"No! No, I beg you, Father—"
Priam stepped back up into his chariot.
"I have tried to be patient with you, girl; but I have no more patience now. Get back to the Sunlord's house; he is the patron God of the demented - and pray to him for kindlier visions. As for me, let it never be said that Priam of Troy refused hospitality to a woman who came to him as supplicant."
"Oh, Gods," she cried, "can you not even see? Are you all besotted with this woman? Mother, can't you see what she has done to my father, my brothers—?"
Hector stepped forward and dragged Kassandra, protesting, out of the path of the chariots. "Don't stand here wailing," he said good-naturedly. "Calm yourself, bright-eyes; suppose it really does come to war with that Akhaian crew? Do you suppose we couldn't send them yelping back to those goat pastures they call their native land? War need not mean disaster to Troy, but to our enemies." His voice was compassionate. She flung her head back and gave a long wail of dismay and despair.
"Poor girl," Helen said, stepping toward her, "why have you chosen to hate me? You are the sister of my beloved; I am ready to love you as a sister."
Kassandra jerked away from Helen's outstretched hands; she felt that she would fall down and vomit if the woman actually touched her. She stared up at Priam in anguish.
"Oh, why can't you listen to me? Can't you see what this will mean? It is not man alone but the Gods who struggle here—and no man can live when there is war among the Immortals," she wailed. "And yet you say it is I who am mad! Your madness is worse than mine, I tell you!" She whirled and ran away into the palace.
Her heart was pounding as if she had run all the way from the Sunlord's house; she felt sick and shaking, and it seemed that she was running through flames that rose around her, engulfing all the palace in the smell of burning, the smoke… when hands touched her she shrieked in terror and tried to pull away, but the hands held her tight, and in a moment she was wrapped in loving arms. The darkness rolled away; there was no fire. She gazed in confusion into Andromache's dark eyes.
"Kassandra, my dearest! What ails you?"
Kassandra, jolted out of the nightmare but not yet fully aware of what was happening or where she was, could only stare, unable to speak.
"Sister, you are exhausted, you have been too long in the sun," Andromache said. She put her arms around Kassandra and led her into the cool, shadowed room.
"Oh, if it were only no worse than that," Kassandra gasped as Andromache pushed her down on a bench with soft cushions, and held a cool cup of water to her lips. "Don't you think I would rather believe myself mad, or sun-smitten, if it meant I need not see what I have seen?"
"I believe you," Andromache said. "I do not think you mad: but I do not believe your visions either."
"Do you think I would invent such a thing? How wicked you must think me!" Kassandra cried out indignantly. Andromache held her close in an affectionate embrace.
"No, sister; I believe that the Gods have tormented you with false visions," she said. "No one could believe you malicious enough to pretend such things. But, my dear, listen to reason. Our city is strong and well defended; we have no lack of warriors or weapons, or if it came to that, of allies; if the Akhaians should be fools enough to come chasing after this bitch in heat instead of saying "good riddance to a very nasty piece of rubbish", why should you think they would not get more of Troy than they ever bargained for?"
Kassandra could see the good sense in that; but she moaned, clutching at her heart.
"Yes, Hector said something like that—" she murmured, "but—" she heard herself crying again, "it is the Immortals who are angry with us." She fought desperately to bring herself up out of the dark waters.
"At least you know she is no more than a bitch in heat," she said at last.
"Oh yes; I saw the looks she cast on Hector and even on your father," Andromache said. "And it may well be that she is a curse sent to our city by one of the Immortals; but if it is their will we cannot avoid it."
Kassandra rocked to and fro in misery; Andromache's quiet words and acceptance filled her with despair.
"Do you truly believe that the Gods would stoop to fight against a mortal city? What reason could they have? We are not wicked or impious - we have not angered any God."
"Perhaps," said Andromache,"the Gods do not need reasons for what they do."
"If the Gods are not just," Kassandra said, weeping, "what hope is there for us?"
As if in a blaze she saw the face of the Beautiful One, the Goddess who had tempted Paris successfully.
I will give you the most beautiful woman in the world—
As she had thought then, she thought again: But he already has a woman…
She raised her face to Andromache.
"Where did Oenone go?"
"I did not see; I thought perhaps she went to care for her child—"
"No; she saw Paris with Helen and ran away," Kassandra said. "I will go to her."
"I cannot see why Paris would desert her even for Helen, beautiful as she is," said Andromache. "Unless some Goddess has ordained it."
"Such an unjust Goddess I would never serve," Kassandra said bitterly.
Andromache covered her hands with her ears. "Oh, don't say that," she implored. "That is blasphemy; we are all subject to the Immortals—"
Kassandra raised the unfinished cup and drained it; but her hands were shaking and she almost dropped it.
"I will go and speak with Oenone," she said, rising.
"Yes," Andromache urged, "go and tell her we love her and we will never accept that Spartan in her place, were she Aphrodite herself."
Though Kassandra searched the palace everywhere, Oenone was nowhere to be found; nor was she ever again seen in Priam's house. At last, hearing the royal party on the stairs - making ready, she thought, to solemnize Paris's wedding - which, since Oenone was not there to protest it, could not be prevented -Kassandra left the palace and returned quietly to the Sunlord's house. She had no wish to hear wedding hymns sung for Helen when they had been denied Oenone. She would have been willing to rebuke them in the name of any God if a God had spoken to her, but nothing happened, and she had no wish to make a further spectacle of herself crying out the death and disaster that she could not help but see.
VOLUME TWO: Aphrodite's Gift
CHAPTER 1
Kassandra spoke to no one, either in the Sunlord's house or elsewhere, of Helen or Paris; but she should have known that such news would never be kept silent; before three days had elapsed, Helen's story, and Kassandra's prophecy, were on every tongue in Troy.
There were even those who, seeing Helen's beauty, believed, or said they believed, that the Akhaian Goddess of Love and Beauty, Aphrodite, had come herself to the city. Kassandra, if asked about this, said only that Helen was indeed very beautiful—beautiful enough to turn the head of any mortal man—and that in her own country she was believed to have been fathered by an Immortal.
She did not know or care whether anyone believed this; her own worry was now for Oenone. She hoped that the girl had simply taken her child and returned to the Temple of Scamander; but she did not believe it. At the back of her mind was the haunting fear that Oenone had somehow chosen to sacrifice herself and her son to the River God. If Aphrodite was indeed a Goddess of Love, why had she not chosen to guard the love between Oenone and Paris?
She wondered about this Goddess Aphrodite, who put such temptation into the hearts of men - and women too; it was not only that Paris had chosen and could not resist Helen, but Helen too, though Queen of Sparta by Mother-right, had chosen to give herself to Paris—after having chosen her husband, as few women in the Akhaian world could do. If I were Queen, she thought, I should choose to be like Imandra and reign alone, taking no consort.