The Firebrand

CHAPTER 3

Light gleamed in eye-hurting flashes from the sea and the white stone. Kassandra narrowed her eyes against the light and tugged softly at Hecuba's sleeve.

"Why do we go to the Temple today, Mother?" she asked.

Secretly she did not care. It was a rare adventure for her to be allowed outside the women's quarters and rarer yet to go outside the palace altogether. Whatever their destination, the excursion was welcome.

Hecuba said softly, "We go to pray that the child I am to bear this winter will be a son."

"Why, Mother? You have three sons already. I should think . you would rather have another daughter; you have only two of us girls. I would rather have another sister."

"I am sure you would," said the Queen, smiling, "but your father wants another son. Men always want sons so they can grow up to fight in their armies and defend the city."

"Is there a war?"

"No, not now; but there are always wars when a city is as rich as Troy."

"But if I had another sister she might be a warrior woman, as you were when you were a girl, and learn to use weapons and defend the city as well as any son." Then she paused to consider. "I do not think Polyxena could be a soldier, she is too soft and timid. But I would like to be a warrior woman. Like you."

"I am sure you would, Kassandra; but it is not the custom for women of Troy."

"Why not?"

"What do you mean, why not? Customs are. There is no reason for them."

Kassandra gave her mother a skeptical look, but she had already learned not to question that tone in her mother's voice. She thought secretly that her mother was the most queenly and beautiful woman in the world, tall and strong-looking, in her low-cut bodice and flounced skirt, but she no longer quite believed her all-knowing like the Goddess. In the six years of her life, she had heard something similar nearly every day and believed it less with every year; but when Hecuba spoke like that, Kassandra knew she would get no further explanation.

"Tell me about when you were a warrior, Mother."

"I was of the nomad tribe, the riding women," Hecuba began; she was almost always willing to talk about her early life, more so, Kassandra thought, since this latest pregnancy. "Our fathers and brothers were also of the horse-folk and they are very brave—"

"Are they warriors?"

"No, child; among the horse-tribes, the women are the warriors. The men are healers and magicians, and they know all kinds of wisdom and about the lore of trees and herbs."

"When I am older can I go to live with them?"

"The Kentaurs? Of course not; women cannot be fostered in a man's tribe."

"No; I mean with your tribe, the riding women."

"I do not think your father would like that," said Hecuba, thinking that this small, solemn daughter might well have grown to be a leader among her own nomad people, "but perhaps some day it can be arranged. Among my tribe a father has authority only over his sons, and it is the mother who decrees the destiny of a daughter. You would have to learn to ride and to use weapons."

She took up the small, soft hand in hers, thinking that it was hardly the hand of a warrior woman.

"Which Temple is that - up there?" Kassandra asked, pointing upward to the highest of the terraces above them, indicating the building which gleamed brilliantly white in the sun. From where they stood they were high enough to see a series of terraces below them; Kassandra could look down, leaning on the wall that guarded the winding stairway upward, and see the roofs of the palace and the small figures of the women laying out washing to dry, small trees in tubs, the bright colours of their clothing and the mats where they lay to rest in the sun; and far below that, the city walls looking out over the plain.

"It is the Temple of Pallas Athene, the greatest of the Goddesses of your father's people."

"Is she the same as the Great Goddess, the one you call Earth Mother?"

"All the Goddesses are one, as all the Gods are one; but they show themselves with different faces to mankind, in different cities and at different times. Here in Troy Pallas Athene is the Goddess as Maiden, because in her temple under the care of her maidens is guarded the holiest object within our city. It is called the Palladium." Hecuba paused, but Kassandra, sensing a story, was mouse-silent, and Hecuba went on in a reminiscent tone.

"They say that when the Goddess Athene was young she had a mortal playmate, the Libyan maiden Pallas, and when Pallas died Athene mourned her so greatly that she added her name to her own and was thereafter known as Pallas Athene; she fashioned an image of her friend and set it up in the temple of Zeus on Olympos. At that time, Erechtheus, who was king in Crete -your father's forefather before his people came to this part of the world—had a great herd of a thousand beautiful cattle, and-Boreas, the son of the North Wind, loved them, and visited them as a great white bull; and these sacred cattle became the Bull-Gods of Crete."

"I did not know that the kings of Crete were our forefathers," Kassandra said.

"There are many things you do not know," Hecuba said in reproof, and Kassandra held Ker breath - would her mother be too cross to finish the story? But Hecuba's frown was fleeting, and she went on.

"Has, the son of Erechtheus, came to these shores and entered the sacred Games here. He was the victor of the Games, and as his prize he won fifty youths and fifty maidens. And rather than making them his slaves, he said, "I will free them, and with them I will found a city." And so he set forth in a ship at the will of the Gods - and he sacrificed to the North Wind to send him to the right place for his city, which he meant to call Ilion; which is another name for the city of Troy."

"And did the North Wind blow him here?" Kassandra asked.

"No; he was blown from his course at sea by a whirlwind, and when he came to rest near the mouth of our holy Scamander, the Gods sent one of these cows, a beautiful heifer, a daughter of the North Wind, and a voice came to Has, crying out, "Follow the cow! Follow the cow! Where the cow lies down, there establish your city!" And they say that the cow wandered to the bend of the river Scamander and there she lay down; and there Has built the city of Troy. And one night he awoke hearing another voice from Heaven, saying, "Preserve the image I give you; for while Pallas dwells within your city, your city shall never fall." And he woke and beheld the image of Pallas, with a distaff in one hand and a spear in the other, like Athene's self. So when the city was built, he built this temple first, on the high place, far up here, and he dedicated it to Athene - she was quite a new face of the Goddess, then, one of the great Olympians, worshipped even by those who honor the Sky Gods and the Thunderer - he made her the patron of the city. And she brought to us the arts of weaving and the gifts of the vine and the olive, wine and oil."

"But we are not going to her Temple today, Mother?"

"No, my love; though the Maiden Goddess is also patron of childbirth and I should sacrifice also to her. Today we seek the Sunlord Apollo. He is the Lord of the Oracles as well; he slew the great Python, the Goddess of the Underworld, and became Lord of the Underworld as well."

"Tell me, if the Python was a Goddess, how could she be slain?"

"Oh, I suppose it is because the Sunlord is stronger than any Goddess," her mother said, as they began to climb the hill at the center of the city. The steps were steep, and Kassandra's legs felt tired as she struggled up them. Once she looked back; they were so high, so near the God's house, that she could see down over the wall of the city, to the great rivers where they flowed down across the plain and came together in a great flood of silver toward the sea.

Then for a moment it seemed to her that the surface of the sea was shadowed and that she saw ships blurring the brightness of the waves. She wiped her eyes and said, "Are those my father's ships?"

Hecuba looked back and asked, "What ships? I see no ships. Are you playing some game with me?"

"No; I really see them. Look there, one has a grey sail - no, it was the sun in my eyes—I cannot see them now." Her eyes ached and the ships were gone—or had they ever been more than the glare on the water?

It seemed to her that the air was so clear, filled with little sparkles like a thin veil, that at any moment the veil might tear or slip aside, revealing a glimpse into another world beyond this one. She could not remember ever seeing anything like this before. She felt, without knowing how, that the ships she had seen were there in that other world, perhaps they were something which she was going to see some day. She was young enough not to think this in any way strange. Her mother had moved on ahead and for some reason it seemed to Kassandra that it would disturb the Queen if she spoke again about the ships she had seen and could not see now. She hurried after her mother, her legs aching as she strained up the steps.

The Temple of Apollo Helios the Sunlord stood more than halfway to the summit of the hill upon which was built the great city of Troy. It was overlooked only by the great height of the maiden Temple of Athene far above; but it was itself the most beautiful of the temples of the city. It was built of shining white marble, with tall columns at either side, on a foundation of stonework set up - so Kassandra had been told more than once - by Titans before even the oldest men in the city were born, with high walls which, she had been told, those giants had built. The light was so fierce that Kassandra shaded her eyes with her hands. Well, if this was the very home of the Sun God, what would it-be except strong and perpetual light?

In the outer court, where merchants were selling all manner of things, animals for sacrifice, small clay statues of the God, various foods and drinks, her mother bought her a slice of sweet melon. It slid deliciously down her throat, dry from the long and dusty climb. Under the portico of the next court it was cool and shadowy; there a number of priests and functionaries recognized the Queen and beckoned her to come forward.

"Welcome, Lady," said one of them, "and the little princess too. Would you like to sit here and rest for a moment until the priestess can speak with you?"

They showed them to a marble bench in the shade. Kassandra sat quietly beside her mother for a moment, glad to be out of the heat; she finished her melon and wiped her hands on her underskirt, then looked about for a place to put the rind; it did not seem quite right to throw it on the floor under the eyes of the priests and priestesses. She slid down from the bench and discovered a basket where there was a quantity of fruit rinds and peelings, and put her rind inside it with the others.

Then she walked around the room slowly, wondering what she would see, and how different the house of a God would be from the house of a King. This of course was only his reception room, where people waited for audience—there was a room like this in the palace where petitioners came to wait when they wanted to ask a favour of the King or bring him a present. She wondered if he had a bedroom and where he slept or bathed. And Kassandra peered through into the main room which, she thought, must be the God's audience chamber.

He was there, so lifelike that Kassandra was not really aware for a moment that it was only a statue. It seemed reasonable that a God should be a little larger than life, rigidly upright, smiling a distant but welcoming smile. Kassandra stole into the room, to the very foot of the God, and for a moment she thought she had actually heard him speak; then she knew it was only a voice in her mind.

"Kassandra," he said, and it seemed perfectly natural that a God should know her name without being told. "Will you be my priestess?"

She whispered, neither knowing or caring if she spoke aloud, "Do you want me, Lord Apollo?"

"Yes; it is I who called you here," he said. The voice was great and golden, just what she imagined that a God's voice would be; and she had been told that the Sunlord was also the God of music and song.

"But I am only a little girl, not yet old enough to leave my father's house," she whispered.

"Still, I bid you remember, when that day comes, that you are mine," said the voice, and for a moment the motes of golden dust in the slanting sunshine became all one great ray of light through which it seemed that the God reached down to her and touched her with a burning touch… and then the brightness was gone and she could see that it was only a statue, chill and unmoving and not at all like the Apollo who had spoken to her. The priestess had come to lead Hecuba forward to the statue, but Kassandra tugged at her mother's hand.

"It's all right," she whispered insistently,"the God told me he would give you what you asked for."

She had no idea' when she had heard this; she simply knew that her mother's child was a boy, and if she knew when she had not known before, then it must have been the God who told her, and so, though she had not heard the God's voice, she knew that what she said was true.

Hecuba looked down at her sceptically, let her hand go and went into the inner room with the priestess. Kassandra went to look round the room.

Beside the altar was a small reed basket, and inside, as Kassandra peeped in, a suggestion of movement. At first she thought it was kittens; and wondered why, for cats were not sacrificed to the Gods. Looking more closely, she noted that there were two small coiled snakes in the basket. Serpents, she knew, belonged to Apollo of the Underworld. Without stopping to think, she reached out and grasped them in either hand, bringing them toward her face. They felt soft and warm and dry, faintly scaly beneath her ringers, and she could not resist kissing them. She felt strangely elated and just faintly sick, her whole body trembling all over.

She never knew how long she crouched there, holding the serpents, nor could she have said what they told her; she only knew that she was listening attentively to them all that time.

Then she heard her mother's voice in a cry of dread and reproof. She looked up, smiling.

"It's all right," she said, looking past her mother to the troubled face of the priestess behind Hecuba. "The God told me I might."

"Put them down, quickly," said the priestess. "You are not used-to handling them; they might very well have bitten you."

Kassandra gave each of the serpents a final caress and laid each one gently back in the reed basket. It seemed to her that they were reluctant to leave her, and she bent close and promised them she would come again and play with them.

"You wretched, disobedient girl!" Hecuba cried as she rose, grabbing her by the arm and pinching her hard, and Kassandra drew away, troubled; she could not remember that her mother had ever been so angry with her before, and she could not imagine why she should make a fuss about something like this.

"Don't you know that snakes are poisonous and dangerous?"

"But they belong to the God," Kassandra argued. "He would not let them bite me."

"You were very lucky," said the priestess gravely.

"You handle them and you are not afraid," Kassandra said.

"But I am a priestess and I have been taught to handle them."

"Apollo said I was to be his priestess, and he told me I might touch them," she argued, and the priestess looked down at her with a frown.

"Is this true, child?"

"Of course it is not true," Hecuba said sharply. "She is making up a tale! She is always imagining things."

This was so unfair and unjustified that Kassandra began to cry. Her mother grabbed her firmly by the arm and pulled her outside, pushing her roughly ahead and down the steep steps so sharply that she stumbled and almost fell. The day seemed to have lost all its golden brilliance. The God was gone; she could no longer feel his presence, and she could have cried for that even more than for the bruising grip of her mother on her upper arm.

"Why would you say such a thing?" Hecuba scolded again. "Are you such a baby that I cannot leave you alone for twenty minutes without getting into mischief? Playing with the Temple serpents - don't you know how badly they could have hurt you?"

"But the God said he would not let them hurt me," Kassandra said stubbornly, and her mother pinched her again, leaving a bruise on her arm.

"You must not say such a thing!"

"But it is true," the girl insisted.

"Nonsense; if you ever again say such a thing I will beat you," said her mother crossly. Kassandra was silent; what had happened had happened. She had no wish to be beaten but she knew the truth and could not deny it. Why couldn't her mother trust her? She always told the truth.

She could not bear it, that her mother and the priestess should think she was lying, and as she went quietly, no longer protesting, down the long steps, her hand tucked tightly under the larger hand of the Queen, she clung to the face of Apollo, his gentle voice in her mind. Without even being aware of it, already something very deep within her was waiting for the sound.