Many of the housefolk were gathered, staring at the women who had ridden their horses, white and bay and black, right into the court. Their leader, a tall woman with a pale, freckled face, vaulted down from the back of her horse and ran to catch Hecuba in her arms.
"Sister! What joy to see you," she cried. Hecuba held her, and Kassandra marvelled to see her staid mother laughing and crying at once. After a moment the tall stranger let her go and said, "You have grown fat and soft with indoor living; and your skin is so white and pale, you might be a ghost!"
"Is that so bad?" Hecuba asked. The woman scowled at her and asked, "And these are your daughters? Are they house-mice too?"
"That you will have to decide for yourself," Hecuba said, beckoning the girls forward. "This is Polyxena. She is already sixteen."
"She looks too frail for an outdoor life such as ours, Hecuba. I think perhaps you have kept her indoors too long, but we will do what we can with her, and return her to you healthy and strong."
Polyxena shrank away behind her mother, and the tall Amazon laughed.
"No?"
"No; you are to have the little one, Kassandra," said Hecuba.
"The little one? How old is she?"
"Twelve years," Hecuba answered. "Kassandra, child, come and greet your kinswoman Penthesilea, the chief of our tribe."
Kassandra looked attentively at the older woman. She was taller by several finger-breadths than Hecuba, who was herself tall for a woman. She wore a pointed leather cap, under which Kassandra could see tucked-up coils of faded ginger-coloured hair, and a short tight tunic; her legs were long and lean in leather breeches which came below the knee. Her face was thin and lined, her complexion not only burnt dark by the sun, but clustered with thousands of light-brown freckles. She looked, Kassandra thought, more like a warrior than a woman; but her face was enough like Hecuba's own that Kassandra had no doubt that this was her kinswoman. She smiled at Kassandra good-naturedly.
"Do you think you will like to come with us, then? You are not frightened? I think your sister is afraid of our horses," she added.
"Polyxena is afraid of everything," Kassandra said. "She wants to be what my father calls a proper good girl."
"And you don't?"
"Not if it means staying in the house all the time," said Kassandra, and saw Penthesilea smile. "What is your horse's name? Will he bite?"
"She is called Racer, and she has never bitten me yet," said Penthesilea. "You may make friends with her if you are able."
Kassandra went boldly forward and held out her hand as she had been taught to do with a strange dog so that it could smell her scent. The horse butted her great head down and snorted, and Kassandra stroked the silky nose, and looked into the great loving eyes. She felt, returning that wide-eyed gaze, that she had already found a friend among these strangers.
Penthesilea said, "Well, are you ready to come with us then?"
"Oh, yes!" Kassandra breathed fervently. Penthesilea's thin stern face looked friendlier when she smiled.
"Do you think you can learn to ride?"
Friendly or not, the horse looked very large, and very high off the ground; but Kassandra said valiantly, "If you can learn and my mother could learn, I suppose there is no reason I cannot."
"Won't you come up to the women's quarters and share some refreshment before you must go?" asked Hecuba.
"Why, yes, if you will have someone look after our horses," Penthesilea said. Hecuba summoned one of the servants and gave orders to take Penthesilea's horse and those of her two companions to the stables. The two women with her, dressed as she was dressed, the Amazon leader introduced as Charis and Melissa; Charis was thin and pale, almost as freckled as the Queen, but her hair was the colour of brass; Melissa had brown curly hair and was plump and pink-cheeked. They were, Kassandra decided, fifteen or sixteen. She wondered if they were Penthesilea's daughters but was too shy to ask.
Climbing to the women's quarters, Kassandra wondered why she had never noticed before how dark it was inside. Hecuba had called the waiting-women to bring wine and sweets and while the guests nibbled at them, Penthesilea called Kassandra to her and said, "If you are to ride with us, you must be properly dressed, my dear. We brought a pair of breeches for you. Charis will help you to put them on. And you should have a warm cloak for riding; when the sun is down it grows cold quickly."
"Mother made me a warm cloak," Kassandra said, and went with Charis into her room to fetch the leather bag of her possessions. The leather breeches were a little big for her - Kassandra wondered who had worn them before this, for they were shiny in the seat with hard wear. But they were astonishingly comfortable once she had grown used to their stiffness against her legs. She thought that now she could run like the wind without tripping over her skirts. She was threading the leather belt through the loops when she heard her father's step and his boisterous voice.
"Well, kinswoman, have you come to lead my armies to Mykenae to recover Hesione? And such splendid horses - I saw them in the stable. Like the immortal horses of Poseidon's own herd! Where did you find them?"
"We traded for them with Idomeneus, the King of Crete," said Penthesilea. "We had not heard about Hesione; what happened?"
"Agamemnon's men from Mykenae, or so we thought," Priam said. "Akhaians anyhow, raiders. Rumour says Agamemnon is a vicious and a cruel king. Even his own men love him not; but they fear him."
"He is a powerful fighter," said Penthesilea. "I hope to meet him one day in battle. If you yourself will not lead your armies to Mykenae to recover Hesione, wait only until I summon my women. You will have to give us ships, but I could have Hesione back to you by the next new moon."
"If it were feasible to go against the Akhaians now, I would need no woman to lead my army," Priam said, scowling. "I would rather wait and see what demand he makes of me."
"And what of Hesione, in Agamemnon's hands?" asked Penthesilea. "Are you going to abandon her? You know what will happen to her among the Akhaians!"
"One way or other, I would have had to find her a husband," said Priam. "This at least saves me a dowry, since if it is Agamemnon who has taken her, he cannot have the insolence to ask a dowry for a prize of war."
Penthesilea scowled, and Kassandra too was shocked: Priam was rich, why should he begrudge a dowry?
"Priam, Agamemnon already has a wife," said Penthesilea, "Klytemnestra, the daughter of Leda and her king Tyndareus. She bore Agamemnon a daughter who must be seven or eight years old by now. I cannot believe they are so short of women in Akhaia that they must resort to stealing them… nor that Agamemnon is so much in need of a concubine that he would carry one off when he could have any chief's daughter within his kingdom."
"So he married the daughter of Leda?" Priam frowned for a moment and said, "Is that the one who was, they said, so beautiful that Aphrodite would be jealous, and her father had to choose among almost forty suitors for her?"
"No," said Penthesilea. "They were twins, which is always ill fortune; one was Klytemnestra, the other daughter, Helen, was the beauty. Agamemnon managed to swindle Leda and Tyndareus—God knows how he managed it - into marrying Helen off to his brother, Menelaus, while he married Klytemnestra."
"I don't envy Menelaus," said Priam. "A man is cursed who has a beautiful wife." He smiled absently at Hecuba, "Thank all the Gods you never brought me that kind of trouble, my dear. Nor are your daughters dangerously beautiful."