The Firebrand

  “I’ll send a messenger at once to the Sun Lord’s house,” Deiphobos promised her courteously. “Will you go at once to the palace, Sister?”

  “Yes; I am longing to see my mother,” Kassandra said. “I hope she is well?”

  “Queen Hecuba? Oh, yes; though like us all, she grows no younger,” said Deiphobos.

  “And our father? He lives still in health? I heard he had suffered some illness . . .”

  “Word came of this as far as Colchis? He suffered the stroke of the God; he is lame, and his face stricken on one side,” the young officer told her. “And now Prince Hector leads the armies of Troy.”

  “Yes, that I had heard,” Kassandra said, “but on the long road from Colchis I had no news at all, nor was the journey favorable for the Sight; for all I knew, he might have died since then.”

  “No, I rejoice to say that though he grows old, he is well enough to come out every day on the wall to see what happens,” Deiphobos said. “As long as Priam still leads us, Hector will not be too foolhardy. Akhilles”—he made contemptuous gesture toward the Akhaian camp—“is always trying to lure Hector out to single combat; but my brother has more sense than that. Besides, we all know how Agamemnon played a filthy trick on his own daughter, so it’s not likely they’d observe the rules of single combat; more likely they’d rush him ten or more at a time. You can’t trust an Akhaian as far as you can throw him; they say, if one of ’em kisses you, count your teeth, thieving bastards. But I see they let you through safe. . . .”

  “Safe, but I encountered their thieving ways,” Kassandra told him. “What they did not steal they left only because they feared Apollo’s serpents—and I do not think that was from any reverence for the God, but only fear of the serpents themselves. And they have taken both of my mother’s waiting-women—who were not Apollo’s servants but mine, or rather Hecuba’s.”

  Deiphobos came and gently patted her shoulder.

  “Never fear, Sister, we’ll get your waiting-women back. But let me send to the Sun Lord’s Temple for men to unload your cart, and for you, an escort up to the palace; it isn’t fitting for a princess to walk alone through the city. Better yet, let me send to the palace for a sedan chair; it’s what the Lady Andromache uses when she comes down to greet Hector every day before the battles start.”

  Kassandra wanted to protest that she was certainly capable of walking; but Honey was heavy in her arms, and she agreed to use the chair.

  Before long, servants in the distinctive robes of the Sun Lord’s house appeared, and Kassandra gave careful instructions about the serpents, promising that she would herself come to supervise their care after she had greeted her parents. Then Deiphobos conducted her through the side gate into a small guardhouse. There he fetched her refreshment while she awaited the chair that was to carry her to the palace.

  She was unaccustomed to the sun’s glare, its heat even in this season. It soon seemed frighteningly hot to her. Also, she was worried about Kara and Adrea.

  Honey was crawling on the floor of the little guardhouse; Kassandra noticed that she was getting her tunic very dirty, and her knees not much less so, but she was far too tired to care.

  Deiphobos guided her attention to a small stairway carved out from the stone which actually led up inside the wall.

  “Would you care to have a look from the top of the wall? You can see everything that goes on in the Akhaian camp from here. The King is coming down now to have a look—he comes every day about this time,” Deiphobos said. “I hear his guards.” He glanced at Honey. “The baby will be safe here,” he said. “She’s big enough that no one will step on her.” He picked up a spear that was leaning against the wall, and slung it in his belt. “There—nothing else she can hurt herself with. Come along.”

  Kassandra followed him up the narrow steep stairs; he turned back at the top to give her a hand up. It was true: from here she could see all through the Akhaian camp. He pointed out to her the large ornamented tent that was Agamemnon’s, the somewhat smaller but more ornamental one that belonged to Akhilles and Patroklos, the quarters of Odysseus, which looked as if he had moved a ship’s cabin ashore. “And many others. There’s a long roster of the ships out there which belong to the Akhaians—some bard was making a song about it,” he said. “To hear them tell it, every hero from the mainland has turned up to help Agamemnon and his crew. There’s a sizable list of our allies too, but I don’t suppose you’re interested in that.”

  “Not particularly,” Kassandra confessed. “I heard enough about both sides in Colchis.”

  “Colchis,” he said thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, Colchis hasn’t come out for either side; why hasn’t their King sent soldiers for Troy?”

  “Because Colchis has no King,” Kassandra informed him. “Colchis is ruled by a Queen; and this last year she has been pregnant; her heir—a daughter—was born just before I left.”

  “No King, and a woman’s rule? It seems a strange way to manage a city.”

  Before he had time to say anything more, the sound of soldiers approaching interrupted them, and Priam, accompanied by several of his soldiers—many of whom Kassandra recognized as the sons of his palace women—came up on the top of the wall.

  It was well she had been warned by the Sight; otherwise she might have recognized her father only by the rich cloak he wore. He had been a hale and hearty man with fresh color, verging on middle age; now she saw an old man, his skin grayish and wrinkled, his face fallen away at one side with a drooping eyelid, the corner of his mouth sagging. His speech too was heavy and thick.

  He demanded of Deiphobos, “What was going on in the Akhaian camp this morning? Was it those Akhaians intercepting weapons again? If this keeps up, we’ll be melting down our old swords to make new ones. We need a couple of wagonloads of iron from Colchis, but we’d have to arrange special escort or bribe someone to let it through . . .”

  He broke off and said, “How many times have I told you: no women here unless the Queen herself is present to make certain they behave themselves? You know as well as I do, the kind of women who come here to gawk at the soldiers—”

  Kassandra said, “No, Father; it is not Deiphobos’ fault; he offered me shelter from the sun and a view from the wall after the Akhaians captured my wagon . . .”

  She did not finish, but she did not need to; Priam recognized her and said, “So you have come back like an ill omen, Kassandra! I thought you had determined to pass the rest of the war in Colchis—one less woman for me to worry about should the city fall. But your mother has missed you.” He came and dutifully kissed her on the forehead. “Do you mean that the Akhaians dared to break Apollo’s truce?”

  As a small child, Kassandra had found Priam’s anger terrifying; now he simply sounded peevish, like an overgrown spoiled child. She said gently, “It doesn’t matter, Father; no one has been hurt, and Apollo’s property—including me, I suppose—is quite safe. And as soon as my chair is here, I shall go and reassure my mother.”

  “You are strong and healthy; why should you need a chair to carry you?” he demanded crossly.

  The war is not going as he wishes it, she translated to herself, and said demurely, “Yes, Father, I am sure you are right.”

  “Your chair is waiting for you,” Deiphobos said, and Kassandra saw it drawing up inside the wall. She went down the stairs and picked up Honey, wishing she could find a way to have the baby washed and fed before taking her to her mother; but there was no help for it now. She herself was disheveled from long traveling, and from the interlude in the dusty Akhaian camp, as well as from holding the dirty child; but there was no help for that either. And why should I put on my finest robe and tidy my hands and face for my mother? she asked herself. But when she was brought into Queen Hecuba’s presence, and saw her mother’s disapproving stare, she knew.

  “Well, Kassandra! My dear, dear daughter!” Hecuba exclaimed and came to embrace her, then drew back with a little grimace of dismay.

  “But wh
at have you been doing with yourself, my dear? Your dress is a disgrace, and your hair—”

  “Mother, after my encounter this morning with the Akhaians, it is fortunate they even left me a dress to wear before you,” she said with a smile. “I fear that the gifts I brought from your kinswoman Imandra were left in the Akhaian camp.”

  Hecuba looked deeply distressed. “They did not—offer you insult?”

  “Nobody raped me, if that’s what you mean,” Kassandra said, laughing.

  “How can you make a joke of such a thing?” her mother demanded.

  Kassandra said, kissing her, “Why, how can I do anything else? They are fools, all of them; but there is foolery enough in Troy, if it comes to that.”

  Hecuba’s eyes fell on the child in Kassandra’s arms.

  “Why, what’s this? A child, and such a young one . . . her hair . . . it curls the way yours did when you were that age. . . . Why, what . . . Who . . . How—?”

  “No, Mother,” Kassandra said quickly, “she is not mine—or rather, I did not bear her; she is a foundling.” Hecuba still looked skeptical, and Kassandra, sighing—why was her mother always ready to think evil of her?—said, “Would it be easy to find a man who would share my bed when it was occupied by a serpent—even one so small as this?” She reached inside her dress for the one that always coiled there during her waking hours.

  Hecuba gave a little scream. “A snake—and in your very bosom!”

  “She is my child far more than the baby,” Kassandra said, laughing, “for I hatched her myself from an egg; but anyone in my train can tell you how I found Honey on a hillside in a snowstorm, cast out to die by some mother who chose not to rear a girl this year.”

  Hecuba came and looked closely at the child. She said, “Now I look well, she is not at all like you.”

  “I told you that.”

  “So you did. I am sorry; I would not willingly believe . . .”

  Not willingly, perhaps, but you would have believed it, Kassandra thought.

  But then her mother asked the question she had been evading: “And where are Kara and Adrea?”

  “In the tents of Agamemnon and Akhilles,” she said,“but not by choice.” She explained what had befallen them.

  “So we must somehow arrange to ransom them—or exchange Akhaian prisoners for them, perhaps,” she said.

  “Arrange to exchange for them? Why should we do business with the Akhaians?” asked a familiar voice, and Andromache came into the room. “Oh, Kassandra! My dear sister!” and she flew to embrace her, ignoring the dirt on her robe. “So you have returned! I knew you were not traitorous enough to remain all through the war in Colchis! What a darling baby!” she exclaimed, staring at Honey. “Is she yours? No? Oh, what a shame!” Then she saw the snake and recoiled a little.

  “So you are still at your old game of playing with serpents! I should have remembered.”

  Honey, seeing the snake, began to cry and reach out her hands for it. Kassandra, laughing, allowed the little girl to wind it about her waist. Andromache shrank away with a glance of revulsion, but the child’s delight in the snake was unmistakable.

  “Why not get her a kitten, Kassandra?” Hecuba suggested. “It would be an altogether more seemly pet.”

  Kassandra laughed. “She is content with such pets as I give her; you should see her with our very matriarch of serpents—the one who is almost as big around as she is.”

  “Are you not afraid—snakes have not very good eyesight—the snake will make a mistake and swallow her by misadventure?” Andromache protested.

  But Kassandra said, “They know their own; Honey has fed her with doves and rabbits. But, Mother, this is not a proper subject for your rooms.”

  Hecuba asked, laughing, “The snake—or the baby?”

  “Both,” Kassandra replied, hugging her mother again. “Let me call someone to take her away for a bath and clean clothing. She will be prettier then; and besides, she has had nothing to eat since early morning.” Then, with a glance at Hecuba for permission, Kassandra summoned a servant to take child and snake to the house of the Sun Lord.

  “I too should present myself there soon, I fear,” she said, “although I am sure they would gladly give me leave to pay my respects to my mother and my family. And I would like to see Helen’s sons,” she added.

  “Ah, Helen’s sons,” Hecuba said drily. “There are jokes in the Akhaian army that Helen is raising up an army for Troy.”

  “As I cannot for Hector,” said Andromache, and her eyes were full of tears. “But that Akhaian woman, no sooner has she whelped than she is in pup again.”

  “What a thing to say,” Hecuba protested. “You had bad luck, that is all. You have borne Hector a fine son, and every man in the army knows his name and admires him. What more do you want?”

  “Nothing,” Andromache said, “and just between us women, I am glad enough to be spared the business of bearing every year or two; I told Hector that if he wishes for fifty sons like his father, he must get them as his father does. But so far he wishes only to share my bed and even refused one of the captured Akhaian women. Perhaps I am not as fond of children as Helen, but I would like to have a daughter before I am too old. And speaking of daughters, Kassandra, did you know that Creusa had named her second daughter Kassandra?”

  “No, that I had not heard,” Kassandra said, and wondered whether it had been Creusa’s doing or that of Aeneas.

  “And now before you go,” said Andromache, “tell me of my mother.”

  Kassandra told Andromache of the birth of the heir to Colchis; and Andromache sighed.

  “I wish that I might go to Colchis, so that Hector might be King there; perhaps when this wretched war is over that can be arranged.”

  “Imandra feels that her little pearl princess will be reared to be Queen,” Kassandra said. “And Hector would not be content to sit at the foot of the throne, as your mother’s consort does, and amuse himself in hunting and fishing with his companions.”

  Andromache sighed.

  “Perhaps not; but he would get used to it, I suppose, as I have gotten used to keeping indoors and spinning until my fingers are sore,” she said restlessly. “Now that you have returned, Kassandra, perhaps we can manage some excursions outside the walls . . .”

  “If the Akhaians allow it . . .”

  “Or if they get tired of sitting outside the walls and throwing rocks at the guards,” Andromache said. “That is about all they have accomplished in the last few months; though once or twice they have tried to storm the walls, and even brought extra-long ladders. But Hector had the idea of emptying the big soup kettle boiling for the guards’ dinner over their heads, and they went down a great deal faster than they had come up, I assure you.” She laughed heartily. “Now they always keep a great kettle of something boiling up there, and if it is something no worse than soup, the assailants are lucky. Last time it was oil, and they have not tried again since then; ai, the screams we heard that night from the Akhaian camp! All their healer-priests were out chanting, and sacrificing to Apollo, until past dawn. That will teach them to come sneaking up the wall when they thought all the guards were sleeping!”

  “You do not bear weapons now—but you have not lost your taste for warfare,” Kassandra commented.

  “I have a child to protect,” Andromache replied; and Kassandra remembered that she herself had indeed been ready to kill when the soldiers threatened Honey.

  “And I many children, but they are all of an age to fight for themselves,” Hecuba said. “And now, Kassandra, tell me: when you passed through the country of the Amazons, did you encounter our kinswoman? And had Penthesilea any message for me?”

  “I saw her only on the outward journey,” Kassandra said, and told her mother about the meeting with the Amazons, and how many of the women had chosen to settle into villages with men. Then, more troubled, she told about the starving Kentaurs on the return journey, and that she had seen no sign of any women of the tribes.


  “May the Goddess be with her,” said Hecuba fervently. “I have no sense that she is dead; and I think I might know. We have been as close as if we were twins; but she is four years younger than I. It is not beyond all possibility that one day we may see her in Troy.”

  “May that day be far off,” Kassandra said, “for she told me that if the war went desperately against us, she would come and end her days in Troy.” And with a curious flicker of the light, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud, she saw Penthesilea riding through the gates of Troy . . . in triumph, or in defeat? She could not tell; the vision was gone, and they spoke of other things.

  At last she rose and stretched herself. “I sit like any old gossip among women,” she said, “and I have duties awaiting me in the Sun Lord’s house. But it has been good to gossip and be idle”—and, she thought, to talk of women’s matters like the raising of children. She had once thought it must be very boring, but now, having a child of her own, she was beginning to understand that such woman’s talk could be absorbing. But to speak of nothing else for a lifetime . . .

  “It is not every day that you return from a journey of such length,” Andromache said. “Helen will want to see you, and show you her babies—and Creusa to show you your namesake. She is more like Polyxena than like you, with red hair and blue eyes—and as pretty as if Aphrodite had laid the gift of beauty in her cradle. She will marry a prince, if this war leaves any of us alive to think about marriages.”

  “I think no one will ever call my little one beautiful,” Kassandra said, “but to a mother I suppose even the plainest children are lovely. In any case, I intend, if the Gods are kind, to send her to Penthesilea to be brought up a warrior. I still wish I might have been.”

  “Oh, you cannot mean that, Kassandra,” said Hecuba, coming to embrace her in farewell.

  “Can I not? Mother, if any of Imandra’s gifts have survived the Akhaians, I will send them to you as quickly as the cart can be unloaded,” she said, and took her leave. Andromache said she would walk with her a little way.