"At least your son still lives," Andromache muttered.
"But he is lost to me," Helen said. "And Menelaus has sworn that if this one lives—" and Kassandra remembered that Helen had confided to her that she believed herself to be pregnant again, "he will expose it. Believe me, Andromache, I would rather be going into the hands of a stranger, even if the men threw dice for me. Menelaus will doubtless make me feel his fury for the rest of my life; I would rather be buried peacefully here at the side of Paris, whom I loved."
"I do not believe that," said Andromache grimly. "I am sure you would rather have some new man to captivate with your beauty." She turned away from Helen and did not speak again.
Kassandra held out her hand to Helen and the other woman held it. She said, "I wonder if all the women in Troy hold me responsible…?"
"I don't," Kassandra said.
"No. And I found friends in Troy," Helen said, bending down to kiss Kassandra. "I wish I had never come here to destroy you all—"
"It was Poseidon who did that," said Kassandra, and they were silent, holding hands like young girls. It was not very long before steps sounded outside and Menelaus stooped to come in the low door.
"Helen?" he said.
"I am here," she said meekly, and Kassandra looked up into the blaze of light that seemed to fill the little hut. Helen's hair was brilliantly golden, and about her was the radiance she had borne when she stood upon the walls of Troy; the very aura of the Goddess.
Menelaus blinked as if his eyes were dazzled. Then, unwillingly, he bent and murmured, "My Lady and my Queen." As if he were afraid to approach her, he offered his arm and she stepped slowly toward him.
They left the hut, Menelaus following Helen a half pace behind.
It was growing dark outside when at last the familiar form of Agamemnon thrust his head inside the hut.
"Priam's daughter," he said, "you are to come with me; the ship is ready to sail."
Now what am I to do? Submit? Fight? There is no help for it. It is fate.
She rose and he took her arm, not cruelly, but with a certain proprietorial pride. He said, smiling tentatively, "I asked for you alone, from all the spoils of Troy; believe me, I will not ill-treat you, Kassandra. It is no small thing to be the beloved of a King of Mykenae."
Oh, I believe it, she thought. It occurred to her that Priam might, if Agamemnon had not already been wedded to Helen's sister, very well have given her in marriage to this man. What lay before her now, except for a few formal rites and the blessing of her kin, would not be much different than that. A wife to any Akhaian was no less a slave than any slave in Troy. She shivered; and he turned to her solicitously.
"Are you cold?" he asked. He bent and picked up a cloak from a pile of plundered garments that were stacked in the hut; a blue one she had never seen before.
"Wear this," he said magnanimously, draping it round her shoulders. He guided her over the rough ground; down to the water's edge, and held her hand as she stepped into the boat. The deck swayed as he led her across it; it was bigger than it had looked from the walls of Troy. The rowers at their oars looked up at her curiously as she tried to walk without tripping over the cloak. On deck there was a small tent, something like the tents in which the Akhaians had camped during the war. He lifted the flap for her to step inside. There were soft rugs and a lamp burning.
"You will have privacy here," he said ceremoniously. "We will sail with the tide, two hours before dawn." He left her, and she let herself fall on the rugs, feeling the gentle up-and-down sway of the deck. She wondered if she could slip to the other side of the ship, slide off into the water and drown. But no, surely she was watched, and they would seize her before she got to the water. Besides, she had been told that she was not to die, so she would only be sent back again.
She lay back, trying to resign herself to the moment when Agamemnon would come to her.
He could not be worse than Ajax. And she had lived through that. She would live through this too.
CHAPTER 17
At least she was no longer retching. Kassandra dragged herself out of the tent on deck and into the fresh evening air. She still could not bear the thought of food; the very idea gave her a warning spasm, but she managed to stay upright this time, on her knees - the motion of the ship made it unthinkable to stand without an undignified fall - and looked curiously at the shoreline and the small rocky islands they were passing.
It seemed they had been at sea forever; last night she had seen the new moon, slim and pale and welcome because she knew it appeared in the southwest and gave some direction - now that she could note directions at all - to the trackless, directionless sea. She thought that her confusion had added to the sickness; there was nothing but a sick and whirling body in the center of a vortex of heaving ocean and lurching deck. At first she had been so ill nothing had mattered - not the smells of the sea or the sounds of the rowers, not Agamemnon's use of her uncaring body, not the food she regularly refused. At first, she had believed it was mostly the aftermath of the blow she had had from Ajax—head injuries often caused both nausea and confusion, and when it did not subside in a reasonable time she thought that it was the motion of the ship.
Now - counting time from the moon—she had begun to wonder - with dismay and revulsion - if she might be pregnant. When she had first taken Aeneas to her bed, she had not thought much about it. The priestesses were taught ways to avoid such things if they chose, but these arts often failed and aboard the ship she had been too ill to heed them. She had been resigned to the fact that sooner or later she would find herself with child by Aeneas. But the possibility that this might be Aeneas's child was very small indeed; since the blow on the head she had a certain amount of trouble remembering exactly when he had last been with her, or when she had last seen evidence that she was not pregnant. So it was probable that this was the child of Agamemnon - or worse, of Ajax, who had taken her first. Kassandra rarely listened to girls' gossip, but she had heard them saying often enough that one was not likely to get pregnant the first time with any man. But she had seen evidence, whatever they believed or hoped, that once was quite enough. If she had to choose, she would hope it was Agamemnon's child: she detested him, but it was not he who had taken her by force over the body of her dead child. The fact that she was recognized as his chattel and prize of war was not pleasing to her. All my life I feared him, she thought, remembering her first vision when she was a child, but at least he had behaved no worse than custom allowed in such cases.
It was an evil custom certainly, but he had not invented it, and it would hardly be reasonable to blame him. If she had been given by her parents in marriage to this man he would have used her no worse, and probably no better.
He was, she supposed, no worse than any other Akhaian; as they were reckoned, she supposed he was considered a good man. She even realized that he had actually been frightened by her continuing sickness; at first he had tried to gentle her out of it, reassuring her that it was always this way at the beginning of a voyage and that she'd soon grow used to it, encouraging her to get into the fresh air; when it did not subside, he left her alone a good deal, for which she was dimly grateful.
She thought sometimes that he might be trying to show her kindness. Once when she had vomited all over him (without apology; she had not asked him, nor given him leave, to bring her on this voyage at all) he had not beaten her - as she half expected (she had seen him beat one of his servants for spilling his clean shaving water) but had called for fresh water to rinse her mouth, and had held her in his arms, covering her with a fresh cloak and trying to soothe her to sleep again.