The Firebrand

CHAPTER 15

Before her lay the plain of Troy in the early sunlight. Within the city no one was stirring; outside, a few torches sputtered weakly against the sunrise.

The silence was absolute. Even the distant line of the sea beyond the Akhaian earthworks lay dead calm and molten as if the very tide itself had ceased to pull upon the land. The reddish overcast of the sky was like faraway flames swallowing the last dim flicker of the setting moon. It was again as in her dream—the wooden horse before the walls seemed to rear upward, pawing with monstrous hooves at the city. She screamed, hearing her own voice die unheard in her throat, and then screamed again, pressing against the silence until at last she could hear her own voice tearing at her throat.

"O, beware! The God is angry and will strike the city!"

It was as if behind the dead silence she could hear great rolling waves of sound, as if Apollo and Poseidon, toe to toe in their struggle for the city, had broken the deadlock and Poseidon had thrown the Sunlord down.

Her screams had not been unheard; already women were flocking out of the buildings in all stages of undress.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

Kassandra was dimly aware of what they were saying.

It is Kassandra, Priam's daughter. Don't listen to her, she is mad.

No, heed what she says, she is a prophetess, she sees—

"What is it, Kassandra?" asked Phyllida calmly, coming up to speak to her soothingly. "Can you not tell us quietly what it is that you have seen?"

She was still screaming out words. She tried to listen to her-self—for she was as confused as her hearers, and it seemed as if her head had been cloven with an axe—and she thought, If I were listening, I would believe I was mad, too. Yet in spite of the confusion, one part of her mind was clear, with the icy clarity of despair, and she struggled to bring that part into focus and to ignore the part that was a chaos of panic and terror.

She heard herself crying out, "The God is angry! Apollo cannot conquer the Earthshaker, the city walls will be destroyed! Our own God will do what the Akhaians could not do in all these years! We are lost, we are destroyed! Hear and flee!"

But what use was a warning? It was upon her that no one would escape, that she could see only death and disaster. She became aware that she was fighting Phyllida's restraining hands and her friend was saying gently to one of the priestesses, "Give me your sash to tie her, lest she do herself some hurt. Look, her face is bleeding where she has scratched herself." She passed the cloth carefully round Kassandra's hands.

Kassandra said desperately, "You need not tie me; I will not hurt anyone."

"But I fear you will harm yourself, my dear," Phyllida said: 'Go, Lykoura, bring me wine mixed with syrup of poppy seeds, it will calm her—"

"No," Khryse said, striding toward them. He roughly shoved Phyllida away, and he pulled the sash from Kassandra's hands. "She needs no drug; no soothing draught can calm her now. She has had a vision. What is it, Kassandra?" He laid his hands on her brow and said in a strong stern voice, looking compellingly into her eyes, "Say what the God has given you to say; I pledge by Apollo, none will lay hands on you while I live."

But you are as powerless now as your Sunlord, she thought frantically.

"Listen, then," she said, trying to silence her beating heart with the pressure of her clasped hand at her bosom. "The Earthshaker has overthrown the Sunlord as he will overthrow our city. We will feel Earthshaker's rage more strongly than we ever have before. Not a wall, not a house, not a gate, not the palace itself will escape.

"Warn the people to flee, even into the arms of the Akhaians! Cover the cooking fires, make sure no lamp is near to the stores of pitch or oil - let no one remain within doors lest his body be broken by falling stone."

Khryse said sternly, turning toward the women. "We may still have a little time. Go quickly and release the serpents, any that have not taken flight already. Then two of you go to the palace and inform the King and Queen that we have had evil omens and bid them flee to open ground. They may not heed, but we must do what we can."

"It will avail nothing," Kassandra cried out, trying to stop herself even as she spoke. "None can escape the wrath of Poseidon! Let the women take refuge in the Temple of the Maiden; she may have some pity on us."

"Yes, go," Khryse said to the women. "Take the children there, and remain beneath the open sky till the quake subsides; there perhaps you can hide from our foes if they break into the city. There will be spoils to loot in Troy and they may not climb that far." He held Kassandra as she began to recover her senses; in her head there was sharp pain and a drowning sensation as if she looked out at the world from deep under water. "I must go Kassandra, and do what I can to spread the warning. Do you want that soothing draught? Will you take shelter in the Sunlord's courts or will you go down to the town? What can I do to aid you?"

She found that Khryse's voice came to her as if across the plains and legions of the dead, but when she spoke her voice was calm.

"Thank you, elder brother, I need nothing. Go and do what you must, and I will go and make certain my child is safe."

Khryse walked away and Kassandra went to her room. Honey slept there, still curled in blankets, but Kassandra noted that the snake was gone. Wiser than humans she had sought refuge in some secret place known only to the serpentkind. Kassandra bent and gently shook the child, waking her. Honey put her arms up to be lifted and Kassandra dressed her quickly. Somehow she had to get the child safely out of Troy before the invaders broke through the walls.

She said, "Come, darling," and took her hand. "We must go quickly."

Honey looked confused, but obediently trotted along beside Kassandra as they crossed the compound. Hurrying up toward the Maiden's Temple with Honey's hand in hers she stumbled, and strong hands picked her up.

"Kassandra," said Aeneas, "it has come. This was your warning?"

"I thought you had left the city," she said, trying to steady her voice.

"Surely you cannot stay now," he said. "Come with me; I shall find a ship bound for Crete—"

"No," she said. "Come - quickly. The Gods have forsaken Troy—"

She led him swiftly into the innermost shrine of the Maiden's Temple; there were a few priestesses there, and she cried out to them:

"Quickly, extinguish all the torches—yes, even the Sacred Flame! The Gods have deserted us!"

She herself took the last torch and crushed out the fire that burned before the Maiden; and as the priestesses were rushing out of doors, she tore down the curtain.

"Aeneas, this is the most sacred object in all of Troy; take it." She drew forth the ancient statue, the Palladium, and wrapped it in her veil. "Carry it across the seas, wherever you may go. Build an altar to the Goddess and establish the Sacred Fire. Tell the truth of Troy." He moved as if to remove the veil and look at it, but she stayed his hand.

"No, no man must look upon it," she said. "Swear you will carry it to a new temple and there consign it to a priestess of the Mother—Swear!" she repeated, and Aeneas looked into her eyes.

"I swear," he said. "Kassandra, there can be no further reason to remain. Come with me - a priestess should be the one to take this beyond the seas."

He bent to embrace her; she kissed him wildly, then drew back.

"It cannot be," she said; "my fate lies here. It is yours to leave Troy unwounded and alive. But go at once, and all our hopes and all our Gods go with you."

"You must not stay here—" he began.

"I swear to you, I shall leave Troy before the sun rises again," she said. "It is not death that awaits me; but I am not free to go with you; the Gods have decreed otherwise."

He kissed her again and took the wrapped bundle.

"I swear it by my own divine lineage," he said. "I will do your will - and hers."

Her eyes blurred with tears as he hurried out of the temple.

She had hardly crossed the court when inside her head she heard a great roar. The ground swayed beneath her feet; she stumbled and fell with Honey in her arms, and lay still, her body pressed against the suddenly unstable earth which rippled and bounced beneath them. Her only emotion was not fear but rage: Earth Mother, why do you let your sons play this way with what you have made?

The movement seemed to go on forever, through the frightened sobs of the child in her arms. Then it subsided, and she realized that the sun was still only a fraction above the horizon; the quake could hardly have lasted more than a few moments. Honey's crying had subsided to a soft hiccoughing.

Kassandra looked behind her; the sound she had heard had been the walls of the Sunlord's house collapsing inward. Hardly a building in the enclosure was still standing. Of the main building where they dwelt no more than a heap of rubble was left. Certainly nothing could be salvaged from there. There was a muffled screaming; someone had been trapped inside under the fallen stones. Kassandra looked helplessly at the pile - she could not with all her strength have budged a single stone—and very soon the sound ceased.

Somewhere in the gardens, an unconcerned bird began to sing.

Did this mean it was over?

As if in answer, the ground seemed to shudder and rock again, and then was still. Stunned, Kassandra walked toward the vantage point where last night she had looked down on the plain.

The great gate and front wall of Troy had fallen, and in the midst of the battered rubble of wall and gate, Kassandra saw the wooden Horse lying, one leg raised grotesquely as if it had indeed kicked the wall down with its great hooves. The torches had set the scaffolding on fire and it was burning fiercely; but against the horse itself, the flames licked in vain. Flames were rising, as expected, from the poorer quarter with its wooden houses. It was the vision she had seen first as a child, the vision no one had believed - Troy was burning.

Through the gap in the fallen wall, Akhaian soldiers were already pouring in in floods, rushing into still unfallen houses and leaving laden with everything they could carry. Where could she hide? More important, where could she take Honey? One building within the compound of the Sunlord's house was still standing; the shrine. There might be food there, remnants of the offerings of the day before. She was conscious, to her own shock, of a sudden fierce hunger. She went inside, and paused. If there should be another quake, the building might fall. The statue of the Sunlord had fallen, and beneath it, crushed, lay a human figure. Approaching with a numb curiosity - there was nothing to be done - she saw that it was Khryse who lay there.

At last, she thought, now the God has truly struck him down.

She knelt beside the fallen man, closing the wide-open eyes, then rose and passed on.

In the room behind the statue, where the offerings were kept, she found loaves of bread, quite stale, but she ate one, dividing it with the little girl, who seemed stunned and did not cry. She thrust another into the fold of her robe - she might need it—and stopped to consider. The Akhaians were already plundering the lower town. Had the palace fallen? Had they all been killed: her parents, Andromache, Helen? Were there any Trojan soldiers left alive to halt the sack? Or were she and her child the only ones left alive to watch the devastation?

She listened for any sound that would prompt her to think that someone else remained living in the Sunlord's house but there was only silence. Perhaps someone still lived in the palace below. Had the warning reached them in time to get out into the courts or gardens?

Although the sun was now quite warm, she shivered. Her warm shawl, and every stitch of her clothing except the shift she stood in, was buried in the ruins of the Sunlord's Temple.

She should go down to the palace; although she was aware of the Akhaian soldiers in the city, she was desperately anxious to know if her mother still lived. She picked up Honey and began to run down the street.

The way was blocked with rubble and the debris of partially fallen houses; the people were mostly stunned-looking women, like herself half-clad and barefoot, and a few half-armed soldiers who had risen early to join Deiphobos. When they saw she was heading for the palace, they followed her.

The palace had not collapsed. The front doors had, and some of the carvings had fallen away, but the walls were still standing, and there was no sign of fire. As she approached she heard a loud wailing, and, recognizing her mother's voice, began to run. On the flagstones of the forecourt, heaved up and uneven now, she saw Priam lying, dead or senseless; she could not tell. Hecuba bent beside him, wailing; Helen wrapped in a cloak, Nikos at her side, and Andromache, clutching Astyanax in her arms were with her.

Andromache raised her eyes to Kassandra and said fiercely, "Are you content, Kassandra, that the doom you prophesied has come on us?"

"Oh, hush!" said Helen. "Don't talk like a fool, Andromache. Kassandra tried to warn us, that is all. I am sure she would rather have left all this unspoken. I am glad to see you unharmed, Sister." She went and embraced Kassandra, and after a moment, Andromache followed suit.

"How is it with Father?" asked Kassandra. She went and bent over her mother, gently lifting her up. "Come, Mother, we must take refuge in the Maiden's Temple."

"No! No, I will stay with my Lord and King," Hecuba protested, her wails turning to sobbing.

Andromache came and embraced her, while Astyanax came and put his arms around Hecuba, saying, "Don't weep, Grandmother; if any harm has come to Grandfather the King, then I will look after you."

"Hush, love," Helen said, as Kassandra knelt beside her father, taking the cold hand in hers, and raised a closed eyelid. There was not the faintest stir of motion or life; the eyes were already filmed over. She knew she should have joined Hecuba in ritual keening, but she only sighed and let his hand fall from hers.

"I am sorry, Mother," she said. "He is dead."

Hecuba's cries began again. Kassandra said urgently, "Mother, there is no time for that; Akhaian soldiers are in the city."

"But how can that be?" Hecuba asked.

"The walls were broken in the earthquake," Kassandra explained, desperately wondering if they were all lacking in wits, or senseless with shock - had they heard nothing? 'Already they are plundering in the streets, and they will surely lose little time coming here. Where is Deiphobos?"

"I think he must be dead," Helen said. "We heard Mother cry out that Father had fallen down in a fit, or a faint. We came at once, and Deiphobos carried him out of his room into the court here, then ran back seeking his own mother. Then the first shock came and the floors fell in and I think some of the roof as well. I had snatched up Nikos and ran out with him after Deiphobos."

"And so we six are alive," said Kassandra, "but we must hide somewhere, unless we wish to fall into the hands of the soldiers. I do not know what is the Akhaian custom with captive women and I do not think I wish to."

"Oh, Helen has nothing to fear from them," said Andromache, staring fixedly at the Argive woman. "Her husband will soon be here to claim her, I am sure, and deck her in all the jewels of Troy and lead her home in triumph. How fortunate for you that Deiphobos died just in time - not that you care."

Kassandra was appalled at her spite.

"This is no time to quarrel, Sister; we should be glad if one of us need not fear capture. Shall we take refuge in the House of the Maiden? That is where we sent the women from the Sunlord's house and I am sure it is still whole." She put her arm round Hecuba, and said, "Come, let us go."

"No, I stay with my King and my Lord," said the old woman stubbornly, dropping again to her knees beside Priam's body.

"Mother, do you truly believe that Father would want you to stay here to be captured by some Akhaian lord?" Kassandra asked in exasperation.

"He was a soldier to his death; I will not abandon him the moment he has fallen," Hecuba insisted. "You are a young girl; go and take shelter somewhere they will not find you, if there is such a place in Troy. I stay with my Lord; Helen will be with me. Even the Akhaians would offer no insult to the Queen of Troy. We have fallen to a God and not to them."

Kassandra wished she felt half that sure. But they could already hear the soldiers approaching, and she seized Honey's hand. Andromache seized her other hand. Astyanax was in her arms, protesting, struggling to get down, but Andromache paid no attention.

"Let us hide in one of these mean houses along here; they would never think of looking in here, where there would be nothing to plunder," Andromache suggested, but Kassandra shook her head.

"I will entrust myself and my daughter to the Maiden of Troy. If our Gods have deserted us, perhaps the Goddesses will not."

"As you wish," Andromache murmured. "I no longer believe in any Gods. Farewell, then. Good fortune to you." She wedged herself into the smallest and dirtiest of the houses, and Kassandra ran on up the hill, to the highest point of Troy, where the Maiden's Temple stood untouched, the statue in the forecourt still unfallen. Kassandra flung herself down at the feet of the statue; surely no man, not even an Akhaian barbarian, would venture to trespass on any woman who took refuge here.

She heard the voices of the other women in one of the inner rooms. In a moment she would join them. She put Honey down and knelt before the altar.

"Ah, there she is!" It was a cry of triumph in the barbarian tongue of the soldiers. Two armored men burst in the door. "I wondered where all the women had gone."

"This one will do for me; it's the princess, Priam's daughter.

She's a prophetess and a virgin of Apollo—but if Apollo wanted to protect his virgins, he'd have done it. You want to check in the inside room for some more of them?"

"No," replied the other. I'll take the little one. When people think they're big enough, they're too old for my taste. Come here, little girl, I've got something nice for you—"

Kassandra turned in horror, to see a giant soldier beckoning to Honey. "No," she shrieked,"she's only a baby! No, no—"

"I like them that way," said the big soldier, grinning, and made a lunge at the child, ripping away her dress. Kassandra flew at him, using nails and teeth to tear Honey from his arms; a savage kick sent her flying half senseless into a corner of the room. She heard Honey screaming, but could not move; her limbs were so heavy she could not stir a finger. She felt the other man seize her and struggled violently; a blow across the face from the man's arm sent her back as all the strength poured out of her like sand from a torn sack.

She kept on hearing Honey's helpless cries until, even more terribly, they stopped. She was aware - though she could neither move nor speak—when the man tore away her dress and shoved her down onto the marble paving.

Goddess! Will you let this happen in your very shrine before your eyes? she implored, then in shock remembered; she no longer believed, why should the Maiden protect her?

But Honey has done no wrong, she is a baby! If the Maiden sees this and cannot prevent it she is no Goddess. And if she can and will not—

Then fierce pain ripped her apart as the man thrust violently into her, and she felt darkness closing in on her.

She felt herself step out of her pain-racked body, conscious of the man still jerking away at her limp form, of Honey naked and torn, bleeding on the stone, still moving a little, whimpering through bruised lips. She rose and moved away, stepping over the flat and featureless plain. The sun had dimmed into the greyness that was all that was here. She walked down through the plain that was, and was not, the city of Troy where the wooden horse had kicked down the walls and rose still whole and nightmarish over the dead city.

She saw others on this plain: Akhaian soldiers, a few of the Trojans. They seemed confused, looking about for a leader. Then she saw Deiphobos, half clad, still carrying his mother in his arms; his face and hands singed with fire. So they had died together as Helen had suspected.

He tried to call to her, but she had no wish to speak to him. She turned and hurried the other way, wondering what had happened to Andromache.

There was Astyanax, his head bleeding, his clothing torn. He looked stunned, but as she watched his face brightened, and he began to run across the plain, crying out in joy. She saw him swept up into Hector's arms and smothered in kisses. So Hector had claimed his son; she was not surprised that the Akhaian soldiers had not let him live. Andromache would grieve; she did not know that her son was with his father as Hector had promised. She hoped the child had not known too much terror before he met his end on an Akhaian spear - or had they hurled him from the walls?

Then she saw Priam, standing tall and imposing as she remembered him from when she was a little girl. He smiled at her and said, "The city's gone, isn't it? I suppose we're all dead, then?"

"Yes, I think so," she said.

"Where's your mother, my dear? Not along yet? Well, I'll wait for her here…' he said, gathering himself together to look round. "Oh! There's Hector and the boy—"

"Yes, Father," she said, feeling a lump in her throat; he sounded so happy.

"I think I will go and join them; if your mother comes, tell her, will you, love?"

But this can't be all there is to being dead, she thought. There must be more to it…

She looked up and standing directly before her, she saw Penthesilea, unwounded, smiling, her face shining, surrounded by half a dozen of the warrior women who had fought with her on that last day. Laughing for joy, she ran into the Amazon's arms. She was surprised to find that her kinswoman felt as solid and strong and warm as on the day she had embraced her when she went out to fight before Troy and to die at Akhilles's hands. She spoke her surprise aloud.

"Then I suppose Akhilles must be here somewhere too—"

"I would have thought so," said Penthesilea, "but he seems to have gone to his own place, wherever that may be."

Beyond Penthesilea the plain of the dead faded away, and Kassandra could see what looked like blinding light; twice the brilliance of the Sunlord as she had seen him in her first overpowering vision, and through the light, she made out the form of a great temple, larger than the one where she had served in Colchis, and even more beautiful.

She whispered in awe, "Is that where I am to go?"

Beyond the light she began to hear music; harps and other instruments swelling, and filling the air with harmony like a dozen - no, a hundred - voices, all joined together in song, clear and high and coming closer. This was what she had thought the Sunlord's house would be. Khryse was standing in the doorway, beckoning to her; his face was free of the dissatisfaction and greed she had seen in it, so that he was at last what she had always believed him. He held out his arms, and she was ready to run into them, as Astyanax had run to Hector.

But Penthesilea was standing in her way - or was it the Warrior Maiden herself, wearing the armor of the Amazon? She held Honey laughing and unwounded by the hand. So she is dead too.

"No," Penthesilea said, "no, Kassandra; not yet."

Kassandra struggled to form words. It was the place she had seen in her dreams, the place she had always known she belonged. And not only Khryse, but everyone she had loved was there, awaiting her, waiting for her voice to fill the place lacking in that great blended choir.

"No," Penthesilea's voice was sorrowful, but inflexible, and she held her back as one restrains a small child. "You cannot go yet; there is still something you must do. You could not leave with Aeneas; you cannot come with me. You must go back, Kassandra; it is not time for you."

The beautifully moulded face under the shining helmet was beginning to break up into a sunburst of brilliant sparkles. Kassandra fought to keep it in focus. "But I want to go - the light—the music—" she said. The light was fading; and around her was darkness; she was aware of a ghastly smell, like death, like vomit; she was lying on the dirt floor of some kind of rough shelter.

Then I'm not dead after all. Her only emotion was bitter disappointment. She tried to hold on to the memory of the light, but already it was disappearing. She was conscious of pain in her body. She was bleeding and part of what she smelled was her own blood on her face and covering her dress. The man who had raped her was lying half across her body. It was his vomit she smelled, and slowly, as if surfacing from a very deep trance, she heard a familiar voice and saw a face—hook-nosed, black bearded - that had haunted her nightmares for years.

"I told you she was the one I wanted," said Agamemnon. "Look, she's breathing again. If you'd killed her I'd have had you flayed alive; you knew she fell to me in the casting of lots, but you had to try and get ahead of me. You always were spiteful, Ajax."

Kassandra felt agony through her whole body; agony mingled with despair.

So I am not dead after all; the Maiden saved me. For this!