She was unaccustomed to the sun's glare, its heat even in this season. It soon seemed frighteningly hot to her. Also, she was worrying about Kara and Adrea.
Honey was crawling on the floor of the little guard-house; Kassandra noticed that she was getting her tunic very dirty, and her knees not much less so, but she was far too tired to care. Deiphobos guided her attention to a small stairway carved out from the stone, which led up actually inside the wall.
"Would you care to have a look from the top of the wall? You can see everything that goes on in the Akhaian camp from here. The King is coming down now to have a look - he comes every day about this time," Deiphobos said. "I hear his guards." He glanced at Honey. "The baby will be safe here," he said. "She's big enough that no one will step on her." He picked up a spear that was leaning against the wall, and slung it in his belt. "There - nothing else she can hurt herself with. Come along."
Kassandra followed him up the narrow steep stairs; he turned back at the top to give her a hand up. It was true; from here she could see all through the Akhaian camp. He pointed out to her the large ornamented tent that was Agamemnon's, the somewhat smaller but more ornamental one that belonged to Akhilles and Patroklos, the quarters of Odysseus, which looked as if he had moved a ship's cabin ashore. "And many others. There's a long roster of the ships out there which belong to the Akhaians -some bard was making a song about it," he said. "To hear them tell it, every hero from the mainland has turned up to help Agamemnon and his crew. There's a sizeable list of our allies too, but I don't suppose you're interested in that."
"Not particularly," Kassandra confessed. "I heard enough about both sides in Colchis."
"Colchis," he said thoughtfully, "come to think of it, Colchis hasn't come out for either side; why hasn't their King sent soldiers for Troy?"
"Because Colchis has no king," Kassandra informed him. "Colchis is ruled by a queen; and this last year she has been pregnant; her heir - a daughter - was born a few days before I left."
"No king, and a woman's rule? Seems a funny way to run a city." Before he had time to say anything more, the sound of soldiers approaching interrupted them, and Priam, accompanied by several of his soldiers—many of whom Kassandra recognized as the sons of his palace women—came up on the top of the wall.
It was well she had been warned by the Sight; otherwise she might have recognized her father only by the rich cloak he wore. He had been a hale and hearty man with a fresh colour, verging on middle age; now she saw an old man, his skin greyish and wrinkled, his face fallen away at one side with a drooping eyelid, the corner of his mouth sagging. His speech too was heavy and thick.
He demanded of Deiphobos, "What was going on in the Akhaian camp this morning? Was it those Akhaians intercepting weapons again? If this keeps up, we'll be melting down our old swords to make new ones. We need a couple of wagon-loads of iron from Colchis, but we'd have to arrange special escort or bribe somebody to let it through…'
He broke off and said, "How many times have I told you; no women here unless the Queen herself is present to make certain they behave themselves? You know as well as I do, the kind of women who come here to gawk at the soldiers—"
Kassandra said, "No, Father; it is not Deiphobos's fault; he offered me shelter from the sun and a view from the wall after the Akhaians captured my wagon—"
She did not finish, but she did not need to; Priam recognized her and said, "So you have come back like an ill omen, Kassandra! I thought you had determined to pass the rest of the war in Colchis, one less woman for me to worry about should the city fall. But your mother has missed you." He came and dutifully kissed her on the forehead. "Do you mean that the Akhaians dared to break Apollo's truce?"
When she was a small child Kassandra had found Priam's anger terrifying; now he simply sounded peevish, like an overgrown spoilt child. She said gently, "It doesn't matter, Father; no one has been hurt, and Apollo's property—including me, I suppose—is quite safe. And as soon as my chair is here I shall go and reassure my mother."
"You are strong and healthy; why should you need a chair to carry you?" he demanded crossly.
The war is not going as he wishes it, she translated to herself, and said demurely, "Yes, Father, I am sure you are right."
"Your chair is waiting for you," Deiphobos said, and Kassandra saw it drawing up inside the wall. She went down the stairs and picked up Honey, wishing she could find a way to have the baby washed and fed before bringing her to her mother; but there was no help for it now. She herself was dishevelled from long travelling, and from the interlude in the dusty Akhaian camp, as well as from holding the dirty child; but there was no help for that either. And why should I put on my finest robe and tidy my bands and face for my mother* she asked herself. But when she was brought into Queen Hecuba's presence, and saw her mother's disapproving stare, she knew.
"Well, Kassandra! My dear, dear daughter!" Hecuba exclaimed and came to embrace her, then drew back with a little grimace of dismay.
"But what have you been doing with yourself, my dear! Your dress is a disgrace, and your hair—"
"Mother, after encountering the Akhaians this morning, it is fortunate they even left me a dress to wear before you," she said with a smile. "I fear that the gifts I brought you from your kinswoman Imandra were left in the Akhaian camp."
Hecuba looked deeply distressed, "They did not - offer you insult?"
"Nobody raped me, if that's what you mean," Kassandra said, laughing.
"How can you make a joke of such a thing?" her mother demanded.
Kassandra said, kissing her, "Why, how can I do anything else? They are fools, all of them, but there is foolery enough in Troy, if it comes to that."
Hecuba's eyes fell on the child in Kassandra's arms.
"Why, what's this? A child, and such a young one - her hair - it curls like yours did when you were that age - why, what - who -how—?"
"No, Mother," Kassandra said quickly,"she is not mine - or rather, I did not bear her; she is a foundling." Hecuba still looked sceptical, and Kassandra, sighing—why was her mother always ready to think evil of her? - said, "Would it be easy to find a man who would have my bed when it was occupied with a serpent, even one so small as this?" She reached inside her dress for the one who always coiled there during her waking hours; Hecuba gave a little scream.
"A snake—and in your very bosom!"
"She is my child far more than the baby," Kassandra said laughing, "for I hatched her myself from an egg; but anyone in my train can tell you how I found Honey on a hillside in a snowstorm; cast out to die by some mother who chose not to rear a girl this year."
Hecuba came and looked closely at the child. She said, "Now I look well, she is not at all like you—"
"I told you that."
"So you did. I am sorry; I would not willingly believe…'
Not willingly, perhaps, but you would have believed it, Kassandra thought.
But then her mother asked the question she had been evading.-'And where are Kara and Adrea?"
"In the tents of Agamemnon and Akhilles," she said, "but not by choice." She explained what had befallen them.
"So we must somehow arrange to ransom them, or exchange them, perhaps for Akhaian prisoners," she said.
"Arrange to exchange them? Why should we do business with the Akhaians?" asked a familiar voice, and Andromache came into the room. "Oh, Kassandra! My dear sister!" and she flew to embrace her, ignoring the dirt on her robe. "So you have returned! I knew you were not traitorous enough to remain all through the war in Colchis! What a darling baby!" she exclaimed, staring at Honey. "Is she yours? No? Oh, what a shame!" Then she saw the snake and recoiled a little.