"You should not stay for me," she said. "I would be glad to know you are safe from what will come."
"I want nothing," he said in a queerly sober tone, "except that you should know at last, before the end comes for us all, that my love for you is true and unselfish, desiring nothing except your good."
Why, that's true, she thought, and said gently, "I believe you, my friend, and I beg you to go to safety as soon as you can. Someone must remember and tell the truth about Troy for those who come after; it troubles me that in legends, our children's children should come to think of Akhilles as a great hero or a good man."
"It is not likely to do us any harm, or Akhilles any good either, whatever they may say or sing of us in times to come," Khryse said. "Yet if I survive I swear I will tell the truth to anyone who will listen."
Kassandra climbed quickly to the Sunlord's house and took off her formal robe; she put on an old dark tunic, in which she could come and go unheeded, solid leather sandals, and a heavy cloak which would keep off wind or rain. Then she went quietly out of the small abandoned side gate and took the road up toward Mount Ida, along the drying stream of the Scamander. The track was beaten now into a road; many horses and men had come this way and the water which had once run strong and clean was muddied and fouled. When last she had taken this path - how many years ago now?—the water had been clear, the path almost untrodden.
Even now, had her errand been less urgent and desperate, she would have enjoyed the journey; the sun was hidden by clouds, the tops of the tree-clad hills lost themselves in thick rolls of mist and the light winds promised rain and probably thunder. She went up quickly; but although she was a strong woman, the gradient was so steep that she was soon out of breath and had to stop and rest. As she climbed, what had been a river ran clearer here, and no man nor horse had polluted the pathway or the water. She knelt and drank, for in spite of the clouds and wind, it was hot.
At last she reached the place where the water sprang forth from the rock guarded by a carved image of Father Scamander. She struck the bell which summoned the river priestesses, and when a young girl appeared, asked if she might speak with Oenone.
"I think she is here," the girl said. "Her son was ill with a summer fever; she did not go down to the sheep-shearing festival with the others."
Kassandra had forgotten that it was so near to shearing-time.
The child went away, and Kassandra sat down on a bench near the spring and enjoyed the silence; perhaps when Honey was older she might come here to serve among the priestesses of the River God. A pleasant place for a young girl to grow up -not perhaps as pleasant as riding with the Amazons, but that was no longer possible. She began to understand that she had hardly begun yet to feel her grief for Penthesilea. She had been so busy with vengeance and then with other deaths that her grief had had to stand aside for more leisure to mourn.
It will be a long time before I can mourn for my brother, she thought, and wondered what she had meant by it.
She heard a step behind her and turned; at first she hardly recognized Oenone. The slender young girl had become a tall and heavy woman, deep-breasted, her dark curls coiled low on her neck. Only the deep-set eyes were the same, but even so Kassandra hesitated when she spoke the name.
"Oenone? I hardly recognized you—"
"No," Oenone said. "None of us are as young and pretty as we once were. It's the princess, is it not - Kassandra?"
"Yes," she said. "I suppose I have changed too."
"You have," Oenone said,"though you are still beautiful, Princess."
Kassandra smiled faintly. She said, "How is my brother's son? They told me he has been ill—"
"Oh, nothing serious, just one of those little disorders that come to children in the summer. He will be recovered in a day or two. But how may I serve you, Lady?"
"It is not for me," Kassandra said, "but my brother Paris. He lies dying of an arrow-wound and you have such skill in healing - will you come?"
Oenone raised her eyebrows. At last she said, "Lady Kassandra, your brother died, for me, on the day when I left the palace and he spoke not one word to acknowledge his son. All these years, for me, he has been dead. I have no wish now to bring him back to life."
Kassandra knew in her heart that she should have anticipated this answer; that she had had no right to come here and ask anything of Oenone. She bowed her head and rose.
"I can understand your bitterness," she said, "and yet - he is certainly dying - can your anger be still so great? In the face of death?"
"Death? Do you not think it was like death for me, to be sent forth without a word, as if I were a penny harlot in the streets of Troy? And all those years not a word to his son—no, Kassandra, you ask if my anger is so great? You have not begun to know anything about my anger, and I do not think you want to know. Go back to your palace, and mourn your brother as I mourned him all these years." Her voice softened. "My anger is not for you, Lady, you were always kind to me and so was your mother."
"If you will not come for Paris's sake, or for mine," Kassandra pleaded, "will you not come for my mother's sake? She has lost so many of her sons—" her voice broke and she bit her tongue hard, not wishing to weep before Oenone.
"If it would make any difference," Oenone began, "but now, with the city about to fall into the hands of an angry God - ah, it surprises you that I know that? I am a priestess too, Lady. No, go home and care for your child—send her to safety if you can -it will not be long now. I bear no ill will even to the Spartan Queen, but I can do nothing for Paris. When he deserted me, he outraged Father Scamander - who is one with Poseidon."
It had never occurred to Kassandra before that the River God, Scamander, should be an aspect of Poseidon Earthshaker. But Paris had forsaken the River God's daughter for the daughter of Zeus Thunderer—and he had presumed to judge in a controversy' between the Immortals, abandoning his own country's Gods to serve the Akhaian Aphrodite.
"I bear no guilt for his death," Oenone continued. "His fate is on him as yours and mine are. May your Gods guard you, Lady Kassandra." She raised her hand in a gesture of blessing, and Kassandra found herself walking away down the hill, feeling like a peasant woman dismissed from the royal presence.
Downhill, her return took less time, and when she returned to the palace, she heard the sound of wailing. Paris was dead. Well, she had expected it. Despite her encouraging words to Helen, she had been sure that with such a wound he could not survive long. Moving to the balcony to look out over the plain where the Akhaian armies were building, she could now see the rough outline of what the scaffolding surrounded. It rose, huge, clumsy, unmistakable; the great wooden form of a horse.
So this is their altar, she thought; the very form of Poseidon Earthshaker himself. Do they think this horse will kick down the walls of Troy, or that it will summon the God to do so for them? How childish.
Then, without knowing why, she was seized with a sharp fit of shivering, so that she had to wrap her cloak round her in spite of the brightness of the sun. The figure of the horse - or of the God - struck her through with terror, although she was not sure why.
CHAPTER 14
Even before Paris was laid on his pyre, Deiphobos went to Priam and demanded command of the Trojan armies; when Priam protested, he said, "What choice have you, sir? Is there anyone else in Troy, save perhaps Aeneas? And he does not belong to the royal house of Troy, and is not Trojan born."