The Firebrand Read Online Free PDF Page A

quickly. “Let it be so, then, in the name of the Goddess,” she said with resignation, and handed the boy to Priam, who held the child awkwardly, as one unused to handling babies.
    He looked into the child’s eyes and said, “Greetings, little son.” Hecuba sighed with relief; after having formally acknowledged a child, a father could not have it killed, or expose it to die.
    Hector and Polyxena had been allowed to come and speak with their mother. Hector said now, “Will you give my brother a royal name, Father?”
    Priam scowled, thinking it over. Then he said, “Alexandros. Let the girl be called Alexandra, then.”
    He went away, taking Hector with him, and Hecuba lay with the dark-haired baby girl in the curve of her arm, thinking that she could comfort herself with the knowledge that her son lived, even if she could not rear him herself, while she had her daughter to keep. Alexandra, she thought. I will call her Kassandra.
    The princess had remained in the room with the women and now edged close to Hecuba’s side. Hecuba asked, “Do you like your little sister, my darling?”
    “No; she is red and ugly, and not even as pretty as my doll,” said Polyxena.
    “All babies are like that when they are born,” said Hecuba. “You were just as red and ugly; soon she will be just as pretty as you are.”
    The child scowled. “Why do you want another daughter, Mother, when you have me?”
    “Because, darling, if one daughter is a good thing, with two daughters one is twice blessed.”
    “But Father did not think that two sons were better than one son,” Polyxena argued, and Hecuba recalled the prophecy spoken by the woman in the street. Among her own tribe, twins were thought to be, in themselves, an evil omen, and were invariably put to death. If she had remained with them, she would have had to see both infants sacrificed.
    Hecuba still felt a residue of superstitious fear; what could have gone amiss to send her two children at one birth, like an animal littering? That was what the women of her tribe believed must be done; yet she had been told that the true reason for the sacrifice of twins was only that it was all but impossible for a woman to suckle two children in a single season. Her twins at least had not been sacrificed to the poverty of the tribe. There were plenty of wet-nurses in Troy; she could have kept them both. Yet Priam had decreed otherwise. She had lost one child—but, by the blessing of the Goddess, only one, not both.
    One of her women murmured, almost out of hearing, “Priam is mad! To send away a son and rear a daughter?”
    Among my people, Hecuba remembered, a daughter is valued no less than a son; if this little one had been born in my tribe, I could rear her to be a warrior woman! But if she had been born to my tribe, she would not have lived. Here she will be valued only for the bride-price she will bring when she is married, as I was, to some King.
    But what would become of her son? Would he live in obscurity as a shepherd all his life? It was better than death, perhaps, and the God who had sent the dream and was therefore responsible for his fate might yet protect him.

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    LIGHT GLEAMED in eye-hurting flashes from the sea and the white stone. Kassandra narrowed her eyes against the light and tugged softly at Hecuba’s sleeve.
    “Why do we go to the Temple today, Mother?” she asked.
    Secretly she did not care. It was a rare adventure for her to be allowed outside the women’s quarters and rarer yet to go outside the palace altogether. Whatever their destination, the excursion was welcome.
    Hecuba said softly, “We go to pray that the child I am to bear this winter will be a son.”
    “Why, Mother? You have a son already. I should think you would rather have another daughter; you only have two of us girls. I would rather have another sister.”
    “I am sure you would,” said the Queen, smiling, “but your father wants another son. Men always want sons so they can grow up