POLYXENA So have we all, sister. Look around you. See what is lost. You may weep for the walls of Troy, I would weep for the dances I will not step again. You weep for the dead. I would weep for honey cakes. You may weep for Troy’s children slain. I would weep for the wine spilt from the jar, never drunk. Oh, I pray the Gods had given me power to strike those warriors down! I would have used it well!
HECUBA Polyxena! How can you? To shed your tears for cakes!
POLYXENA What tears? The dead have no tears. I can not weep. If I could cry, then I would cry for cakes—sweet cakes, gay dances, and bright flowing wine. You grieve your losses and I’ll grieve for mine.
CASSANDRA (Shaking her head and crying) No one hears me! I have seen blood, not this blood here today. I have seen bodies broken, but not these! I see a desolation yet to come! In time! At the end of time.
ANDROMACHE She’s at it still, I see.
HECUBA (Motioning toward her head) Poor thing.
CASSANDRA (Weeping) Apollo said you wouldn’t believe me.
HECUBA (Cuddling her) Well old Apollo can go scratch himself, of course Mother believes her little girl….
SEPTEMIUS AND HIS PEOPLE WERE IN THE STREET when they saw Stavia next, she coming along the walk with her marketing bag on her shoulder, brow furrowed with concentration over something or other, so she almost bumped them before hearing Kostia and Tonia’s greeting, a vibrating “Hello, Medic,” which hung on the air like the reverberation of a gong.
“Ahum,” she said conversationally, trying to remember where she was and who these were. “The magician’s troupe!”
“Madam,” he bowed. Bowough nodded, mistily, hardly seeing her. Though he had slept very well, it was one of his mostly off days, one of those times when he wandered more in memory than in reality. Kostia and Tonia reached out to take her hands, ostentatiously not seeing the warning glance Septemius gave them. Kostia and Tonia always found out about people. Septemius did not know how they did it, but it seemed to work better when they touched the person in question.
“Stavia,” they murmured in unison. “Well met.”
She remembered them now, and, remembering also she had not told them her name, she regarded them with some alarm.
“May we return your courtesy of last evening by offering you a cup of tea?” Septemius, his usual florid manner banked like coals kept for the morning, hands fingertipped together.
They were on the sidewalk before a teahouse, just half a block from the Well of Surcease. Inside the windows they could see women and servitors gathered around the tables. There were a few itinerants there as well. “Why not?” She smiled. “Actually, I was coming to see you later today. I have some medicine for your father.”
“Medicine?” They went into the teahouse and took a table near the wall. The servitor set five cups before them, tip-tap, tip-tap-tap, and Septemius smiled. An omen.
“Something that may help his chest. I’d forgotten we had it, until Morgot—the chief medical officer, my mother—reminded me. An oil made from the eucalyptus trees, useful in boiling water to make a cleansing vapor for the lungs.” Stavia nodded her thanks to the servitor who brought them the steaming pot of the tea she had suggested. “Put a kettle of it on the stove in your room and pull his bed nearby, with a sheet over his head and the spout so he breathes it.”
“Ah. Something you have not used yourself?”
Stavia flushed. “As you can no doubt tell, Septemius Bird, I am newly assigned to the quarantine house, my first medical post after seven years at the medical academy in Abbyville and a two-year internship there. The quarantine house is a junior post, given to new graduates. I am told that in preconvulsion times, medical training would begin where I have already left off, and the extent of my ignorance oppresses me. So, we do what we can with herbary since our production of pharmaceuticals is so limited, but Abbyville taught little herbary and I have still very much to learn. Learning must come bit by piece, catch as catch can, on the job. If this stuff does your father good, I will be glad to learn of that.”
“I see.” And he did see. Ah, these girls of Women’s Country! Often given their first postings at seventeen or eighteen, expected to continue their education meantime as well as having babies every year or two. And, of course, to take part in the arts and crafts of the community. “Your science is medicine then.”
“Yes. My art is drama, and my craft is gardening. Is your work a science, a craft, or an art, Septemius Bird?”
“My magic? If it has no science, it fails, Stavia. If it has no craft, it bores, and if it has no art, it offends.”
“You are fortunate to wrap everything up so neatly,” she said, a pinch at the corner of her lips betraying that she meant more than the words said.
“It must be difficult to be a talented young woman in Women’s Country,” he replied sympathetically. “I don’t know how you can get everything done.”
“Oh, if it were only just Women’s Country,” she burst out, then, horrified, put her fingers over her mouth. “Forgive me.”
“Would it help to talk about it?” he asked. “To an intinerant?” she blurted, surprise making her sound rude, even to herself. “Why would I?”
“Because,” said Kostia placidly, “he is a very wise man…”
“An outsider,” said Tonia, “who has been everywhere there is to be…
” “And has seen bits and pieces of everything…”
“And can be objective about things…”
“Which others of us are unlikely to be.”
Stavia flushed. “I didn’t mean to be offensive.”
“I took no offense,” Septemius assured her. “My nieces are partly right. I make no claim to wisdom, but I am a fairly objective
