The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Yes; she has always been my friend,” Kassandra replied, and Charis sent for Phyllida and asked if it was acceptable to her.

  “I will teach you everything I learned in Colchis,” Kassandra promised, and Phyllida seemed pleased.

  “Yes, and if we work together, our children can grow up as brother and sister,” Phyllida said. “It was I who bathed your little one yesterday and gave her her supper. She is very quick and clever, and someday she will be pretty too.”

  Kassandra suspected that Phyllida had said this to flatter her, but it did not altogether displease her. When it had all been arranged, they went out again to look down into the Akhaian camp. The glare and heat of the daytime had subsided, and a light wind had sprung up; they could see blowing dust in the Akhaian camp, and the forms of many people, some of them clad in the white robes of the servants of Apollo.

  “So they were not quite as casual about it as they seemed,” Phyllida said. She had not taken part in the mission to the camp, but she had heard all about it, and Kassandra could see it had lost nothing in the telling. “Look,” she said, “they are performing rituals to purify the camp and appease the Sun Lord.”

  “Well they might, if they scorn His curse,” Kassandra said.

  “I do not think it is the soldiers who scorn His curse,” Phyllida said. “I think it is only Agamemnon himself; and we know already that he is a godless man.”

  “What are they about now?” Kassandra asked.

  “They are building fires to cleanse the grounds,” Phyllida said, then shrank back at the great cry of mourning that rose from the Akhaians. They had dragged out a body from one of the tents and were casting it into the flames.

  It was too far to hear the words of the cries of despair, but they had heard such cries before. Phyllida gasped, “There is plague in their camp!”

  And Kassandra said, in horror, “This, then, is the Sun Lord’s curse!”

  EVERY MORNING and evening for ten days they watched as bodies of plague victims in the camp were burned; after the third day, the bodies were dragged a long way down the shore and burned there, for fear of contagion. Kassandra, who had seen the dirt and filth and disorder within the camp, was not surprised that there was sickness, though she did not make light of the Sun Lord’s curse, and she knew the Akhaians believed in it. At sunrise, at high noon and again at sunset, Khryse strode the battlements of Troy, wearing Apollo’s mask and carrying His bow, and whenever he appeared there were cries and shrieks for mercy in the Akhaian camp.

  Priam proclaimed that every Trojan soldier and citizen must appear each morning before the priests of Apollo, and that anyone who showed signs of illness was to be confined alone to his own house. This isolated a few people with bad colds, and one or two men who had been indiscriminate in exploring the women’s district. He closed two or three brothels and also a filthy market, but there were no signs, so far, of plague inside the walls of Troy. He declared a holiday for prayers and sacrifices to Apollo, imploring that the city continue to be spared the curse. However, when Khryse begged for audience and asked Priam also to request the return of Chryseis, he answered him sharply: “You have called a God to your side, and if that is not enough, what more do you think a mortal, even the King of Troy, could do?”

  “You mean you will do nothing to help me?”

  “Why should it matter to me what becomes of your wretched daughter? I might have felt a fellow father’s feeling, had you asked three years ago when first she was taken, but you have not appealed to me before this; I cannot believe you are much in need of my help—except perhaps to boast that the King of Troy is your ally,” Priam said.

  Khryse said hotly, “If I called down Apollo’s curse on the Argive camp, I can as easily curse Troy—”

  Priam lifted his hand to stop him.

  “No!” he thundered. “Not a word! Raise a finger or speak a syllable to curse Troy, and by Apollo’s self, I swear I will myself have you flung into the Akhaian camp from the highest rampart of the city!”

  “As Your Majesty wishes,” Khryse said, bowed deeply and went away. Priam scowled, his feathers still ruffled.

  “That man is too proud! Did you hear him—threatening to curse Troy itself!” He looked around to his advisers in his throne room. “Should he ask audience again with me, make certain that I have no time to speak with him!”

  Kassandra was not displeased with the interview. Still at the back of her mind had been an old fear: that if Khryse, as he once threatened, were to go to Priam and ask to marry her, her father would be pleased to thrust her, even unwilling, into marriage—any marriage—and would find no reason for refusing an apparently respectable priest of Apollo. Now that she knew that Priam found Khryse almost as distasteful as she did herself, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  21

  TEN DAYS they watched the plague raging in the Akhaian camp. On the tenth day the soldiers dragged out a noble white horse and sacrificed it to Apollo, and some time later, a messenger with Apollo’s serpent staff came up to the city and asked for a truce for the purpose of speaking with Apollo’s priests.

  “A delegation will come down to the camp,” he was told. Khryse, of course, was first among them. Kassandra did not ask if she might join the group; she simply slipped away to put on her ceremonial robes and went with them.

  Agamemnon, Akhilles and several of the other leaders, among whom Kassandra recognized Odysseus and Patroklos, were drawn up in ranks behind the priests of Apollo. The chief priest among the Akhaians, a lean, sinewy man who looked like an athlete, approached Khryse.

  “It seems,” he said, “that the Immortal is angry with us after all. But I ask you, colleague, will you accept some gift from us?”

  Khryse said, “I want my daughter back, or properly married to the man who took her, to whom she went as an innocent maiden . . .”

  Agamemnon snorted, but said nothing; he had apparently agreed to let the priests speak for him.

  “It cannot be expected,” the priest began, “that the King of Mykenae would agree to marry a prisoner of war, when he already has a Queen.”

  “Very well,” said Khryse, “if he will not marry my daughter, I want her back, and a proper dowry with her, since she is no longer a virgin and I cannot find a husband for her without a dowry.”

  The priests conferred for a moment. Finally they said, “Suppose we were to offer you the pick of all the women from all the cities we have sacked in the countryside, maiden for maiden?”

  “Do you think I am a lecher?” Khryse asked, his voice simmering with indignation. “I am a grieving father, and I call upon Apollo to right the wrong done me.”

  “Well, Agamemnon,” said the Argive priest, “it seems that there is no alternative; we must act with simple justice, and restore the man’s daughter.”

  Agamemnon stood up to his full height and folded his arms.

  “Never! The girl is mine.”

  “But she isn’t,” said the priest. “You took her when there should have been a truce, at the spring planting, and for that impiety the Earth Mother is displeased.”

  “No woman, even a Goddess, tells me what I may not do,” contradicted Agamemnon. Kassandra noticed a visible shiver through the ranks of the men, and Odysseus in particular looked displeased.

  “The Immortals,” Odysseus said, “hate such pride as belongs only to them, Agamemnon. Come, give the girl back, and pay the girl’s father her lawful bride-price.”

  “If I give up the girl . . .” For the first time Agamemnon hesitated, noticing that his fellow chieftains were regarding him with anger. “If I give up the girl,” he repeated, “why should all you others keep the prizes you have won, and laugh at me? You, Akhilles; if I am forced to give up mine, will you give up the woman in your tent?”

  Akhilles snarled, “I was not fool enough to steal mine from a priest of Apollo, and bring us all under a curse, Agamemnon. My woman came to me because she liked me better than any of Priam’s sons inside Troy. And since I came to Troy
to please you, Agamemnon, when by right I should have been fighting at the side of my Trojan kinfolk, I don’t see why my woman should come into this at all. She is a good girl; she came to me of her free will, and she is skilled in all kinds of women’s work. I had thought to take her home with me—should I ever return from this war—and make her my wife, since, unlike you, I did not have to marry some old hag of a Queen to get the rule of her city.”

  Agamemnon set his teeth; Kassandra could see that he was trying very hard to keep hold of his temper.

  “As for my Queen,” he said, “I remind you, my Queen is the twin sister of that Helen who was thought beautiful enough that her loss should start this war. And if she was also Queen in her own right of a great city, did that make her worth any less? She has borne me noble children; and let that be enough about her.”

  “Yes, enough,” said the chief priest. “Agamemnon, you swore an oath you would do whatever was needful to save us from this plague; so we have determined that the girl Chryseis must be returned to her father. We will all make up the dowry he asks.”

  Agamemnon’s fists were clenched, and his jaw set so hard Kassandra wondered if his teeth would shatter.

  “Do you all say this,” he demanded, “in spite of all I have done for you? It would serve you all right if I said, ‘Get another to lead your armies.’ You, Menelaus—do you too stand with these people to rob me?”

  The slight, brown-haired man with a small curly beard shifted uneasily from foot to foot. He said, “I would rather not suffer Apollo’s wrath for your impiety—or your bad luck or bad manners—in taking a girl who should have been let alone.”

  “How was I supposed to know the damned girl’s father was a priest, or to care if I did know? Do you think we spent our time discussing her father?” Agamemnon raged.

  The priestess behind Kassandra compressed her lips against a giggle and muttered softly, “It’s for certain you did not spend it in learning manners,” and it was Kassandra’s turn to tighten her mouth against a snicker. Agamemnon’s head swiveled toward the women, and he seemed angrier than ever.

  “Very well,” he said. “Since you all connive against me that I shall be robbed, take the girl and be damned. But I shall then be repaid by having the woman in Akhilles’ tent.”

  Akhilles sprang out from the midst of the Akhaian ranks and yelled, “No! You’ll take her only over my dead body!”

  “I suppose I could arrange that if you insist,” Agamemnon said lazily. “Patroklos, can’t you control this wild boy? He’s hardly old enough to mix in men’s affairs. Come, Akhilles, what do you need with a woman at your age? I’ll send you the box of toys I gathered for my own son.”

  Kassandra’s eyes narrowed. Agamemnon should not have said that; Akhilles is young, but not young enough to be taunted that way without getting his own back.

  The chief priest of the Trojans said, “Khryse, have you a cloak for Chryseis? With plague here, she may not bring any garment into our camp; what she is wearing must be burned before she enters Troy, and her hair cut off.”

  Khryse produced a long robe and a cloak. “Burn what clothes these folk have given her,” he said. “But her hair too?”

  “I am sorry; it is the only way to be certain she does not carry the plague,” said the priest. Agamemnon came back from his tent with Chryseis, and Khryse stepped forward to embrace her. But the chief priest stopped him.

  “Let the women undress her and take her clothing to be burned, first,” he said, and Charis and Kassandra moved to Chryseis, the other women making a circle about her to hide her as her Akhaian dress and overdress were stripped away and cast to the ground. With dignity, Chryseis ignored them. But when Charis unbraided her hair and took out a knife to cut it, she moved away.

  “No. I have borne all else, but you shall not make a mock of me by shorn locks; I feel no need of purification or penance!”

  Charis said gently, “It is only for fear of plague; you come from an infected city into one so far clean.”

  “I haven’t the plague nor have I been near anyone who has it,” said Chryseis, weeping. “Don’t cut off my hair!”

  “I’m sorry; we must,” said Charis, seizing the long hair and cutting it off to the nape of her neck. Chryseis was sobbing inconsolably.

  “Oh, look what you’ve done! What a figure of fun I shall be, with everyone laughing and jeering! You have always hated me, Kassandra! And now you have done this to me. . . .”

  “What a foolish child you are,” Charis said brusquely. “We have done as the priests bade us, no more. Don’t blame Kassandra.” She laid the robe Khryse had brought over Chryseis’ shoulders. “I have no pin; you will have to hold it together over your breasts.”

  “No,” Chryseis said sullenly. “If you don’t have a pin, it can fall open for all I care.”

  Charis shrugged. “If you want every Akhaian soldier gazing on your naked breasts, that is your affair,” she said, “but it might distress your father. For his sake, hold your robe so your modesty is preserved.”

  She signaled to the women to open a gap in their circle so that Chryseis could approach her father. Agamemnon took a step toward her, but Odysseus held him back, speaking to him urgently in an undertone.

  22

  THE DAY AFTER Chryseis had been returned to Troy, Kassandra was summoned to dine with her parents at the palace; she supposed that Priam wished to hear how the parley had gone. Besides the King and Queen there were Creusa and Aeneas, Hector and Andromache, with their little son, and Helen and Paris with her children. Nikos, a handsome boy, was a year older than Hector’s son; the twins were running around, but were no particular trouble, as each had his own nurse who kept him under reasonable control.

  It seemed to Kassandra strange that the years of war had made little change in the palace dining hall. The paintings on the walls were a little faded and cracked; she supposed that the palace servants who might have been repainting them had other duties, if they were not among the army. There were many kinds of food, including fresh fish—although indeed, there was not much of this. Andromache told her that the Akhaians had dirtied the harbor so that the finest fish stayed farther out at sea; and no one could be spared to go out with the fishing boats through the blockade of the Akhaian soldiers.

  “And when a boat does go out,” she added,“the Akhaians draw it onto shore and take most of the best fish.”

  But there was an abundance of fruits and barley bread and honey; and wine from the grapes plucked from the vines that grew as plentifully as weeds all through the city.

  Priam insisted that Kassandra repeat every word exchanged in the negotiations. He shook his head angrily when he heard of Agamemnon’s arrogance and said, “I have seen no more plague victims in the Argive camp; and may the Gods grant there come none to our city. So the girl is safely back among us; what will her father do with her now?”

  “I do not know; I have not asked him,” Kassandra said, thinking, nor do I have any intention of doing so, and do not care. “I suppose,” she said, “he will find her a husband with the dowry the Akhaians gave. They seemed eager to placate the Sun Lord. And after the plague who can blame them?”

  “I suppose that none of the Akhaian leaders died in the plague?”

  “None that I know about,” said Aeneas. “Certainly neither Agamemnon nor Akhilles suffered; but they came almost to blows as soon as Chryseis left the camp; and at the end, Agamemnon stalked off to his tent and Akhilles to his; it seems there was a quarrel . . .”

  “There was,” Kassandra said, and told them how Agamemnon had insisted that if his woman was taken from him, he would be repaid with Briseis; and what Akhilles had said to this.

  “That explains what I saw later, though of course I did not know what it meant,” Aeneas said. “A few of Agamemnon’s soldiers went to Akhilles’ tent, and there was some sort of fight between them and Akhilles’ men; then Odysseus came and talked with them all for a long time. After that, Akhilles’ soldiers were tearing down bann
ers and decorations; it looked as if they were packing to go home.”

  “May that be what the Gods will,” said Hector. “Agamemnon is an honorable enemy; Akhilles is mad. I prefer to fight sane men.”

  Kassandra had her namesake, Creusa’s daughter, in her lap. She said, “I do not think any man who would fight in this war is sane.”

  “We all know what you think, Kassandra,” said Hector, “and we are tired of hearing it.”

  “Hector, do you truly think we can win this war? If the Gods are angry with Troy—”

  “I have seen no sign of Their anger,” said Hector. “Now, it seems that the Sun Lord, at least, is angry with the Akhaians; with Akhilles gone, I have no fear of the rest of them. We will fight them and win honorably, and then we will make a truce and live at peace with them—if we are fortunate, for the rest of our lives.”

  “And what will happen to us?” asked Paris. He was sitting beside Helen, who was feeding one of the twins mashed fruit with a bone spoon; she looked quiet and peaceful; lovely, Kassandra thought, but without any trace of the uncanny beauty she had shown when she was inhabited by Aphrodite.

  “If peace comes to us,” Andromache said, “there will be peace for you as well, and you may make such lives for yourselves and your children as you desire.”

  “It will be a dull world without war,” Hector said, yawning.

  Paris disagreed. “I have already had as much war as I care to see. There must be better things to do with a life.”

  “You sound like our sister,” Hector said. “But peace will come, like it or not; if all else fails, there’s peace in the grave, and an end to all fighting and talk of honor.”

  Kassandra said wryly, “It sounds like a heaven specially designed by Akhilles’ God.”

  “No heaven for me, then,” Paris said. “Enough to fight here; I don’t intend to spend the Afterlife doing it.”

  “You mean you wouldn’t choose to spend the Afterlife doing it,” Hector remarked. “I’m not so sure we will be given our choice.”