The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Perhaps they will make a foray in the dark to rescue him,” Polyxena said. “Or if it rains, Akhilles may agree to accept a ransom; he will not want to drive a chariot all day in a storm.”

  “I don’t think it will make any difference to him,” Kassandra said. “It seems to me that the sensible course would be to accept this and do what he does not expect: let him keep Hector’s corpse; then muster all our forces tomorrow and throw everything we have into an all-out attempt to kill Akhilles and Agamemnon and perhaps Menelaus as well.”

  Polyxena stared at her in utter dismay, the beginning rain mingling with the tears on her cheek.

  “I beg of you, Sister, say nothing like that to our mother or father,” she said. “I did not think even you could be so heartless as to leave Hector unburied in the rain.”

  “It is not Hector who lies unburied,” Kassandra said fiercely; “it is a dead body like any other.”

  “I do not know if you are very stupid, or simply very malicious,” Polyxena said, “but you speak like a barbarian and not a civilized woman, a princess and a priestess of Troy.” She turned away her eyes, and Kassandra knew she had only made things worse. She looked away from Polyxena to hide the tears in her eyes, while knowing perversely that Polyxena would think better of her for them. They did not speak again.

  When they reached the palace, a servant (Kassandra noticed that the old woman’s eyes were as swollen and red as her mother’s—everyone down to the kitchen drudges had loved Hector, and all the palace women remembered Troilus as a small petted child) took their sodden cloaks, dried their hair and feet with towels and showed them into the main dining hall.

  It looked almost the same as always—a roaring fire casting light around the room and branched candlesticks spreading brilliance by which the paintings on the walls wavered as if seen underwater. The carved bench where Hector habitually sat was empty, and Andromache sat between Priam and Hecuba, like a child between her parents.

  Paris and Helen were nearby, their hands clinging. They came to greet Polyxena, who went to kiss her parents. Kassandra sat down in her accustomed place near Helen; but when the servants put food on her plate she could not swallow and only nibbled at a dish of boiled vegetables and drank a little watered wine. Paris looked sad, but Kassandra knew that he was very well aware that he was now Priam’s eldest son by his Queen and commander of the armies. If there is to be any hope for Troy, someone must disabuse him of that notion, she thought. He is no Hector. Then she was astonished at herself; she had known so long that there was no hope for Troy: why did these unconquerable thoughts of hope keep rising again and again?

  Did this mean her visions of doom were simply hallucinations or brain-sickness, as everyone said? Or did it mean that somehow with Hector gone there was new hope for Troy? No, that was certainly madness; he was the best of us all, she thought, and knew that someone—Paris? Priam?—had actually said it aloud.

  “He was the best of us all,” Paris said, “but he is gone, and somehow we must manage the rest of this war without him. I have no idea how we will do it.”

  “It is in essence your war,” Andromache said. “I told Hector he should have left it to you all along.”

  Someone sobbed aloud; it was Helen. Andromache turned on her in sudden rage.

  “How dare you! If it were not for you he would be alive, and his son not fatherless!”

  “Oh, come, my dear,” Priam said in a conciliatory tone, “you really mustn’t talk like that to your sister—there is enough grief in this house this night.”

  “Sister? Never! This woman from our enemies, from whom all our troubles have arisen—look, she sits and gloats because now her paramour will command all Priam’s armies. . . .”

  “The Gods know I do not gloat,” Helen said, stifling her tears. “I grieve for the fallen sons of this house which has become my house, and for the grief of those who are now my father and my mother.”

  “How dare you . . .” Andromache began again; but Priam took her hand and held it, whispering to her.

  “How would you have me prove my grief?” Helen stood up and came to Priam’s high seat. Her long golden hair was unbound, hanging over her shoulders; her blue eyes, deep-set in her face and shadowed with weeping, were luminous in the candlelight.

  “Father,” she said to Priam, “if it is your will, I will go down to the camp and offer myself to the Akhaians in return for the body of Hector.”

  “Yes, go,” said Hecuba swiftly, almost before Helen had finished speaking, and before Priam could answer. “They will do you no harm.”

  Andromache chimed in, “It might be the one good act of a lifetime and atone for all else you have done to this house.”

  Kassandra was riveted to her seat, though her first impulse was to rise up and cry out, “No, no!” Nevertheless, she remembered what she had prophesied when Paris first stood at the gates of Troy: that he was a firebrand who would kindle a fire to burn down all the city—a prophecy repeated when he had brought Helen here. That was long ago; she no longer blamed Helen for what would come to the city: that was the fate ordained by the Gods. And her father and brothers—even Hector himself—they had not heeded her then; and whatever she said, they would certainly do exactly the opposite. Better to keep silent.

  Priam said gently, “Helen, it is a generous offer, but we cannot possibly allow you to do this. You are not the only cause of this war. We will ransom Hector’s body—with all the gold of Troy if we must. Akhilles is not the only captain of the Akhaians. Surely there are some there who will listen to reason.”

  “No.” Andromache rose and stood looking at Helen with a somber gaze; Kassandra realized that some people would think her more beautiful than Helen, though her beauty was of a different kind—dark where Helen was fair, lean where Helen was rounded. “No, Father, let her go, I beg of you. You owe me something too; I have borne Hector’s son. I beg you, let her depart, and if she does not, drive her forth with whips. This woman has never been anything but a curse to all of us in Troy.”

  Paris rose to his feet. “If you drive out Helen,” he declared, “I go with her.”

  “Go, then,” cried Andromache wildly. “That too would be a blessing to our city! You are no less a curse than she! Your father did well when he sought to send you away.”

  “She is raving,” Deiphobos said roughly. “Helen shall not go from us while I live; the Goddess sent Helen to us, and no other roof shall shelter her while my brothers and I live.”

  Priam looked down the hall. “What shall I do?” he asked half aloud. “My Queen and the wife of my Hector have said to us—”

  “She must go,” Andromache cried. “If she remains here, I will depart this night from Troy—and I call upon all the women of Priam’s house to go forth with me; shall we remain under one roof with her who has cast our city down into the dust?”

  “And yet the walls of Troy stand firm,” Paris said. “All is not lost.” He rose and came to Andromache, taking her hand gently and raising it to his lips.

  “I bear you no grudge, poor girl,” he said. “You are distraught with your grief, and no wonder. I’ll answer that Helen shall hold no malice toward you.”

  Andromache jerked away.

  “Women of Troy, I call on you, come forth from the accursed roof that shelters that false Goddess who would bring us all to ruin and slavery. . . .” Her voice had risen, high and hysterical; she picked up a torch and cried, “Follow me, women of Troy. . . .”

  Priam rose in his place and thundered, “Enough! We have trouble enough without this! My child,” he said to Andromache, “I understand your pain; but I beg you, sit down and listen to us. Nothing would be solved by driving Helen forth. Soldiers have fallen in battle long before Hector was born—or I.” He reached out to embrace Andromache, and after a moment she collapsed against his breast, sobbing. Hecuba came to enfold her in her arms.

  “Peace,” she said somberly. “We have Troilus to mourn and to bury before the sun rises; and you women,
collect your jewels to offer for Hector’s ransom.”

  Kassandra, joining the women as they gathered together to assemble by Troilus’ body, found herself wondering whether Andromache had been justified. Andromache alone among the women did not follow Hecuba; she remained at Priam’s feet, crying out desolately, “I have not even a body over which to mourn.” Then she raised her voice and called out, “Let not Helen touch Troilus’ body, Mother! Know you not the old tale, a corpse will bleed if his murderer touches it?—and he has little blood left to spare, poor lad!”

  9

  ALL NIGHT Kassandra heard the rain and wind, beating and tearing around the high palace of Priam, as the women of the royal household wailed for Troilus. They washed and dressed his corpse, covered it with precious spices and burned incense to cover the sickly smell of death. In the gray lull between darkness and sunrise they ceased their nightlong mourning to drink wine and listen to a song from one of the minstrels in the room. She praised the beauty and bravery of the dead youth, singing that he had been felled because his beauty was such that the War-God desired him, and took the form of Akhilles in order to possess him.

  When the song ended, Hecuba called the musician to her and gave her a ring as a memento of her noble elegy, and one of the women persuaded her to sit down and rest, and to drink a cup of warmed wine with spices. Helen, who had also accepted a cup, came and sat beside Kassandra.

  “I will go and sit somewhere else if you do not want to be seen talking to me,” she said, “but it seems I am not welcome anywhere among the women now.” Her face looked thin, even haggard, and pale—she had lost weight since the deaths of her children, and Kassandra noted dulled strands within the gilt of her hair.

  “No, stay here,” Kassandra said. “I think you know I will always be your friend.”

  “All the same,” Helen said, “my offer was sincere; I will return to Menelaus. He will probably kill me, but I might have a chance to see my only remaining daughter once before I die. Paris thinks we will have other children; and indeed, I had hoped—but it is too late for that. I think he wanted our son to rule Troy after us.”

  She looked half-questioning at Kassandra, and Kassandra nodded, with a shocking sense that by agreeing with what Helen had said, it was as if she willed that the doom be so.

  In the last years she had grown accustomed to this feeling, and knew its foolishness; the guilt, if guilt there must be, belonged only to the Gods, or whatever forces there were which made the Gods act as They did. She raised her cup to Helen and drank, feeling the heaviness of the wine strike her hard at this unaccustomed hour; and she had eaten but little the day before. Helen seemed to echo her thoughts, saying, “I wonder if the Queen is wise to serve so strong a wine unmixed when we are all half fainting with grief or hunger; these women will all be raving drunk in half an hour.”

  “It is a matter not of wisdom but of custom,” Kassandra said. “If she served less than her best, they would question her love and respect for the dead boy.”

  “It’s odd,” Helen said reflectively, “the way people think, or refuse to think, about death. Paris, for one—it seems as if he thinks that since our children have died, perhaps the Gods will accept the sacrifice of their lives and spare ours.”

  “If a God would accept the innocent to expiate the sins of the guilty, I could have no reverence for Him; and yet there are some peoples who do believe in Gods who accept the sacrifice of innocent blood,” Kassandra said. She added, almost in a whisper: “Perhaps it is an idea the Gods—or fiends—put into all men’s heads; did not Agamemnon sacrifice his own daughter on the altar of the Maiden for a fair wind to bring his fleet to Troy?”

  “It is so,” said Helen, softly, “though Agamemnon will not now hear it named, and says the sacrifice was of his wife’s—my sister’s—doing, a sacrifice to her Goddess. The Akhaians fear the old Goddesses, saying they are tainted. The bravest of men flee in terror from women’s Mysteries.”

  Kassandra looked round the shadowed room, where the women were drinking and talking in little groups.

  “I wish somehow we could inspire them with this terror now,” she said, and remembered how she had visited Akhilles’ tent in a trance—or only in a dream? The thought stirred in her mind that perhaps she still might have some such access to the mind of the Akhaian hero; she would attempt it at the first opportunity. She raised her cup silently and drank; Helen, meeting her eyes over the rim, did the same.

  There was a sudden strong draft in the room; the door opened and Andromache stood there, holding a torch with long flaming streamers blowing in the strong wind from the corridor. Her long hair was dripping with rain and her dress and cloak sopping. She came through the room like a walking ghost, softly chanting one of the funeral hymns. She bent over Troilus’ wrapped body and kissed the pale cheek.

  “Farewell, dear brother,” she said in her clear reedy voice. “You go before the greatest of heroes, to speak to the Gods of his eternal shame.”

  Kassandra went quickly to her and said softly, yet audibly, “Shame done to the brave is shame only to the one who commits the crime, not to the one who suffers it.” Yet Hector had willingly fought Akhilles, playing that game of one scoring on another. He did only what his whole life had taught him to do.

  She poured a cup of the spiced wine—it was heavy now, even less diluted than what had been in the pitcher when it was fuller. Perhaps it was better; Andromache would go from here to sleep and some ease of her horror, if not of her grief. She set the cup in her cousin’s hand, smelling on her breath the heaviness of wine—wherever she had been, she had been drinking.

  “Drink, my sister,” she said.

  “Ah, yes,” Andromache said, tears spilling down her face. “With you I came to Troy when we were girls, and you told me, as we came here, so many stories of how brave and handsome he was. My child was born into your hands. You are my dearest friend for all our lives.” She embraced Kassandra and clung to her, swaying, and Kassandra realized that she was already drunk. Kassandra herself was not unaffected by the wine she had drunk; she sensed Andromache’s restlessness and her seeking.

  Andromache bent again to kiss the dead face of Troilus. She said to Hecuba, “You are fortunate, my mother, that you can adorn his corpse and weep; my Hector lies moldering in the rain, unmourned, unburied.”

  “Not unmourned,” said Kassandra gently. “All of us mourn for him. His spirit will hear your tears and lamentations, whether his body rests here or yonder with Akhilles’ horses.” Her voice broke; she was thinking of a day soon after Andromache had come to Troy, when Hector had forbidden her to bear weapons and threatened to beat her. She had spoken to try to comfort Andromache, but suddenly she wondered if she had made things worse. Andromache’s eyes were cold and tearless. Kassandra guided her toward the seat; but when Andromache saw Helen there, she drew back, her lips baring her teeth in a dreadful masklike grimace which transformed her face almost into a skull.

  “You, here, pretending to mourn?”

  “The Gods know I pretend nothing,” said Helen quietly, “but if you prefer it, I will go—you have the better right to be here.”

  “Oh, Andromache,” Kassandra said, “don’t speak so. You both came to this city as strangers, and found a home here. You have lost your husband, and Helen her children, at the hands of the Gods; you should share sorrow, not turn and rend one another. You are both my sisters and I love you.” With one hand she drew Helen close; with the other arm embraced Andromache.

  “You are right,” said Andromache; “we are all helpless in Their hands.” She snuffled and drank the last of her wine. Her voice was unsteady as she said drunkenly, “Sister, we are both victims in this war; the Goddess forbid this madness of men should sep—separate us.” Her tongue stumbled clumsily on the words, and they were both weeping as they embraced. Hecuba came to enfold all three in her arms; she was crying too.

  “So many gone! So many gone! Your precious children, Helen! My sons! Where is Hector’s son, my l
ast grandchild?”

  “Not the last, Mother; have you forgotten? Creusa and her children were sent to safety; they risk nothing,” Kassandra reminded her. “They are all out of range of Akhilles’ madness or the Akhaian armies.”

  Andromache said, “Astyanax is too old for the women’s quarters; I cannot even comfort him, nor seek to find comfort seeing his father in his face.” Her voice was sadder than tears.

  “When I lost—the little ones,” Helen said shakily, “they brought Nikos to me for comfort; I will go, Andromache, and bring your son to you.”

  “Oh, bless you,” Andromache cried.

  Kassandra said, “Let me take you to your room; you do not want him here among all these drunken women.”

  “Yes, I will bring him to you there,” Helen said. “You still have your son, and that is the greatest of all gifts.”

  One by one, or in twos and threes, the women, exhausted with grief and the strong wine, were slipping away to their beds. Only Hecuba, and Polyxena in her priestess’ robes, took their station at Troilus’ head and feet, there to remain until those came who would give his body to the earth. Kassandra wondered if she too should remain; but they had not asked her, not even to do the service of a priestess in purifying the chamber of death. Andromache and even Helen needed her more; she knew she was as alien among the women of Troy as were the Colchian and the Spartan women.

  She stayed with them until Helen had slipped into Paris’ rooms and found Nikos and Astyanax. They had both been crying. Astyanax’s face was filthy and smudged with tears; someone had evidently told him of his father’s death and had tried to offer the child some solace. Helen took both boys to the well at the center of the courtyard and washed their faces with the corner of her veil.

  Astyanax fell gratefully into his mother’s arms, then said, bewildered, “Don’t cry, Mother. They told me I was not to cry because my father is a hero. So why are you crying?”

  Helen said gently, “Astyanax, you must help to dry your mother’s tears; it is now your business to care for her, since your father cannot.”