"Why, don't tell me that you wish to show yourself as Aphrodite?" Helen said, laughing. "I thought you were one of her foes."
Kassandra made a pious gesture.
"May it be far from me to be the foe of any Immortal," she said. "I do not serve her, for it seems to me that the Beautiful One is not a Goddess as Earth Mother and Serpent Mother and even the Maiden are Goddesses."
"When is a Goddess not a Goddess?" asked Helen with a droll smile, "I don't think I understand you, Kassandra."
"I mean that the Goddesses of your Akhaian folk are different from the Goddesses of our people," Kassandra began. "Your Maiden Goddess—the warrior, Athene—she is just such a Goddess as a man would invent," Kassandra said, "because they say she was not born of any woman but sprang in full armor from the head and the mind of Zeus; yet, for all her weapons, she is a girl with all the domestic virtues, who would make some God a good wife. She tends to her spinning and weaving and is patron of the vines, both the olive and the grape. Would not a man create a warrior maiden just like this—brave and virtuous, but still obedient to the greatest of Gods? And your Hera—she is like our Earth Goddess, but your people call her only the wife of Zeus Almighty and say she is subject to him in all things, while to us Earth Mother is all-powerful in herself. She brings forth all things, but her sons and her lovers come and go, and she takes whom she will; when the God of Death took her daughter, she brought the very Earth to a standstill, so that it neither bore nor brought forth fruit…'
"But we too have an Earth Lady," said Helen: 'Demeter. When Hades took her daughter, she brought, they say, a winter of fearful cold and dark; and in the end Zeus said that the girl must return to her mother—"
"Exactly," Andromache interrupted. "They say that even Earth Mother is under obedience of this great Zeus. But there's no sense to it. Why should the Earth Goddess, who was before all else and all-powerful, be subject to any man or any God?"
"Well, if you are going to argue as to which of the Gods is most powerful," Helen began, "is it not the forces of love which can disrupt all else in men's lives—and women's too—and make them blind to all else—"
"Create disorder and disruption, you mean," Kassandra said.
"You speak that way only because you have never come under Aphrodite's sway, Kassandra," said Andromache, "and if you defy her, she will make you suffer for it."
Surely this was true; Kassandra remembered the shocking conflict she had felt in Aeneas's arms. You do not know she is already making me suffer. But she could not speak of that, not to any of the women here.
"May that be far from me," Kassandra said, "I defy no one -certainly no Immortal." Yet even as she spoke she remembered that Khryse had called her defiance a defiance of Apollo's self. Was it so, or was he only—like all men—vengeful against a woman who would not serve him and his lust? And she had—if only in a dream—defied Aphrodite's power.
"Even Apollo Sunlord," she said, with a little thrill of dread, as if she flung a challenge even in the Sunlord's face, "is said to have slain Serpent Mother, and taken from her her power. Yet surely of all men, he who slays the woman from whom he sprang is most wicked - and would the Immortals allow in a God what is z most wicked in man? Were this true, Apollo would be no God but the most evil of fiends - which he surely is not."
"And as for Earth Mother creating a year in which no fruit or flowers came forth, and no crops would bear," Helen said, "in the year in which Atlantis sank beneath the ocean, so my mother's father's father said, there were great earthquakes, and great clouds of ash covered the sun; in that year, it might be said, there was no summer, for the very foundations of the earth had been shaken. But whether it was the doing of any God, who can say? It would not be surprising if men thought that Earth Mother had betrayed them, and sought to put an end to her-misbehaviour by giving her an overlord who would make her serve men as she ought."
Creusa interrupted nervously, "I do not think it is well done for us to stand here questioning the ways of the Immortals. They do not look to men to make an accounting of what they do, and if we seek to question them, they may seek to punish us for it."
"Oh, nonsense!" Kassandra said. "If they are as stupid and jealous of their power as all that, why would anyone serve them at all?"
"Do you, who are sworn to serve the Gods, not fear them at all?" Andromache asked.
"I fear the Gods," Kassandra said. "Not what men say they are."
In the Sunlord's house, the serpents - so Phyllida told her when Kassandra went to see her charges - seemed unusually disturbed. Some of them withdrew and would not come to be handled or even bathed, others were drowsy and sluggish. As she went from one to the other, trying to decide what was troubling them, she remembered the earthquake when Meliantha had died. Was this warning of just such another blow from the hand of Poseidon? I should send a message to the palace, she thought; but when she had last spoken there in prophecy they had mocked and taunted her, and Priam had forbidden her to speak. They would not believe me if I did send a warning, she thought. And then she knew, without the shadow of doubt, that she must not refuse to hear the voice which sent her the warning. Not that she could do anything to avert the hand of whatever God might send the earthquake, but that some of the worst of its fury might be averted. Distraught, she caught up a cloak and cried to Phyllida to try and soothe the serpents in whatever way she could.
Phyllida had put her own son and Honey to bed, each of them hugging a restless snake. As Kassandra bent to caress each of the children, her mind filled with pictures of the roof collapsing; she swiftly gave orders that they should have a bed made up in the courtyard, where if any building should fall, they would not be crushed beneath it.
Then she ran into the courtyard and cried out:
"O Lord Apollo! Hold off the hand of thy brother who shakes the Earth! Thy serpents have given me your warning; let all your servants hear!"
People came running out at her cries; Khryse demanded, "What is happening? Are you ill? Are you smitten by the hand of the God?"
Kassandra fought to control the intolerable shaking of her body. She struggled to speak rationally, make her words even.
"The serpents in the Sunlord's house have given me warning," she shouted, knowing that she sounded distraught, or worse; "as they did when Meliantha died. They are restless and trying to escape; the earth will shake before morning. Whatever is precious must be rescued; and none should sleep beneath a roof this night, lest it fall upon them."
"She is mad," Khryse said. "We have known for many years that she raves in prophecy."
"All the same," said one of the elder priests, "whatever she may or may not know of the Gods, in Colchis she learned the ways of serpent-lore from a mistress of that art. If the serpents have given her warning—"
Charis commanded, "The warning is given; we may not disregard it. Do what you will, or suffer the consequences; as for me and mine, I will make my bed under the open sky which will not fall upon us yet, at least."
Overhead it was already dark; torches were brought and the priestesses went quickly about the task of removing out of doors anything that might be endangered by the falling of stone or walls. Khryse still grumbled; it was to his advantage, Kassandra knew, to have it thought that nothing she said was true.
She ran toward the gates. "Open the doors," she cried. "I go to warn the folk of the city, and Priam's palace!"