"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.

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."

"May that be what the Gods will," said Hector. "Agamemnon is an honorable enemy; Akhilles is mad. I prefer to fight sane men."

Kassandra had her namesake, Creusa's daughter, in her lap. She said, "I do not think any man who would fight in this war is sane."

"We all know what you think, Kassandra," said Hector, "and we are tired of hearing it."

"Hector, do you truly think we can win this war? If the Gods are angry with Troy—"

"I have seen no signs of their anger," said Hector. "Now it seems that the Sunlord at least is angry with the Akhaians; with Akhilles gone, I have no fear of the rest of them. We will fight them and win honorably, and then we will make a truce and live at peace with them - if we are fortunate, for the rest of our lives."

And what will happen to us?" asked Paris. He was sitting beside Helen, who was feeding one of the twins mashed fruit with a bone spoon; she looked quiet and peaceful; lovely, Kassandra thought, but without any trace of the uncanny beauty she had shown when she was inhabited by Aphrodite.

"If peace comes to us," Andromache said,"there will be peace for you as well, and you may make such lives for yourselves and your children as you desire."

"It will be a dull world without war," Hector said, yawning. Paris disagreed. "I have already had as much war as I care to see. There must be better things to do with a life."

"You sound like our sister," Hector said. "But peace will come, like it or not; if all else fails, there's peace in the grave, and an end to all fighting and talk of honor."

Kassandra said wryly, "It sounds like a heaven specially designed by Akhilles's God!"

"No heaven for me then," Paris said. "Enough to fight here; I don't intend to spend the afterlife doing it."

"You mean you wouldn't choose to spend the afterlife doing it," Hector remarked. "I'm not sure we will be given our choice."

At this moment there was a loud outcry; the children had been playing at the far end of the hall, and there were whacking sounds from wooden swords and loud childish shrieks; Hector and Paris saw that little Astyanax and Helen's son Nikos were sprawled on the floor, struggling and punching at each other, both shouting incoherently, their faces red and tear-stained.

Helen and Andromache each ran to reclaim their child, and when they returned, each with a wailing small boy under her arm, Hector gestured to the women to set the boys down.

"Here, here, lads, what's all this? Isn't there enough war outside the gates, must we have it at suppertime too? Astyanax, Nikos is our guest in Troy; a guest deserves our hospitality. Besides, he is smaller than you. Why do you beat him?"

"Because he is a coward like his father," Astyanax scowled, digging his fists in his eye.

Nikos kicked out at his shins, and Astyanax muttered, "Well, you said it, father."

Hector struggled to keep his face straight. "No, Astyanax; I said that his father Menelaus was an honorable enemy; Paris is not his father, you know. And besides—" he interrupted as both boys began yelling at once, "whoever said what, there is always a truce at dinnertime. If Agamemnon himself came to this table, it would be my duty as an honorable man to feed him if he was hungry; the first duty we owe the Gods is hospitality. Do you hear me?"