The Firebrand

CHAPTER 10

Kassandra dreamed that the Gods were angry with the city and were fighting above Troy; they towered to the sky, their spears clashing with thunderbolts and the glare of their great swords was like lightning. She woke to a day of heavy dripping rain, and a dull ache in her eyes.

Surprisingly, she missed Chryseis; she had grown used to the girl's company and could not help dwelling with fear and disgust on what must have befallen her in the camp of the Greeks - they had after all been there for several months without their own women. Although she knew that some of the women of the town slipped out through the walls into the shoreline camp to sell their bodies, she did not suppose it was the same. However, when she thought to pity Chryseis, she found herself thinking that this had been exactly what the girl wanted; she had been eyeing the foreigners over the wall for some months now.

Dismissing the girl from her thoughts, Kassandra threw on a robe and went to care for the serpents and the old priestess.

When she entered the room set apart for the old woman and the serpents she found confusion; two or three statues had been overthrown and were lying broken about the room, and there was not a sign of a single snake anywhere. She called out - she had heard that snakes were deaf and could hear nothing, but she was not certain about that, and calling would do no harm—and old Meliantha called out feebly from the other room.

"Is that you, Kassandra, daughter of Priam?"

Kassandra went quickly to the dark inner room where the old lady lay on her pallet.

"What ails you, Meliantha? Are you ill?"

"No," said the aged priestess, "I am dying." Kassandra saw by the dim light that her face had shrunken even further, her eyes dimmed and covered with a white film. "You need not call out to the serpents, for they have gone; all of them. They have left us and retreated deep into the earth. Those who are still here are lying dead in their pots—look and see." Kassandra went to investigate, and saw a few unbroken pots lying in place; inside the serpents lay, cold and still. She returned to the old priestess to ask what had happened.

"Did you not feel the anger of the Earthshaker in the night? Not only the pots, but all my statues are broken."

"No, I heard nothing; but I had evil dreams of the anger of the Gods," Kassandra said. "Is it Serpent Mother who is angry with us?"

"No," said the old priestess scornfully. "She would not punish her serpents to show her anger with us; rather she would slay us for the well-being of her little folk. Whichever God has done this, Serpent Mother has nothing to do with it."

The old woman looked so agitated that Kassandra wished to comfort her. "Will you have bread and wine, Mother?"

"No; I cannot think of such things at such a time as this," the old woman said. "Dress me in my priestess's robes, and paint my face, and then carry me out into the sunlight in the courtyard, so that I may look one more time upon the face of the Sunlord for whom I have spent my life."

Kassandra did as she was bidden, assisting the old woman into the elaborate robe of pleated linen dyed brilliant yellow with saffron. She found a pot of cosmetics and as the old woman wished, hesitantly painted her cheeks and lips brilliant red with dye, though she thought it looked grotesque. At last she stooped and picked up the old priestess in her arms and carried her into the brilliant light of the courtyard, where she laid her down on some cushions. The old woman, exhausted, lay back, and Kassandra could see the blue pulse in her veins beating away hard in her temple. Her breath was a hoarse, exhausted rasp.

"Shall I not summon a healer to you, Lady?"

"No; it is too late for that," Meliantha said. "I am glad I will not live to see the days that are coming to Troy. But you have been good to my little people; and I shall pray with my dying breath that somehow you may escape what the fates have determined for this wretched city." She shut her eyes for a moment and Kassandra bent forward to hear if she still breathed. Meliantha put out a wavering hand.

"Closer, my child, I cannot see your face," she said. "Yet it shines before me like a star; the Sunlord has not forsaken you." Then she kissed Kassandra with her wrinkled lips and, opening her filmed old eyes, she cried out, "Apollo Sunlord! Let me see thy face bright before me!"

She trembled violently and fell back upon the cushions, and Kassandra knew she was gone.

Now it could not hurt her to be left alone, so Kassandra ran to tell Charis what had happened.

"She was the oldest of us all," Charis said. "I came here as a girl of twelve and already she was old then. I felt the Earthshaker in the night, and I should have gone to her; but it was just as well. I could have done her no good. Well, we must bury her as befits a priestess of Apollo," she said, and sent the women for flowers to make garlands and for honey cakes and wine.

"We do not mourn when one of our own goes to the eternal realms," she chided the sobbing girls. "We rejoice because after a long life of service the Serpent Mother has taken her and see—" she indicated the dead snakes lying in their pots, "her little friends have gone before her to welcome her into those realms; there she can see them again and play with them, as she always loved to do."

Two days later, Kassandra heard the alarm in the city announcing an Akhaian attack, and saw the men of Troy rushing down to meet them, her brother Paris among them. She was surprised at how commonplace this was beginning to seem, not only to her, but apparently to all the people of Troy. Except for the fighting men, no one seemed to pay much attention to the attack. The smooth routine of the temple didn't alter at all, and from the wall she could see townswomen going calmly to the cisterns with their water jars.

One non-fighting man, however, was still interested in the actions of the Akhaians. At the end of the wall nearest the fighting Khryse stood scowling as he watched the fight. Kassandra, not wishing to deal with him, slipped away back to the maidens' rooms. The people of Troy, she thought to herself, are starting to regard the Akhaians with all the concern they would give to a sudden hailstorm. Can't they see that this will be our destruction? But I suppose that no one can live in a state of terror for years on end. No doubt I'd feel the same complacency if I did not have the visions to unsettle me.

Shortly afterward, a messenger from the city reached her, saying that the Lady Helen was in labour and wished to see her. Since Meliantha's death, Kassandra had few or no obligations in the Sunlord's house and so she did not bother to ask leave, but went down at once to the palace. She found her mother and sisters, except for Andromache, all gathered in Helen's rooms.

Kassandra inquired about Andromache and was told that she had taken all the littlest children to her room to tell them stories and feed them sweets.

"For if there is anything we do not need in the birthing-chamber," said Creusa, "it is the babies under our feet."

Kassandra thought she was most probably right; she wondered if it were good nature on Andromache's part, or whether she shrank from remembering her own ordeal. It did not matter; in any case it needed doing and Andromache's motives were not important.

The birthing-chamber was quite crowded enough as it was, and most of the women were more obstacles to be stepped around than any kind of help to a woman in labour, but custom demanded witnesses for a royal birth. Kassandra wondered if the Akhaians had the same custom, and resolved to ask Helen when they had leisure. At the moment, however, she was surrounded with so many midwives, waiting-women insistent on curling her hair or showing her some garment or piece of jewellery she might want, priestesses bearing amulets or chanting healing spells, cooks with morsels and drinks to tempt her appetite, that Kassandra could not get near the bed and resolved to wait till Helen asked for her.

Creusa had brought a lap-harp with her, and sat in the corner producing a quiet and calming background strumming. After a time Helen noticed Kassandra in the crowd and beckoned to her.

"Come and sit here beside me, Sister; this is like a festival -and so it is for most of them, I suppose."

"Like a wedding," Kassandra said. "Great fun for everyone except the ones most concerned. All we need in here are a few acrobats and dancing girls, and someone showing off a two-headed rabbit for coppers, and a fire-eater or a sword-swal-lower—"

"I'm sure if I wanted them, Hecuba would provide them," Helen said with a droll lift of her eyebrows. Kassandra was aware that even under these trying circumstances she was ravishingly lovely.

"Acrobats and dancing-girls, at least," Kassandra said. "Priam has several of them in the palace. I'm not sure about two-headed rabbits."

"Oh, fie, Kassandra; our royal mother would not - it would be beneath her dignity to take notice of Priam's dancing-girls or flute-girls," Creusa said, between chords. Kassandra laughed.

"Don't you believe that; Hecuba's business is to oversee the food for every person under this roof. She probably knows how many olives each of them eats at dinner - which ones are greedy for honey and cakes, and which ones are careful never to get with child."

"Of course; an acrobat can put herself out of work for a year, if she gets pregnant," Helen said. "I had two girls, sisters, in Mykenae, who used to come and dance for me." It was the first time she had spoken of her old home that Kassandra could remember. "No working girl wants to be burdened with carrying and birthing. That's for ladies of leisure - like us."

"Perhaps we work hardest of all," Kassandra said. "My mother has borne and suckled seventeen children."

Helen shivered. "I am already three-and-twenty and I have only Hermione and Nikos; I am fortunate," she said, and then a surprised look passed over her face and she grimaced and was silent for a moment.

"That was a fierce one," she said. "I think it will not be very long now." She looked around the chamber.

Kassandra asked, "Can I fetch you something?"

Helen shook her head, but she looked sad. She is alone here, thought Kassandra. Among so many women, she has no real friend from her own country.

"Where is your lady, Aithra?"

"She has returned to Crete; I would not be the cause of her exile too," Helen said, and reached out her hand to Kassandra; Kassandra held it tight.

Helen said, almost in a whisper, "Stay with me, Sister? I do not know these women—and there is none of them I trust."

Creusa pulled a stool toward them with her free hand. Kassandra dropped on it, disposing her cumbersome robes around her. She noticed that the other woman looked pale now, and drawn. Not now possessed by her Goddess; she was, Kassandra noted with detachment, quite a small woman, whose pale hair was her chief beauty, for even now, tired and sweat-stained, it fell into smooth dazzling bands on both sides of her face. Her eyes looked tired and a little red. Kassandra sat on the stool beside the bed letting Helen grip her hand. Creusa played softly, and music seemed to be helping - or perhaps Helen would have z had an easy time of it in any case. Kassandra was curious, but did not feel comfortable asking questions; this experience was still something which seemed to have nothing to do with her. As the afternoon sun strengthened in the room, Hecuba sent everyone away except the two senior midwives, a servant for running errands, and a priestess bearing many amulets which she came and distributed around the bed. She would have sent Kassandra away too.

"You are a maiden, Kassandra; a birth-chamber is no place for you."

But Helen clung to her hand.

"She is my friend, Mother. And she is not only a maiden, she is a priestess. No chamber of women is forbidden to a priestess of the Mother."

"Have you brought holy serpents?" Hecuba asked.

"No; the temple serpents all died in the earthquake," Kassandra said.

The priestess, tucking an amulet under Helen's breasts with a muttered spell, raised her head to say, "Speak not of evil omens here."

"I cannot see why the deaths of serpents in the Temple of Apollo should be an omen, good or evil, for my baby," Helen said. "Apollo is not my God and I have no dealings with him for good or ill. As for Serpent Mother, she is no Goddess of mine."

The priestess caught Kassandra's eye and made a sign against evil fortune. Kassandra agreed with Helen - she was accustomed to the practice which made almost any random occurrence an omen for good or bad, but she still felt it nonsensical.

The priestess went to boil a pot of water over the brazier, and the room was filled with the steamy smell of the healing herbs she cast into it. Shortly before sunset Helen gave birth to a son; small and wrinkled, to whom she gave the name Bynomosa.

Hecuba looked at the small wriggling form with a slight frown.

"How long have you been among us, Helen? He is small… never have I seen a full-term babe so small. He weighs no more than a chicken trussed for the spit."

"Nor did I," said Kassandra, "as you have told me often enough. It's likely that with all the trouble and excitement - the disruption at the festival, the earthquake - no doubt this little one comes hither some days or weeks before his time; does it matter, if he is strong and healthy?"

Helen made a face and whispered, "She simply wishes to be

- certain it is her own son's son. Wanton I may be, but not so much as that; I knew I bore Paris's son before we fled from Agamemnon's house. But I do not know how to tell her what she really wants to know without shocking her further."

Kassandra giggled, but she did not know what to say either.

Creusa came to take her turn at holding the baby. She said tactfully, "I think he will have his father's eyes; babies who will be dark-haired have eyes of a smokier blue than those who will be fair."

Kassandra was startled, she had not expected such support from her half-sister. As a child Creusa had always had a talent for making a bad situation worse, as well as a tendency to throw fits of hysteria if she felt herself ignored. Perhaps marriage to Aeneas was giving her more maturity than anyone expected.

There was a step at the door, and Kassandra, recognizing it, went to let Paris in, saying, "Brother, you have another son."

"I have a son," Paris corrected, "and if you prophesy anything of evil about him, Kassandra, I shall rearrange the bones of your face, so that people flee from you as from the Medusa."

"Don't you dare to make threats to her," cried Helen. "Your sister is my friend."

Kassandra took the child in her arms and kissed him. She said, "I have no prophecy given me for this child. He is strong and well, and what fate will be his in manhood is not mine to say."

She laid the child in Paris's arms; he bent over Helen and Kassandra put her veil over her face.

"Are you going away, sister?" Helen asked. "I had hoped you would stay and eat the evening meal with us, since Paris will not remain in the women's quarters."

"No, I must go down to the market," Kassandra said. "Did you not hear? We lost all our serpents in the earthquake, and those who did not die forsook us, and have gone deep into the ground and will not return. Apollo's Temple cannot be without serpents; I must replace them."

"What a curious omen!" Creusa said. "What do you think it could mean?"

Reluctantly—she did not want to frighten them, nor anger Paris or her mother by repeating what they were so unwilling to hear - Kassandra said, "I think the Gods are angry with the city. This is not the first evil omen we have had."

Paris laughed. "It takes no evil omen to make snakes take to the deeps in an earthquake—it is simply the way of the serpent-kind. I have seen enough of them in the mountains. But I am sorry for the loss of your pets." He patted Kassandra lightly on the arm. "Go you to the market, sister, and choose carefully—perhaps your new snakes will prove more faithful."

"May the Gods grant it," Kassandra said fervently, quickly leaving the room.

She decided to stop briefly and see Andromache before leaving the palace.

"Kassandra!" Andromache greeted her with delight. "I knew not that you were here. Were you summoned for the birth?"

"Yes," Kassandra replied, embracing her friend. "Helen has a son, and both are well."

"I heard the child was a boy," Andromache said. "Nurse told me when she came to get the children. But," she grinned wickedly, ""Helen" has a son—not Paris? For shame, Kassandra, to even imply such a thing!"

"For shame, Andromache, to put such a meaning into my words!" Kassandra retorted. "Who was your father? You know full well that I lived among the Amazons long enough to think of a child as its mother's - particularly when I have just seen him born. Now if Paris had been lying there in labour…'

The two women clung together laughing. "That I would like to see," said Andromache, "and would he not deserve it well!"

Kassandra sobered abruptly, shivering. Before her she saw an image of Paris, lying convulsed with pain, on the pallet in the hut he had shared with Oenone. Oenone bent over him, wiping his sweating forehead with a cloth, and a golden breastplate lay on the floor beside them.

"Kassandra!" Hands grabbed her shoulders, guided her to a stool, and forced her head between her knees. "I am a fool to keep you standing here when you've doubtless not eaten since daybreak! Keep your head down until the faintness passes, and I'll get you some food." Andromache went to the door and called to a serving woman, then poured out a goblet of the wine that stood on a table at the far side of the room.

"Drink this," she ordered, "and eat at least a piece of the dried fruit." She extended a plate, and Kassandra took a bunch of raisins, put one in her mouth, and forced her jaws to start chewing on it. "For once, the children didn't eat everything in sight."

"Sight." Kassandra sighed. "I wish I didn't have it."

"They're bringing up bread and meat from the kitchens," Andromache said. "That will help close it down. My mother - always used to eat hot red meat and all the bread she could hold after a major scrying. And surely priestesses wouldn't fast before ritual work if it didn't help the Sight."

"No doubt," Kassandra agreed. "And in its own way, childbirth is a ritual."

"Very true," Andromache said feelingly. "Did Helen have a hard time of it?"

Kassandra shook her head.

"It would be that way for her." Andromache made a face. "Oh well, I suppose that if Aphrodite is going to lead Helen to take lovers, the least she can do is give her the art of bearing children easily. And speaking of children… did I see Oenone and her son at the spring planting?"

"You did, and so did I," Kassandra replied. "She came to catch a glimpse of Paris. I fear she still loves him."

"Much good may it do her." Andromache said.

A servant entered with food from the kitchen. When she withdrew, Kassandra continued, "Oenone was my friend. I feel guilty that I cannot help loving Helen. And now Paris forgets even that he has a son by Oenone."

"I think that everyone loves Helen," Andromache said. "Priam himself is never gruff with her, and he is well versed in the wiles of women and not easily charmed. As for Paris—well, what do you expect? If you had the Goddess of Love for your bed, would you turn away to a water-nymph—and how would the Goddess deal with you if you did?"

Kassandra shivered. "I do not like this Akhaian Goddess," she said. "May she never lay her hands on me."

Andromache looked very serious. "I would not wish for that," she said. "I would be sorry to think you should never know what it is to love."

"What makes you think that I do not?" Kassandra asked curiously. "I love my brothers and my mother, my serpents, my God—"

Andromache smiled a little sadly.

"I am fortunate," she said. "My love is for the man I was given for my husband and I cannot imagine loving another; from what little talk I have had with Helen I understand it was so with her until the Goddess laid her hand on her; and then she could think of nothing but Paris."

"Surely then such love is a curse and not a gift," Kassandra said, "and I pray it may never befall me." z6o

Andromache embraced her gently and said, "Have a care what prayers you make, Kassandra. I wished to travel forth from Colchis, and to have a husband of great honor and renown. And that prayer brought me here away from my mother and my Gods, to a city at the far corners of the Earth; in these dark times." She caught up a little of the salt that lay at hand on the tray with the meat and cast it into the air with a whispered word Kassandra could not hear. Kassandra, cutting herself a small slice of the roasted meat and laying it on a piece of bread, raised her eyebrows in question.

"I prayed for you," Andromache said,"that your prayers might, be answered only in the way you would have it."

Kassandra embraced her friend and said impulsively, "I do not know if the Gods ever honor such requests - but I am grateful to you."

When she had finished her evening meal with Andromache, and helped her put Astyanax to bed, she left the palace. She was strolling through the darkened stalls of the evening market when she remembered that she had intended to ask Andromache what it might mean when serpents deserted a temple. Then she recalled that Adromache would have nothing to do with serpents.

She resolved to ask all the priestesses she could find if they knew of a lore-mistress or master, a priest or priestess of Serpent Mother or of the Python, before she bought a single snake for the house of the Sunlord. Somewhere in this great city of Troy there must be someone versed in such wisdom.