Even Kassandra, who was familiar with the voice of the God, was paralyzed with terror. She could not have moved a muscle nor spoken a word.
Quickly the form who at once was and was not Khryse shot three arrows into the air. One of them fell directly upon the roof of Agamemnon's tent; another before the tent of Akhilles; and the third into the very center of the camp. Kassandra watched, feeling a dreadful stillness, as if she had watched all this before. It was as if she were very far away, and a thick wall of glass, or the weight of an ocean, rippled before her, cutting off what she saw and heard.
Apollo's curse! It has come upon us, O Sunlord!
Or, she thought, is this curse on the Akhaians alone?
And yet, if the Akhaians are cursed, somehow we will suffer for it; we are at their mercy. I wonder if Priam realizes that? If he does not, I am sure Hector does.
Then slowly she began to be aware again of what was going on around her; the glare of mid-day, the light reflected off city walls and the plain below, the laughter and jeers of the Akhaians. They seemed to think this a charade, a gesture; it never occurred to them that perhaps Apollo himself had cursed their people and their army.
Or did I dream it?
Whatever the truth, there were things to be done. She went to the temple and was set to the task of accepting and tallying the offerings. After an hour of counting and tallying up flasks of oil, and wheaten loaves, it felt as if she had never been away from Troy.
She worked till sunset; when she had finished with the offerings, she went to care for the serpents and to see what places had been found for them. Then she went to Charis, who was still the most senior priestess and told her that alone she could not care easily for so many snakes if she had other duties as well. She asked her to recommend a young girl to train to help her with them and learn serpent-lore. Charis asked if Phyllida would be satisfactory to her.
"Yes; she has always been my friend," Kassandra replied, and Charis sent for Phyllida and asked if it was acceptable to her.
"I will teach you everything I learned in Colchis," Kassandra promised, and Phyllida seemed pleased.
"Yes, and if we work together, our children can grow up as brother and sister," Phyllida said. "It was I who bathed your little one and gave her supper yesterday. She is very quick and clever, and some day she will be pretty too."
Kassandra suspected that Phyllida had said this to flatter her, but it did not altogether displease her. When it had all been arranged, they went out again to look down into the Akhaian camp; the glare and heat that had blinded all in the daytime was subsiding a little, and a light wind sprang up at sunset; they could see blowing dust in the Akhaian camp, and the forms of many people, some of them robed in the white robes of Apollo's servants.
"So they were not quite as casual as they seemed about it," Phyllida said. She had not gone down into the camp, but she had heard all about it, and Kassandra could see it had lost nothing in the telling. "Look, they are performing rituals to purify the camp and appease the Sunlord."
"Well they might, if they scorn his curse," Kassandra said.
"I do not think it is the soldiers who scorn his curse," Phyllida said. "I think it is only Agamemnon himself; and we know already that he is a godless man."
"What are they about now?" Kassandra asked.
"They are building fires to cleanse the ground," Phyllida said, then shrank back at the great cry of mourning that rose from the Akhaians. They had dragged out a body from one of the tents, and were casting it on the flames.
It was too far to hear the words of the cries of despair, but they had heard such cries before. Phyllida gasped, "There is plague in their camp!"
And Kassandra said, in horror, "This, then, is the Sunlord's curse!"
Every morning and evening for ten days they watched plague victims being dragged out of the camp and their bodies burned; after the third day, the bodies were dragged a long way down the shore and burned there, for fear of contagion. Kassandra, who had seen the dirt and filth and disorder within the camp, was not surprised that there was sickness, though she did not even slightly belittle the Sunlord's curse, and she knew the Akhaians believed in it. At sunrise, at high noon and again at sunset, Khryse strode the battlements of Troy, wearing Apollo's mask and carrying his bow, and whenever he appeared there were cries and shrieks for mercy in the Akhaian camp.
Priam proclaimed that every Trojan soldier and citizen should appear before the priests of Apollo each morning, and that anyone who showed signs of illness should be confined alone to his own house. This isolated a few people with bad colds, and one or two men who had been undiscriminating about exploring the women's district. He also closed a filthy market and two or three brothels, but there were no signs, so far, of plague inside the walls of Troy. He declared a holiday for prayers and sacrifices to Apollo, imploring that they should continue to be spared the curse. However, when Khryse begged for audience and asked Priam also to request the return of Chryseis, he answered him sharply.
"You have called a God to your side, and if that is not enough, what more do you think a mortal man, even the King of Troy could do?"
"You mean you will do nothing to help me?"
"Why should it matter to me what becomes of your wretched daughter? I might have felt a fellow father's feeling had you asked three years ago when first she was taken, but you have not appealed to me before this; I cannot believe you are much in need of my help—except perhaps to boast that the King of Troy is your ally," Priam said.
Khryse said hotly, "If I called down Apollo's curse on the Argive camp, I can as easily curse Troy—"
Priam lifted his hand to stop him.
"No!" he thundered. "Not a word! Raise a finger or speak a syllable to curse Troy, and by Apollo's self, I swear I will myself have you flung into the Akhaian camp from the highest rampart of the city!"
"As Your Majesty wishes," Khryse said, bowed deeply and went away. Priam scowled, his feathers still ruffled.
"That man is too proud! Did you hear him—threatening to curse Troy itself!" He looked round to his counsellors and advisers in his throne room. "Should he ask audience again with me, make certain that I have no time to speak with him!"
Kassandra was not displeased with the interview. Still at the back of her mind was the old fear; once Khryse had offered to go to Priam and ask to marry her, and she had felt that her rather would be pleased to thrust her, even unwilling, into marriage - any marriage - and would find no reason for refusing an apparently respectable priest of Apollo. Now that she knew that Priam found Khryse almost as distasteful as she did herself, she breathed a sigh of relief.
CHAPTER 21
Ten days they watched the plague raging in the Akhaian camp. On the tenth day the soldiers dragged out a noble white horse and sacrificed it to Apollo, and some time later, a messenger with Apollo's serpent staff came up to the city, and asked for a truce for the purpose of speaking with Apollo's priests.
"A delegation will come down to the camp," they were told. Khryse of course was first among them; Kassandra did not ask if she might join the group; she simply slipped away to put on her ceremonial robes and went with them.
Agamemnon, Akhilles, and several of the other leaders, among whom Kassandra recognized Odysseus and Patroklos, were drawn up in ranks behind the priests of Apollo. The chief priest among the Akhaians, a lean, sinewy man who looked like an athlete, approached Khryse.
"It seems that the Immortal is angry with us, after all," he said, "but I ask you, colleague: will you accept some gift from us?"