Kassandra said quietly, "Leave him here, then, in Troy; his father will care for him, and so will I, Helen, if that is what you truly want." After she said it, she realized that Helen was almost the only person in Troy to whom she could talk these days; her mother no longer understood her, nor her sisters. She would miss Helen, if she should return to the country of Sparta.
Helen frowned. She said, "Why should I give up my own child, because Menelaus is a fool?" After a moment she added, "To tell the truth, Kassandra - unless you are under the spell of Aphrodite, there is not much difference between one man and another; but children are not so easily set aside. I am not responsible for this war; and I think Agamemnon would have made war sooner or later, whatever I did or did not do." She sighed and let her head rest against Kassandra's shoulder. "My sister, I am not as brave as I think I am; I could summon the courage to return to Menelaus, even to leave Paris; but I cannot bring myself to leave my child." She picked up the toddler leaning against her knee, and pressed him to her heart.
"To leave your child? And why should you, after all?" asked Andromache, coming to the wall with Creusa just in time to hear her last words. "No woman could bring herself to leave a child she has borne… or if she could, she would be no better than a whore."
"I am glad to hear you say so," said Helen. "I was trying to tell myself that it was my duty to return to Menelaus—"
"Don't even think of such a thing," said Andromache, hugging Helen. "You belong to us now, and we would not let you go for every Akhaian down there; even if Paris and Priam and all the men wanted you to go - and they do not. The Gods have sent you to us and we will keep you - won't we, Creusa?" she added to the other woman, who nodded and laughed.
"The Goddess has blessed you, and we will not let you go."
Helen smiled faintly." That is good to hear. All my life men have been kind to me, but women never; it is good to have friends among you."
"You are too beautiful for women to love you much," said Andromache, "but you have been here for two years now; and unlike many beautiful women, you make no attempt to seduce our husbands."
"Why should I do that? I already have one more husband than I need; what should I want with yours?" Helen asked laughing. "I have no great love for Troy, indeed, and would willingly see more of the world; but women cannot travel…'
Whenever Kassandra heard anyone say such a thing as Women cannot… she was always eager to do just that very thing. She said, "But I am about to travel at the will of my God; and if you wanted to come with me, Helen, I would willingly have your company."
"And I yours; but again, I cannot leave so young a child," Helen said. ""Where do you go and why?"
"To Colchis; to seek Queen Imandra and ask of her serpent-lore," Kassandra said. "A moon past, our serpents died or fled from us; I do not want to replace them until I am sure that nothing I did or failed to do was responsible…'
She told the story, and Andromache looked wistful.
"Bear my greetings to my mother; and tell her I am happily wed and that I have Hector's son."
"Why not come and bring her your own greetings? Your son is old enough to leave with Hecuba and his father."
"I wish I could," Andromache said. "If you had told me this a month ago - but I am pregnant again. Perhaps this time it will be a daughter who can be a warrior for Troy."
"A warrior?"
"Why not? You are, Kassandra, and your mother before you."
"Did you not hear what Paris said, when last I would have borne my bow to the walls?" Kassandra asked in disgust. "I could shoot now—and kill Akhilles - and end this war without sending Helen forth from us. But this would not please the men; they do not want to end this war—"
"No," said Andromache,"they want to win it; Hector has reserved Akhilles for himself and will never agree to any other way to end the fighting. Can you tell me when this will happen and how much longer must we fight?"
Kassandra smiled wryly. "Hector has forbidden me to prophesy doom," she said, "and believe me, I have nothing else to tell."
"Perhaps it is as well you are travelling to Colchis," Helen said. "Kassandra, my friend, the Gods have spoken to me as well as to you, and they have spoken to me nothing of disaster."
"Then may your Gods speak truth and mine be false," Kassandra said. "Nothing would please me more than to return and find Akhilles dead at Hector's hand, and all of them gone away again."
But it will not, it cannot be so…
CHAPTER 13
Kassandra had believed that once she made the decision to travel to Colchis it would be a simple matter of getting leave of the chief priest and priestess, gathering together the clothing she wished to take with her, choosing a travelling companion (or perhaps two) and setting forth.
But it was not nearly so easy as that. She was reminded that there was officially a state of war between the Akhaians and Troy, so that it must be arranged (by lengthy messages sent back and forth from one Temple of Apollo to the next) that she should travel under the Peace of Apollo, being a woman and a sworn priestess and having nothing to do with the war on either side; and she was given to understand that this was more difficult because she was Priam's daughter and closely related to the main combatants of the war. Long before the official safe-conducts and permissions could be arranged Kassandra was heartily sick of the whole idea and wished she had never thought of it. In the end she swore a sacred oath by every God she had ever heard of (and some she hadn't) that she would deliver no messages relating to the war from either party, and she was declared an official messenger of Apollo and permitted to travel wherever she wished.
Khryse wished to travel with her, and she had some sympathy for him; he was still mourning the fate of his daughter in the Greek camp, and knowing that Agamemnon had chosen the girl for his own mistress did not help. However, though he swore to her that he would respect her virginity as if she were his own child, she did not trust even his oath, and refused to have him in her party. Since he was a highly respected priest of Apollo, it seemed for a time that they would not allow her to travel without his escort; but she finally appealed to Charis, saying she would remain within walls till her hair turned grey rather than travel a single step in his company; and at last the matter was dropped.
Then Priam wished to send messages to many friends along her path, and she had to swear that they were family matters, or religious matters with nothing to do with the war; she could see reason in this because often travellers under religious immunities had taken advantage of this for spying on one side or the other. And finally her mother refused to allow her to travel without adequate chaperonage, so that in the end Kassandra, who would have preferred to travel alone or with a single companion, preferably an Amazon rider like Penthesilea, had to accept two of her mother's oldest and most timid waiting-women, and to promise that on the road she would always share her bed with one or the other of them.
"What can she be thinking of?" she asked herself, "If I wished to indulge myself in lechery, I would certainly not wish to travel to the ends of the world and do so on the hard ground after a day's riding when I could just as easily do so in my own bed."
But she knew it was her mother's way, and there was really nothing she could do about it; and so she accepted Hecuba's choice of women.