"I will go and send our best healer-priests to the palace for him, Lady Helen," Khryse said, and went off up the hill. Kassandra watched the charge; Paris fought like a madman, as if the War God's self inhabited him, and she lost count of how many of the Akhaian soldiers he cut down and left bleeding on the ground.
"I have never seen him fight like this before," Helen said.
Pray you never do again, was Kassandra's reaction.
"Maybe the wound is as slight as he says; he seems not to be favouring the arm at all."
"He rides like Hector himself," said Priam, watching him from the wall. "We have all been unjust to the boy, thinking him less heroic than his brother."
Helen shut her eyes as a sword came down toward Paris; he parried the blow at the very moment when it seemed it must strike his head from his shoulders. It was the last blow; a moment later Agamemnon's men broke and ran, running as if they did not mean to stop until they reached their ships. Paris yelled as if he were going to chase them into the water, but before long he called off his men.
"If there is a bullock, have it killed for the men's dinner," he said to Hecuba, as he came up the stairs to the waiting women. "I have never seen such fighting."
"Praise to Aphrodite that you are safe still!" Helen hurried to embrace him.
"Yes, she is still watching over us; she did not bring us here to Troy only to abandon us now." Paris looked down at the ashes of the structure the Akhaians had been trying to build.
"If this is dedicated to any God, I pray he will forgive me.
Now, if you will find that healer, my Helen, I will be glad of his good offices; my arm aches." He leaned on her as they went down into the palace and Kassandra looked after them with dread.
"You had better go," said Khryse. "You are as good a healer as any in the Sunlord's house." She had not heard Khryse come back.
Kassandra was not sure of that, but did not know how to say so. "You saw the wound closer than I; you know how bad it is," he added. "I do not like such wounds even when they look harmless." She hurried off to Paris's and Helen's chambers, only to be told that her services were not required.
That night was quiet, but in the morning, the scaffolding had been raised again and the Akhaians were hammering and sawing away again as if they had never been interrupted.
"Well, we'll make short work of that, as we did yesterday," said Deiphobos, who had come out this morning with Priam, the old man leaning heavily on his son's shoulder. "Where's Aphrodite's gift to womankind this morning? Still hiding behind Helen's frilled skirts?"
"Be quiet," Priam said sharply. "He had a wound yesterday; perhaps it is worse or he has taken cold in it." He summoned one of the younger messengers and said, "Go to Prince Paris if you please, and ask why he is not here with his army."
"A wound," said Deiphobos scornfully, "I saw that wound; a cat-scratch or more likely, a love-bite."
The boy hurried away and came back looking pale. He bowed to Priam and said, "My lord, the Lady Helen asks that the priestess Kassandra will come and look at her brother's wound; it is beyond her power to cure."
"My father," Deiphobos said, "have I your leave to take out the chariots and drive off these ants as Paris did yesterday?"
"Go," Priam said, "but when Paris is healed you will give over command to him again; nothing that is his will ever belong to you."
"We'll see," said Deiphobos, saluted Priam and went.
Kassandra went down into the palace, through the halls which seemed, this morning, dank and cold and still, with wisps of sea-fog hanging in the halls themselves. In the rooms allotted to Paris and Helen, Paris, half-clad and very pale, was lying on a pallet, muttering. Helen, at his side, trying to bathe the wound with steaming water scented with herbs, sprang up and came to Kassandra.
"Aphrodite be praised that you have come; perhaps he will listen to you when he will not to me," she said. Kassandra came and drew back the veil with which the wound had been covered. The whole upper arm was grossly swollen, the puncture still obstinately closed and weeping clear fluid; the arm looked purplish, with red streaks fanning down toward the wrist.
Kassandra drew breath; she had never seen an arrow wound quite like this. She said, "Have the priests of Apollo seen this?"
"They were here twice in the night; they told me to bathe it with hot water, and said it should probably be burned with a hot iron, but I had not the heart to make him suffer that, when they could not promise that it would cure him," Helen said. "But just in the last hour he seems worse, and he does not know me now; until a few minutes ago he was yelling to the servants to bring his armor, and threatening them with a beating if they would not help him get up and put it on."
"That is not good," Kassandra said. "I have seen worse wounds heal, but—"
"Should I have let them burn him?"
"No; if I had been there I would have said, dress it with wine and sweet oil; and sometimes I have known a poultice of mouldy bread, or of cobwebs, to cleanse a puncture wound," she said. "The healers are too quick with their hot irons; I might have cut it last night to make it bleed more freely, but nothing more. Now it is too late. The infection has taken hold, and either he will live or he will die. But don't despair," she added quickly. "He is young and strong, and as I told you, I have seen worse wounds heal."
Is there nothing that can be done?" Helen asked wildly. "Your magic—"
"Alas, I have no healing magic," Kassandra said. "But I will pray; I can do no more." She hesitated and said, "The river priestess Oenone, she was skilled in healing magic."
Helen sprang up in excitement.
"Can you not send for her?" she implored. "Beg her to come and heal my lord! Whatever she asks, it shall be hers; I promise it."
But the only thing she wishes for, you have already taken from her, Kassandra thought. She said, "I will send a message to her; but I cannot promise that she will come."
"But if she loved him once, could she be cruel enough to refuse him her help, if it meant his death?"
"I don't know, Helen; she was very bitter against him when she left the palace," Kassandra said.
"If I must, I - Queen of Sparta - will kneel before her with ashes in my hair," Helen said. "Should I go to Oenone, then?"
"No; I know her, I will go," Kassandra said. "You pray and sacrifice to Aphrodite, who favours you." Helen embraced her, and clung to her.
"Kassandra, surely you do not wish me evil? So many of these women of Troy hate me - I can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices—" Helen's voice sounded almost like a pleading child's, and Kassandra touched her cheek gently.
"I wish you nothing but good, Helen; that I swear to you," she said.
"But when first I came to Troy you cursed me—"
"No," Kassandra said. "I foretold truly that you would bring sorrow on us. Because I saw the evil, it does not mean that I caused it. It was the doing of the Immortals, and no more of your doing than mine. No one can escape the working of fate. Now I will go to the headwaters of the Scamander and find Oenone, and implore her to come and heal Paris," Kassandra said.
Khryse greeted her as she left the palace. She looked at him in surprise; this morning she had forgotten, and simply taken his presence for granted.
"I thought by now you would be on a ship bound for Crete or Egypt," she said. "Why have you not gone?"
"There may still be something I can do for the city which has sheltered me, or for Priam who has been my King," Khryse said, "or, who knows, even for you."