She poured his cup and mixed his wine, and when the servers went round filled his plate; she found herself feeling a kindly warmth for the old man.
Priam said, "Now tell us your news, Odysseus. And I need your advice, too, friend; I have had an offer for Polyxena, from Akhilles son of Peleus; if you were in my place, would you accept? He is noble and I hear that he is also brave—"
"Brave he certainly is," Odysseus said, "but he has no pleasure except in killing. If I had a daughter I'd cut her throat before I married her off to that madman."
"He has the strength of Herakles—" Hector began.
"And many of his other faults," Odysseus interrupted. "Like Herakles, he's no man for women; takes a fancy to one now and then and is likely to kill her in a moment of madness. I sailed with Herakles; just once. That was enough; I got tired of his moping over his boy friends and his sudden rages. Akhilles is too like him for my taste. There are enough fine young men in Troy - or even fine honorable Akhaians if that's what you want for her - but she looks like a nice young girl; find her someone else. That's my best advice." Then he shouted to a servant and requested that his chests be brought into the hall, and from each of them he brought out strange and beautiful things, gifts for everyone in the hall, presenting them lavishly to Priam and to his sons and daughters. For Hecuba there was a little cup, no larger than a closed fist, of beaten gold.
"From the House of the Bulls in Crete," he said. "I found it myself in the remains of what was once the Labyrinth; God knows how it escaped the earlier looters."
"Maybe some God preserved it for you."
"Maybe," said Odysseus. "See the bulls?"
Hecuba looked admiringly at the cup, then passed it round the admiring circle of women. Kassandra examined it in her turn, exclaiming over the finely chiselled carvings; a bull in nets as finely carved as thread, with young men in a chariot, and a cow to lure him.
"But this is a priceless treasure," she said, "you should keep this for your own wife."
"I have just as many fine things again," Odysseus said with great good-nature, "for my wife and my son. Never think I would give away all my best."
For Andromache he had a golden comb and for Creusa a bronze mirror with gold-washed beads about the edge.
"A mirror fit for Aphrodite herself," he said. "I got this when I spent the night in the cave of a sea-nymph. All night we loved and when we parted in the morning she gave me this because she said she'd never look in it again if she wasn't beautiful enough for me to stay with her." He winked and said, "So now you're a bride and can make yourself beautiful for your husband."
Kassandra's gift was a necklace of blue beads which looked like glass, oblong in shape, and simply made, except for the plain gold clasp which held them at the ends.
"It is a small thing," he said, "but I seem to remember that priestesses are not allowed to wear elaborate ornaments, and this is simple enough, perhaps, that you may wear it in memory of your father's old friend."
Touched by the words, Kassandra kissed him on the cheek as she would hardly have dared with her own father.
"I need no gifts to remember you, Odysseus; but I will wear this whenever I am permitted. Where was it made?"
"In Khem, the land where Pharaoh rules, and the Kings build great tombs which make the whole city of Troy look like a little village," he said, and she was so accustomed already to his fantastic tales that she did not know for many years that for once he was speaking only the simple truth.
The gifts bestowed, he asked Priam: 'When are you going to make me free of the straits, so that I can come and go without paying taxes like those other Akhaians?"
"You are certainly different from the others," Priam temporised, "and I would be ungrateful indeed if after so many gifts I should extort more from you, my friend. But I cannot allow anyone and everyone to travel through my waters. The tax I ask of you is only to tell me what is happening in the world faraway. Is there peace in the islands where those Akhaians reign?"
"There will be peace there, perhaps, when the sun rises in the west," Odysseus said. "As with Akhilles, the kings think of warfare as their greatest pleasure. I will go to war only when my own lands and peoples are threatened; but they think of battle as a pastime more virtuous than any games… the great game at which they would gladly spend all their lives. They think me unmanly and cowardly that I have no love for fighting, though I am better at fighting than most of them."
"For years they have been trying to provoke us to war," Priam said, "but I have made a policy of ignoring insults and provocations, even when they stole my own sister. You live among the Akhaians, old friend; if they make war will you too come against us?"
"I will try not to be drawn into any such war," Odysseus said. "I have only one oath binding me; when the woman who is now Queen of Sparta was wed, there were so many suitors that none of them would yield to another and it looked as if only a war would settle it. Then it was I who created a compromise, and I am proud of it."
"What did you do?" Priam asked.
Odysseus grinned hugely. He said 'Picture this: perhaps the most beautiful woman who ever borrowed the girdle of Aphrodite, and all of us standing about calling out what gifts we would give to her father, and offering to fight for her, with the winner to take bride and dowry of Sparta… and I suggested that she herself should choose, with all of us swearing an oath we would protect the one she chose, should anyone interfere with his wife—"
"Whom did she choose?" asked Hecuba.
"Agamemnon's brother Menelaus; a poor thing, but perhaps she thought he was as wise and strong as his brother," Odysseus said. "Or perhaps it was just out of love for her sister, who had been married to Agamemnon the year before. Sisters marrying brothers… it creates confusion in the family, or so I should imagine."
"Yet if Aeneas had a brother I should be willing to marry him," Polyxena whispered into Kassandra's ear, "if the brother had but half of his good looks and kindliness."
"So should I," Kassandra whispered back, "if the brother but looked at me the way Aeneas looks on Creusa."
Hecuba murmured in a fussy voice, "It is rude to whisper, girls; speak to the company or be silent. Anything not fit to be said aloud is not fit to be said at all."
Kassandra was tired of her mother's strictures of courtesy. She said aloud, "I for one am not ashamed of what we were saying; we said only that either of us would willingly marry a brother to Aeneas if Aeneas is anything like his brothers."
She was rewarded with a swift blazing look from Aeneas; he said, smiling, "Alas, daughter of Priam, I am my father's only son; but you make me wish I were twins or even triplets for I would willingly share a marriage cup with all three of you. What about it, my lord?" he asked Priam. "Is it fitting for me to have as many wives as you do? If you are eager to marry off your daughters I will gladly take all three of them, if Creusa gives me leave."
Polyxena dropped her eyes and blushed; Kassandra heard herself giggle. Creusa reddened and said, "I would rather be first and only wife; yet the law permits you to have as many wives as you will, my husband."
"Enough; this is no jest," Priam said. "A king's daughters are not to be lesser wives or concubines, son-in-law."
Aeneas smiled in friendly fashion and said, "I meant your daughters no insult, sir," and Priam answered, clasping his hand in a friendly, somewhat drunken clasp, "I know that well; late in a banquet when the wine has been round a few times more than is wisest, jests far more unseemly than that may be forgiven.
And now perhaps it is time for the women to take your bride away, before the party grows too rough for maiden ears."