The Firebrand

CHAPTER 19

A few days later, a messenger arrived, with gifts from the King's house for the Temple, and a message for Kassandra herself.

"Your father and mother have asked that you may make a visit to your home for the wedding of your sister Creusa."

"I shall have to ask leave," Kassandra told him, but permission was readily granted - perhaps too readily. Kassandra knew that it would not have been so swiftly given for any of the other young priestesses, and she really wished to be treated as one of them; but she could not fault the priests and priestesses that they did not wish to offend Troy's King. They insisted only that -since she was not yet a full priestess but still in the probationary year - if she wished to spend the night in her father's house she must be properly accompanied and chaperoned by a senior priestess.

The priestess who heard her request said, "It lies in your power to confer a favour, daughter of Priam: who will you have to accompany you?"

Kassandra was not totally a stranger to these kind of courtly intrigues; whoever she chose, others might feel slighted. Making a choice no one could fault or envy, she chose the elderly Charis, who had first welcomed her to the House of the God.

Dressing herself in the most festive of the few simple dresses she had with her, with the older woman at her side, she went quietly through the streets, attended only by one of the Temple slaves.

Charis, a lifelong dweller in the House of the Sunlord, was nevertheless impressed as they approached the Great Citadel of Priam, and said little.

Kassandra was silent too, for she had looked down from the heights and seen again the dark ships in the harbor, not knowing whether they were really there or yet to come.

As they entered the forecourt, Hecuba came to greet them; Kassandra bent to embrace her mother - Hecuba was a tall woman but now Kassandra was taller still, and Hecuba lamented as she turned her face up to her tall daughter: 'You cannot be still growing! Why, you are taller than most warriors, Kassandra! A man might not wish to have you near—"

"What does it matter, mother? Since I am not to be married but to dwell in the House of the God…'

"That I shall never accept," said Hecuba with spirit. "I want to see your children before I die…'

But you never will, Kassandra suddenly knew; it came with the painful memory of holding Phyllida's child in her lap, that before she held her grandchild - the bitterness, the despair— Hecuba's eyes would forever have closed on this world.

"Mother, let's not speak of that; if you want a wedding, you have Creusa now to marry off, and Polyxena's older than I am, and still unwed. Find her a husband, and don't bother about me," she said. "Tell me about Creusa's husband."

"She is to marry Aeneas, son of Anchises," Hecuba said. "So handsome, they say he is truly a son of foam-born Aphrodite…'

"She is a Goddess of whom I know nothing," Kassandra said, before she remembered the beautiful one in Paris's dream; Goddess of love and beauty, surrounded by her doves. If his father claims to be the lover of Aphrodite, I should think the Goddesses would be angry with him," said Kassandra. "I must see this marvel of a man."

"Well, Creusa is content with him, and so is your father," said Hecuba, "and in my youth I would have been more than happy with such a husband." She turned a little anxiously to Kassandra and said, "Please try not to prophesy doom at this wedding, darling; it upsets people so much."

Kassandra thought with a surge of anger: Does she think I prophesy for the pleasure of doing it? But her mother looked so troubled that Kassandra could not be angry; she kissed her again and said, "I will certainly try not to see any disasters; if the Gods are kind, I may be able to foretell something better."

"Gods grant it," murmured Hecuba piously. "Well, come in, my dear; I have missed you very much."

After a moon spent in the House of the Sunlord, everything in the palace seemed smaller and gaudy; yet dear and familiar. Andromache, dressed for the wedding in flame-dyed finery, ran out to greet Kassandra. Her pregnancy was very obvious now, and she waddled with the typical walk of a pregnant woman, tilting her body backward for balance. Kassandra, thinking of the lithe young girl in Imandra's house, felt saddened, but Andromache embraced her joyously.

"Oh, I am so glad to see you! I wish you would marry and come home so we could be together! Just think, in another moon I will have my son in my arms!"

"Where is Oenone? Should she not be among us? A pregnant woman is the luckiest of all guests at a wedding."

"She is not pregnant now," said Andromache. "Have you not heard? She bore Paris a son four days ago, and she is still in bed; she had a dreadful time, poor thing - your mother said she was so slender she should have known better than to have a child at all. But when I asked how she could have avoided it, she would not tell me - she said Hector would not like it. Oenone has called her son Corythus - so if Creusa wants a pregnant woman at her wedding she will have to make do with me."

"Creusa is fortunate to have you among her guests," Kassandra said.

Andromache smiled like a kitten lapping cream and said, "I hope she thinks so too."

"I should go and see Oenone," Kassandra said. Andromache took Kassandra's hand and drew her along the stairs.

She said, "You had better not; she has been very strange lately. When I went to see her she would not speak to me. She said I was her husband's enemy because Hector had sent him away."

They went into the upstairs suite where the women were dressing the bride. It was the beautiful room with the Cretan murals of bull-dancers, and Kassandra said, "But this is the room my mother had made ready for Oenone."

"She would not stay in it," Andromache said. "She said she did not want to lie here day after day looking out on the sea which had borne Paris away from her, so she insisted on moving into a room at the back of the palace where she can look upon Mount Ida, her home. But never mind that now; come and help dress the bride."

Far below they could hear the sounds of the men in the hall, drinking and toasting the wedding.

Creusa was being covered with an embroidered veil; she put it back for a moment and came forward to greet Andromache with a bow, then kissed Kassandra coolly and said, "Welcome, sister."

She was not Hecuba's daughter, but Priam's by the most important of his lesser wives. Strictly speaking, by court etiquette, it was for Kassandra first to claim sisterhood, but she was not interested at the moment in preserving protocol. She returned Creusa's embrace warmly, and wished her good fortune: 'May Earth Mother and the Bright Ones bless you, sister."

"Can you see good fortune for me, Kassandra - you who are a prophetess?"

"I will know that when I have seen your husband," said Kassandra elliptically.

"When you have seen him I think you will envy me," Creusa said.

Kassandra smiled and said, "Indeed I hope so, sister. Mother told me how handsome he is."

"And he is rich too, and a prince in his own country," said Creusa. "Surely no woman can be luckier than I."

"Do not say such things, lest the Immortals be jealous," reprimanded Charis. "Remember the fate of the woman who said her spinning was as fine as that of Pallas Athene, and Athene turned her into a spider who should forever spin her webs to have them torn down by housewives!"

"Come, come," said Andromache, who was the first of the bride-women. "Let us finish dressing her quickly, or the men will all be drunk before she comes. Kassandra, your fingers are nimblest, will you put the flowers in her hair?"

Kassandra quickly tied the blossoms into a wreath and fastened them into Creusa's bright curls.

"Now she is ready; let us lead her down."

Taking her by the hands, the women surrounded the bride and led her carefully down the steep staircases of the palace, holding her carefully lest she stumble and begin her marriage with a false step - the worst of omens.

They lifted up their voices in the oldest of marriage hymns, the one to Earth Mother, and Kassandra felt surrounded with as much joy and gaiety as if it were her own wedding. For once, she thought, 7 can be as carefree as any other young girl. She was briefly aware that others did not observe themselves in this way; what was the difference? But for once she had an answer to that painful sense of difference. I am a priestess and need not be like the others; if I can somehow manage to seem like the rest it is enough.

They were at the very threshold of the feasting-hall when they heard a cry of surprise and welcome.

Priam called out, "Odysseus, you old cheat! Right enough, you know just when to come to sample our best wine for a wedding! Come in and have a drink, old comrade!"

Kassandra reached out and pulled Creusa back.

"Let our father welcome his guest first."

Creusa said sulkily, "I didn't want that old pirate at my wedding!"

Andromache whispered, "I have heard all my life of the stories he can tell; he has sailed further than Jason and has many traveller's tales. He visited my mother in Colchis and brought her a mother-of-pearl comb that he said was given him by a mermaid."

"Perhaps he has brought you a wedding gift too, Creusa," Kassandra said. "In any case even the Gods must show hospitality; let us go in."

She took up the first line of the hymn to the Maiden, always sung at weddings, and the other girls joined in. Priam looked up and gestured them forward; Kassandra saw a handsome young man, tall and slender, with curly light-brown hair, and a scattering of dark freckles just gilding his face. She supposed, from the ornate crimson tunic he wore, that this was the bridegroom. Just approaching the high seat was a short, burly man of middle age, with crisply curled hair and a red face, weather-beaten and hook-nosed, with deep-set blue eyes that seemed to look out on immense distances. She supposed, even before she saw the recognition in Andromache's eyes, that this was the famous seafarer and pirate, her father's old friend Odysseus.

The seafarer turned and cried out, "What a bunch o' beauties, old friend. These cannot all be your daughters, Priam; or can they? I seem to remember you've somewhat more'n your share of womenfolk."

Priam summoned them to him with a wave of his hand.

Kassandra found herself enveloped in a great bear hug.

"Your second daughter, isn't it? Is this the bride? Well, why not, in the name of all the demons?" He smelled of salt air and faintly of wine. She could not be offended by the embrace; it was as kindly and enthusiastic as a gust of the sea wind. "You'd like one as beautiful as this, wouldn't you, Aeneas, my friend?"

Kassandra could see that Aeneas's eyes rested on her with appreciation and that Creusa was almost crying.

She pulled back from Odysseus gently and said, "Don't, sir. I am not for any man; I am a virgin of Apollo Sunlord, and content to be so."

"Hellfire!" His swearing was enormous as everything else about him. "What a waste, beautiful; I'd marry you myself, except I have a wife already back in Ithaca and Hera, my protecting Goddess, is a Goddess of marital fidelity; I'll have trouble with her if I go sniffing round other women. Not that I haven't had my share, but I couldn't marry anyone else, and besides you want some beautiful young fellow, not an old walrus like me." She giggled; with his huge moustache, he really did look like a walrus.

"And this is Hector's bride?" he said, turning to Andromache. "Hector, you won't mind if an old man kisses your wife, will you? Customary in my part of the world, you know." He took Andromache by the arms, patted her bulging belly. "Can't get close enough to you now for a real kiss, can I, girl? Well, some other time, maybe." He kissed her smackingly on the cheek.

"I brought some things in my pack - loot from a Cretan ship -bride-gifts for your daughter, Priam, and gifts for that fine grandson this pretty girl here's going to give you in a few days—no? And since this one won't marry, I'll give gifts to the Sunlord's temple for her."

"In Apollo's name I thank you, sir," said Kassandra courteously, but Odysseus pulled her down to sit at his side.

"Here, sit beside me, drink from my cup; you're the only unattached girl here, and such flirting as I can do before your father and mother will do you no harm, hey?"

"My sister Polyxena is not married," Kassandra said with a glimmer of mischief, and Odysseus said, laughing, "Won't be long if I know your father, my girl; Polyxena's pretty enough, but just between you and me I like a girl with a little more meat on her bones. You'll do just fine."

She poured his cup and mixed his wine, and when the servers went round filled his plate; she found herself feeling a kindly warmth for the old man.

Priam said, "Now tell us your news, Odysseus. And I need your advice, too, friend; I have had an offer for Polyxena, from Akhilles son of Peleus; if you were in my place, would you accept? He is noble and I hear that he is also brave—"

"Brave he certainly is," Odysseus said, "but he has no pleasure except in killing. If I had a daughter I'd cut her throat before I married her off to that madman."

"He has the strength of Herakles—" Hector began.

"And many of his other faults," Odysseus interrupted. "Like Herakles, he's no man for women; takes a fancy to one now and then and is likely to kill her in a moment of madness. I sailed with Herakles; just once. That was enough; I got tired of his moping over his boy friends and his sudden rages. Akhilles is too like him for my taste. There are enough fine young men in Troy - or even fine honorable Akhaians if that's what you want for her - but she looks like a nice young girl; find her someone else. That's my best advice." Then he shouted to a servant and requested that his chests be brought into the hall, and from each of them he brought out strange and beautiful things, gifts for everyone in the hall, presenting them lavishly to Priam and to his sons and daughters. For Hecuba there was a little cup, no larger than a closed fist, of beaten gold.

"From the House of the Bulls in Crete," he said. "I found it myself in the remains of what was once the Labyrinth; God knows how it escaped the earlier looters."

"Maybe some God preserved it for you."

"Maybe," said Odysseus. "See the bulls?"

Hecuba looked admiringly at the cup, then passed it round the admiring circle of women. Kassandra examined it in her turn, exclaiming over the finely chiselled carvings; a bull in nets as finely carved as thread, with young men in a chariot, and a cow to lure him.

"But this is a priceless treasure," she said, "you should keep this for your own wife."

"I have just as many fine things again," Odysseus said with great good-nature, "for my wife and my son. Never think I would give away all my best."

For Andromache he had a golden comb and for Creusa a bronze mirror with gold-washed beads about the edge.

"A mirror fit for Aphrodite herself," he said. "I got this when I spent the night in the cave of a sea-nymph. All night we loved and when we parted in the morning she gave me this because she said she'd never look in it again if she wasn't beautiful enough for me to stay with her." He winked and said, "So now you're a bride and can make yourself beautiful for your husband."

Kassandra's gift was a necklace of blue beads which looked like glass, oblong in shape, and simply made, except for the plain gold clasp which held them at the ends.

"It is a small thing," he said, "but I seem to remember that priestesses are not allowed to wear elaborate ornaments, and this is simple enough, perhaps, that you may wear it in memory of your father's old friend."

Touched by the words, Kassandra kissed him on the cheek as she would hardly have dared with her own father.

"I need no gifts to remember you, Odysseus; but I will wear this whenever I am permitted. Where was it made?"

"In Khem, the land where Pharaoh rules, and the Kings build great tombs which make the whole city of Troy look like a little village," he said, and she was so accustomed already to his fantastic tales that she did not know for many years that for once he was speaking only the simple truth.

The gifts bestowed, he asked Priam: 'When are you going to make me free of the straits, so that I can come and go without paying taxes like those other Akhaians?"

"You are certainly different from the others," Priam temporised, "and I would be ungrateful indeed if after so many gifts I should extort more from you, my friend. But I cannot allow anyone and everyone to travel through my waters. The tax I ask of you is only to tell me what is happening in the world faraway. Is there peace in the islands where those Akhaians reign?"

"There will be peace there, perhaps, when the sun rises in the west," Odysseus said. "As with Akhilles, the kings think of warfare as their greatest pleasure. I will go to war only when my own lands and peoples are threatened; but they think of battle as a pastime more virtuous than any games… the great game at which they would gladly spend all their lives. They think me unmanly and cowardly that I have no love for fighting, though I am better at fighting than most of them."

"For years they have been trying to provoke us to war," Priam said, "but I have made a policy of ignoring insults and provocations, even when they stole my own sister. You live among the Akhaians, old friend; if they make war will you too come against us?"

"I will try not to be drawn into any such war," Odysseus said. "I have only one oath binding me; when the woman who is now Queen of Sparta was wed, there were so many suitors that none of them would yield to another and it looked as if only a war would settle it. Then it was I who created a compromise, and I am proud of it."

"What did you do?" Priam asked.

Odysseus grinned hugely. He said 'Picture this: perhaps the most beautiful woman who ever borrowed the girdle of Aphrodite, and all of us standing about calling out what gifts we would give to her father, and offering to fight for her, with the winner to take bride and dowry of Sparta… and I suggested that she herself should choose, with all of us swearing an oath we would protect the one she chose, should anyone interfere with his wife—"

"Whom did she choose?" asked Hecuba.

"Agamemnon's brother Menelaus; a poor thing, but perhaps she thought he was as wise and strong as his brother," Odysseus said. "Or perhaps it was just out of love for her sister, who had been married to Agamemnon the year before. Sisters marrying brothers… it creates confusion in the family, or so I should imagine."

"Yet if Aeneas had a brother I should be willing to marry him," Polyxena whispered into Kassandra's ear, "if the brother had but half of his good looks and kindliness."

"So should I," Kassandra whispered back, "if the brother but looked at me the way Aeneas looks on Creusa."

Hecuba murmured in a fussy voice, "It is rude to whisper, girls; speak to the company or be silent. Anything not fit to be said aloud is not fit to be said at all."

Kassandra was tired of her mother's strictures of courtesy. She said aloud, "I for one am not ashamed of what we were saying; we said only that either of us would willingly marry a brother to Aeneas if Aeneas is anything like his brothers."

She was rewarded with a swift blazing look from Aeneas; he said, smiling, "Alas, daughter of Priam, I am my father's only son; but you make me wish I were twins or even triplets for I would willingly share a marriage cup with all three of you. What about it, my lord?" he asked Priam. "Is it fitting for me to have as many wives as you do? If you are eager to marry off your daughters I will gladly take all three of them, if Creusa gives me leave."

Polyxena dropped her eyes and blushed; Kassandra heard herself giggle. Creusa reddened and said, "I would rather be first and only wife; yet the law permits you to have as many wives as you will, my husband."

"Enough; this is no jest," Priam said. "A king's daughters are not to be lesser wives or concubines, son-in-law."

Aeneas smiled in friendly fashion and said, "I meant your daughters no insult, sir," and Priam answered, clasping his hand in a friendly, somewhat drunken clasp, "I know that well; late in a banquet when the wine has been round a few times more than is wisest, jests far more unseemly than that may be forgiven.

And now perhaps it is time for the women to take your bride away, before the party grows too rough for maiden ears."

Hecuba gathered the women together and they surrounded Creusa, with their torches, Kassandra, whose voice was the clearest, leading the wedding hymn. Creusa kissed her father and he laid her hand in Aeneas's; then the women led her up the stairs. Creusa, close to Kassandra, whispered, "Will you prophesy good fortune for my wedding, sister?"

Kassandra pressed her hand and whispered, "I like your husband well; you heard me say I would gladly marry him myself. And such good fortune as may come to any wedding in this year will surely be yours; I see long life and good fame for your husband and for the son you will bear him."

Andromache touched Kassandra's shoulder and whispered, "Why had you no such prophecy for me, Kassandra? We have been friends and I love you."

Kassandra turned to her friend and said gently, "I do not prophesy what I wish, Andromache, but what the Gods send me to say. If I could choose prophecy I would wish you long life and honor, and many sons and daughters to surround you and Hector in your honorable old age on the throne of Troy."

And only the Gods know how much I wish that had been the prophecy sent me…

Andromache smiled and took Kassandra's hand.

"Perhaps, my dear, your goodwill may count for more than your prophecy," she said. "And can you see enough into the future to know how long before Hector's child is born - and if it is a son? My mother would have had me bring a daughter first into the light; but here Hector talks of nothing but his son, so I too wish for a boy - and will I live through childbirth to see his face?"

With enormous relief, Kassandra clasped her friend's slender fingers in hers.

"Oh, it is a boy," she said. "You will have a fine strong boy, and you will live to guide him toward manhood…'

"Your words give me more courage," Andromache said, and Kassandra felt a catch in her throat, remembering the fires which had been all she could see at Andromache's wedding. Perhaps, she thought, it was madness after all and not true prophecy; this is what my mother believed. I would rather be mad than to believe, in this quiet place under these peaceful stars, that fire and disaster should fall on all of these I love.

"Kassandra, you are daydreaming again; come and help us undress the bride," demanded Andromache. "We cannot undo these knots you have tied into Creusa's hair."

"I am coming," Kassandra said quickly, and went to help the other girls at making her sister ready for her husband's coming. With all her heart she was glad she had foreseen for them no disaster.