"Not at all; it is not I, but the Gods who have determined that some animals shall be fed on other living things; I did not create them and it is not for me to say on what they should be fed," Kassandra replied. She had heard Meliantha say this once when a young girl in the temple had been squeamish about feeding living mice to snakes.
"Well," said Arikia, "we must find you a room of your own, and an attendant priestess, and make you known to the rest of us who live here. You are a princess of Troy and I hope it will not be too small and mean for you."
"Oh, no," Kassandra said, "I am eager to be one of you." Arikia embraced her lovingly, and led her into the house of Serpent Mother.
CHAPTER 17
Then began for Kassandra a time like no other in her life. Since she was already a priestess, there were no wearying ordeals or trials; although as the youngest - many of the priestesses of-Serpent Mother were elderly and frail, for few young women chose to serve the Serpent shrine - she had to take her turn at the more troublesome duties such as caring for the animals being raised for feeding the serpents, cleaning pots, and accepting and tallying temple offerings. She was welcomed by everyone and treated in accordance with her station; Queen Imandra herself received no more deference, and soon Arikia came to love her as a daughter.
In many ways her stay in the Serpent Mother's Temple was like her early years in the Sunlord's house, with one great difference: all the devotees of Serpent Mother were women, and she had nothing like her early troubles with Khryse; the only men in the house of the Serpent were slaves and none of them would have dared make any advances to any of the priestesses.
She learned all that the priestesses could teach her about the ways of serpents and snakes; how to tell the venomous from the harmless, how to tame and handle certain kinds of harmless serpents which looked identical to certain poisonous snakes so that any onlooker would believe that she was defying death. She herself had no fear of even the largest snakes, and soon was one of the preferred handlers; often when the enormous matriarch of serpents was carried in processions, Kassandra was one of those chosen to carry her.
No facet of serpent lore escaped her; how to find and capture them in the wild, how to feed and keep them, how to bathe them and care for them when they shed their skins. She even hatched one herself, carrying the egg between her breasts for more than a month, and sheltering the baby snake against her body when it crawled out of the egg. For this she was given the coveted title of honor among the priestesses, Snake Mother.
She seldom thought of Troy. Word came to them now and again, perhaps distorted by the long journey, of how the war went. Idomeneo of Crete, and the Minoan Kings, became Troy's allies; most of the mainlanders stood with the Akhaians. The Islanders, because of alliances forged when Atlantis still ruled the seas, held with Priam and the Goddesses of Troy and Colchis.
Sometimes at the full moon, Kassandra kindled witchfire and looked into her scrying-bowl by its light; and so she knew when Andromache bore Hector a second son who died before his navel-string was healed; she wished that night that she could have been in Troy to comfort her friend's grief.
She knew, too, when Helen bore Paris twin sons, which did not entirely surprise her; Paris, after all, was a twin—and Helen too had a twin sister. It occurred to her that if she herself ever bore children, she might produce twins, perhaps twin daughters. Helen's twins were strong and healthy children, though they hadn't the beauty of either their mother or father, and grew so fast that within half a year they were walking.
Before Paris's younger sons were weaned, Priam suffered a fall in a skirmish on the shore, and the thunderbolt stroke, during the illness that followed, left the right side of his face twisted and sagging, and he limped thereafter on his right foot. He made Hector the official commander of his armies—to no one's surprise. The soldiers, though they were loyal, and cheered Priam when on rare occasions he appeared before the armies, worshipped Hector as if he were Mars himself.
Time in Colchis slipped past without incident. She was always welcomed at the palace, and Imandra often sent for her; sometimes simply for her company, occasionally to look into a scrying-bowl and tell her how it went with the war, or sometimes to search out the Amazons to be certain it did not go too badly with Penthesilea and her band. With her days filled with study and duties, it surprised her to discover that she had been gone from Troy for more than a year. Among women, birth was always a festival and someone in the palace was always having a baby; the women sworn to Serpent Mother did not marry and most of them had taken formal vows of chastity, so there were no births in their temple. She wondered when the Queen would have her child.
Soon she heard in the city that the Queen would walk abroad to bless her subjects in the name of Earth Mother; Kassandra vaguely remembered - it was almost her first memory - that
Hecuba had done this before Troilus was born. In Troy it was simply an old custom half-remembered and informally observed: whenever the Queen showed herself in the streets women would rush up to her and ask her blessing; in Colchis where the customs were kept in the old way, Kassandra was not surprised to find there it was a formal procession. But surely they had left it to very late; the time of birth must be imminent. Imandra would not walk the streets but would be carried in a sedan chair, and Arikia, the earthly representative of Serpent Mother, would be carried with her, the serpents of wisdom adorning her from head to foot, so that all women in the city could seek blessing not only from the pregnant queen but from the Serpent Mother.
"But why now? Do they want the Queen to fall into labour in the streets?" she asked.
"Well, it has happened before," Arikia said. "This would not be the first child of a Queen of Colchis to be born in the streets of the city. There will be many court midwives in the procession. But the Queen's astrologers have chosen this as an auspicious day; and of course, the nearer to her time Imandra is, the more blessing she can confer."
"Yes, of course." Kassandra could understand that. It was the morning of the procession, and Kassandra along with her fellow priestesses was helping to dress and adorn Arikia, winding the serpent matriarch about her waist and two smaller serpents about her arms. It would be tiring for her, for the serpents must be held up so that the people could see them. Kassandra wished that she, who was younger and stronger, could take the older woman's place. She said so, but Arikia only said, "It is harder still on the Queen, my dear; she is as big as a python who has swallowed a cow. Perhaps next time, my dear; Imandra is an old friend and I am happy to ride in her procession. She has been more than kind to you, too. A little more of the crimson paint on my left cheek, if you please, and some of the herbal powder to be burned in the brazier; the serpents love it, and they give far less trouble when they can smell it. Will you ride with me, Kassandra? And you can feed the brazier, and stand ready to take the smaller snakes from me if they should be restless. It is not likely, but of course anything can happen."
Kassandra knew this was a privilege of which other priestesses in the temple would be envious; but they deferred to her as princess of Troy and she was entitled to these honors. She went and put on her best ceremonial robe at once, and wrapped her arms with two or three of the smaller serpents, binding two others around her brow so that they formed a crown. Thus arrayed (and thinking that perhaps the statues of the legendary Medusa might have been inspired by such a serpent crown) she went out to the street and as Arikia was lifted into the high raised chair, let herself be lifted in after her.