"I shall have to ask leave," Kassandra told him, but permission was readily granted - perhaps too readily. Kassandra knew that it would not have been so swiftly given for any of the other young priestesses, and she really wished to be treated as one of them; but she could not fault the priests and priestesses that they did not wish to offend Troy's King. They insisted only that -since she was not yet a full priestess but still in the probationary year - if she wished to spend the night in her father's house she must be properly accompanied and chaperoned by a senior priestess.
The priestess who heard her request said, "It lies in your power to confer a favour, daughter of Priam: who will you have to accompany you?"
Kassandra was not totally a stranger to these kind of courtly intrigues; whoever she chose, others might feel slighted. Making a choice no one could fault or envy, she chose the elderly Charis, who had first welcomed her to the House of the God.
Dressing herself in the most festive of the few simple dresses she had with her, with the older woman at her side, she went quietly through the streets, attended only by one of the Temple slaves.
Charis, a lifelong dweller in the House of the Sunlord, was nevertheless impressed as they approached the Great Citadel of Priam, and said little.
Kassandra was silent too, for she had looked down from the heights and seen again the dark ships in the harbor, not knowing whether they were really there or yet to come.
As they entered the forecourt, Hecuba came to greet them; Kassandra bent to embrace her mother - Hecuba was a tall woman but now Kassandra was taller still, and Hecuba lamented as she turned her face up to her tall daughter: 'You cannot be still growing! Why, you are taller than most warriors, Kassandra! A man might not wish to have you near—"
"What does it matter, mother? Since I am not to be married but to dwell in the House of the God…'
"That I shall never accept," said Hecuba with spirit. "I want to see your children before I die…'
But you never will, Kassandra suddenly knew; it came with the painful memory of holding Phyllida's child in her lap, that before she held her grandchild - the bitterness, the despair— Hecuba's eyes would forever have closed on this world.
"Mother, let's not speak of that; if you want a wedding, you have Creusa now to marry off, and Polyxena's older than I am, and still unwed. Find her a husband, and don't bother about me," she said. "Tell me about Creusa's husband."
"She is to marry Aeneas, son of Anchises," Hecuba said. "So handsome, they say he is truly a son of foam-born Aphrodite…'
"She is a Goddess of whom I know nothing," Kassandra said, before she remembered the beautiful one in Paris's dream; Goddess of love and beauty, surrounded by her doves. If his father claims to be the lover of Aphrodite, I should think the Goddesses would be angry with him," said Kassandra. "I must see this marvel of a man."
"Well, Creusa is content with him, and so is your father," said Hecuba, "and in my youth I would have been more than happy with such a husband." She turned a little anxiously to Kassandra and said, "Please try not to prophesy doom at this wedding, darling; it upsets people so much."
Kassandra thought with a surge of anger: Does she think I prophesy for the pleasure of doing it? But her mother looked so troubled that Kassandra could not be angry; she kissed her again and said, "I will certainly try not to see any disasters; if the Gods are kind, I may be able to foretell something better."
"Gods grant it," murmured Hecuba piously. "Well, come in, my dear; I have missed you very much."
After a moon spent in the House of the Sunlord, everything in the palace seemed smaller and gaudy; yet dear and familiar. Andromache, dressed for the wedding in flame-dyed finery, ran out to greet Kassandra. Her pregnancy was very obvious now, and she waddled with the typical walk of a pregnant woman, tilting her body backward for balance. Kassandra, thinking of the lithe young girl in Imandra's house, felt saddened, but Andromache embraced her joyously.
"Oh, I am so glad to see you! I wish you would marry and come home so we could be together! Just think, in another moon I will have my son in my arms!"
"Where is Oenone? Should she not be among us? A pregnant woman is the luckiest of all guests at a wedding."
"She is not pregnant now," said Andromache. "Have you not heard? She bore Paris a son four days ago, and she is still in bed; she had a dreadful time, poor thing - your mother said she was so slender she should have known better than to have a child at all. But when I asked how she could have avoided it, she would not tell me - she said Hector would not like it. Oenone has called her son Corythus - so if Creusa wants a pregnant woman at her wedding she will have to make do with me."
"Creusa is fortunate to have you among her guests," Kassandra said.
Andromache smiled like a kitten lapping cream and said, "I hope she thinks so too."
"I should go and see Oenone," Kassandra said. Andromache took Kassandra's hand and drew her along the stairs.
She said, "You had better not; she has been very strange lately. When I went to see her she would not speak to me. She said I was her husband's enemy because Hector had sent him away."
They went into the upstairs suite where the women were dressing the bride. It was the beautiful room with the Cretan murals of bull-dancers, and Kassandra said, "But this is the room my mother had made ready for Oenone."
"She would not stay in it," Andromache said. "She said she did not want to lie here day after day looking out on the sea which had borne Paris away from her, so she insisted on moving into a room at the back of the palace where she can look upon Mount Ida, her home. But never mind that now; come and help dress the bride."
Far below they could hear the sounds of the men in the hall, drinking and toasting the wedding.
Creusa was being covered with an embroidered veil; she put it back for a moment and came forward to greet Andromache with a bow, then kissed Kassandra coolly and said, "Welcome, sister."
She was not Hecuba's daughter, but Priam's by the most important of his lesser wives. Strictly speaking, by court etiquette, it was for Kassandra first to claim sisterhood, but she was not interested at the moment in preserving protocol. She returned Creusa's embrace warmly, and wished her good fortune: 'May Earth Mother and the Bright Ones bless you, sister."
"Can you see good fortune for me, Kassandra - you who are a prophetess?"
"I will know that when I have seen your husband," said Kassandra elliptically.
"When you have seen him I think you will envy me," Creusa said.
Kassandra smiled and said, "Indeed I hope so, sister. Mother told me how handsome he is."
"And he is rich too, and a prince in his own country," said Creusa. "Surely no woman can be luckier than I."
"Do not say such things, lest the Immortals be jealous," reprimanded Charis. "Remember the fate of the woman who said her spinning was as fine as that of Pallas Athene, and Athene turned her into a spider who should forever spin her webs to have them torn down by housewives!"
"Come, come," said Andromache, who was the first of the bride-women. "Let us finish dressing her quickly, or the men will all be drunk before she comes. Kassandra, your fingers are nimblest, will you put the flowers in her hair?"
Kassandra quickly tied the blossoms into a wreath and fastened them into Creusa's bright curls.
"Now she is ready; let us lead her down."
Taking her by the hands, the women surrounded the bride and led her carefully down the steep staircases of the palace, holding her carefully lest she stumble and begin her marriage with a false step - the worst of omens.