In the outer court, where merchants were selling all manner of things, animals for sacrifice, small clay statues of the God, various foods and drinks, her mother bought her a slice of sweet melon. It slid deliciously down her throat, dry from the long and dusty climb. Under the portico of the next court it was cool and shadowy; there a number of priests and functionaries recognized the Queen and beckoned her to come forward.
"Welcome, Lady," said one of them, "and the little princess too. Would you like to sit here and rest for a moment until the priestess can speak with you?"
They showed them to a marble bench in the shade. Kassandra sat quietly beside her mother for a moment, glad to be out of the heat; she finished her melon and wiped her hands on her underskirt, then looked about for a place to put the rind; it did not seem quite right to throw it on the floor under the eyes of the priests and priestesses. She slid down from the bench and discovered a basket where there was a quantity of fruit rinds and peelings, and put her rind inside it with the others.
Then she walked around the room slowly, wondering what she would see, and how different the house of a God would be from the house of a King. This of course was only his reception room, where people waited for audience—there was a room like this in the palace where petitioners came to wait when they wanted to ask a favour of the King or bring him a present. She wondered if he had a bedroom and where he slept or bathed. And Kassandra peered through into the main room which, she thought, must be the God's audience chamber.
He was there, so lifelike that Kassandra was not really aware for a moment that it was only a statue. It seemed reasonable that a God should be a little larger than life, rigidly upright, smiling a distant but welcoming smile. Kassandra stole into the room, to the very foot of the God, and for a moment she thought she had actually heard him speak; then she knew it was only a voice in her mind.
"Kassandra," he said, and it seemed perfectly natural that a God should know her name without being told. "Will you be my priestess?"
She whispered, neither knowing or caring if she spoke aloud, "Do you want me, Lord Apollo?"
"Yes; it is I who called you here," he said. The voice was great and golden, just what she imagined that a God's voice would be; and she had been told that the Sunlord was also the God of music and song.
"But I am only a little girl, not yet old enough to leave my father's house," she whispered.
"Still, I bid you remember, when that day comes, that you are mine," said the voice, and for a moment the motes of golden dust in the slanting sunshine became all one great ray of light through which it seemed that the God reached down to her and touched her with a burning touch… and then the brightness was gone and she could see that it was only a statue, chill and unmoving and not at all like the Apollo who had spoken to her. The priestess had come to lead Hecuba forward to the statue, but Kassandra tugged at her mother's hand.
"It's all right," she whispered insistently,"the God told me he would give you what you asked for."
She had no idea' when she had heard this; she simply knew that her mother's child was a boy, and if she knew when she had not known before, then it must have been the God who told her, and so, though she had not heard the God's voice, she knew that what she said was true.
Hecuba looked down at her sceptically, let her hand go and went into the inner room with the priestess. Kassandra went to look round the room.
Beside the altar was a small reed basket, and inside, as Kassandra peeped in, a suggestion of movement. At first she thought it was kittens; and wondered why, for cats were not sacrificed to the Gods. Looking more closely, she noted that there were two small coiled snakes in the basket. Serpents, she knew, belonged to Apollo of the Underworld. Without stopping to think, she reached out and grasped them in either hand, bringing them toward her face. They felt soft and warm and dry, faintly scaly beneath her ringers, and she could not resist kissing them. She felt strangely elated and just faintly sick, her whole body trembling all over.
She never knew how long she crouched there, holding the serpents, nor could she have said what they told her; she only knew that she was listening attentively to them all that time.
Then she heard her mother's voice in a cry of dread and reproof. She looked up, smiling.
"It's all right," she said, looking past her mother to the troubled face of the priestess behind Hecuba. "The God told me I might."
"Put them down, quickly," said the priestess. "You are not used-to handling them; they might very well have bitten you."
Kassandra gave each of the serpents a final caress and laid each one gently back in the reed basket. It seemed to her that they were reluctant to leave her, and she bent close and promised them she would come again and play with them.
"You wretched, disobedient girl!" Hecuba cried as she rose, grabbing her by the arm and pinching her hard, and Kassandra drew away, troubled; she could not remember that her mother had ever been so angry with her before, and she could not imagine why she should make a fuss about something like this.
"Don't you know that snakes are poisonous and dangerous?"
"But they belong to the God," Kassandra argued. "He would not let them bite me."
"You were very lucky," said the priestess gravely.
"You handle them and you are not afraid," Kassandra said.
"But I am a priestess and I have been taught to handle them."
"Apollo said I was to be his priestess, and he told me I might touch them," she argued, and the priestess looked down at her with a frown.
"Is this true, child?"
"Of course it is not true," Hecuba said sharply. "She is making up a tale! She is always imagining things."
This was so unfair and unjustified that Kassandra began to cry. Her mother grabbed her firmly by the arm and pulled her outside, pushing her roughly ahead and down the steep steps so sharply that she stumbled and almost fell. The day seemed to have lost all its golden brilliance. The God was gone; she could no longer feel his presence, and she could have cried for that even more than for the bruising grip of her mother on her upper arm.
"Why would you say such a thing?" Hecuba scolded again. "Are you such a baby that I cannot leave you alone for twenty minutes without getting into mischief? Playing with the Temple serpents - don't you know how badly they could have hurt you?"
"But the God said he would not let them hurt me," Kassandra said stubbornly, and her mother pinched her again, leaving a bruise on her arm.
"You must not say such a thing!"
"But it is true," the girl insisted.
"Nonsense; if you ever again say such a thing I will beat you," said her mother crossly. Kassandra was silent; what had happened had happened. She had no wish to be beaten but she knew the truth and could not deny it. Why couldn't her mother trust her? She always told the truth.
She could not bear it, that her mother and the priestess should think she was lying, and as she went quietly, no longer protesting, down the long steps, her hand tucked tightly under the larger hand of the Queen, she clung to the face of Apollo, his gentle voice in her mind. Without even being aware of it, already something very deep within her was waiting for the sound.