The Firebrand

  Hecuba said slowly, “When Polyxena and I were too weary to watch longer—already the sun was rising—I stepped into the garden for a moment, and I thought I felt Troilus touch my hair as he did when he grew too tall to kiss me except on the top of the head. He was such a sweet little boy, the dearest of all my sweet boys . . .” Her eyes filled and spilled over again, and Kassandra hugged her mother close.

  “He was certainly at your side,” she said; “I swear it to you.”

  “And Hector—you say he too is at peace—but how can his spirit be free when we have not his body to give it decent burial and pay honor to his spirit?” Hecuba demanded. “And if it be so, then why have funeral rites been ordained by the Gods?”

  “I know only what I have seen, Mother.”

  “It is no use,” said Hecuba despairingly, after considering this for a time. “I cannot think of his spirit as free while I see his poor body . . . Look how the dust rises, even after a full night of heavy rain!” she exclaimed, and began to cry again.

  Kassandra tried to dry her mother’s tears with her veil, chiding her, “It would break Hector’s heart to see you cry like this. Akhilles cannot hurt him now, whatever he may do. Even if he should cut up Hector’s body and feed it to his dogs, it would not harm the part of Hector we knew, not at all.”

  Hecuba cringed and looked sick. “How can you say such things, Kassandra?”

  “I am sworn by Apollo to speak the truth; to those who will not hear it I can only say that this does not excuse me from speaking it,” Kassandra replied, wondering why only her mother could make her this angry even—or especially—when she was trying to say nothing that could upset her.

  “But here you are saying that we could feed our Hector to the dogs—”

  “Mother, I said no such thing!” Kassandra was furious now, but with an effort she kept her voice steady and calm. “You did not hear me aright! I said only that if Akhilles in his madness should do such a thing it would make no difference to Hector, but only to us.”

  “But you were saying—I heard you—that we did not need to give him funeral rites,” Hecuba said, and Kassandra sighed as if she were dragging a very heavy weight uphill.

  “Mother, I do not think funeral rites matter at all to Hector or to the Gods, but only to us,” she repeated, as if she were trying to explain to Honey why she could not eat a dozen cakes.

  Hecuba thrust out her chin. “And I say this is only one of your wild notions,” she said, and turned away.

  “Yes, very likely, Mother,” Kassandra said, stifling her rage. She is old; I cannot expect her to understand anything that is new to her.

  “But I beg you to say nothing like that to Andromache, Kassandra; she has already enough grief to bear without that.”

  “Without what?” asked Andromache, stepping up to the wall in time to hear the last words.

  “I was saying to her,” Kassandra began, and Hecuba flashed an angry Don’t you dare glance at her; Kassandra realized that the argument with her mother had made her forget the exact words she had intended to speak.

  She said wearily, “Only that in a vision last night I spoke with Hector and he bade you be comforted, because he is content and at peace, whatever they may do to his body.” There was more; Hector had bidden her to say to Andromache—what? That he would come to take his son . . . but no! I can’t say to her that her son will die, when she has lost Hector too . . . she . . . what was it . . . that she wouldn’t want her son to live in the days that are coming. . . .

  Andromache was watching her with arched-brow skepticism; Kassandra said, “He bade me say that—that he would remain to watch over his son.”

  “Much good that does either of us,” Andromache said, with the wide-open eyes of suppressed tears, “when he has left us.”

  “But he does not want you to cry and grieve,” Kassandra said. “It cannot help him now.”

  “Every seer and soothsayer tells us that,” Andromache said, and she sounded bitter. “I had hoped for something better from you, Kassandra, if indeed you can see beyond death.”

  “I speak as the God bids me speak in such words as people are willing to hear,” Kassandra said, and turned away. Out on the field, Akhilles went on whipping his horses in an ever more maniacal fury.

  All day, as the sun rose and declined over Troy, this went on. Twice Paris led out a party to try to capture Akhilles’ chariot and Hector’s body, and twice the troops of Agamemnon drove them off again; three of Priam’s lesser sons by his palace women were killed, and at last they realized Akhilles was simply too well protected.

  “No more,” Priam said after the third attack. “The sun is setting; when it is dark, I will myself go down to Akhilles and try to bargain with him to ransom my son’s body.”

  How foolish, Kassandra thought, and how useless; Hector is not in that lump of rotting flesh out there tied behind Akhilles and his damned chariot. Why could she see this when her parents could not? Should they not be wiser than she was? It frightened her that they were not.

  She felt ill and faint; she had stood all day by her mother and had not even partaken of the hard bread and oil portioned out to the soldiers at noon. She went and ate a little bread, washing it down with a few sips of watered wine, then went with Hecuba, who was assisting Priam’s body-servants to dress him in his richest robes.

  “If I go to Akhilles without robing myself in my finest,” he said, “he may believe I do not think him worthy of honor. I don’t, of course, but I don’t want him to think so.”

  “I’m not so sure, Father,” Paris said; he was standing beside his father, trimming his beard meticulously with the scissors Helen used for her tapestry. “Perhaps that madman’s vanity would be more flattered if you went to him robed simply in mourning, as a suppliant.”

  “Yet showing him the gold of Troy may arouse his greed if we cannot appeal to his honor,” Andromache said.

  “We can hardly appeal to his honor,” said Paris. “It seems obvious to me that he has none. The question is how we can best persuade him to give us Hector for burial.”

  “I will go to him as a suppliant,” Priam said. Already he was energetically tearing off his robes. “Bring me the plainest garment I own. Also, I will go to him alone.”

  “No!” Hecuba cried, falling to her knees before him in an agony of despair. “We have already seen he has no respect for customary honor, or Hector would even now be in his tomb! If you go within his reach, he will certainly kill you or mistreat you, and perhaps offer the same kind of insult to your corpse that he has offered to Hector’s. You cannot go to him unguarded.”

  “If I must, I will go first to our old friend Odysseus, who will bring me safely to Akhilles,” Priam said, “and we know he wants the good opinion of Odysseus; he will offer me no insult in his presence.”

  “That’s not enough,” Hecuba declared, clinging tightly to his knees. “If you are bent on this folly you shall not take a single step; for I will not let you go at all.”

  Priam tried to shake her loose, but she would not be dislodged. He stood scowling crossly.

  “Come, my lady,” he said at last, “what would you have me do, then? If I go to Akhilles with armed men, he will only think I am challenging him to single combat; is that what you want?”

  “No!” Hecuba cried, but she refused still to loose her hold.

  “Well, then, what do you want me to do? Why can a woman never be reasonable?” Priam demanded.

  “I don’t know, my lord and my love; but you’re not going down to that madman alone!”

  “Let me go,” said Andromache with quiet dignity. “Let him explain to Hector’s widow and to his child why he will not ransom him.”

  “Oh, my dear—” Priam began, but Hecuba started up in indignation.

  “If you think I’d let you take my grandson within a league of that fiend—”

  “A better thought,” Helen said: “take a priest—if only as a witness before the Gods; Akhilles fears the Gods—”

>   “Better yet,” said Priam, “I will take two priestesses, Kassandra and Polyxena. One serves Apollo and one the Maiden, so whichever Immortal Akhilles fears may witness his impiety.”

  He turned to Kassandra and said, “You are not afraid to go with your old father into Akhilles’ presence, are you, girl?”

  “No, Father,” she said, “and I will go unarmed if you will, or weaponed; have you forgotten I was trained as a warrior?”

  “No,” Polyxena said in her childish voice, “no weapons, Sister; we go barefoot with our hair unbound, praying for his mercy. It will flatter his vanity to have us kneeling at his feet. Go and robe yourself in an unadorned white tunic without embroidery or bands, and comb out your hair—or better yet,” she added, seizing the scissors from Paris, “cut it in token of mourning.” She hacked vigorously at her long reddish curls, disregarding her mother’s cries of protest. Then she began to cut away Kassandra’s, and as Kassandra looked, shocked, at the waist-length tresses lying on the floor, she exclaimed, “Do you begrudge Hector your vanity?”

  I wouldn’t if I thought it would make a fingernail’s worth of difference to Hector, Kassandra thought, but was wise enough not to say the words aloud. She let Polyxena take off her rings and the necklace of pearls she wore; her sister then stripped off her own jewels. Priam kept only one large and beautiful emerald ring on his finger—a gift for Akhilles, he said—and removed his own sandals. Kassandra took a torch in her hand, and Polyxena another, and with their father they went down from the palace. At the gates of Troy, Priam bade his servants turn back.

  “I know you do not want to desert me,” he said, “but if we cannot do this alone it probably cannot be done at all. If Akhilles will not listen to a grieving father and sisters, he would not listen to the whole armed might of Troy. Go back, my children.”

  Most of them wept, and cried out with grief and fear for him; but at last, one by one, they turned back and the three suppliants went through the opened gates, and began moving deliberately, by the light of their two torches, across the plain.

  The ground was still muddy underfoot from the last night’s rain; and it was very dark, for the sky was covered with thick clouds which now and then opened to show a withering moon. Kassandra shivered in her plain robe, the cold rising up through her muddy feet, and wondered if the sky would open for a further downpour. Such a useless errand, and yet if it gave peace of mind to her father, how could she refuse?

  Priam moved slowly, she noticed, with a pain at her heart, as if his legs would hardly carry him and he were borne along by his strength of will alone. Will this, then, be his death? Oh, damn Hector for having the bad luck and the bad sense to go and get himself killed! she thought, stumbling along behind Polyxena with her eyes so full of tears that she could hardly see where she was going.

  Was Hector still here on this plain, bound somehow to that lump of decaying flesh tied behind Akhilles’ chariot? Why did he not come and speak with them, forbid his father to humble himself to Akhilles? No, Hector had bidden her farewell and said they would not meet again. If she had told her father and mother that she had seen the ruin of Troy, would they have believed her? Or would it have made them even more eager to see all things done in order while there was still time enough?

  A solitary watchman challenged them: “Who goes there?”

  Priam’s voice sounded thin and quavering; Kassandra had never realized quite how old and feeble he sounded.

  “It is Priam, son of Laomedon, King of Troy; I seek a parley with the Lord Akhilles.”

  There was a muttering of voices, and after a time a lantern flashed on them.

  “My lord of Troy, you are welcome, but if you have an armed guard you must leave them here.”

  “No guard at all, armed or unarmed,” Priam said. “I come only as a suppliant to Akhilles; my only company is my two young daughters.”

  It made them sound, Kassandra thought, as if they were little girls, not grown women past twenty. As if explaining this, Priam added, “They are both sworn priestesses, one of Apollo and one of the Maiden; not the wives of warriors.”

  “Why are they here, then?”

  “Only to support our father if his steps should stumble by the way,” said Polyxena, as the torch flashed in their faces.

  Kassandra added, “I am known to the Akhaian captains; I was present at the negotiations for the return of Chryseis, daughter of Apollo’s priest.” After she said this she wondered if she should have mentioned it; Akhilles had not come out of that encounter so well that he would wish to be reminded of it.

  But the watchman evidently didn’t know or didn’t care about that. He said, “Let them come, then,” and lowered the torch, saying, “Follow me.”

  He led the way across the ground, rutted by chariot wheels, toward the light that streamed from the tent of Akhilles. Inside was warmth and even a certain degree of comfort; chairs covered with furs and skins, tapestry hangings and a table spread with fruits and wine. Akhilles sat at the center of the tent, looking as if he had arranged himself to give audience. At the far end of the tent, in the shadows between the light of half a dozen lamps, lay the shrouded and mummified figure of Patroklos, just as Kassandra had seen it in her vision. Nearer the door stood Agamemnon, and beside him Odysseus with a cup of wine in his hand; they looked as if they had been set up for a tableau. Akhilles was apparently just fresh from his bath; he looked very clean, his skin as pink as a little child’s; his hair, which had been cut short, silver-gilt in the light, was being combed by a slave, whom Kassandra recognized as her mother’s woman Briseis. As his gaze fell on Priam, he put up his hand to stop the combing, and the woman drew back.

  “Well, my lord of Troy,” he said, his thin lips stretching back in what Kassandra thought of as a grin of contempt, “what brings you out on a night like this?”

  As if he didn’t know perfectly well! But it was obvious to all of them that Akhilles was all set to enjoy this. Priam came forth into the lantern light; Kassandra and Polyxena drew together, watching him. Priam knelt clumsily down, extending his hands in a pleading gesture toward the younger man.

  “Oh, my lord Akhilles, I am sure I need not say to you why I have come; I beg you to yield up to me what is customary and proper, and give me the body of my fallen son Hector for proper burial.”

  Akhilles’ facial muscles barely twitched into a slight smile. Priam rushed on, “You are so valiant, sir; you have fought long; but all these years of battle, we have returned your dead to you that their bodies may be given to the fire and their spirits sent off properly to the Afterworld.”

  “Hector angered me,” Akhilles said. “He really should not have had the arrogance to go up against me, whom the Gods have sworn to protect.”

  Priam stopped and swallowed; he could not think what to say to that. Kassandra clenched her fists under her hanging sleeves.

  And he dares speak of arrogance?

  Priam said at last, “My lord Akhilles, a warrior challenges the finest opponent he can. And he has fallen; you who are so powerful, can you not be merciful to Hector’s wife and child as well?”

  “No,” said Akhilles, “I can’t.”

  He stopped, and Kassandra could hear them all listening for his next word; but he was so silent for so long that she thought he intended to leave it at that. But then he said, “I have sworn that I will have the revenge that has been given to me.”

  Priam leaned forward and laid his hands on Akhilles’ knees. His words rushed out of him.

  “Prince Akhilles, you must have had a father once; can you not for your own father’s sake be merciful? Hector was the eldest of my sons; I was proud of him as your father must have been of you. And when the gallant Patroklos fell in battle, Hector did not seek to keep his body; he honored a brave fallen foe! He came to the funeral games for Patroklos, because, he said, Patroklos would not begrudge him a good dinner; and he said that he looked forward to having much to talk about with Patroklos in the Afterlife. They were both warriors,
and when the battles of this world were over he trusted they would be friends as fellow warriors. Let us lay Hector to rest as you will bury Patroklos.”

  Akhilles looked toward the shadowed corner of the tent, and Kassandra saw that his eyes were suddenly filled with tears. She could see emotions chasing themselves over his features: hatred, scorn, pity, sorrow; but the sorrow predominated. Her father had evidently found the one thing that might cut through the arrogance and scorn. Akhilles said slowly, “You are right, my lord of Troy; Patroklos has a friend, then, in the Afterlife. Guard!” he snapped out. “Go out and bring us the body of royal Hector!”

  The soldier bowed to the ground and fled.

  Akhilles said, “What of a ransom? What ransom do you offer me, then?”

  Priam muttered, “That is for you, noble Akhilles, to say.” He drew the ring from his finger and set it on Akhilles’ finger. “First I offer this as a gift to you with my thanks.”

  Akhilles stroked it consideringly. He said with his cruel smile, “I suppose Hector is worth more to you than a few captured chariots.”

  The madman is enjoying this. It was obvious to Kassandra that he was contemplating something outrageous. Priam mumbled, “I have sworn that I will pay without haggling whatever you ask, Prince Akhilles.”

  Akhilles rubbed his chin, evidently intending to extort the most drama he could from the scene. “Agamemnon—what should I ask for ransom?”

  “Get a good one,” Agamemnon said carelessly. “The King of Troy can afford anything you ask; his city has half the riches of the world within its walls.”

  Odysseus interrupted and said clearly, “Your nobility will be measured by your generosity, Akhilles; will you allow a Trojan to outdo you in generosity?” His face was turned away; Kassandra thought that he was ashamed. She wished that they could have dealt with Odysseus alone.

  “It’s easy to see what a friend to the Trojans you have always been, Odysseus,” said Agamemnon. “I have not forgotten how we hardly persuaded you to fight on our side at all.”