Agamemnon set his teeth; Kassandra could see that he was trying very hard to keep hold of his temper.
"As for my queen," he said, "I remind you, my queen is the twin sister of that Helen who was thought beautiful enough that her loss should start this war. And if she was also queen in her own right of a great city, did that make her worth any less? She has borne me noble children; and let that be enough about her."
Yes," said the chief priest. "Agamemnon; you swore an oath you would do whatever was needed to save us from this plague; so we have determined that the girl Chryseis must be returned to her father. We will all make up the dowry he asks."
Agamemnon's fists were clenched and his jaw set so hard Kassandra wondered if his teeth would shatter.
"Do you all say this?" he demanded. "In spite of all I have done for you? It would serve you all right if I said, "Get another to lead your armies." You, Menelaus, do you too stand with these people to rob me?"
The slight, brown-haired man with a small curly beard, shifted uneasily from foot to foot. He said, "I would rather not suffer Apollo's wrath for your impiety—or your bad luck or bad manners in taking a girl who should have been left alone."
"How was I supposed to know the damned girl's father was a priest, or to care if I did know? Do you think we spent our time discussing her father?" Agamemnon raged.
The priestess behind Kassandra compressed her lips against a giggle and muttered softly, "It's for certain you did not spend it in learning manners," and it was Kassandra's turn to tighten her mouth against a snicker. Agamemnon's head swivelled toward the women and he seemed angrier than ever.
"Very well," he said,"since you all connive against me that I shall be robbed, take the girl and be damned. But I shall then be repaid by having the woman in Akhilles's tent."
Akhilles sprang out from the midst of the Akhaian ranks and yelled, "No! You'll take her only over my dead body!"
"I suppose I could arrange that if you insist," Agamemnon said lazily. Tatroklos, can't you control this wild boy? He's hardly old enough to mix in men's affairs. Come Akhilles, what do you need with a woman at your age? I'll send you the box of toys I gathered for my own son."
Kassandra's eyes narrowed; Agamemnon should not have said that; Akhilles is young, but not young enough to be taunted that way without getting his own back.
The chief priest of the Trojans said, "Khryse, have you a cloak for Chryseis? With plague here, she may not bring any garment into our camp; what she is wearing must be burnt before she enters Troy, and her hair cut off."
Khryse produced a long robe and a cloak. "Burn what clothes these folk have given her," he said. "But her hair too?"
"I am sorry; it is the only way to be certain she does not carry the plague," said the priest. Agamemnon came back from his tent with Chryseis, and Khryse stepped forward to embrace her. But the chief priest stopped him.
"Let the women undress her and take her clothing to be burned, first," he said, and Charis and Kassandra moved to Chryseis, the other women making a circle about her to hide her as her Akhaian dress and over-dress were stripped away and cast to the ground. With dignity, Chryseis ignored them. But when Charis unbraided her hair and took out a knife to cut it, she moved away.
"No. I have borne all else, but you shall not make a mock of me by shorn locks; I feel no need of purification or penance!"
Charis said gently, "It is only for fear of plague; you come from an infected city into one so far clean."
"I haven't the plague nor have I been near anyone who has it," said Chryseis, weeping. "Don't cut off my hair!"
"I'm sorry; we must," said Charis. She seized the long hair and cut it off to the nape of her neck. Chryseis was sobbing inconsolably.
"Oh, look what you've done! What a figure of fun I will be, with everyone laughing and jeering! You have always hated me, Kassandra! And now you have done this to me—"
"What a foolish child you are," Charis said brusquely. "We have done as the priests bade us, no more. Don't blame Kassandra." She laid the robe Khryse had brought over Chryseis's shoulders. "I have no pin; you will have to hold it together over your breasts."
"No," Chryseis said sullenly. "If you don't have a pin, it can fall open for all I care." Charis shrugged.
"If you want every Akhaian soldier gazing on your naked breasts, that is your affair, but it might distress your father. For his sake, hold your robe so your modesty is preserved."
She signalled to the women to open a gap in their circle so that Chryseis could approach her father. Agamemnon took a step toward her, but Odysseus held him back, speaking to him urgently in an undertone.
CHAPTER 22
The day after Chryseis had been returned to Troy, Kassandra was summoned to dine with her parents at the palace; she supposed that Priam wished to hear how the parley had gone. Priam and Hecuba dined in private tonight, rather than with all the household; besides the King and Queen there were Creusa and Aeneas, Hector and Andromache, with their little son, and Helen and Paris with her four children. Nikos was a year or two older than Hector's son, a handsome boy; the twins were running around but were no particular trouble as each had his own nurse who kept him under reasonable control.
It seemed to Kassandra strange that the years of war had made but little change in the palace dining-room. The paintings on the walls were a little faded and cracked; she supposed that the palace servants who might have been repainting them had other duties, if they were not among the army. There was a liberal quantity of many kinds of food: roast kid, fresh fish (although indeed there was not much of this). Andromache told her that the Akhaians spent much of their time in fishing, and had dirtied the harbor so that the finest fish stayed further out at sea; and no one could be spared to go out with the fishing boats through the barricade of the Akhaian soldiers.
"And when they do," she added,"the Akhaians draw the boat on to shore and take most of the best fish."
But there was an abundance of fruits and barley bread and honey; and wine from the grapes culled from the vines that grew as plentifully as weeds all through the city.
Priam insisted that Kassandra should repeat every word exchanged in the negotiations. He shook his head angrily when he heard of Agamemnon's arrogance and said, "I have seen no more plague victims in the Argive camp; and may the Gods grant there come none to our city. So the girl is safely back among us; what will her father do with her now?"
"I do not know; I have not asked him," Kassandra said, thinking, Nor do I have any intention of doing so and nor do I care.
"I suppose," she said, "he will find her a husband with the dowry the Akhaians gave. They seemed eager to placate the Sun-lord. And after the plague who can blame them?"
"I suppose none of the Akhaian leaders died in the plague?"
"None that I know about," said Aeneas. "Certainly neither Agamemnon nor Akhilles suffered; but they came almost to blows as soon as Chryseis left the camp; and at the end Agamemnon stalked off to his tent and Akhilles to his; it seems there was a quarrel—"
"There was," Kassandra repeated, and told them how Agamemnon had insisted that if his woman was taken from him, he would be repaid with Briseis; and what Akhilles had said to this.
"That explains what I saw later, though of course I did not know what it meant," Aeneas said. "A few of Agamemnon's soldiers went to Akhilles's tent, and there was some sort of fight between them and Akhilles's men; then Odysseus came and talked with them all for a long time. After that, Akhilles's soldiers were tearing down banners and decorations; it looked as if they were packing to go home."