The Firebrand

CHAPTER 16

She lay still, too miserable to try and move.

"Honey?" she whispered painfully, through the rawness in her throat. But there was no answer. She remembered seeing the little body, bleeding and broken, flung aside by the man who had used her.

She must be dead now. I hope she is dead now. Yes, she is with Penthesilea.

She will be looking for me there.

I don't want to live. I want to be back there with Penthesilea, and Father… and the music…

But she could feel her own breathing, the loud intrusive beating of her own heart. She would live. What was it Penthesilea had said? 'You still have something to do…' Had it been to care for Honey, I would have gone back - not willingly, but without complaint. But she is gone, I cannot help her now. Why am I here, and everyone I love gone before me?

She dimly made out that she was lying on the floor of a small building, and around her were boxes and bundles and bales of piled-up goods: silks, rich cloaks, tapestries, vases and pottery, sacks of grain and jars of oil, all the riches of the plundered city. Andromache lay close to her, face down, covered with a coarse blanket. Kassandra made out her face in the dim light. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying. She opened them and looked at Kassandra.

"Oh," she said, "you are awake; they said when they brought you here that you were dead and Agamemnon would not admit it."

"I was sure I was dead," Kassandra said. "I wanted to be dead."

"And I," Andromache said. "They took - Astyanax."

"The Akhaians? Yes, I know; I saw him - running to his father's arms."

Andromache considered this for a moment. She said, "Yes, if anyone could see beyond death I suppose it would be you." 'Believe me, he is free, and happy, and with his father."

Kassandra repeated. Her voice caught at the memory. "They are better off than we are; I wish I were where they are now."

After a moment she said, "Why are we being held here? What is to become of us? Where is this place?"

"I am not sure; I think it is where the Akhaian captains are making ready to load the ships," Andromache said.

"Listen," Kassandra said, cringing,"someone is coming." She could hear the fall of heavy footsteps on the ground. But she had lost the preternatural sight of the trance state; she felt dull and sick, locked into her ordinary mortal senses. There was a foul taste in her mouth. "Is there any water here?"

Andromache sighed and stirred, then sat erect. She reached for a jar and carried it carefully to Kassandra, who drank till she was no longer thirsty. She had to sit up to drink, and felt as if her head would split off and roll away. She helped Andromache to replace the jar and lay down again, exhausted by only that small movement.

Kassandra said, in a whisper, "Honey is dead too. They tore her from me in the very shrine of the Maiden; and raped her, baby that she was—" Her voice broke.

Andromache's hand closed over hers. "I know how you must feel, even though she was not your own child."

Kassandra said dully, "She was my own, as much as any child could have been."

"You say that because you have never borne a child," Andromache said. She pulled her cloak over her face again.

"Are you all right? Have you been harmed?" Kassandra persisted, trying to break through Andromache's lifeless despair.

Andromache turned over to face her. "No, they did not lay a hand on me. I suppose they have taken me because it helps their pride to think of Hector's wife a slave," she said. "As for my child—if he had been the son of a lesser man they might have let him live—" After a moment she asked, "But what of you? You have been hurt—" She reached out, stopping short of touching the bleeding cut on Kassandra's forehead. "Were you—beaten as well as—"

"Raped? Yes," she said. "I thought - I hoped that I was dead. But for one reason or another, I - was sent back."

She remembered painfully Penthesilea's words, You still have something to do among the living. But what? They would not have sent her back simply to comfort Andromache and tell her that her son was safe with his father. But what else? Could she somehow avenge herself on Agamemnon? Ridiculous; all the armies of Troy could not cast him down and she was no more than a single woman, wounded and ravished.

A dark form blotted out the light through the door, and a rough voice said, "All right, you, in there with the others," and someone was pushed inside, stumbled and fell at Kassandra's side: a woman, small and frail. She moaned and raised her head painfully.

"Kassandra? Is it you?"

"Mother!" Kassandra sat up and embraced her. "I thought you were dead—"

"And I heard Agamemnon had taken you—"

"He has claimed me," Kassandra said, trying to speak steadily, "but they have not loaded the ships yet; so at least we have a few moments to say farewell—"

"They are still quarrelling over the spoils," Andromache said bitterly, sitting up to embrace Hecuba. "Including us—"

"I do not know where I am to go," Hecuba said, "nor what good I should be, old as I am, as a slave—"

"At least, Mother, you need not fear being made a concubine," Andromache said.

"But you two are young; even as slaves, you may still find something good left in life."

"Never," Andromache said. "Oh, let us not begin to quarrel about which of us has suffered most!"

Kassandra froze, whispering, "Someone is coming."

It was Odysseus; his broad body seemed to fill the whole doorway. The guard at the door asked him, "What do you want, my lord?"

"One of the women in here belongs to me. I lost at the draw, but maybe it isn't all loss; my wife Penelope would be angry with me if I brought home a young and pretty slave."

"Oh, misery," Hecuba whispered, clutching at Kassandra's hand. "And he was so often a guest at our fireside. I cannot bear this humiliation!"

Odysseus came in and bent over the women. His voice was not unkind.

"Well, Hecuba, it seems you're to come with me. Don't be afraid; I have no quarrel with you, and my wife has less." He gave her a hand to help her rise, which she did stiffly. Then he bent over Kassandra and whispered, "Don't be afraid for your mother; I'll take good care of her, she'll never be homeless while

I live. I'd have been willing to take you home too, Kassandra, but Agamemnon was bound and determined he'd have you, so it looks as if you'll be a king's mistress."

"Who is to take Andromache?" Kassandra asked.

"She goes to the country of Akhilles to his father, as part of his estate."

"It could be worse," said Andromache grimly.

Hecuba asked, "And Polyxena?"

Odysseus looked down. He said, "She is a companion to Akhilles himself."

"What barbarian custom is that?" Hecuba demanded, but Odysseus cast down his eyes and would not meet her gaze. He said, "I do not know all these Akhaian customs. I am only an old pirate, remember."

Kassandra, however, had seen it in his eyes, and blurted it out. "She is dead, sacrificed, her throat cut on Akhilles's tomb like some animal—"

Odysseus flinched; Hecuba demanded, "Is this true?"

Odysseus said, "I would have spared you that knowledge. Akhilles had offered to marry her; so they sent her to join him in the afterworld."

Kassandra said gently through Hecuba's cry, "Don't grieve, Mother; she is better off than most of us, and you will be with her soon."

Hecuba dried her eyes with her dress.

"Aye, better off than any of us," she said. "The afterworld cannot but be better than this, and soon I shall be with my Lord and King and the father of my sons. Well, lead on, Odysseus." She stooped quickly to embrace Kassandra. "Goodbye, my daughter. May we meet again soon."

"It cannot be too soon for me," said Kassandra, as they parted. She lay down, trying to rest her aching head on a bundle of canvas. She knew she would not see her mother again this side of death; but at least Penthesilea was waiting and Hecuba would not be alone there. The light moved slowly across the floor; it must be past noon. Had it been only this morning the city had fallen? It seemed like weeks—no, years.

The light was growing duller when she heard an Akhaian voice saying apologetically, "You don't have to wait in there with them, Lady," and a soft, courteous protest in a familiar voice.

Then a slender form stepped inside the shelter, saying softly, "Who is there?"

"Helen?" Kassandra sat up. "What are you doing here?"

"I would rather be here than thrust aboard Menelaus's ship for all the sailors to gape at," said Helen. "He will come and fetch me when the ship is ready to sail."

Kassandra lay down again. She knew she should feel some resentment toward this woman, but Helen had only followed her own destiny as she, Kassandra, followed hers. Helen stared, appalled, at Kassandra's still-bleeding head.

"Oh, how awful!"

"It's all right, I'm not much hurt," Kassandra said.

"And you, who deserve the worst of all, haven't been touched," Andromache said bitterly. "Why, you're even properly dressed." She looked with resentment at the fresh rust-coloured gown, the neatly fastened cloak with gold clasps and belt.

Helen's smile was faint. "Menelaus insisted. And he sent Nikos away with the soldiers, saying I wasn't fit to have the care of a child."

"At least your son still lives," Andromache muttered.

"But he is lost to me," Helen said. "And Menelaus has sworn that if this one lives—" and Kassandra remembered that Helen had confided to her that she believed herself to be pregnant again, "he will expose it. Believe me, Andromache, I would rather be going into the hands of a stranger, even if the men threw dice for me. Menelaus will doubtless make me feel his fury for the rest of my life; I would rather be buried peacefully here at the side of Paris, whom I loved."

"I do not believe that," said Andromache grimly. "I am sure you would rather have some new man to captivate with your beauty." She turned away from Helen and did not speak again.

Kassandra held out her hand to Helen and the other woman held it. She said, "I wonder if all the women in Troy hold me responsible…?"

"I don't," Kassandra said.

"No. And I found friends in Troy," Helen said, bending down to kiss Kassandra. "I wish I had never come here to destroy you all—"

"It was Poseidon who did that," said Kassandra, and they were silent, holding hands like young girls. It was not very long before steps sounded outside and Menelaus stooped to come in the low door.

"Helen?" he said.

"I am here," she said meekly, and Kassandra looked up into the blaze of light that seemed to fill the little hut. Helen's hair was brilliantly golden, and about her was the radiance she had borne when she stood upon the walls of Troy; the very aura of the Goddess.

Menelaus blinked as if his eyes were dazzled. Then, unwillingly, he bent and murmured, "My Lady and my Queen." As if he were afraid to approach her, he offered his arm and she stepped slowly toward him.

They left the hut, Menelaus following Helen a half pace behind.

It was growing dark outside when at last the familiar form of Agamemnon thrust his head inside the hut.

"Priam's daughter," he said, "you are to come with me; the ship is ready to sail."

Now what am I to do? Submit? Fight? There is no help for it. It is fate.

She rose and he took her arm, not cruelly, but with a certain proprietorial pride. He said, smiling tentatively, "I asked for you alone, from all the spoils of Troy; believe me, I will not ill-treat you, Kassandra. It is no small thing to be the beloved of a King of Mykenae."

Oh, I believe it, she thought. It occurred to her that Priam might, if Agamemnon had not already been wedded to Helen's sister, very well have given her in marriage to this man. What lay before her now, except for a few formal rites and the blessing of her kin, would not be much different than that. A wife to any Akhaian was no less a slave than any slave in Troy. She shivered; and he turned to her solicitously.

"Are you cold?" he asked. He bent and picked up a cloak from a pile of plundered garments that were stacked in the hut; a blue one she had never seen before.

"Wear this," he said magnanimously, draping it round her shoulders. He guided her over the rough ground; down to the water's edge, and held her hand as she stepped into the boat. The deck swayed as he led her across it; it was bigger than it had looked from the walls of Troy. The rowers at their oars looked up at her curiously as she tried to walk without tripping over the cloak. On deck there was a small tent, something like the tents in which the Akhaians had camped during the war. He lifted the flap for her to step inside. There were soft rugs and a lamp burning.

"You will have privacy here," he said ceremoniously. "We will sail with the tide, two hours before dawn." He left her, and she let herself fall on the rugs, feeling the gentle up-and-down sway of the deck. She wondered if she could slip to the other side of the ship, slide off into the water and drown. But no, surely she was watched, and they would seize her before she got to the water. Besides, she had been told that she was not to die, so she would only be sent back again.

She lay back, trying to resign herself to the moment when Agamemnon would come to her.

He could not be worse than Ajax. And she had lived through that. She would live through this too.