The Firebrand (49 page)

The chair-bearers slowed, then came to a halt. Servants were carefully lifting Imandra down from her seat—not easily. She walked heavily toward the chair where the priestesses sat, surrounded by their serpents.

“Kassandra, my friend, will you come this evening to the palace and look for me into your scrying-bowl?”

“With pleasure,” Kassandra replied. “As soon as I have cared for my serpents—if Arikia will give me leave,” she added, glancing at the senior priestess, who smiled and nodded permission.

At the Temple of Serpent Mother, she helped the bearers settle Arikia down on her bed in a darkened room, then helped unwind the snakes and bathe them in the fountain in the inner court. After swallowing a little fruit and bread, she dressed herself in her simplest robe and went out again into the chill of early afternoon. It was a little warmer—what heat there was in the sun was full strength now—and the noonday streets were full of people; but none of them recognized the slight dark-haired woman in her plain tunic as the priestess who had been carried, robed and crowned in her serpents, through the streets.

The Queen’s women conducted Kassandra to the royal apartments. It was pleasantly warm there, with a fire in a fireplace. Imandra was lying in a hammock, her hair unbound and her huge body mounded high against the cushions. She had shed the glamour of the Goddess and now looked weary; her drawn face would have been pale, except that she had not even troubled to remove the paint from her cheeks.

She should have kept Andromache here in Colchis instead of sending her to Troy; then she would not need to expose herself to the dangers of a belated childbearing,
Kassandra thought, surprised at herself;
now she needs a daughter to rule after her in Colchis.

As if some hint of Kassandra’s thought had reached her, the Queen opened her eyes.

“Ah, Daughter, you have come to keep me company,” she said. “I am glad; I think the little one”—she laid her hand across her belly—“may be born today; but at least the procession was completed and I need not give birth to their Queen in the streets. Soon I will summon the palace women—they will be cross if they are not told at once; they are entitled to their festival. Kassandra, how old are you, my dear?”

Kassandra tried to reckon up the years; in Troy they did not keep track of a woman’s age once she had arrived at puberty.

“I think I shall be nineteen or twenty this summer,” she said. “Mother told me I was born near to midsummer.”

“A year older than my Andromache,” Imandra said. “And you told me that Andromache’s oldest son is old enough for his first bronze helmet and lessons in swordplay. I do not think I know any other woman of your years who is not married. Sometimes I think you should have been my daughter, since you cleave to the old ways in Colchis, and Andromache seems happy in Troy, even as an obedient wife to Hector.” Her lip curled a little, almost in scorn. “But you are Priam’s daughter, and a Trojan. Is it your will to remain unmarried all your days, my dear?”

“I had thought of nothing else,” Kassandra said. “I am sworn to Apollo Sun Lord.”

“But you are missing all that makes life worth the living,” Imandra said, and sighed.

She frowned and lay motionless for a time, then said, “Will you look into the scrying-bowl and let this old woman once set eyes upon my daughter’s child?”

Kassandra demurred. “Perhaps just now,” she said, “you should think first of
this
child. You must save all your strength and energy until she is safely here among us, Kinswoman.”

“Spoken like a priestess—and priestesses are all full of nonsense,” said Imandra crustily. “I am not a maiden of fifteen in my first childbed; I am a grown woman and a Queen, and no less a priestess than you yourself, Kassandra of Troy.”

“I had no thought of suggesting—” Kassandra began defensively.

“Oh, yes you did; don’t deny it,” Imandra said. “Do as I ask you, Kassandra; if you will not, there are others who will, though not many who see so far or so well.”

Everything Imandra said was true, and Kassandra knew it.

“Oh, very well,” she agreed, mentally adding
you stubborn old creature.
“Call your women,” she said, “and let them prepare you for the birth. Hold me harmless of it if what I say gives you pain or sorrow; I am but the messenger, the wings of the bird on which such greetings fly.” She knelt down, making the preparations for kindling the witchfire for the spell of Sight.

Imandra’s women came and went in the room, making all ready for the birthing. Among them were Kassandra’s two waiting-women, who came to greet her and ask quietly out of earshot of the Queen, “Are we to stay in this foreign city forever, Princess? When shall we return to Troy?”

“That shall be as Queen Imandra wills,” Kassandra said. “I shall not leave her while she has need of me here.”

“How can she have more need of you than your own mother, Lady? Do you truly think Queen Hecuba does not long and grieve for you?”

“You have my leave to return to Troy whenever you will,” Kassandra said indifferently; “this very night if it should please you. But I have made a promise to Imandra and I will not break it.” She rose and strode to the high bed where the women had placed the Queen to rest till it should be time for the birth-chair. The room was slowly filling with the women in the palace, come to witness the royal event.

“I wonder,” Imandra mused fretfully, “if it ever happens that the Earth Mother sends the babe to the wrong womb? From what I know of her, Hecuba would have thought Andromache her perfect daughter, and you were always misplaced in Troy. . . .” She clung hard to Kassandra’s hand. “No, don’t leave me,” she said; “the Gods will wait on the Sight till our eyes are ready to see.”

“I do not know what the purposes of the Goddess may be, that sent me to the womb of Hecuba of Troy instead of Imandra of Colchis,” Kassandra said, laying her cheek against the older woman’s, “but whatever it may have been, Kinswoman, I love and revere you as if you were my mother in truth.”

“I believe you do, child,” said Imandra, turning her face to kiss Kassandra. “Should the Goddess take me today, as we all come under Her Wing at such times as this, promise me to stay in Colchis and rear my daughter in the old ways.”

“Oh, come, you mustn’t talk about dying; you will live many, many years and see this daughter with her own sons and daughters at her knees,” Kassandra said. One of the serving-women handed her a cup of wine and a plate of honey cakes; she sipped at the wine absently, and put the cakes aside.

“Let me look for you into the bowl,” she said, and knelt again on the stones by the kindled witchlight, casting her mind to the day when Andromache’s first son had been born; Hector’s face pale and excited, looking at the little creature . . .

Shadows moved in the water, flowing and congealing into Hector’s face . . . the crimson plumes draggled, slimed with a wet darker crimson . . . Kassandra gasped as a sudden pain pierced her heart.
Hector!
Was he dead, or did she but see what was to come? When a city was at war, it was more likely than not that the leader of the army, who always was first among his troops in battle, should fall at the hands . . . the bloody hands of Akhilles! . . . That sneering face, pale and beautiful, beautiful and evil . . . Snow drifted across the face of the water, and Kassandra knew she saw what was to come in a future year; but which year? Kassandra had no way of knowing.

Imandra, her eyes fixed on Kassandra’s face as if desperately trying to share the vision, asked, “What did you see?”

“Hector’s death,” Kassandra whispered. “But for a warrior there is no other end, and we have long known that this was to come; but ’tis not yet, perhaps not for many years. . . .”

“But the child,” Imandra whispered—“tell me of the child!”

“When last I saw, he was healthy and well grown, and already had a wooden sword and a toy helmet,” Kassandra said, reluctant to look again and see disaster, and for some reason she never doubted that this was what would come. “The omens this night are evil for the Sight, Imandra; I beg you excuse me from looking again.”

“As you will,” said Imandra, but her face twisted with disappointment.

“I could die content if only I could see my daughter’s son, even by your sight rather than my own. . . .”

Flickers of color flowed across the surface of the water;
firelight, flame across the gates of Troy
. . . and she remembered Hector’s teasing voice.

The flames died; there was a flare of light, the bright sunlight reflecting on the white walls of Troy . . . melting into the angry, somber face of Khryse, distorted into the familiar lines of mourning.

Then glare, as if she were staring directly into the face of the sun; it seemed Khryse grew taller, and now Kassandra saw the blazing light of the God, and knew who now strode the walls and ramparts of Troy, terrible in His wrath; His shining bow drawn, the golden arrows shooting . . . shooting at random among Akhaians and Trojans alike, the terrible arrows of Apollo, striking. . . .

Kassandra screamed, covering her face with her hands. The vision blurred and ran like water, was gone.

“Not upon us,” she moaned. “Not upon Thine own people, Sun Lord, not the wrath, not the arrows of Apollo. . . .”

Then they were all around her, shaking her, trying to lift her, holding wine to her lips.

“What did you see? Try to tell us, Kassandra.”

“No, no,” she cried, trying very hard to keep her voice from becoming a shriek. “We must go at once! We must return to Troy!” But dread iced her heart as she thought of the endless leagues of the journey which lay between Colchis and home.

“We must go at once! We must set out at daybreak, or even this night,” she cried, reaching for her waiting-woman’s hands holding her up. “We must go . . . We must not lose a moment. . . .”

She pulled herself unsteadily to her feet, and made her way to Imandra’s side, kneeling there, pleading, “The Gods call me at once to Troy; I beg you, Kinswoman, give me leave to depart. . . .”

“To go now?” Imandra, her whole mind and body concentrated on the birth-throes sweeping her body, stared at her without comprehension. “No; I forbid it. You promised to remain with me. . . .”

Despairing, Kassandra realized that she could not impose her own needs upon this woman gripped in the most imperative of all callings. She would simply have to wait. She wiped away the tears she had not realized were flooding down her cheeks, and turned her attention to Imandra herself.

“Did you see my Andromache’s child?” Imandra pleaded.

“No,” Kassandra said soothingly, blocking from her mind the sight of the child’s broken body before the walls of Troy. . . .
She had seen that before
. . . . “No, this night the Gods gave me no such sight. I saw only how ill it went with my city.”

One of the women started one of the traditional birth-songs.
How could they sing and behave as if this were an ordinary women’s festival? But no, they had not seen blood or flames or the arrows of the angry God.
After a stunned moment of silence, Kassandra joined in the chant, encouraging the waiting soul of the child to come into the body prepared for it, for the Goddess to release the child’s body from the Queen’s imprisoning womb. Song followed song, and later some of the priestesses danced the curious dance of the soul making its way past the guardians of the World Before. The night wore slowly away, and when the sky was paling for sunrise, the Queen at last, with a shout of triumph, gave birth. The senior palace midwife, into whose hands the child had been born, held it up, crying out, “It is a daughter! A strong and healthy daughter! A little Queen for Colchis!”

The women broke into a triumphant chant of welcome for the infant, taking her to the window and holding her up to the rising sun, passing the little naked body around the circle of women from hand to hand that each woman might embrace and kiss the new one. Queen Imandra finally demanded, “Let me take her; let me see that she is truly strong and healthy.”

“Just a moment; we must first swaddle her against the cold,” said the court midwife, and wrapped the baby in one of the Queen’s own shawls.

They put her, swaddled and washed at last, into Imandra’s hands, and the Queen laid her face tenderly against the little one’s cheek.

“Ah, I have waited long enough to hold you, little one. It is like bearing my own grandchild. I know no other woman who has borne a child at my age and lived,” she said; “yet I feel as strong and well as when Andromache was put into my arms.” She was unwrapping the baby in the compulsive way of all new mothers, counting each finger and toe, then counting them all over again in case she had missed one, then giving each one a separate kiss, like a special tribute.

“She’s beautiful,” she said, smiling blissfully when she had finished nudging and nuzzling the baby, and drawing a costly ring from her finger, presented it to the court midwife: “This in addition to your regular fee, which my chamberlain will give you.” The midwife gasped thanks and backed away, overwhelmed at such largess.

Imandra continued: “We will name her on the first auspicious day. Until then she will be my little pearl . . . since she is as smooth and pink as one of the pearls the divers in the islands bring from the depths of the sea. And I shall call her Pearl, my little pearl princess.”