With her own mother she now shared a passionate grief. She had been guilty of underestimating Akhilles; she should have known that his madness made him ever more dangerous; as even a house dog may turn vicious and untrustworthy.
Yet if she had warned them they would never have listened.
One of the attendants of the shrine recognized her and came to ask deferentially how she could serve the daughter of Priam.
"I would speak with my sister Polyxena," she said, and the servant went at once to fetch her.
Before very long, she heard a step and Polyxena came into the room, knowing at once from Kassandra's face and crying out, "You bear evil news, sister! Is it our mother, our father—"
"No; they live still, though I know not what this news will do to them in the end," Kassandra said. Polyxena was now a tall woman in her late twenties; but she had still the soft face of a child. She came and embraced Kassandra, weeping.
"What do you mean? Tell me—"
"Hector," Kassandra said, and felt herself almost at the edge of tears.
"The worst," she said. "Not only Hector, but Troilus." Her throat closed and she could hardly speak. "Both dead in a single hour, at Akhilles's hands, and that madman drags Hector's corpse behind his chariot and will not hear of giving up his body for burial—"
Polyxena burst into sobs and the sisters clung to one another, united as they had not been since they were little children.
"I will come at once," Polyxena said. "Mother will need me; let me but fetch my cloak." She hurried away, and Kassandra reflected sorrowfully that this was true; she could not comfort her mother. Even Andromache was closer to Hecuba than she was. All her life it had been so: that of all their children Hector was closest to her parents, and Kassandra had been the least loved. Was it only that she had always been so different from the others?
It broke her heart that even in this dreadful moment she could not turn to her mother. Because she could always retain her composure and because she was not beside herself with grief, it would never have occurred to anyone that she was in need of consolation. Her bottomless, tearless sadness seemed to her mother, she knew, cold and inhuman; quite unlike the aspect of a woman at all.
Polyxena returned, in the pale cloak of a priestess, with something tied in a cloth at her waist. Her eyes were red, but she had stopped crying; however, Kassandra knew she would weep again at the sight of her mother's tears.
I wish I could; Hector is worthy of all the tears we might all shed for him. And she wondered despairing, "What is wrong with me, that for all my grief I cannot weep for my dearest brothers—
Yet in her heart a small rational voice said, Hector was a fool; he knew Akhilles was a madman who did not abide by any civilized rules for warfare, and nevertheless for something he called honor he rushed to his death. This honor was dearer to him than life, or Andromache or his son, or the thought of the grief his parents would feel. And for all the horror of it, she could not feel any additional disgust or dismay at what Akhilles had done to his corpse. Hector was dead, and that was bad enough. What would make it worse?
And we are all going to die anyhow; and few of us as quickly or mercifully; why do we not rejoice that he is spared further suffering?
Polyxena handed her the cloth; she felt something hard within it.
"What jewels I have," she said. "Father may need them to ransom Hector's body; Akhilles is just as greedy for gold as for what he calls glory; perhaps this will help."
"He is welcome to mine, too," said Kassandra,"though I have few; only my pearls from Colchis."
Together they went down the hill toward the palace. It was growing late; the low sun was hidden behind a heavy bank of cloud, and the brisk wind held a smell of rain. On the plain, there was no sign of Akhilles's chariot. He had given up his gruesome work, at least for the night.
"Perhaps they will make a foray in the dark to rescue him," Polyxena said. "And if it rains, Akhilles may agree to accept a ransom; he will not want to drive a chariot all day in a storm."
"I don't think it will make any difference to him," Kassandra said. "It seems to me that the sensible thing to do would be to accept this and do what he does not expect; let him keep Hector's corpse. Muster all our forces tomorrow and throw everything we have into an all-out attempt to kill Akhilles and Agamemnon and perhaps Menelaus as well."
Polyxena stared at her in utter dismay, the beginning rain mingling with the tears on her cheek.
"I beg of you, sister, say nothing like that to our mother or rather," she said. "I did not think even you could be so heartless as to leave Hector unburied in the rain."
It is not Hector who lies unburied," Kassandra said fiercely. It is a dead body like any other."
I do not know if you are very stupid, or simply very malicious," Polyxena said, "but you speak like a barbarian and not a civilized woman, a princess and a priestess of Troy." She turned away her eyes and Kassandra knew she had only made things worse. She looked away from Polyxena to hide the tears in her eyes, while knowing perversely that Polyxena would think better of her for them. They did not speak again.
When they reached the palace, a servant (Kassandra noticed that the old woman's eyes were as swollen and red as her mother's - everyone down to the kitchen drudges had loved Hector, and all the palace women remembered Troilus as a small petted child) took their soaked cloaks, dried their hair and feet with towels, and showed them into the main dining hall.
It looked almost the same as always, a roaring fire casting light around the room and branched candlesticks spreading brilliance by which the paintings on the walls wavered as if seen underwater. The carved bench where Hector habitually sat was empty, and Andromache sat between Priam and Hecuba, like a child between her parents.
Paris and Helen were nearby, clinging to one another's hands. They came to greet Polyxena, who went to kiss her parents; Kassandra sat down in her accustomed place near Helen, but when the servants put food on her plate she could not swallow and only nibbled at a dish of boiled vegetables and drank a little watered wine. Paris looked sad, but Kassandra knew that he was very well aware that he was now Priam's eldest son and commander of the armies. If there is to be any hope for Troy, someone must disabuse him of that notion, she thought, he is no Hector. Then she was astonished at herself; she had known so long that there was no hope for Troy, why did these unconquerable thoughts of hope keep rising again and again?
Did this mean her visions of doom were simply hallucinations or brain-sickness, as everyone said? Or did it mean that somehow with Hector gone there was new hope for Troy? No, that was certainly madness; he was the best of us all, she thought, and knew that someone - Paris? Priam? - had actually said it aloud.
"He was the best of us all," Paris said, "but he is gone, and somehow we must manage the rest of this war without him. I have no idea how we will do it."
"It is in essence your war," Andromache said. "I told Hector he should have left it to you all along."
Someone sobbed aloud; it was Helen. Andromache turned on her in sudden rage.