That night the weather broke; the North wind rose and battered the ship so hard that even after the sail was lowered, high waves swamped the tent on deck and Agamemnon gave orders for everything to be lashed down. Kassandra was too sick with the rolling and pitching of the ship even to be terrified; she lay clutching a safety rope which Agamemnon had made fast about her, vomiting and at intervals wishing that the ship would be cast on the rocks or the tent washed overboard so that she could drown and be at peace.
The storm continued many days and even when it subsided she wanted nothing more than to lie on deck and pretend she was dead. Her one hope was that the violence about her would bring on a miscarriage. This did not come to pass. Rage alternated with despair; what would she do with a child in captivity, bring it up as another of Agamemnon's slaves?
The day finally came when, as she had known he eventually must, Agamemnon looked at her and said, "You're carrying."
She nodded sullenly, not looking at him, but he smiled, and stroked her hair. He said, "My beautiful, have you forgotten my promise, that you are not my slave but my lawful consort?" He had indeed said something like that, but she had paid no more attention than she did to anything else he had said while she was still vomiting every hour or so. "You must not be afraid for our child; I pledge you my word that it will not be a slave but will be acknowledged and brought up as my son. I do not trust the children of Klytemnestra. Our son will be shown how much I value his mother, who was a princess of Troy."
She was dimly conscious that he was trying to please her; that he considered himself very generous and indulgent. Did he actually believe she could be led to thank him for treating her as a human being?
She supposed some women might be grateful not to have been treated worse because he had power to do so. She raised her eyes and said, unsmiling, "That is kind of you, my Lord." For the first time afraid of what he might do, she spoke the words she had promised herself never to say.
They pleased him, as she had known they would; men were so easily deluded and flattered. He smiled and kissed her. Going to one of the many great chests in which he kept the spoil of Troy, he took from it a gold necklace with four strands, each formed of many small links and engraved plates.
He stooped and put it about her neck.
"This befits your beauty," he said. "And if your child is a son, you shall have another to match it."
She had wanted to fling it back in his face. What arrogance, to give her as a gift some small part of what he had stolen from her family! Then she thought: If I escape him, this necklace, with the links prised off and sold one at a time, would bring me to Colchis or even to Crete. Creusa is there, and perhaps Aeneas; she has only daughters; and might be glad of a son, even if Agamemnon had fathered it.
How will he feel if instead of the son he wants he has only a daughter? That would almost please her, she thought, to give him what he does not want; but then she asked herself, Who would willingly choose to have any child born as a girl into this world, to suffer at the hands of men what all women suffer?
But at the thought of a little girl like Honey, even one fathered by Agamemnon, her heart softened. If this child were a girl she would take her to Colchis, so she might be reared where she need never be a slave.
Days passed; and as she had seen in other women who were in the hands of the life forces, she grew sluggish and heavy on her feet, unwilling to rise; though Agamemnon, now that he knew of her pregnancy, was gentler with her. Every day when weather permitted he escorted her about the deck, insisting that she must have some air and exercise. Once he expressed a hope that they would reach Mykenae before she was delivered.
"We have excellent midwives there, and you would be safe in their hands," he told her. "I do not know if any of these women on the ship know anything about such things."
One of them had been her mother's waiting-woman and the chief of the palace's midwives; but she did not tell Agamemnon that. She did, however, contrive secretly to speak to the woman and tell her what had happened.
"Oh, well, Princess," the woman said, "now you'll be more content, and if you give him a son he'll cherish you all the more; you'll be safe in Mykenae as mother of the King's son."
Secretly Kassandra had been hoping the woman would share her outrage, and she had intended to ask if the old woman could manage to secure for her a herb potion which would cause her to miscarry. It confirmed her belief that women everywhere conspired with their own oppressions.
Once when Agamemnon was sitting beside her, speaking of their son, she asked, "But do you not have a son by Klytemnestra? And being the eldest, would he not take precedence?"
"Oh, yes," Agamemnon said with an evil smile, "but my Queen values only her daughters; she pretended to believe that one of them would follow her as Queen. She even sent our son to be fostered away from the palace, so that I could not school him in the ways of king-craft."
That was, Kassandra thought, the best thing she had ever heard of Klytemnestra. She had wondered how Helen's sister could ever have brought herself, even for reasons of political expediency, to marry a man like Agamemnon. But perhaps her people had given her no choice, or had wanted a king, who commanded iron, to rule over their war parties.
"Our son, Kassandra, might rule after me over the city of Mykenae," he said to her. "Does that not please you?"
Please me?
But she only smiled at him; she had learned that if she smiled, he took it for agreement and was better pleased than if she spoke.
There was at this season no good weather on the sea; but endless rain and wind, and every time they sailed a little way toward where they wanted to go, the winds would rise and beat them back so that they were always in danger of being driven on to the rocks.
Frequently Agamemnon had to head out into the open water to avoid a shore which would destroy the ship; it seemed that with days and months of sailing, they were no nearer to where they wished to go. One day, after a fearful hard-driven wind had blown them about for many days out of sight of land, a morning calm left them drifting. A sailor came to Agamemnon saying they had sighted a stream of green water like a separate current in the sea. Agamemnon went on deck cursing, and she heard him shouting at his men; when he came back he was furious, his face drawn and darkened with outrage.
"What is the matter?" she asked him. She was lying on the deck, trying desperately to keep down the little bread and fruit she had eaten for breakfast.
He scowled and said, "We have sighted the outpourings of the
Nile—the great river of the country of the Pharaohs. Poseidon, who rules the sea as well as the earthquake, has driven us far from home, and on to the shores of Egypt."
"That does not seem a catastrophe," she said. "You were saying that we were gravely in need of fresh food and fresh drinking water. Can they not be had here?"
"Oh, yes; but the word of Troy's fall has been spread all about the world now, and they will expect much gold for supplies," he muttered. "And everyone has told a different tale about what happened—"
"They do not know that Troy fell not to might of arms and soldier-craft, but to the earthquake," Kassandra said. "You can tell them what tale you will and they will not be rude enough to doubt it."
He scowled at her; but at that moment a cry came from the lookout forward that land had been sighted; Agamemnon went forward and soon returned to say that indeed they had reached Egypt.