It was still early in the day when she returned to the court where Charis and Khryse were waiting for her. The old priestess was helping him to tally the offerings left in the Temple court during the night, simple offerings left from simple piety by citizens who had no special petitions to ask. They were making marks on tally-sticks: one mark for a jar of oil or wine, another for a tray of flat cakes, yet another for the pair of pigeons in a woven-reed cage. She told them what arrangements she had made for the child.
"That was sensible," said Charis,"she'll come to no harm rocking the baby, and it will free Phyllida to return to her own duties."
"I cannot tell you my gratitude," Khryse said. "It is all but impossible for a man to care for a girl child; if she had been a boy I might have managed it. When she was very small, it was simpler; now she is all but grown I must watch her night and day. Among the Sunlord's virgins I need not fear for her."
"We will certainly guard her maidenhood for you," said Charis, "but is that so important just now? I thought she was only about ten or eleven years old."
"So did I," Kassandra said, "but when I bathed her I saw she was older than I thought."
Khryse considered.
"Her mother died ten years ago," he said, "and I am sure she was not three years old. Four months ago womanhood came on her, and I did not even know what to say to a girl. It was then I decided I must leave my wandering life and settle somewhere so that she could be properly cared for. On the road I could not even keep her fed, and she was too pretty to let her go out as a beggar."
"Poor motherless child," Kassandra said. "I will care for her as if she were my own."
"You have no children of your own, Lady?"
"No," Kassandra said. "I am a virgin of Apollo."
She felt herself blushing at the look he gave her and said quickly, "They are beginning to bring in offerings and to consult the shrine; I must go and be ready to speak with them."
The first man had brought an offering of a jar of good wine; he asked, "Priestess, I wish to ask the God how shall I get my sister well married; my father is dead and I have been away from my village for many years serving in my king's army."
Kassandra had been asked similar questions many times; she went into the shrine and dutifully repeated the question. She did not believe it was important enough for the God to answer; nevertheless she waited several minutes in case the God had something to say. Then she returned to the waiting man and said:
"Go to your father's oldest friend and ask for his advice out of friendship for your father; and forget not to give him a generous gift."
The man's face brightened.
"I am grateful to the God for his advice," he said, and Kassandra nodded to him courteously, holding herself back by force from saying If you had used what wit the God saw fit to give you, you would have saved yourself the trouble of coming here; but since any sensible person could have given you such an answer, we might as well have a gift for it.
Later when Khryse asked her, "How do you know what to answer? I find it hard to believe a God would trouble himself with such matters," she told him that the priests had worked out proper answers to the commonest questions.
"But never forget to be silent for a few moments, in case the God has another answer to be given. Even the most foolish questions - from our point of view—the God sometimes sees fit to answer," she warned him.
After a little, another man came carrying a great basket of excellent melons and asked, "What shall I plant in my south field this year?"
"Has there been fire or flood or any great change on your land?"
"No, Lady."
She went into the shrine, sitting for a moment before the great statue of the Sunlord, remembering how the first time she saw it as a child she had thought it a living man. When the God did not speak to her she returned and said: 'Plant the crop you planted there three years ago."
This answer could do no possible harm; if he had been rotating his crops as the headmen of most villages now advised, it would not conflict with their advice, and if he had not, it would make things no worse. As he thanked her she felt the common exasperation; this was the safe answer for any farmer in any year, and she felt he should have known it without asking; but they would all enjoy the melons, anyway.
The morning went slowly, with only one question which gave her a moment's thought; a man brought a fine kid as an offering, and said that his wife had just borne him a fine son.
"And you wish to give thanks to the Sunlord?"
The man shifted his feet uneasily, like a guilty child.
"Well, not exactly," he muttered. "I wish to know if this child is mine, or has my wife been unfaithful to me?"
This was the question Kassandra always most dreaded; her year among the Amazons had taught her that a man's suspicion of a woman usually meant that he did not feel himself worthy of a woman's regard.
Yet she accepted the offering calmly and went into the shrine; sometimes this question was actually answered, apparently at random: If you are not certain, expose the child at once. But there was no answer, so she gave the suitable answer for such occasions: 'If you can trust your wife in other ways, there is no reason to doubt her in this."
The man looked enormously relieved, and Kassandra sighed and told him, "Go home, now, and thank the Goddess for your son, and forget not to make apology to your wife for doubting her without reason."
"I will, lady," he promised, and Kassandra, seeing that there were no other worshippers waiting consultation, turned to say to Khryse, "At this hour we should now close the shrine, and rest until the sun begins to decline; it is the custom to take a little bread and fruit before we return to see anyone who comes."
He thanked her and added, "The lady Charis told me you are the second daughter of King Priam and of his queen. You are nobly born, and as beautiful as Aphrodite - how is it that you serve here in the shrine when every prince and nobleman on this coast and southward to Crete must have been seeking you in marriage?"
"Oh, not so many as that," she said, laughing nervously. "In my case, the Sunlord called me to his service when I was younger than your daughter."
He looked skeptical. "He called you? How?"
"You are a priest," she said. "Surely he has spoken to you."
"I have had no such fortune, Lady," he said. "I think the Immortals speak only to the great. My father - he was a poor man - pledged me to the God's service when my elder brother was spared from the fever which raged in Mykenae a score of years ago. He thought it a fair bargain; my brother was a warrior, and I, he said, fit for nothing."
"That was not right," Kassandra said vehemently. "A son is not a slave."
"Oh, I was willing enough," Khryse said. "I had no talent for becoming a warrior."
Kassandra laughed a little. "Strange; surely you are stronger than I, and I was a warrior for several years among the Amazons."
"I have heard of the maiden warriors," he said, "and I have heard also that they kill their lovers and their boy children."
"Not so," she said, "but men dwell apart from women there; male children are sent to their fathers as soon as they are weaned from the breast."
"And had you a lover when you dwelt among them, beautiful Amazon?"
"No," she said softly. "As I told you, I am sworn as a virgin to the Sunlord."
"It seems a pity," Khryse said,"that so beautiful a lady should grow old unloved."
"You need not pity me," Kassandra said indignantly. "I am well content with no lover."
"That seems to me the pity of it," Khryse said. "You are a princess, and beautiful, and you are kind too—so you showed yourself to my daughter - yet you live alone here and give yourself to these wretched petitioners and serve here as any low-born maiden might do—"