She might do that still, if she could find such a shrine, although she supposed Agamemnon might legitimately claim her as a fair prize of war. Scant sympathy was shown to runaway slaves, and she could no longer claim to be a princess, since Troy had fallen. Everyone who spoke of her (she had overheard Agamemnon's soldiers and servants) seemed to think there was no reason she should not be content with him for the rest of her life.
She realized that she was allowing her mind to wander to keep from thinking seriously about the fact that she was probably carrying Agamemnon's child; should she tell him? Not at once; it would please him too much, and he might think she was making some kind of claim to his sympathy or kindness.
Agamemnon was at the stern of the ship, standing beside the man who held the steering-oar. He was dressed, as were all of his men, in a simple loincloth of bleached coarse linen; but the gold torque round his neck and the ornaments he wore, no less than his military bearing and air of command, made it obvious who was King and who were the servants.
He saw her seated in the shadow of the sail and strode across the deck.
"Well, Kassandra, I am glad to see you awake," he said. "The sea is calm and the sun will do you good. When we went ashore for drinking water this morning" - she had been asleep and only dimly aware of the cessation of motion—"men gathered some fresh grapes; perhaps you would like some of them?" Without waiting for her answer he shouted to the four serving women who spent most of their time huddled together at the stern gossiping, "You there—" Kassandra had no idea of the women's names because Agamemnon never spoke to them by any name except 'girl' or 'you' - 'Bring us some of those grapes - you greedy little beasts haven't eaten them all, have you?"
"Oh, no, my lord," murmured the oldest of them, and rose. From an enormous basket she seized four or five bunches of small wild grapes, laid them on a silver tray (Kassandra had seen it in the palace; Hecuba had used it for grapes too because it was etched with vines) and brought them across the deck.
The girl knelt before Agamemnon; he gestured for her to offer them to Kassandra first. She looked familiar; had she seen her in the streets of Troy somewhere in that other life?
"Princess—" she whispered, her eyes humbly cast down. It made Kassandra wonder what had happened to Chryseis when the city fell. She reached out and broke off a few grapes from a bunch, and bit into one. The juicy tartness was pleasant, and she swallowed, hesitantly, half expecting the queasiness to break over her again. Agamemnon had taken a bunch and was eating them with relish. His teeth were large and white and strong - just like a horse's, Kassandra thought with fascinated revulsion. She had to turn away to avoid a convulsive spasm; but she managed to swallow a few grapes, and did not feel immediately compelled to vomit.
"I am glad to see you eating again," Agamemnon observed. "Seasickness seldom lasts this long; and when you are in health you will be as beautiful as when I first saw and desired you."
She realized that he thought it would please her; he was trying to be friendly. Well, she seemed to be bound to him for a time at least; certainly if she was pregnant she must put aside all thought of escape until after the child was born. And it would be foolish to force him to consider her an enemy and perhaps keep closer watch on her, as he would certainly do if he thought she was considering escape.
But does he really believe that I will love him and obey him as a husband when he has murdered my brethren and my parents and my city?
It appeared to be exactly what he thought.
"Will you have more grapes?" he asked, and selected a bunch from the tray. She nodded and ate a few more. After a moment she started to speak, but she had not spoken a word since she came aboard and now her voice failed her. She had to clear her throat twice before speaking.
"How much longer will we be aboard this ship?"
He looked startled; as if he had grown so used to her refusal to speak that he half believed she could not. But he said amiably enough, "I can well believe you are weary of travel. It is never possible to tell how long the journey will take; if we have fair winds and fair weather, we might arrive before the moon has fulled twice more. If we have bad weather and the winds are against us, we might not arrive before the worst of the winter."
She wished she had not asked; the thought of two more months on shipboard appalled her. And what would happen to her when they came to Mykenae?
That thought must have passed visibly across her face, because he said reassuringly, "You must not be frightened. My wife Klytemnestra is a gracious lady, and she would never treat badly one who had been a princess in Troy. She does not think she must prove her own royalty by treating others as her inferiors. Everyone in our house, servant or slave, is treated as custom demands; neither better nor worse."
It would not have occurred to Kassandra to be afraid of Klytemnestra. She was the twin of Helen and she had loved Helen and found her a friend, and that was enough. Now it occurred to her that Agamemnon himself was afraid of his wife and that was why he thought she might be.
Was he afraid because she was the Queen of the land and he became King only as her consort? She still might cherish her anger with him over the evil trick he had played in sacrificing her daughter Iphigenia to the God of the winds - after all, Iphigenia had been her eldest daughter, and Klytemnestra would have thought of her as her heir.
Kassandra remembered old crude jokes about shrewish country-women greeting faulty or drunken husbands with blows over the head from a winnowing fan or a dough roller; did Agamemnon fear some such greeting?
She looked at him and saw that the fear was deeper and blacker than that. For an instant it seemed as if there was blood smeared on his face that would never wash away; she told herself it was only the light of the setting sun. And if she truly saw blood, what wonder? He was a bloody man, a warrior who had slain hundreds in his long career.
She put the grapes aside, and shifted her weight; the roiling nausea, which had subsided for a little while, came back. She sighed and dragged herself back into the deck-tent, glad to be again at rest. No, there was no way now to hide from the knowledge. She was with child, whether by Agamemnon or another, and sooner or later he would have to know it.
That night the weather broke; the North wind rose and battered the ship so hard that even after the sail was lowered, high waves swamped the tent on deck and Agamemnon gave orders for everything to be lashed down. Kassandra was too sick with the rolling and pitching of the ship even to be terrified; she lay clutching a safety rope which Agamemnon had made fast about her, vomiting and at intervals wishing that the ship would be cast on the rocks or the tent washed overboard so that she could drown and be at peace.
The storm continued many days and even when it subsided she wanted nothing more than to lie on deck and pretend she was dead. Her one hope was that the violence about her would bring on a miscarriage. This did not come to pass. Rage alternated with despair; what would she do with a child in captivity, bring it up as another of Agamemnon's slaves?
The day finally came when, as she had known he eventually must, Agamemnon looked at her and said, "You're carrying."
She nodded sullenly, not looking at him, but he smiled, and stroked her hair. He said, "My beautiful, have you forgotten my promise, that you are not my slave but my lawful consort?" He had indeed said something like that, but she had paid no more attention than she did to anything else he had said while she was still vomiting every hour or so. "You must not be afraid for our child; I pledge you my word that it will not be a slave but will be acknowledged and brought up as my son. I do not trust the children of Klytemnestra. Our son will be shown how much I value his mother, who was a princess of Troy."