But one day a friend of Hector's matched her and knocked her down; her short tunic flew up above her waist and Hector himself came and jerked the helmet from her head; then, angrily, wrested the sword out of her hand, turned it edgeways and beat her hard on the backside with it.
"Now get inside, Kassandra, and tend to your spinning and weaving," he snarled at her. "There is enough women's work for you to do; if I catch you masquerading out here again I will beat you bloody with my own hands."
"Let her alone, you great bully," cried Andromache, who had been watching from the sidelines; she had been fitting a crimson cushion to Hector's chariot and tacking the last bits of gold thread on it. Hector turned on her angrily.
"Did you know she was here, Andromache?"
"What if I did?" demanded Andromache rebelliously. "My own mother, and yours too, fights like a warrior!"
"It's not suitable that my sister, or my wife, be out here before the eyes of soldiers," Hector said scowling. "Get inside, and attend to your own work; and no more conniving with this wretched hoyden here!"
"I suppose you think you can beat me bloody too!" Andromache said pertly. "But you know what you shall have from me if you try!" Kassandra saw, in astonishment, the line of embarrassed crimson that crept upward in her brother's face.
Andromache's dark hair blew out around her face in the fresh wind; she was wearing a loose tunic almost the same colour as her wedding gown, and looked very pretty. Hector said at last, so stiffly that Kassandra knew that he was stifling whatever he really wanted to say as not being suitable before an outsider, even a sister, "That's as it may be, wife; nevertheless, it is more seemly for you to go the women's quarters and mind your loom; there is plenty of women's work to be done, and I would rather you do it, than come out here learning Kassandra's ways. Still, if it makes you feel better, I will not beat her this time. As for you, Kassandra, get inside and attend to your own affairs, or I will tell Father and perhaps he can put it in such a way that you will mind his words." She knew that the sulkiness on her face reached him, for he said, a little more kindly, "Come, little sister, do you think I would be out here wearing myself into exhaustion with shield and spear if I could stay cool and comfortable inside the house? Battle may look good to you when it is only playing with spears and arrows with your friends and brothers, but look." He bared his arm, rolling up the woollen sleeve of his tunic past the bright embroidered edgework and showed her a long red seam, still oozing at the center. "It still pains me when I move my arm; when there are real wounds to be given and received, war does not look so exciting!"
Kassandra looked at the wound marring her brother's smooth and muscular body, and felt a curious sickening tightness under her diaphragm; she flinched and remembered cutting the throat of the tribesman who would have raped her. She almost wanted to tell Hector about it - he was a warrior and would certainly understand. Then she looked into his eyes. There, perhaps, she misjudged him; he was not altogether without imagination; but he would never, she thought, see beyond the fact that she was a-girl.
"Be glad, little sister, that it was only I who saw you stripped like that," he said, not unkindly. "For if you were revealed as a woman on the battlefield… I have seen woman warriors ravished and not one man protest. If a woman refuses such protection as is lawful for wives and sisters, there is no other protection for her." He pulled down his helmet and strode away, leaving the women staring after him, Kassandra angry and knowing she was supposed be ashamed, Andromache suppressing giggles. After a moment the giggles surfaced.
"Oh, he was so angry! Kassandra, I would have been terrified if he had been that angry with me!" She drew her white shawl around her shoulders in the fresh wind. "Come, let's get out of the way. He's right, you know; if any other man had seen you—" she drew down her mouth into a grimace, and said with an exaggerated shudder,"something terrible would certainly have happened."
Seeing no alternative, Kassandra followed her, and Andromache linked her arm through her sister-in-law's.
Kassandra, for the first time in days, became aware of the prophetic darkness filling her up inside.
While she had been on the field with a weapon she had not been conscious of the thing which had made her cry out on the night of the wedding. Now, through that dark water she saw Andromache, and all round her something else, overlaid with a cold and frightening fire of grief and terror, but enough joy before the sorrow that it made her lay her hand urgently on Andromache's arm and say softly, "You are with child?"
Andromache smiled; no, thought Kassandra, she glowed. "You think so? I was not sure yet; I thought perhaps I would ask the
Queen how I could be sure. Your mother has been so kind to me, Kassandra; my own mother never understood or approved of me, because I was soft and a coward and I did not want to be a warrior; but Hecuba loves me, and I think she will be happy if it is so."
"I am sure of that, at least," Kassandra said, and then because she knew Andromache was about to ask 'How do you know?" she fumbled for words she could use instead of trying to explain about the dark waters and the terrible crown of fire. "It seemed for a moment," she said,"that I could see you with Hector's son in your arms."
Andromache's smile was radiant; and Kassandra was relieved that for once she had given pleasure instead of fear with her unwanted gift.
In the days following she did not again take up her weapons, but went out often, unrebuked, to see how the ship was progressing. It grew daily on the great cradle on the sand, and almost before Andromache's pregnancy was visible to unskilled eyes, it was ready for launching, and a white bull was sacrificed for the moment when it slid easily down the ramp toward the water.
At that moment Hector, standing between his wife and Kassandra, said, "You who prophesy unasked all the time, what do you see for this ship?"
Kassandra said in a low voice, "I see nothing. And perhaps that is the best omen of all." She could see the ship returning in a golden glow like the face of some God, and nothing more. "But I think it lucky that you are not sailing, Hector."
"So be it, then," said Hector. Paris came to bid them goodbye, clasping Hector's hand warmly, and embracing Kassandra with a smile. He kissed his mother and leaped on board the ship, and his family stood together, watching it drift out of the harbor, the great sail bellying out with the wind. Paris stood at the steering oar at the back, straight and slender, his face alight with the westering sun. Kassandra shook off her mother's arm and walked away through the cheering crowd; she went straight to where a tall woman stood with her eyes fixed on the sail as it dwindled to the size of a toy.
"Oenone," she said, recognizing her from the moment when, with Paris, she had held the girl as if in her own arms, "what are you doing here? Why did you not come to bid him farewell with the rest of his kin?"
"I never knew when first I loved him that he was a prince." said the girl. Her voice was as lovely as she was, light and musical. "How could a common girl like me come up to the King and the Queen when they were saying goodbye to their son?"
Kassandra put her arm around Oenone and said gently, "You must come and stay at the palace. You are his wife and the mother of his child, so they will love you as they do Paris himself." And if they do not, she thought to herself, they can just behave as if they do, for the honor of the family. To think he went away without bidding her goodbye!
Oenone's face was flooded with tears. She clutched Kassandra's arm. "They say you are a prophetess, that you can see the future," she said, weeping. "Tell me that he will come back! Tell me that he will come back to me!"