The Firebrand (48 page)

Arikia said kindly, “I cannot fault you for that, Daughter. But do you truly think she needs your chaperonage when she is in the hands of the Great Mother?”

“I suppose not, my lady. When you put it like that, where could she be safer than in the hands of the Great Goddess? But I cannot break my promise to Queen Hecuba,” said Adrea reluctantly.

“Still,” said Arikia, “I think you must leave her to me and the Goddess; but you may come every few days and speak with her alone and unobserved, to reassure yourself that she is safe and well, and here of her own free choice.”

Imandra said, “Must she lodge in the Temple, Lady Arikia? I would be happier to have her in the palace as my guest, and she could attend at the Temple services whenever you wished for her.”

“No, that will not do; she must live among us and learn to live with us and our serpents,” Arikia said. “Is this disagreeable to you, Kassandra?”

“Not at all,” Kassandra said. “I honor the Lady Imandra as my mother’s kinswoman and my friend; but I am more than willing to dwell in the House of the Mother as is seemly for a priestess.”

Imandra embraced her, and Adrea, and they took their leave. When they had gone, the old priestess, who had observed Kassandra’s close watching of the snake that was still coiled motionless about her body, asked, “Are you afraid of the serpent-folk, Kassandra?”

“Not at all, Lady.” She added impulsively, “This is a very beautiful one.”

“She is a true matriarch among serpents,” Arikia agreed. “Would you care to hold her?”

“Certainly, if she will come to me,” Kassandra said, though she had never handled such a large serpent. “She is not poisonous, I suppose?”

“Can’t you tell by looking at her? Well, that is one of the first things we must teach you. But of course she is not. I would not venture to handle one of the venomous snakes like this; they are seldom so good-tempered. And they are almost never as large as this one.”

Arikia held the huge snake’s tail away from her body. “Look, this will make her uncoil, since she cannot brace herself against my body when I hold her like this. Hold out your hand and let her smell you.” Kassandra obeyed, not flinching as the great head moved close, the forked tongue flicking in and out, just touching her hand. Then the snake moved, flowed smoothly as folds of silk along the older priestess’ arm and along Kassandra’s shoulders and around her waist. The big wedge-shaped head came up toward Kassandra’s; Kassandra took it in her hand and began to rub gently under the chin. She was surprised to feel all the tension go out of the snake’s body as the surprising weight settled round her.

“Good—she likes you,” Arikia said. “It would be of little value for me to accept you here if she did not. All the same, sooner or later if she is frightened or startled while you are holding her, she may bite. Do you know what to do if she does?”

Old Meliantha in the Sun Lord’s house had taught Kassandra that.

“Yes; don’t frighten her more, or try to pull away, but get someone else to unwind her, beginning with the tail,” Kassandra said, and held out her hand and displayed the small scars where one of the Temple serpents had chewed on it during her time as Meliantha’s attendant. Arikia smiled.

“Good; but what have you to learn from us, then?”

“Oh, all manner of things,” Kassandra said eagerly. “I wish to know how to find and take snakes from the wild where they breed; how to hatch them out from eggs and train them to come and go, as I have seen done; how to feed them and care for them for long life, and how to win their confidence and keep them content so they will not run away.”

The old woman chuckled, holding out her hand to circle the head of the big snake.

“Good; I think here we can teach you all these things. You had better let me take her now; I am accustomed to her weight, and I do not think a slender creature like you can carry her very far. You must eat well and get fat, like me, or like Imandra, before you can more truly be a priestess of the Serpent Mother. A day may come when you will sit and display her to the people; she likes to be on display, or so it seems. One more thing: some of the girls are too soft-hearted or sentimental about little animals—doves, mice, rabbits—to feed the serpents. Will that trouble you?”

“Not at all; it is not I, but the Gods who have determined that some animals shall be fed on other living things; I did not create them, and it is not for me to say on what they should be fed,” Kassandra replied. She had heard Meliantha say this once when a young girl in the Temple had been squeamish about feeding living mice to snakes.

“Well,” said Arikia, “we must find you a room of your own, and an attendant priestess, and make you known to the rest of us who live here. You are a princess of Troy, and I hope it will not be too small and mean for you.”

“Oh, no,” Kassandra said, “I am eager to be one of you.”

Arikia embraced her lovingly, and led her into the house of Serpent Mother.

THEN BEGAN for Kassandra a time like no other in her life. Since she was already a priestess, there were no wearying ordeals or trials, although as the youngest (many of the Temple’s priestesses were elderly and frail, for few young women chose to serve the Serpent Mother), she was given such duties as caring for the animals being raised for feeding the serpents, cleaning pots and accepting and tallying Temple offerings. She was welcomed by everyone and treated in accordance with her station; Queen Imandra herself received no more deference, and soon Arikia came to love her as a daughter.

In many ways, her stay in the Serpent Mother’s Temple was like her early years in the Sun Lord’s house, with one great difference: all the devotees of Serpent Mother were women, and she had nothing like her early troubles with Khryse; the only men in the House of the Serpent were slaves, and none of them would have dared make any advances to a priestess.

She learned all that the priestesses could teach her about the ways of serpents and snakes. She soon knew how to tell the venomous from the harmless, and how to tame and handle certain harmless serpents which looked identical to certain poisonous snakes, so that any onlooker would believe that she was defying death. She herself had no fear of even the largest snakes, and soon was one of the preferred handlers; often when the enormous matriarch of serpents was carried in processions, Kassandra was one of those chosen to carry her.

Nothing of serpent-lore escaped her: how to find and capture snakes in the wild, how to feed and keep them, how to bathe them and care for them when they shed their skins. She even hatched one herself, carrying the egg between her breasts for more than a month, and sheltering the baby snake against her body when it crawled out of the egg. For this she was given the coveted title of honor among the priestesses, Snake Mother.

She seldom thought of Troy. Word came to Colchis now and again, perhaps distorted by the long journey, of how the war went. Idomeneo of Crete, and the Minoan Kings, became Troy’s allies; most of the mainlanders stood with the Akhaians. The islanders, because of alliances forged when Atlantis still ruled the seas, held with Priam and the Goddesses of Troy and Colchis.

Sometimes at the full moon, Kassandra kindled witchfire and looked into her scrying-bowl by its light; and so she knew when Andromache bore Hector a second son, who died before his naval-string was healed; she wished that night that she could have been in Troy to comfort her friend’s grief.

She knew, too, when Helen bore Paris twin sons, which did not entirely surprise her. Paris, after all, was a twin—and Helen too had a twin sister. It occurred to her that if she herself ever bore children, she might have twins, perhaps twin daughters. Helen’s twins were strong and healthy children, though they hadn’t the beauty of either their mother or father, and grew so fast that they were walking within half a year.

Before Paris’ younger sons were weaned, Priam suffered a fall in a skirmish on the shore, and the thunderbolt stroke, during the illness that followed, left the right side of his face twisted and sagging, and he limped thereafter on his right foot. He made Hector the official commander of his armies—to no one’s surprise. The soldiers, though they were loyal, and cheered Priam when on rare occasions he appeared before the armies, worshiped Hector as if he were Ares Himself.

Time in Colchis slipped past without incident. Kassandra was always welcomed at the palace, and Imandra often sent for her—sometimes simply for her company, occasionally to look into a scrying-bowl and tell her how it went with the war, or sometimes to search out the Amazons to be certain it did not go too badly with Penthesilea and her band. With her days filled with study and duties, Kassandra was surprised to discover that she had been gone from Troy for more than a year. Among women, birth was always a festival, and someone in the palace was always having a baby; the women sworn to Serpent Mother, however, did not marry, and most of them had taken formal vows of chastity, so there were no births in their Temple. She wondered when the Queen would have her child.

Soon she heard in the city that the Queen would walk abroad to bless her subjects in the name of Earth Mother. Kassandra vaguely remembered—it was almost her first memory—that Hecuba had done this before Troilus was born. In Troy it was simply an old custom, half-remembered and informally observed: whenever the Queen showed herself in the streets, women would rush up to her and ask her blessing. In Colchis, where the customs were kept in the old way, Kassandra was not surprised to find there was a formal procession. But surely they had left it to very late; the time of birth must be imminent. Imandra would not walk the streets but would be carried in a sedan chair, and Arikia, the earthly representative of Serpent Mother, would be carried with her, the serpents of wisdom adorning her from head to foot, so that all women in the city could seek blessing not only from the pregnant Queen but from the Serpent Mother.

“But why now? Do they want the Queen to fall into labor in the streets?” she asked.

“Well, it has happened before,” Arikia said. “This would not be the first child of a Queen of Colchis to be born in the streets of the city; there will be many court midwives in the procession. But the Queen’s diviners have chosen this as an auspicious day; and of course, the nearer to her time Imandra is, the more blessing she can confer.”

“Yes, of course.” Kassandra could understand that. It was the morning of the procession, and Kassandra, along with her fellow priestesses, was helping to dress and adorn Arikia, winding the serpent matriarch about her waist and two smaller serpents about her arms. It would be tiring for the woman, for the serpents must be held up so that the people could see them. Kassandra wished that she, who was younger and stronger, could take the older woman’s place. She said so, but Arikia only said, “It is harder still on the Queen, my dear; she is as big as a python who has swallowed a cow. Perhaps next time, my dear; Imandra is an old friend, and I am happy to ride in her procession. She has been more than kind to you, too. A little more of the crimson paint on my left cheek, if you please, and some of the herbal powder to be burned in the brazier; the serpents love it, and they give far less trouble when they can smell it. Will you ride with me, Kassandra? You can feed the brazier, and stand ready to take the smaller snakes from me if they should be restless. It is not likely, but of course anything can happen.”

Kassandra knew this was a privilege of which other priestesses in the Temple would be envious; but they deferred to her as princess of Troy. She went and put on her best ceremonial robe at once, and wrapped her arms with two or three of the smaller serpents, binding two others around her brow so that they formed a crown. Thus arrayed (and thinking that perhaps the statues of the legendary Medusa might have been inspired by such a serpent crown), she went out to the street and as Arikia was lifted into the high raised chair, let herself be lifted in after her.

It was cold; a high wind was blowing through the streets between the tall buildings, and all the leaves were gone from the trees and bushes. She sat holding her serpents high so that the women in the streets could see them clearly. Imandra’s chair was ahead; Kassandra could see the Queen’s form, heavily pregnant now, her loosened hair flowing down her back. The streets were crowded with women, many of them pregnant, rushing up to the carriages, pushing through the guards, reaching up their arms to beg for the blessing.

The wind chilled her; she was glad for the cozy weight of the serpent about her waist. The snakes were sluggish.
They do not like the cold any better than I do,
she thought, longing for the warm sun of her home.

She fell almost into a trance, looking at the tall figure of Imandra on her carriage, shadowed with the powerful magic and glamour of the Goddess. Women rushed out to hold up their hands, crying out for fertility and just the good fortune of touching the pregnant Queen who embodied the Goddess. Automatically holding up her serpents, she heard the women crying out to Imandra and Earth Mother, to Arikia, and the Serpent Mother, and then from somewhere in the crowd she actually heard someone call, “Look, it is the Trojan priestess, the beloved of Apollo!”

That brought her to sudden awareness. Was it still true? Or had Apollo forgotten her? Perhaps it was time, she thought, that she should return to Troy and her own people and her own Gods; serving the Goddess, women were more free here, but what good was the freedom if she must dwell forever among strangers? Then her heart smote her; she was well loved here and had many friends; could she bear to abandon them and to return to a city where women were expected to defer to their husbands and brothers?

The sun grew hotter; she pulled her veil over her head and dipped her kerchief into a bowl of water to moisten the snakes’ heads. “Soon, little ones,” she murmured, “this will be over and you will be where it is cool and dark.” One of the serpents was trying to crawl into the darkness of her dress; the crowds were thinning, so she did not try to prevent it.