"Without what?" asked Andromache, stepping up to the wall in time to hear the last words.
"I was saying to her," Kassandra began, and Hecuba flashed an angry Don't you dare glance at her; Kassandra realized that the argument with her mother had made her forget the exact words she had intended to speak.
She said wearily, "Only that in a vision last night I spoke to Hector and he bade you be comforted, because he is content and at peace, whatever they may do to his body." There was more; Hector had bidden her to say to Andromache - what? That he would come to take his son… but no! I can't say to her that her son will die, when she has lost Hector too… I can't say that she… what was it… that she wouldn't want her son to live in the days that are coming…
Andromache was watching her with arched-brow skepticism; Kassandra said, "He bade me say that—that he would remain to watch over his son."
"Much good that does either of us," Andromache said, with the wide-open eyes of suppressed tears, "when he has left us—"
"But he does not want you to cry and grieve," Kassandra said. "It cannot help him now."
"Every seer and soothsayer tells us that," Andromache said, and she sounded bitter. "I had hoped for something better from you, Kassandra, if indeed you can see beyond death."
"I speak as the God bids me speak in such words as people are willing to hear," Kassandra said, and turned away. Out on the field Akhilles went on whipping his horses to an ever more maniacal fury.
All day, as the sun rose and declined over Troy, this went on. Twice Paris led out a party to try and capture Akhilles's chariot and Hector's body, and twice the troops of Agamemnon drove them off again; three of Priam's lesser sons by his palace women were killed, and at last they realized Akhilles was simply too well protected.
"No more," Priam said after the third attack. "The sun is setting; when it is dark, I will myself go down to Akhilles and try to bargain with him to ransom my son's body."
How foolish, Kassandra thought, and how useless; Hector is not in that lump of rotting flesh out there tied behind Akhilles and his damned chariot. Why could she see this when her parents could not? Should they not be wiser than she was? It frightened her that they were not.
She felt ill and faint; she had stood all day by her mother and had not even partaken of the hard bread and oil portioned out to the soldiers at noon. She went and ate a little bread, washing it down with a few sips of watered wine, then went with Hecuba, who was assisting Priam's body-servants to dress him in his richest robes.
"If I go to Akhilles without robing myself in my finest," he said, "he may believe I do not think him worthy of honor. I don't, of course, but I don't want him to think so."
"I'm not so sure, Father," Paris said; he was standing beside his father, trimming his beard meticulously with the scissors Helen used for her tapestry. "Perhaps that madman's vanity would be more flattered if you went to him robed simply in mourning, as a suppliant."
"Yet showing him the gold of Troy may arouse his greed if we cannot appeal to his honor," Andromache said.
"We can hardly appeal to his honor," said Paris. "It seems obvious to me that he has none." He shook his head impatiently. "I'm not at all concerned with his honor," he said. The question is how can we best persuade him to give us Hector for burial."
"I will go to him as a suppliant," Priam said. Already he was energetically tearing off his robes. "Bring me the plainest garment I own. Also I will go to him alone—"
"No!" Hecuba cried, falling to her knees before him in an agony of despair. "We have already seen he has no respect for customary honor, or Hector would even now be upon his funeral pyre! If you go within his reach, he will certainly kill you or mistreat you, and perhaps offer the same kind of insult to your corpse that he has offered to Hector's. You cannot go to him unguarded."
"If I must I will go first to our old friend Odysseus, who will bring me safely to Akhilles," Priam said, "and we know he wants the good opinion of Odysseus; he will offer me no insult in his presence."
"That's not enough," Hecuba declared, clinging tightly to his knees. "If you are bent on this folly you shall not take a single step; for I will not let you go at all."
Priam tried to shake her loose, but she would not be dislodged. He stood scowling crossly.
"Come, my lady," he said at last. "What would you have me do, then? If I go to Akhilles with armed men, he will only think I am challenging him to single combat; is that what you want?"
"No!" Hecuba cried, but she refused still to loose her hold.
"Well, then, what do you want me to do? Why can a woman never be reasonable?" Priam demanded.
"I don't know, my lord and my love; but you're not going down to that madman alone!"
"Let me go," said Andromache with quiet dignity. "Let him explain to Hector's widow and to his child why he will not ransom him."
"Oh, my dear—" Priam began, but Hecuba started up in indignation.
"If you think I'd let you take my grandson within a league of that fiend—"
"A better thought," Helen said,"take a priest—if only as a witness before the Gods; Akhilles fears the Gods—"
"Better yet," said Priam, "I will take two priestesses; Kassandra and Polyxena. One serves Apollo and one the Maiden, so whichever Immortal Akhilles fears may bear witness of his impiety."
He turned to Kassandra and said, "You are not afraid to go with your old father into Akhilles's presence, are you, girl?"
"No, Father," she said, "and I will go unarmed if you will, or weaponed; have you forgotten I was trained as a warrior?"
"No," Polyxena said in her childish voice, "no weapons, Sister; we go barefoot with our hair unbound, praying for his mercy. It will flatter his vanity to have us kneeling at his feet. Go and robe yourself in an unadorned white tunic without embroidery or bands, and comb out your hair - or better yet," she added, seizing the scissors from Paris, "cut it in token of mourning." She hacked vigorously at her long brown curls, disregarding her mother's cries of protest. Then she began to cut away Kassandra's, and as Kassandra looked, shocked, at the waist-length tresses lying on the floor, she exclaimed, "Do you grudge your vanity for Hector?"
I wouldn't if I thought it would make a fingernail's worth of difference to Hector, Kassandra thought, but was wise enough not to say the words aloud. She let Polyxena take off her rings and the necklace of pearls she wore; her sister then stripped off her own jewels. Priam kept only one large and beautiful emerald ring on his finger - a gift for Akhilles he said - and removed his own sandals. Kassandra took a torch in her hand, and Polyxena another; and with their father went down from the palace. At the gates of Troy Priam bade his servants turn back.
"I know you do not want to desert me," he said, "but if we cannot do this alone it probably cannot be done at all. If Akhilles will not listen to a grieving father and sisters, he would not listen to the whole armed might of Troy. Go back, my children."
Most of them wept, and cried out with grief and fear for him; but at last, one by one, they turned back, and the three suppliants went through the opened gates, and began moving, deliberately, by the light of their two torches, across the plain.
The ground was still muddy underfoot from last night's rain; and it was very dark, for the sky was covered with thick clouds which now and then opened to show a withering moon. Kassandra shivered in her plain robe, the cold rising up through her muddy feet, and wondered if the sky would open for a further downpour. Such a useless errand; and yet if it gave peace of mind to her father, how could she refuse?