The Firebrand (25 page)

“But how do we know it is the Gods who have shaken the lands?” Kassandra asked. “Have They sent messengers to tell us so?”

“We do not know,” Priam said, “but what else could it be? If it is not the Gods, there would be nothing but chaos. Poseidon is one of the greatest Gods here in Troy, and we petition Him to keep the earth solid beneath our feet.”

“May He long do so,” Kassandra murmured fervently, and since she saw that her father’s attention had wandered to his wine cup, made a courteous request to go; her father nodded permission, and she went out into the courtyard, with much to think about. If indeed it had been the great earthquake (which she had heard about during her childhood—it had been several years before Priam’s birth), then perhaps this was sufficient reason that the worship of Earth Mother had been discredited, except perhaps among the tribeswomen.

The courtyard was abustle; it was a brilliant day. Workmen were moving about. The people painting friezes high up in the rooms assigned to Oenone for Paris were grinding new pigments and mixing them with oil; tally-men were counting jars of wine brought in as tithes on one of the ships lying out in the harbor; some of the soldiers were practicing at arms. Far out beyond the city, Kassandra could see a cloud of dust which was probably Hector exercising the horses of his new chariot. She wandered among them like a ghost unseen;
it is as if I were a sorceress and had made myself invisible,
she thought, and wondered whether she could make herself so in truth, and whether it would make any difference if she did.

For no reason at all, her eyes fell idly on a young man who was dutifully marking tallies with a notched stick and pressing wax on the sealing ropes of great jars, oil or wine—pressing the seal that indicated these had been taken for the King’s household.

He seemed a bit restless under her scrutiny, turning his eyes away, and Kassandra, blushing—she had been taught it was unmaidenly to stare at young men—looked away. Then her eyes were drawn back. The young man seemed to glow. His eyes grew very strange, almost vacant; then they focused, and he drew upright. He seemed to grow taller, looming over her; yes, it was she, Kassandra, whom he fixed with his eyes, and in a flash she recognized what God possessed him, for she was looking again into the face of Apollo Sun Lord.

His voice reverberated as thunder, so that she wondered, with a scrap of wandering consciousness, how the other workers could go quietly on with their work.

She whispered under her breath, “Never, Lord.”

Again she whispered, “Never.”

“I will come,” she said, half aloud, gazing on the luminous form. Then the overseer strode through the yard, and the young man shimmered, wavered in the sun, which blurred Kassandra’s eyes. . . .

The vision was gone, and for a moment Kassandra wondered if she had indeed been bidden to the Sun Lord’s Temple. Should she fetch her cloak and her serpent, and climb up to the High Place of the Gods at once? She hesitated; if she had actually dreamed it and it had never happened, what would she say in the Temple to the priests and priestesses? Surely there were penalties for blasphemy of that kind. . . .

No. She was Priam’s daughter, a princess of Troy, and she had been made a priestess of the Great Mother. She might be mistaken, but it was certainly no blasphemy, nor anything to be ignored. Silently she went into the palace, under her breath whispering, “If I have not been called, Sun Lord, send me a sign.”

On the great stairway, she encountered Hecuba, dressed in a workaday smock, frown lines drawn between her brows making her look older.

“You are idle, Daughter,” Hecuba rebuked her. “If you cannot find any way to keep yourself occupied, I myself will find you some task; henceforth you will not leave the women’s quarters on any morning until your share of spinning and weaving is done. For shame, to leave your work to your sister. Was it only laziness you learned among the women of my tribe?”

“I am not idle!” Kassandra replied angrily. Was this the sign for which she had asked? “I have been sent for by the God, and I am required in His Temple.”

Hecuba frowned at her, narrowing her eyes.

“Kassandra, the Gods choose Their priestesses from among simple folk; They do not call to a princess of Troy.”

“Do you think me less worthy than another?” Kassandra flared out. “I have known since I was a child that Apollo Sun Lord wants me for His own, and now He has summoned me!”

“Oh, Kassandra,” Hecuba sighed, “why do you talk such nonsense?” But Kassandra was no longer listening to her. She turned away and ran down the stairs and out through the great gates, hurrying up the hill toward Apollo’s Temple.

KASSANDRA RAN up the steps of the street that traversed the city from lower to highest ground, hardly realizing that the women who dwelt in the crowded houses built along the steep street had all come out, in a flutter of brightly dyed dresses, to watch her precipitate flight. The pounding of her heart forced her to slow her steps to a walk, and then to a full stop.

She bent over, half sick. She had been rigidly schooled always to maintain her decorum before strangers; she pressed the loose sleeve of her dress over her lips, trying to control the nausea and sharp pain in her chest, and sought a step where she could sit and catch her breath. She did not want to appear on the doorstep of the God as a disheveled fugitive.

A kindly voice said, “Princess . . .” and she looked up to see an aging woman bent over her, holding a clay cup in her hand. “You have climbed too far, and too swiftly, in this sun. May I offer you a drink of water? Or I can fetch you some cooled wine, if it would please you to step inside.”

The thought of going into the cool shaded interior was tempting, but Kassandra was ashamed to show or admit weakness.

How can I be overcome by the sun? I am the beloved of Apollo Sun Lord . . .
but she did not say this aloud, murmuring her thanks and setting the cup to her lips. The water tasted a little of clay and was not overcool, but it felt good to her parched lips and throat.

“Will you rest for a moment inside my house, Princess?”

“No, thank you.” She kept her eyes averted. “I am quite well; I will sit here and rest for a moment.” The light hurt her eyes; she shaded them with her hand, looking down at the clear dazzling reflection of the harbor. For a moment the sun blurred her sight; then she saw clearly, and all but cried out: the clear blue of the sea was dark with the sails of many ships.

They were not her father’s ships, and as she tried to focus on any one of them, she was suddenly no longer sure it was there. After a few moments of this, the harbor burned empty with dazzling blue sea, broken only by the shape of one old Cretan ship which had been unloading paints and lumber for the past three days.

She wrenched her aching eyes from the illusory sea, slowly got to her feet and began to climb upward. She kept her eyes slitted narrowly against the sun, which glared like fire spreading down across the walls of Troy, and kept climbing, slowly, against a growing sense that to run away like this was folly, that one did not flee to a God like a strayed goat bolting from the flock. She should have come, oh, yes, but she should have come like a princess of Troy, suitably attended, and bearing the proper gifts for the House of the God.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to turn back now.
Unless the deceitful vision of ships had been meant as a warning . . . ?
No; even so, she could not take back her commitment to the God.

She climbed on, approaching the Temple of the Sun Lord.

A flare of light, haloed by a flash of summer lightning, drew her eyes to the heights, where the Temple of Pallas Athene stood, and suddenly doubt assailed her. She had been made priestess of the Goddess, sent into the Underworld to seek Her, and had been accepted; was it not Earth Mother who had called her since her earliest childhood, and spoken to her with the voice of prophecy? Was she, then, abandoning her loyalty to the Divine Mother, Maiden and protectress of maidens, forsaking Her for the beautiful Sun Lord?

Sudden panic flooded her, so that for a moment she again thought she would vomit, and she swallowed spasmodically; her whole body was filled with a fear she could all but taste. She heard hard steps pursuing her, and for a moment the sky above her was dark, and one thought filled her mind to the brim, submerged in the dark waters:
I must reach the Temple of the Maiden; there alone will I be safe. . . . No man would dare lay hands on any whom She protects. . . .

Kassandra blinked incredulously. There was no peril, no flame, no pursuer. The harbor gleamed empty and blue; the street around her contained only a few women, watching her climb sedately toward the great gates of the Sun Lord’s Temple.

Is it the God who has sent madness on me?
She paused to catch her breath and stepped over the threshold into the Temple of Apollo.

There was a sudden rush of wind, as if a giant hand pushed her across the threshold. Kassandra, patting her hair distractedly into place, looked about, almost disappointed that no one seemed to take notice.
What did I expect? That the God Himself would come out and make me welcome?

An old woman in the ordinary dress of a priestess—a white tunic and a veil dyed with saffron to a sunny golden color—raised her head and looked at Kassandra, then stood up and came toward her. She said, “Welcome, daughter of Priam; have you come here for an oracle or an omen, or to offer sacrifice?”

“None of these things,” Kassandra said, self-consciously, not knowing how to say what she had some to say. “I came—because the God has called me to come—to be His priestess . . .” And she broke off, feeling more than a little foolish.

But the older woman smiled in a kindly way and said, “Yes, of course; I remember that you came once to us when you were only a little girl, and seemed so much at home here, I thought perhaps one day the Sun Lord would call you. So now come inside, my dear, and tell me all about it. First, how old are you?” she asked. “You seem well grown to womanhood.”

“My mother tells me that I shall be sixteen soon after Midsummer,” Kassandra answered as they went inside. She remembered the waiting room where many years ago she had eaten a piece of sweet melon while her mother awaited the oracle, and found it hard to believe that it had changed so little in so many years. She wondered about the serpents she had seen and caressed at that time. They had been of a short-lived species; probably they were long dead. The thought saddened her.

The priestess gestured to her to sit.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “Tell me all that makes you think you have been called to our Temple.”

When Kassandra had finished, the priestess spoke again. “Well, Kassandra,” she said, “if you wish to be one of us, you must live for a year here within the Temple, to learn to interpret the oracles and the omens and to speak for the God.”

Kassandra said, feeling a surge of upswelling happiness, “I shall be happy to live in the house of the God.”

“Then you must send one of the Temple servants to fetch your belongings: only a few changes of clothing and perhaps a warm cloak, for you must wear the common dress of a priestess; we are all as sisters here, and you may not wear jewels and ornaments while you dwell in the shrine.”

“I do not care for jewels,” Kassandra said, “and indeed, I have very few. But why is it not permitted?”

The old woman smiled. “It is a rule of the Temple,” she said, “and I do not know why it is so. Perhaps it is because many of the folk who come here to consult us are poor, and if we were hung with jewels they might feel that we were enriching ourselves upon their offerings.

“My name,” she said, “is Charis, which is one of the names of Earth Lady. I have dwelt in the house of the Sun Lord since I was nine winters old, and now I am seven-and-forty. We are long-lived here, unless we are chosen to bear a child to the God and it should chance that we die in childbirth; but that does not happen often, and many of our brothers and sisters are healer-priests. Have you your mother’s or your father’s leave to dwell in the house of the God?”

Kassandra said, “I think my mother will agree to it. As for my father, he has so many sons and daughters, I do not think he will know or care whether I am in the God’s house or his. I have never been one of his favorites.

“But tell me,” she asked the old priestess, “may I have my serpent to live with me in the Temple? She was a gift from Imandra, Queen and priestess of Colchis, and no one else in Troy loves her; I fear she will be neglected if I am not there to care for her.”

“She will be welcome,” Charis said. “You may have her brought here.”

The old priestess now summoned a servant, and Kassandra instructed her as to which of her possessions she wanted fetched from the palace. “And go to my mother, Queen Hecuba,” she said, “and tell her that I beg for her blessing.”

The servant bowed and went away. “And now, if you wish,” Charis said, “I will show you the chambers where the virgins of Apollo sleep.”

So BEGAN the time that Kassandra remembered later as the happiest and most peaceful of her entire life. She learned to consult the oracles, to read the omens and to serve the shrine with the appointed offerings. She cared for the sacred serpents, and learned to interpret the meanings of their movements and behavior.

As she had foreseen, her mother made no difficulties; she sent by the servant the requested belongings, and a message: “Say to my daughter Kassandra that I bless her and approve what she has done; tell her I send her many kisses and embraces.”