Marion Bradley: The Firebrand

Troy: Priam's City

Hecuba the Queen never went outside the walls of Troy without looking back in great pride at this fortress of a city, rising up, terrace upon terrace, above the fertile plain of the green-flowing. Scamander, beyond which lay the sea. She always marvelled at the work of the Gods that had given her the rulership over Troy. Herself, the Queen; and Priam as her husband, warrior and consort.

She was the mother of Prince Hector, his heir. One day her sons and daughters would all rule over this city and the land beyond, as far as the eye could see.

Even if this child should be a daughter, Priam would have no cause to complain of her. Hector was now seven, old enough to learn arms-play. His first suit of armor had already been ordered from the smith who served the royal household. Their daughter Polyxena was four years old, and would someday be pretty, with long reddish hair like Hecuba's own; one day she would be as valuable as any son, for a daughter could be married to one of Priam's rival kings and cement a firm alliance. A king's household should be rich with sons and daughters. The palace women had also borne Priam many sons and a few daughters. But Hecuba, as his Queen, was in charge of the royal nursery and it was her duty—no, her privilege - to say how every one of the King's children should be brought up, whether born to her or to any other woman.

Queen Hecuba was a handsome woman, tall and broad-shouldered, with auburn hair drawn back smoothly from her brow and dressed in long curls at her neckline. She walked like the Goddess Hera, carrying her child, low and near to birth, proudly before her. She wore the low-cut bodice and tiered skirt, with a pattern of brilliant stripes, which was the common dress of the noblewomen of Troy. A gold collar, as wide as the palm of her hand, gleamed about her throat.

As she walked through a quiet street near the marketplace, a woman of the people, short and dark and coarsely dressed in an earthy-coloured linen, darted out to touch her belly, murmuring, as if startled at her own temerity, "A blessing, O Queen!"

"It is not I but the Goddess who blesses you." Hecuba held out her hands, feeling above her the shadow of the Goddess, like a tingling in the crown of her head; she could see, in the woman's face, the never-failing reflection of awe and wonder at the sudden change.

"May you bear many sons and daughters for our city. I pray you bless me also, daughter," said Hecuba seriously.

The woman looked up at the Queen—or did she see only the Goddess? - and murmured, "Lady, may the fame of the Prince you bear outshine even the fame of Prince Hector."

"So be it," murmured the Queen, and wondered why she felt a small premonitory shiver, as if the blessing had somehow been transmuted, between the woman's lips and her ears, into a curse.

It must have been visible on her face, too, she thought, for her waiting-woman stepped close and said in her ear, "Lady, you are pale; is it the beginning of labour?"

Such was her confusion that for a moment the Queen actually wondered if the strange sweating chill which seized her was the first touch of the birth process. Or was it only the result of that brief overshadowing by the Goddess? She did not remember anything like this with Hector's birth, but she had been a young girl then, hardly aware of the process taking place within her. "I know not," she said. "It is possible."

"Then you must return to the palace and the King must be told," said the woman. Hecuba hesitated. She had no wish to return inside the walls, but if she was truly in labour it was her duty - not only to the child, and to her husband, but to the King and to all the people of Troy, to safeguard the prince or princess she bore.

"Very well, we will return to the palace," she said, and turned about in the street. One of the things that troubled her when she walked in the city was that a crowd of women and children always followed her, asking for blessings. Since she had become visibly pregnant they begged for the blessing of fertility, as if she could, like the Goddess, bestow the gift of childbearing.

With her woman, she walked beneath the twin lionesses guarding the gates of Priam's palace, and across the huge courtyard behind them where his soldiers gathered for arms-drill. A sentry at the gate raised his spear in salute.

Hecuba watched the soldiers, paired in teams and fighting with blunted weapons. She knew as much about weapons as any of them, for she had been born and raised on the plains, daughter of a nomad tribe where women rode horseback, and trained like the men of the cities with sword and spear. Her hand itched for a sword, but it was not the custom in Troy, and while at first Priam had allowed her to handle weapons and practice with his soldiers, when she became pregnant with Hector he had forbidden it. In vain she told him that the women of her tribe rode horseback and worked with weapons until a few days before they were delivered of their children; he would not listen to her.

The royal midwives told her that if she so much as touched edged weapons it would injure her child and perhaps the men who owned the weapons. A woman's touch, they said, especially the touch of a woman in her condition, would make the weapon useless in battle. This sounded to Hecuba like the most solemn foolishness, as if men feared the notion that a woman could be strong enough to protect herself.

"But you have no need to protect yourself, my dearest love," Priam had said. "What sort of man would I be if I could not protect my wife and child?" That ended the matter; and from that day to this, Hecuba had never so much as touched the hilt of a weapon. Imagining the weight of a sword in her hand now, she grimaced, knowing that she was weak from women's indoor work and soft from lack of training; Priam was not so bad as the Argive kings who kept their women confined inside their houses, but he did not really like it when she went very far outside the palace. He had grown up with women who stayed indoors at all times, and one of the worst epithets he had for a woman was 'sunburnt from gadding about'.

The Queen went in through the small door into the cool shadows of the palace and through the marble-floored halls, hearing in the silence the small sound of her skirts trailing against the floor and her waiting-woman's soft footfalls behind her.

In her sunlit rooms, with all the windows flung open as she preferred to keep them, her women were sunning and airing linens, and as she came through the doors they paused to greet her. The waiting-woman announced, "The Queen is in labour; send for the royal midwife."

"No, wait." Hecuba's soft but definite voice cut through the cries of excitement. "There is no such hurry; it is by no means certain. I felt strange and had no way of knowing what ailed me; but it is by no means sure it is that."

"Still, Lady, if you are not sure, you should let her come to you," the woman persuaded, and the Queen at last agreed. Certainly there was no need for haste; if she was in labour there would soon be no doubt about it; but if she was not it would do no harm to speak with the woman. The strange sensation had passed off as if it had never been, nor did it return.

The sun declined, and Hecuba spent the day helping her women fold and put away the sun-bleached linens. At sundown Priam sent word that he would spend the evening with his men, she should sup with her women and go to bed without waiting for him.

Five years ago, she thought, this would have dismayed her; she would not have been able to go to sleep unless she was encircled in his strong and loving arms. Now, especially this late in pregnancy, she was pleased at the thought of having her bed to herself. Even when it crossed her mind that he might be sharing the bed of one of the other women of the court, perhaps one of the mothers of the other royal children, it did not trouble her; she knew a king must have many sons and her own son Hector was firm in his father's favour.