Gods' Concubine

by Sara Douglass

  Did that wondrous, thick, long curled hair still live beneath these tight shroudings? If I unwrapped his beloved head would I be able to run my hand through its blue-black crispness again?

  Would there ever be any way of recapturing that single moment we had, that moment in the hills behind the Altars of the Philistines, when he had lowered his mouth to mine, and for a heartbeat almost loved me?

  A tight hand closed about my throat, jerking me back, and, terrified, I let out a strangled cry.

  “Caela,” he said, his mouth close to my ear, and pulled me back against his body.

  His other hand was now about my waist, as hard and as cruel as that about my throat. I was caught, I could not move…I could barely breathe.

  And then he let me go, stood back from me and looked about the chamber. “This is where they buried us? In this chamber?”

  I nodded. I could not take my eyes from him.

  He walked slowly over to the plinth on which lay poor Cornelia’s corpse, and he touched the wrappings. “They have been disturbed. Why?”

  I raised my wrist, and showed him the bracelet. “Silvius took this from the corpse, and put it on my wrist.”

  William’s eyes darkened. “And why did he do that?”

  “He thought to make me remember. At that time I slumbered in forgetfulness, remembering nothing. It was a device to make Asterion think me no threat. To make him believe that Mag was dead.”

  “And that artifice worked, of course.”

  He was looking at me strangely, and I found myself shivering. “Yes.” In truth, of course, Asterion had then found out about Damson, and had “murdered” poor Mag all over again, but I sensed that now was not the time to leap forth into such explanations.

  What was wrong with William? Why did he regard me with such peculiar wild eyes?

  “William? What is wrong? Why summon me here?” Sweet gods, was this the time for us? I felt a mad rush of hope and joy within me, and even though I tried to suppress it, I knew I could not keep it entirely from my face.

  He lifted those unsettling eyes from me and began to walk slowly about the chamber, sometimes running a hand about its walls, sometimes touching briefly one of the plinths. “I have seen Silvius,” he said.

  “That cannot have been pleasant.”

  He shot me a look, but continued speaking in a normal tone. “From what you said to me, and from what I have gleaned, he has been of great help to you.”

  “And to this land. I owe him a great deal.”

  “Be careful you do not owe him too much,” he said. “Caela, how much does he know?”

  I frowned. “Know about what?”

  “About the Game, about the bands—and their location—about you.”

  My frown deepened. “He knows many things. He has been at my side for almost a year. And at Saeweald’s. He has become our closest ally.”

  At that William closed his eyes briefly, as if I had said something so painful he could hardly bear it. And I suppose I had. Brutus had ever hated his father.

  “You lay with him,” William said. “You lay with him.”

  “I wanted to,” I said steadily, wishing William would leave this be. “I had no wish to stay God’s eternal virgin concubine.”

  “You gave him your virginity,” he said, his voice bitter. “That gives any man a powerful hold over a woman.”

  “It certainly gave you a powerful hold over me.”

  “But Silvius even more power, Caela, considering what you are now.”

  I shrugged. “He is my friend. He will not think to use it to—”

  “God curse you, Caela. Have you no wits?”

  I flinched, taking a step back. William’s face was suffused with fury, and something else which frightened me far more than did his fury: fear.

  “It is not the time now to discover yourself jealous, William. I—”

  “Damn you for your unthinking naive stupidity!” He strode forward and, before I could stop him, before I

  could even think or utter a protest, he seized me in cruel hands, and forced his mouth down to mine.

  For an instant I resisted, and then all my want and need, all my desire for him flooded through me, and I opened my mouth under his.

  How many years had I wanted him to kiss me?

  Oh gods…I melted against him.

  “You bitch,” he exclaimed, almost throwing me from him, and, horribly, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand. “You corrupted piece of filth.”

  I could not believe it. How could he possibly say that to me?

  “Don’t you understand, Caela?” he spat. “Silvius is not my father, nor Brutus’ father.” He paused, and in that instant, seeing the terror in his eyes, I suddenly knew what he was going to say.

  I went cold, frozen with horror.

  “Silvius is Asterion. Not only Aldred, although Asterion certainly used Aldred’s body as he needed. Silvius is Asterion also. I tasted it then, in the corruption in your mouth. You are as much his as is Swanne.”

  “No.” I gasped, taking yet another step back. My stomach coiled and then clenched, and I thought I might vomit. “No!”

  “Yes, God curse you again, Caela! How much does he know?”

  I could not think. My world had been torn apart around me.

  William had walked up to me, and now he grabbed my shoulders, giving me a little shake. “How much does he know?” he said again.

  “Silvius cannot be…he cannot be…”

  “How much does he know?”

  “Many things,” I managed to whisper, my mind churning. “Saeweald and I…we trusted him. We trusted him. He knew so much that…things only Silvius could have known…”

  “And what did you know of what Silvius knew? Answer me that?”

  “He knew the Game…as he would, being your father…”

  “No one knows the Game better than Asterion. And no one knows it less than you, or Saeweald. You were his willing fools. You knew nothing of Silvius, and nothing of Asterion, save for their existence.” His mouth twisted, and I could see contempt burning in his eyes. “All he had to do was come to you, wearing my face, and say, ‘I hated Brutus, too. I was his victim, too. I want to help.’ And you fell into his arms. Literally. You were so grateful you lay with him.”

  He grunted, disgusted, and pushed me away. “You lay with Asterion. You stupid, sorry bitch, Caela. What have you done?”

  I could say nothing immediately. All I could do was stare at him, appalled more at myself than what he’d said about Silvius. One thing stuck in my mind—how Silvius had known all about glamours.

  Of course he knew, because he used them continually himself.

  Eventually, running my tongue over my lips to soften the dryness, I managed to speak. “How did you know?”

  “When I was Brutus, and you Cornelia, I had a vision. I saw you lying with a man in the stone hall, a man you loved. I could not then see his face, but as your loving continued, he changed, changed into Asterion, and before my eyes he murdered you. You accepted him into your body, thinking here was a man who loved you, and he took that and murdered you with it.”

  He paused. “The night you lay with Silvius I again saw it in vision, save that this time I did see the man’s face. My father—or at least a glamour of him.”

  I was shaking my head, desperate to deny what he was saying, but William continued. “And last night I

  saw him, he who pretends to be my father. I spoke to him of my mother and his wife, Claudia. He talked of her as well.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “My mother’s name was Lavinia. My father would have known that. Asterion would not.”

  I raised trembling hands to my face, finally facing the fact that William might be speaking the truth.

  “He does not know where the bands are,” I said. “Silvius never knew.”

  He almost spat in my face. “He doesn’t need to know where they are. He has you, Caela. He is going to reel you in at any moment. You are
his creature. You will take him to them.”

  He stopped, his face roiling in contempt, and suddenly the full enormity of what he’d revealed hit me.

  Everything I’d done had been a jest. All those times I’d laughed with Silvius about fooling Asterion. All the times I’d confided in him.

  I remembered in a bolt of stunning clarity how Silvius had made such a point of making me agree that I lay with him freely, that it was my own choice. How he insisted that I had to come to him as myself, and not as Damson.

  I remembered how he’d never appeared with me, or Saeweald or Judith or anyone else close to me, when he was within Aldred’s body.

  And I’d given myself to him. Freely. I had given Asterion not only me, but Eaving…this land.

  When I’d become Eaving I’d felt the shadow which hung over the land, the blight that tainted it. I’d thought that shadow and blight was Swanne. I was wrong.

  It was me.

  “He has you, thus he has the bands,” William said softly, driving home each word with cruel intent. “He has Swanne, the Mistress of the Labyrinth. He has the Game, Caela, in his hands, and you and Swanne have given it to him.”

  I gagged, nausea suddenly overwhelming me.

  There was a step behind me, and strong hands seized my body and held it back hard against foul, muscular flesh.

  And then a voice spoke, its breath caressing my cheek, its sound filling the chamber.

  “Not God’s Concubine at all,” said Asterion, “but mine.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Not God’s Concubine at all,” said Asterion, “but mine.”

  William sagged, grabbing at one of the plinths for support, only at this moment finally allowing himself to believe what he had shouted at Caela: that she’d given herself to Asterion, that she was his creature as much as Swanne.

  He’d wanted her to somehow deny it, perhaps explain it, account for the stench of foulness he’d tasted in her mouth as he’d tasted it in Swanne’s.

  But she was Asterion’s creature. Both of them. Asterion’s.

  The Minotaur had his eyes fixed on William, kept them on the man, even as he lowered his head and nuzzled at Caela’s neck as a lover might.

  Caela did not move, but she stared at William, and in those eyes William saw terror, and guilt, and hopelessness, and desperation.

  And something else.

  An entreaty.

  No!

  Please, she begged him with her eyes as Asterion’s mouth moved to the back of her neck, then into her hair, a faint trail of saliva clinging to her skin where his mouth had been. Please! Please!

  No!

  Gods, do this if you never do anything else for me, my love.

  And it was that “my love” that persuaded him. That, and the fact that Caela resisted, where Swanne had succumbed.

  “Caela,” William said and, stepping forward, snatched Caela from Asterion’s surprised hold.

  “Caela.”

  Then, before the Minotaur could move, William lowered his head, kissed Caela as fiercely as he could and, as she grabbed at him, sank his sword deep into her belly.

  Caela!

  Asterion watched Caela, still somehow alive, sink to the floor, the blood pumping from her belly, saw the expression of torment on William’s face—and laughed.

  Caela lifted a bloody hand and grabbed at William’s wrist, her eyes locked into his, her lips moving soundlessly.

  “What?” said Asterion, still chortling. “You think that will save you, and your Game? She’ll only be reborn, fool, at my behest, and then I shall have her. She shall be mine, all mine—mind, body and spirit.”

  He paused, and the laughter in his face and voice died as he saw that William watched only Caela in her dying, and paid him no attention. “Never yours. Never.”

  Caela’s hand slipped away from William’s wrist, and, as he tried to seize her, and lift her up, she closed her eyes and breathed one last final sigh, blood bubbling from her mouth.

  There was a moment’s silence, a vast stillness, and then William let Caela’s body slump to the floor.

  He took his sword, lifted it, then tossed it across the chamber towards Asterion, now watching him warily.

  “Kill me, as well,” William said. “I see no reason to continue this charade.”

  But he said it to empty air.

  Asterion had vanished.

  TWENTY-THREE

  He didn’t know what to do with the body. Should he leave it here, in this mausoleum? Carry it to the surface and lay it before the stunned, angry eyes of those who had cared for her?

  He sank to his knees before her body, gently straightening out her limbs, his eyes avoiding the congealing blood across her abdomen, his heart racing, his mind screaming that this wasn’t happening, that this hadn’t happened, that he could not have…he could not have…

  He had killed her?

  “Caela,” William whispered.

  He had killed her? No, how could that be…Brutus had constantly held his hand, and yet Brutus had hated her.

  Hadn’t he?

  William moaned, and bent forward until his forehead rested on Caela’s still breast.

  He had killed her.

  That Caela herself had begged him to do so was of no matter. He had killed her.

  “Gods…gods…gods…” he murmured, over and over, everything within him turning to ice.

  “William,” said a voice, and William jerked to his feet, his hands spread defensively to either side of his body.

  Harold stood a little distance away, dressed in the scarlet tunic with the golden dragon emblazoned across

  its breast that he’d been wearing when he had been struck down by Swanne’s foul arrow, but without his warrior’s chain mail beneath it, merely simple cream linen trousers. His hair was pulled back and tied with a thong in the nape of his neck, his beard close trimmed to his cheeks, his face calm as he regarded Caela lying dead at William’s feet.

  “You promised you would not harm her,” said Harold. “You vowed it to me!”

  “I—”

  “This is a bad day,” Harold said, then raised his eyes from Caela to William. They were steady, impassive.

  “I had no choice—” William began.

  “This is a bad day that, after all the days and years and aeons you refused her that simple grace of a kiss, the moment you do kiss her, you choose only to taste foulness.”

  “I—”

  “Did you taste foulness because that is what you wanted to taste, William?”

  “She had lain with Asterion, willingly. She was his creature.”

  “You are a fool, William.” Suddenly Harold had closed the distance between them, although William did not actually see him move, and had his hand tight in William’s hair, and had wrenched William’s head back until his neck screamed in agony.

  “You are a fool. You tasted only what you wanted. I lay with her, did you know that?”

  “I—”

  “I lay with her, and kissed her mouth, and because I loved her, I tasted only sweetness and goodness. You bring corruption to everything you touch, William. No one else. You.” He wrenched William’s head again, and the man cried out, but made no move to pull himself free. “Who corrupted her, William? Asterion…or you, that first night you lay with her in her father’s palace in

  Mesopotama? That night you raped her?”

  Harold let William’s head go and the man staggered a little as he regained his balance.

  “No,” Harold said, his voice thick with contempt. “No one has corrupted Cornelia-Caela, not even you. She is incorruptible, did you not know that?”

  “But she, too, thought that—”

  “She thought so because she looked into your eyes, and your face as you told her how depraved she was. She looked at the man she has always loved, and what she saw in his eyes and his face made her believe in her own corruption. She had waited aeons for that kiss, William, lived for it, and you used it to destroy her.”

&n
bsp; Harold paused, his chest heaving, then laughed hollowly. “Have neither you nor Asterion thought, pitiful fool, that if Caela said to Asterion-as-Silvius, thinking he was Silvius, ‘Yes, I lie with you willingly,’ then that promise was given to your father, even if he was not there, and not to Asterion?”

  William stared at Harold, his eyes unblinking, trying to make sense of what Harold said.

  “You sent her into death believing she is Asterion’s creature,” Harold said, his voice now expressionless. “What a magnificent parting gift for the one woman who has always loved you, eh? How you must always have hated her.”

  “I do not hate her.”

  Harold raised an eyebrow.

  “I do not hate her.”

  Harold turned his back.

  “I have always loved her,” William whispered, sinking to his knees and holding out his hands in supplication. “Always.”

  Harold turned his head slightly, enough to see William over his shoulder. “Then may mercy save her from a man who loves as you do,” he said, and vanished.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Mother Ecub sat in her priory with Matilda at her side and had known that moment Caela died.

  Concomitant with that knowledge came such a terrible wave of despair and fear that Ecub knew Caela had died in the worst possible circumstances.

  The women of the priory, known among themselves now as Eaving’s Sisters, came to sit with Mother Ecub and with Matilda. They formed a circle, and held hands, and spoke quietly, wondering, and wept.

  Two hours after the knowledge of Caela’s death had overwhelmed Ecub, there came a ringing at the priory gate.

  “I will go,” said Ecub.

  And she set her face into harsh lines, rose, lifted a lamp, and walked to the gates, Matilda at her heels.

  When she swung them open, she was not overly surprised to find William of Normandy—Brutus—standing there, Caela’s bloody body in his arms.

  Matilda gasped, her hands flying to her face. She started forward, but Ecub held her back.

  “Help me,” William said. He did not seem surprised to see his wife standing with Ecub.

  “Why?” Ecub said.