft and a coward and I did not want to be a warrior; but Hecuba loves me, and I think she will be happy if it is so.”
“I am sure of that, at least,” Kassandra said, and then because she knew Andromache was about to ask “How do you know?” she fumbled for words she could use instead of trying to explain about the dark waters and the terrible crown of fire. “It seemed for a moment,” she said, “that I could see you with Hector’s son in your arms.”
Andromache’s smile was radiant; and Kassandra was relieved that for once she had given pleasure instead of fear with her unwanted gift.
In the days following, she did not again take up her weapons, but went out often, unrebuked, to see how the ship was progressing. It grew daily on the great cradle on the sand, and almost before Andromache’s pregnancy was visible to unskilled eyes, it was ready for launching, and a white bull was sacrificed for the moment when it slid easily down the ramp toward the water.
At that moment Hector, standing between his wife and Kassandra, said, “You who prophesy unasked all the time, what do you see for this ship?”
Kassandra said in a low voice, “I see nothing. And perhaps that is the best omen of all.” She could see the ship returning in a golden glow like the face of some God, and nothing more. “But I think it lucky that you are not sailing, Hector.”
“So be it, then,” said Hector. Paris came to bid them goodbye, clasping Hector’s hand warmly and embracing Kassandra with a smile. He kissed his mother and leaped on board the ship, and his family stood together, watching it drift out of the harbor, the great sail bellying out with the wind. Paris stood at the steering oar at the back, straight and slender, his face alight with the westering sun. Kassandra shook off her mother’s arm and walked away through the cheering crowd; she went straight to where a tall woman stood with her eyes fixed on the sail as it dwindled to the size of a toy.
“Oenone,” she said, recognizing her from the moment when, with Paris, she had held the girl as if in her own arms, “what are you doing here? Why did you not come to bid him farewell with the rest of his kin?”
“I never knew when first I loved him that he was a prince,” said the girl. Her voice was as lovely as she was, light and musical. “How could a common girl like me come up to the King and the Quee
n when they were saying goodbye to their son?”
Kassandra put her arm around Oenone and said gently, “You must come and stay at the palace. You are his wife and the mother of his child, so they will love you as they do Paris himself.” And if they do not, she thought, they can just behave as if they do, for the honor of the family. To think he went away without bidding her goodbye!
Oenone’s face was flooded with tears. She clutched Kassandra’s arm. “They say you are a prophetess, that you can see the future,” she said, weeping. “Tell me that he will come back! Tell me that he will come back to me!”
“Oh, he will come back,” said Kassandra.
He will come back. But not to you.
She was confused at the depth of her own emotions. She said, “Let me speak to my mother about you,” and went, with Andromache, to Hecuba. Andromache said in gentle reproach, “Oh, Kassandra, how can you? A peasant girl—to bring her to the palace?”
“She’s not; she’s as well born as either of us,” Kassandra said. “You’ve only to look at her hands to see that. Her father is a priest of the River God Scamander.”
She repeated this argument to Hecuba, whose first impulse had been to say, “Of course, if she is carrying Paris’ child—and how can you be so sure of that, my dear?—we must see that she is well provided for and not in want. But to bring her to the palace?”
Nevertheless, when she met Oenone she was charmed at once by her beauty, and brought her to a suite of rooms high up in the palace, light and airy and looking out on the ocean. They were empty, and smelled of mice, but Hecuba said, “No one has used these rooms since Priam’s mother lived here; we will have workmen in and have them redecorated for you, my dear, if you can manage with them this way for a night or two.”