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.
"So you are still at your old game of playing with serpents! I should have remembered."
Honey, seeing the snake, began to cry and reach out her hands for it. Kassandra, laughing, allowed the little girl to wind it about her waist. Andromache shrank away with a glance of revulsion, but the child's delight in the snake was unmistakable.
"Why not get her a kitten, Kassandra?" Hecuba suggested. "It would be an altogether more seemly pet."
Kassandra laughed. "She is content with such pets as I give her; you should see her with our very matriarch of serpents - the one who is almost as big around as she is."
"Are you not afraid—snakes have not very good eyesight - the snake will make a mistake and swallow her by misadventure?" Andromache protested.
But Kassandra said, "They know their own; Honey has fed her with doves and rabbits. But Mother, this is not a proper subject for your rooms."
Hecuba asked, laughing, "The snake—or the baby?"
"Both," Kassandra replied, hugging her mother again. "Let me call someone to take her away for a bath and clean clothing. She will be prettier then and besides, she has had nothing to eat since early morning." Then, with a glance at Hecuba for permission, Kassandra summoned a servant to take child and snake to the house of the Sunlord.
"I too should present myself there soon, I fear," she said, "although I am sure they would gladly give me leave to pay my respects to my mother and to my family. And I would like to see Helen's sons," she added.
"Ah, Helen's sons," Hecuba said dryly. "There are jokes in the Akhaian army that Helen is raising up an army for Troy."
"As I cannot for Hector," said Andromache and her eyes were full of tears. "But that Akhaian woman, no sooner has she whelped than she is in pup again."
"What a thing to say," Hecuba protested. "You had back luck, that is all. You have borne Hector a fine son—and every man in the army knows his name and admires him. What more do you want?"
"Nothing," Andromache said, "and just between us women, I am glad enough to be spared the business of bearing every year or two; I told Hector that if he wishes for fifty sons like his father, he must get them as his father does. But so far he wishes only to share my bed and even refused one of the captured Akhaian women. Perhaps I am not as fond of children as Helen, but I would like to have a daughter before I am too old. And speaking of daughters, Kassandra, did you know that Creusa had named her second daughter "Kassandra"?"
"No, that I had not heard," Kassandra said, and wondered if it were Creusa's doing or that of Aeneas.
"And now before you go," said Andromache,"tell me of my mother."
Kassandra told Andromache of the birth of the heir to Colchis; and Andromache sighed.
"I wish that I might go to Colchis so that Hector might be the King there; perhaps when this wretched war is over that can be arranged."
"Imandra feels that her little pearl princess will be reared to be Queen," Kassandra said. "And Hector would not be content to sit at the foot of the throne, as your mother's consort does, and amuse himself with hunting and fishing with his companions."