The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  They had been joined by a tall armored man; with surprise she recognized Aeneas.

  “I came to escort you, Kassandra,” he said, “but I have been talking with your guests. We will be grateful to have the Amazon archers to defend the main tower; we will station them on the walls . . .”

  “I am at your disposal,” Penthesilea said, “and I have an old grudge against the father of Akhilles; once at least I will ride out against the son.”

  Kassandra felt again the clamping darkness squeezing its fist around her throat, so that she could neither speak nor cry out.

  “No!” she whispered, but she knew that none of them could hear her.

  Aeneas said in a friendly manner, “Well, Hector is our commander; it will be for him to say where he wishes you to fight. We can settle that in a day or two. Shall we go?” He offered his arm courteously to the Amazon Queen, and they left the room, walking down toward the palace. It was not yet quite dark, and Penthesilea looked with dismay at the rubble still blocking the streets. A few wooden shelters had been hastily flung up, but the town still looked as if a giant’s child in a fit of temper had kicked over a box of his toys.

  Aeneas said, “My father has told me many tales of the wars between the Kentaurs and the Amazons. There was a minstrel at our court who used to sing a ballad about them . . .” He hummed a few phrases. “Do you know the song?”

  “I do indeed; if your minstrels cannot sing it, I will sing it for you myself,” Penthesilea said, “though my voice is not what it was when I was a girl.”

  Moving through the courtyards, Kassandra studied the small band of Amazons. Penthesilea had aged more than a year or two since their last encounter on the road to Colchis. She had always been tall and thin; now she was gaunt, her arms and legs all taut, ropy sinew with no remaining ounce of softness anywhere. She still had all her own teeth, strong and white; one could hardly have described her as “an old woman.”

  None of the others were as old as Penthesilea; the youngest, Kassandra reckoned, was hardly into her teens, a slight girl who looked as strong and dangerous as her own bow.

  This is what I could have been; what I should have been. Kassandra regarded the young warrior with ill-concealed envy. At least she need not sit idly while the defenses of her city fell apart.

  “But you have not been idle,” said Aeneas softly, and she wondered—though she never knew for sure—whether he had read her thoughts or whether she had whispered them aloud. “You are a priestess, a healer. It is not only the fighters who serve a city at war.” He slid his arm around her waist, and they walked entwined the rest of the distance. When they entered into Priam’s great hall, the herald called out their names:

  “The Princess Kassandra, daughter of Priam; the Lord Aeneas, son of Anchises; Penthesilea, warrior Queen of the Amazon tribes, and two dozen of her ladies—er”—the herald coughed to cover his confusion—“of her warriors—how shall I say it, my lady—”

  “Peace, donkey,” said Penthesilea. “None of us have more wit than the Gods have given us. Your King and Queen know who I am.” But she was smiling and good-natured even while the herald fumbled to dry his sweaty palms on his tunic.

  Hecuba came down from her high seat, bustling toward her sister, and took her into her arms.

  “Dearest sister,” she said, and Penthesilea returned her embrace.

  Priam rose too and took several steps from the high seat, embracing Penthesilea exactly as his wife had done.

  “You are most welcome, Sister-in-Law; every hand that can raise a weapon is welcome to us this day. You shall have your choice of all the booty of the Akhaian camp with the other warriors, that I promise to you. Anyone who gainsays this is no friend to me,” he said, with a sharp and meaningful look at Hector.

  “Father, have we come to this?”

  “I would welcome the Kentaurs themselves to fight against Akhilles’ army,” said Priam. “Tell me, Sister, what weapons have you brought?”

  “Two dozen warriors, and we are all armed with swords of iron from Colchis,” Penthesilea said. “Every one of us skilled with the bow as well; not one of my women but will shoot out the eye of a running stallion at a hundred paces.”

  “Will one of you enter the archery contest in the funeral games tomorrow?” Paris asked. “Akhilles has offered the best of the captured chariots, and to the best archer, the great bow of Patroklos himself.”

  “He would not award that to a woman,” Hector said. “Not though she outshot Patroklos himself.”

  “He is sworn to award the prizes to the victor.”

  “Nothing is sacred to Akhilles,” Penthesilea said. “I would be willing to compete if only to show that to all his men; but he might surprise me. But I have neither wish nor need for a chariot; and my own bow is sufficient to my needs.” She laughed. “I am not in this war for gold or booty; what would I do with a woman captive?”

  “If you win enough booty in this war, you could reestablish your cities,” Andromache said, “or go and found a city of your own somewhere, as my mother’s people did with Colchis.”

  “There are worse thoughts,” said Penthesilea. “I will consider that. If I win this great chariot, then, Priam, will you ransom it for gold?”

  “If he does not,” Hecuba said, “I will. You will be well paid—you and all your warriors.”

  The wine cups went round again, all the men laughing and joking, each saying in which contest he would compete, and what he would do with the prize if he won it.

  “You should seek to win one of the women, Aeneas,” said Deiphobos. “Someone to warm your bed while Creusa is in Crete.”

  “No,” said Aeneas, raising his cup. “Should I win a captive woman, I will send her to Crete as a maid to wait on Creusa and help her care for the children; she will be paid an honest wage, that someday she may be able to purchase her freedom. I like not this passing round of women as prizes. No more than Penthesilea would I desire any woman who does not come to me of her free will.”

  Over the rim of the golden cup his eyes met Kassandra’s; she knew what he was asking of her and what her answer would be.

  KASSANDRA AND Aeneas moved slowly up the hill toward the house of the Sun Lord; there was no moon and the streets were dark except for the occasional spilled light from the inside of one of the houses. Kassandra stumbled over a loose stone, and Aeneas put his arm around her, steadying her steps—or perhaps, she thought, seeking an excuse to hold her; she was not certain she had not stumbled for an excuse to cling to him. Although the night was warm, he wrapped his cloak round them both; and she was overwhelmingly aware of the warmth from his body.

  She was not precisely frightened; but she was nervous and a little troubled. For so many years her life had been the life of a priestess, and virginity had been at the very center of that life. She found herself remembering all the arguments she had mustered against Khryse, and wondered if she was behaving like a hypocrite: now that she had resolved to surrender, she was surrendering to her sister’s husband. But she had Creusa’s own word that it did not matter; she need have no scruples on Creusa’s account.

  And as for the God? She had long ago lost the belief that it would matter to Apollo Sun Lord what she did. He had long abandoned her; but if He had spoken to forbid this step, even now, she knew she would not defy Him. There was within her a small glowing center of angry desolation: He did not care; it did not even matter to Him that one of His chosen was to abandon her pledge to Him.

  But that thought was buried very deep indeed; on the surface of her mind there was room for nothing except Aeneas.

  They were approaching the great gates; a priest stood there to guard the entrance and exit, and she stopped and turned away so that he would not see her.

  “We cannot go in there,” she said. “If I take you inside and do not bring you out again immediately . . .”

  He understood at once.

  “No, indeed,” he said. “You must look to your reputation; I would not endanger it, Kassan
dra. Perhaps we should have remained in the palace this night. . . .”

  “No,” she said softly, “I would not want that. I am not ashamed—it is not that—”

  “But you must not cause a scandal,” he said, and walked toward the low wall where it fell away to the streets below. Kassandra felt awkward; she had not thought of this till this moment. Penthesilea and her women had left the palace earlier, and Kassandra had seen no one in the streets. She had brought out Akhilles and Odysseus in the cloaks of novice priests; but she could not do that with Aeneas, even if she could somehow lay hands on a cloak. She frowned, trying to think of a way to take him in unseen; letting him depart again in the morning was no particular problem. She said in an undertone, “There is a place where the wall crumbled away in the great earthquake; even the little children can climb it. It has not been repaired because all the workmen have been put to repairing the city gates, down below. This way,” she said, and led him along the outer wall. It was nowhere very high, and there had once been a door at the side; it had been blocked up only a generation or two before, and when the old arch crumbled, it had left a pile of easily scaled rubble which no one had thought it necessary to guard or observe. Even in her long skirt Kassandra found it easy to climb, though the stones turning under her feet and those of Aeneas behind her rattled loudly.

  She thought she was probably not the first of the Temple women to bring a lover in this way; it was the sort of thing she would have expected of Chryseis. She did not want to think of herself in the same terms as that alley-cat girl; but she must accept it; she was no better. She gave Aeneas her hand to steady him as he stepped down and felt her breath catch in her throat; she had so often chided Chryseis in her mind for this kind of thing.

  If Creusa does not object—and if the Lord Apollo does not speak to prevent it—then there is no one, man or woman or God, to be offended, she told herself firmly. She led him along the deep shadows at the edge of the wall; and rather than conducting him to the door of the priestesses’ dormitory and through the corridor to her room, took him to the window that opened from the street, and stepped through.

  Inside, it was dark and still, a single rushlight burning on a platter—just enough for them to see her bed and the pallet where Honey usually slept. As she approached the bed, Kassandra saw the little girl’s dark head on the pillow; and as she bent to lift her, a long blunt form uncoiled upward, eyes gleaming like two flat pebbles. She saw Aeneas recoil and said softly, “She will not harm you; she is not poisonous.”

  “I know,” Aeneas said. “My mother was a priestess of Aphrodite, and shared her bed with stranger things than snakes. Your pet will not trouble me.”

  “I can put her in the child’s bed if you like,” Kassandra said, lifting Honey and laying her on the pallet; the child whimpered, and Kassandra sat with her, crooning softly to soothe her back to sleep.

  “It does not matter to me,” Aeneas said, “but I am a stranger to her; perhaps she will spend a quieter night in the child’s bed.” Kassandra felt heat rising in her cheeks as she rose and picked up the snake, laying her down close to Honey; the serpent glided down, wrapping her coils close around Honey’s waist. Reassured by the familiar touch, Honey slept, and Kassandra came back, taking Aeneas’ cloak and laying it aside.

  “I did not know your mother was a priestess of Aphrodite,” she said, and Aeneas replied, “When I was a child, they told me my mother was Aphrodite’s self. Later, I knew who she really was and came to know her as a mother. I am not surprised if she seemed like the Goddess Herself to my father; she was very beautiful. I think the priestesses of Aphrodite are chosen for their beauty.”

  “And if they serve the Goddess,” Kassandra said, “She would certainly lend them Her beauty.”

  “It cannot be only that,” Aeneas said, “or you would long ago have been chosen to Her service.”

  The remark made her shiver. Was she, then, being deceived into the service of that Goddess who thrust the disorderly worship of carnal love into the lives of men and of women? Was it, then, that despised Goddess who sought now to lay a hand on her and win her away from the pledge she had made to Apollo?

  Already she had seen how Aphrodite disrupted the lives of those who worshiped Her. Aeneas was Her child; did he worship Her too?

  She could not ask him these things. He sat on the edge of her narrow bed, drawing off his sandals. She came to him and he reached for her, with a single gesture pulling the pin from her hair and letting it fall free to hide her face and all her questions. It no longer mattered. All the Goddesses, whatever Their names, were one, and she should serve Them as every woman served Them.

  She heard the rustling of the snake as it shifted its coils. Aeneas reached for her, his arm around her waist.

  “It is no wonder you have remained so long a virgin, with such a guardian of your chastity,” he murmured, laughing. “Have all the Sun Lord’s maidens such chaperones to safeguard them?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, laughing, and lay back in his arms. Then she raised herself to extinguish the rushlight. Darkness filled the room and she heard him laugh again, softly. Beyond the laughter she heard, very far away, a ripple of thunder, then the sudden rush and rattle of rain outside.

  “Shining Aphrodite, if I must serve You like all women, after so many years of refusing Your service, lay then some of Your gifts on me,” she whispered, and felt a shimmer of light around her—or was it only a random flicker of the lightning outside as Aeneas touched her in the dark?

  AT DAWN she slipped quietly from her bed, to sit at the window, remembering and savoring every detail of the night. Soon the winds at the summit would blow away the pearly mists in the city below.

  At the highest point of the Sun Lord’s house the wind already roared noisily around the walls; and Aeneas stood, not yet armed.

  “There is no reason for arming, if I am to compete in wrestling and boxing,” he said. “I will take on any contestant save Akhilles himself. I dreamed last night . . .”

  Kassandra asked, “Did the God send you a lucky dream?”

  “Whether lucky or unlucky I do not know,” said Aeneas. “My good fortune, it seems to me, I have already won.” He bent and kissed her. “Promise me: you have no regrets, my beloved?”

  “None,” she said. It no longer mattered to her. So many years she had waited to give herself, refusing even, as she thought, the Sun Lord’s self; and here in the midst of war, in the shadow of death, she had found love and knew it could not last. When Honey at the far end of the room stirred and cried with some nightmare, she ran quickly to quiet the child. She soothed her gently, rocking, crooning to her, and saw Honey’s eyes turn to the unfamiliar figure in the room; she was suddenly, confusedly glad that the little girl was too young to voice her surprise or curiosity.

  Now as they stood close together, she thought of all the other women of Troy who for all these years had been fastening on their men’s armor and sending them out to fight—or to die—and realized that for once she shared the concerns and fears of these women.

  She helped him to buckle the final strap on his breastplate; the rest of his armor would be donned in the field. The trumpet which blew at dawn to summon the men had not yet sounded; and this morning it was uncertain whether it would be heard at all. Only those who were competing in Patroklos’ funeral games need rise or go out this day, although a careful watch would be kept in case the Akhaians attempted to break the truce.

  “Come, kiss me, love; I must go,” he said, holding her tight in a last embrace; but she protested, “Not yet; shall I find you some bread and a little wine?”

  “I must breakfast with the soldiers of my mess, sweet-heart; don’t trouble yourself.” He hesitated and held his face against her cheek. “May I come to you again tonight?”

  She did not know what to say, and he mistook her silence. “Ah, I should not have . . . your brothers are my friends, your father my host . . .”

  “As for my father or brothers, there is no man in
all of Troy to whom I must account for my doings,” Kassandra said sharply. “And your wife, my sister, said to me when we parted that she begrudged you nothing that would make you happy.”

  “Creusa said that? I wonder . . . Well, I am grateful to her, then. I could have told you that, but better you should hear it from her.” Impulsively he caught her to him again. “Let me come,” he begged. “We may not have much time . . . and who knows what may happen to either of us? But these days of the truce . . .”

  All over Troy, she thought, women fresh from their men’s beds were fastening on armor, using these last little delaying moments and kisses, trying not to think of the vulnerability of the flesh they had caressed.

  Aeneas stroked her hair. “Even with Aphrodite I now have no quarrel—for it was She, I think, who brought you to me. I shall sacrifice a dove to Her as soon as I can.”

  There were doves enough in Apollo’s shrine; but Kassandra felt a certain reluctance to suggest he buy one of them. Aeneas in one way had stolen something belonging to Apollo—though she did not know now and had never known why it should have belonged to anyone but herself. Then she told herself sharply not to be foolish; she was certainly not the first of the Sun Lord’s maidens to take a man to her bed, and would hardly be the last. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him and said, “Until tonight, then, my dearest love.”

  She went to the high railing to watch him as he went down through the city. It was hardly full light yet; the clouds were blowing across the plain before Troy, and there were only a few figures astir in the streets: soldiers, gathering for the morning meal.

  She was weary; she should go back to bed. But she wondered how many of the women in the city who had just sent their lovers or husbands to battle—or, today, the mock-battle of the games—could calmly go and sleep. She went into her room, finding Honey still buried in her blankets, and dressed herself swiftly. She did not want to walk about the courts; for some reason she was certain that she would encounter Khryse, and she felt that he would be instantly aware of what had happened and that she could not endure his gaze. She had lately allowed Phyllida to take over the care of the serpents, so there was no reason to go to the serpent court.