Kassandra, choosing her moment carefully, left the hedge and raced across the field, breathlessly crowding into the circle near the Queen, taking her place beside Oenone. All the women were looking down fearfully at the Akhaians nearing their ships. She picked out the tall beaked figure of Agamemnon; he was no monster now, only a man, rougher, stronger and crueller than most, but the sight of him still made her blood run cold.
Hecuba was looking around and counting her women. "Are you all here? Has anyone been taken?"
A group of women from the Sunlord's house were clustered together at the outskirts of Hecuba's women. Phyllida was unobtrusively counting them; she cried out, "Oh, where is Chryseis! Was she not with you, Kassandra? I thought I saw her at your side—"
"Yes, she was with me, perhaps she is still in the hedge. Shall I go back and see? All of - of them have got back to their ships, I think—"
"No," Phyllida said firmly, "you must not expose yourself; remember, you are Priam's daughter, and you would be a great prize to any one of the invaders. Stay here close to your mother," she admonished, as Hecuba came and grasped Kassandra's hand.
"So you are safe? I was worried about you," Hecuba said. "How did you know they would attack us?"
"I thought it likely," Kassandra said, "and so it was."
"But they have not taken any captives," Hecuba said, "and so they have had all their trouble for nothing."
"No, we did not come off untouched," Kassandra said. "They managed to take one of the maidens from Apollo's Temple."
"Oh, how dreadful!" Hecuba said with a gasp.
Kassandra thought to herself that the loss was a small one; the girl had been a troublemaker from the first, and it was not even certain that she was a maiden.
All the same, Kassandra was grateful that the attack had done so little harm. She decided to seek out Helen and ask when her child would be born - once again it seemed as if Helen was under the glamour of the Goddess, even at the most unattractive stage of pregnancy, she seemed beautiful and glowing. It was not only Paris whose eyes followed her as bits of lint follow amber.
Helen smiled at Kassandra with such intense welcome that Kassandra felt almost weak in the knees. The favour of the Goddess was to be treasured; without it, the women here might have torn the Spartan Queen to pieces; after all, she had brought the men of Troy into the dangers of this war. But I have no husband or lover for whom I must fear. Helen embraced her and Kassandra returned the greeting warmly.
Strange; when she first came here it was I who pleaded to my father and mother that they should have nothing to do with her. Now I love her well and if they sought to cast her out, I would be the first to speak in her favour. Is it the will of the Goddess she incarnates? Do I serve her in befriending Helen? No; now, bearing a child, she must seek the favour of Earth Mother.
"When is the baby due?"
"At autumn harvest," said Helen.
"And it is Paris's child? Then perhaps," Kassandra suggested, "Menelaus will go away and be content to leave you here."
Helen smiled cynically. "If he should say it, no one would listen," she said. "Come, Kassandra, you know as well as I that my body and my adultery are only a pretext for this war; Agamemnon has been trying for years to have a good excuse to attack Troy. If I sought to return to Menelaus tonight under cover of darkness, I would wager anything you like that my dead body would be found hanging on the walls and the Akhaians would keep fighting on the pretext of avenging me."
This was so likely true that Kassandra did not bother to comment. Helen said in annoyance, "There have been many times when I felt it would be best if I had been sworn a virgin to the Moon Maiden. Even now I am tempted to forswear men forever in her shrine; would she have me, do you think?"
"How should I know?" Kassandra replied hesitantly.
"Well, you are a priestess—"
"All I know is that she denies no woman who comes before her," Kassandra said. "But it seems to me that your destiny is to become a symbol of strife among men; and no one can argue with destiny."
"It would be too good to be true, I suppose, that I should be able to seek the Goddess and in her shadow avert the known pattern of my fate," Helen said. "But how do I know it is a God who has determined this fate and not that I have simply become entangled between two willful men who care nothing for the Gods?"
"I think this is the kind of thing no one can ever know," Kassandra said. "Yet I do feel the hand of some God in this; I know how Paris was driven to seek you."
"Then you mean that this war between Troy and my people was determined by the Immortals?" Helen asked. "Why? I mean, why me and not some other?"
"If I knew that," said Kassandra, "I should then be the most favoured seer of the Gods. I can only guess that the Goddess who favoured you with such beauty had this purpose in mind."
"And I still ask: why me and not some other?"
"Ask as much as you will," Kassandra said, "and if you receive an answer come and share it with me."
CHAPTER 10
Kassandra dreamed that the Gods were angry with the city and were fighting above Troy; they towered to the sky, their spears clashing with thunderbolts and the glare of their great swords was like lightning. She woke to a day of heavy dripping rain, and a dull ache in her eyes.
Surprisingly, she missed Chryseis; she had grown used to the girl's company and could not help dwelling with fear and disgust on what must have befallen her in the camp of the Greeks - they had after all been there for several months without their own women. Although she knew that some of the women of the town slipped out through the walls into the shoreline camp to sell their bodies, she did not suppose it was the same. However, when she thought to pity Chryseis, she found herself thinking that this had been exactly what the girl wanted; she had been eyeing the foreigners over the wall for some months now.
Dismissing the girl from her thoughts, Kassandra threw on a robe and went to care for the serpents and the old priestess.
When she entered the room set apart for the old woman and the serpents she found confusion; two or three statues had been overthrown and were lying broken about the room, and there was not a sign of a single snake anywhere. She called out - she had heard that snakes were deaf and could hear nothing, but she was not certain about that, and calling would do no harm—and old Meliantha called out feebly from the other room.
"Is that you, Kassandra, daughter of Priam?"
Kassandra went quickly to the dark inner room where the old lady lay on her pallet.
"What ails you, Meliantha? Are you ill?"
"No," said the aged priestess, "I am dying." Kassandra saw by the dim light that her face had shrunken even further, her eyes dimmed and covered with a white film. "You need not call out to the serpents, for they have gone; all of them. They have left us and retreated deep into the earth. Those who are still here are lying dead in their pots—look and see." Kassandra went to investigate, and saw a few unbroken pots lying in place; inside the serpents lay, cold and still. She returned to the old priestess to ask what had happened.
"Did you not feel the anger of the Earthshaker in the night? Not only the pots, but all my statues are broken."
"No, I heard nothing; but I had evil dreams of the anger of the Gods," Kassandra said. "Is it Serpent Mother who is angry with us?"
"No," said the old priestess scornfully. "She would not punish her serpents to show her anger with us; rather she would slay us for the well-being of her little folk. Whichever God has done this, Serpent Mother has nothing to do with it."
The old woman looked so agitated that Kassandra wished to comfort her. "Will you have bread and wine, Mother?"