The Valkyrie

by Charlotte Vassell

  “Oh how wonderful. I hope you started an e-petition. Outsourcing is that colonialism? You never told me your name.” said Britannia, placated like a sobbing toddler given a sweet. She wished that her daughter was as agreeable as this girl who had clearly seen that Britannia was right in everything she had done.

  “Victoria” was her companion’s reply.

  “Enchanting, well I shall send you back to your office Victoria” chirped Britannia happily. She was clearly buoyed by the prospect of a letter writing campaign.

  ***

  The weather was gloriously splendid as Britannia headed towards the Royal Mint. You could have followed her that day. The blood that dripped from her hands left a charming little trail all the way from the City, where she had threatened to tear out the throat of the Chief Executive (unfortunate man, he was only a civil servant) until he put her back on that bloody fifty pence piece. He went off work with stress following a psychotic episode with hallucinations not long after that, poor lamb. What Britannia didn’t admit to Victoria was that none of that had been her work it was only her brand seal stamped on everything, but as long as everyone thought it was her she was almost happy with the situation.

  Britannia Rules The Graves

  Glory sat on the steps of her mother’s townhouse in Mayfair. The invitation said to be prompt. It also said that she should be there no later than 4pm, it was now 5.30pm and Glory had been there for over two hours. During most of that time she had stared wistfully at a pair of squirrels. The male had aggressively tried to mate with an unwilling female. Glory felt like she was watching a reconstruction of losing her virginity staged by little furry animals. She checked her phone and the two messages that she had failed to answer yesterday had been joined by another from the same source. She gave Valour a quick call but it went straight through to voicemail. Glory felt her mother’s presence turn the corner of Grosvenor Square. She stood up and rearranged the beautiful dress she was wearing ahead of Liberty’s ‘impromptu’ engagement party. Britannia arrived at her front door to see her daughter there looking stiff.

  “Good afternoon mother.” Glory said. The rigid formality of her greeting stuck to her throat.

  “Oh it’s you, again. Why are you here?” asked Britannia looking like a bulldog chewing a proverbial wasp.

  “It’s been a hundred years. Besides you sent me an invitation to tea.” Glory was getting annoyed that she’d bothered coming at all as mother didn’t appear to remember inviting her. She must have done so drunk. Glory’s presence clearly wouldn’t have been missed.

  “Really? It felt like only yesterday that I was disgraced by your presence.” Britannia walked past an awkward Glory and opened the large black door herself. There were no servants to open it for her these days. Britannia beckoned Glory in with as little enthusiasm as was possible. Her gesture said ‘well you’re bloody here you may as well come inside you stupid girl.’

  Britannia’s house of horrors would have been smart a century before, but now the paper had all but peeled off the walls, the chairs had grown mould and the curtains were in tatters. Britannia’s beloved Barbary lion Henry – she had loved Henry more than her only child – had been stuffed and was keeping guard in the drawing room. If Miss Haversham had have been immortal she would have kept it tidier. Dank, damp and decrepit and that was merely the house. It looked like she’d forgotten to tidy up after a riotous tea party in 1867.

  “How are you mother?” asked Glory after being shooed into the disgusting room.

  “I’m fine.” Britannia said angrily. She had settled herself down onto a leather upholstered chair that many years ago would have been refined indeed.

  “Fine: feelings internalised never expressed.” Glory rose to the bait yet again. She knew better but her mother always did this to her.

  “Oh you’re in a generous mood?”

  “Why so foul mother? Oh is this about the fifty pence piece thing again?”

  “Go on patronise me. You think you’re so much smarter than me, with all those stupid books you’ve read. Well you aren’t. Why are you wearing that dress? Who would be imprudent enough to ask you anywhere?” Britannia was annoyed that no one asked her anywhere any more.

  “I’m off to Olympus, my friend Liberty got engaged to Apollo yesterday and they’re throwing an engagement party.” Britannia puckered spitefully to this piece of news “I’ve only been here for a few moments and yet it begins.”

  “What begins, you wretched girl?” Britannia arched an eyebrow.

  “Your tirade.”

  “A tirade, from me? The cheek. You horrid, ungrateful little bastard. I had the best of me taken by you, if it hadn’t have been for you I might have ruled the world. Your father, your fucking father, whose very thunderous eyes you look at me with, took everything from me that day.” Britannia boomed. Storm clouds were gathering outside the window, but it was hard to tell which of the two had summoned them.

  “You’re always the victim aren’t you, never the antagonist.” Glory leaned nonchalantly against the pianoforte. Mites had been at the legs so it was a good thing that Glory was lighter than a feather.

  “I’m not perfect and I’ve made bad decisions, but I’ve spent my entire life being shit on by everyone else.” Britannia had the dignity of the bawd house.

  “No you haven’t. You were more than happy to shag the old boy but you couldn’t bear that he wouldn’t leave his psycho wife for you: that you were just another nymph, another fuck and run. You make a terrible play for Olympus and then claim your hand was forced.” Glory shouted back at the goddess who marred her existence.

  “How dare you.” screamed Britannia in a fit as she slapped Glory on her left cheek.

  “How dare I indeed? You might have ruled the world? You bloody did because of me. I carved up the land and the sea and put your fucking name on it, your fucking flag. My goodness the millions and millions that fell in your name, and against it, and yet you have the nerve to tell me that I ruined everything, I made you bitch. How many ships did I have sunk, how many cities did I have burnt, how many shots did I have fired? How many mortal lives did I have ruined so that you wouldn’t hate me?” asked Glory in earnest. Illicit immortal tears rolled down her cheeks. This was the confrontation she had dreamed of for centuries.

  “You awful child. You couldn’t even stay married.” screeched Britannia as she slapped Glory again on the other cheek.

  “Awful child? I did more than any other daughter would do for their mother. I gave you all the glory.”

  “Yes but you kept the power between you and your little seer friend Liberty.”

  “Of course I did. What business would you have ruling anything? You don’t rule your own faculties. Your opinions don’t matter because they’re all laughably crackpot. You should have sat back and enjoyed it, soaked in the glory. And such glory it was; is glory not the only virtue worth pursuing? I gave you exactly what you wanted and yet you still hate me. My own mother despises my very existence, even when I have swept up and given her the four corners of the earth as if it was a tablecloth and presented it to her on her own table.” Glory sobbed.

  “Glory isn’t a virtue, you’re a sin.” Britannia paused and maliciously adding “You look fat in that dress.”

  “And you look dead in your chair.”

  “I never wanted you.”

  “I never wanted me either.”

  “Did you come all the way here to threaten me?” asked Britannia.

  “No, I came all the way here to kill you. It became apparent yesterday that the world, as it is, is about to end and that we are on the edge of a new epoch. I wanted to kill you myself before anyone else takes the opportunity over the coming days of chaos. I deserve that at least, I deserve your blood on my hands.” Glory pulled out the little knife she always carried and plunged it into the cavern where Britannia’s heart should have been “You heartless... you heartless evil bitch!”

  Britannia’s body began to metamorphose.

  �
�There goes the British.” Glory said through immortal tears. She slumped to the floor broken and she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Jovial tears welled at her emancipation from the tyranny of her mother’s terminal disappointment in her. Britannia’s body had started sprouting beautiful flowers akin to nasturtiums and would fully melt away into a florist’s delight in a few hours. The kingdom, the power, and the glory were now all hers. Glory picked herself up, wiped the blade on the curtains and put her stoical veneer back on. She left the room without even glancing back at the floral corpse. Glory walked out of the house and into broad daylight, she did not need to fabricate an alibi as no one would miss her mother and besides she’d happily admit to stabbing her. She shut the door behind her sealing Britannia’s tomb. Glory walked out into the square and said out loud to herself “I do not look fat.”

  ***

  Aphrodite’s bedroom was as one would expect. The bed had satin sheets and of course it was currently occupied. Ares laughed to himself.

  “Darling, what is it?” asked Aphrodite. Aphrodite tolerated Ares’s little follies with other goddesses and the occasional mortal women because he always came back to her. None of them ever seemed particularly serious and she kept it like that. His thing for Glory was of some longstanding but it was never going to happen as long as Glory was trapped in her little Freudian nightmare. Besides she had the niggling feeling that Apollo had a deep seated affection for the Valkyrie. She had considered playing Apollo off against Ares over Glory, but Apollo was never serious about nymphs and she didn’t want to unnecessarily goad her dear Ares. Aphrodite hadn’t realised how wrong she was.

  “Oh nothing sweetheart.” Ares said with a smile aimed not at Aphrodite. He knew what Glory had done, as god of murder of course he did. He was proud of her, atta girl. He also knew what Athena and Apollo had done. Ares had yet to work out their game but he was sure it would all be revealed in due course. It all excited him.

  The Rules of Engagements

  Olympus was everything it was expected to be: all marble and columns – Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, and ironic even – and yet it felt like a gaudy pastiche of itself, a giant folly built on a country estate. The problem was, you see, that the mortals had reinterpreted Ancient Greece from the ruins that they finally took proper notice of, after a good millennium of ignoring them. Time had worn the colour away and sanitised their culture. No longer paying much attention to the murders, the incest and the rapes they focused instead on the nudes and fashioned their local bank branches after the Parthenon. Yet Olympus was that brutality. You could feel that ineffable something in the air, something akin to shiny oppression, it was a jovial tyranny if you will.

  Honour and Bea were loitering near the entrance to the party. Honour stood rigid. She didn’t want to walk in without Glory. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to act around these Olympians and felt reassured in such social occasions with good old Glory, as Glory historically had zero regard for ‘good manners’ or ‘delicate matters of breeding’. Being stood next to Glory meant that Honour was allowed to not care. Glory was an enabler. Liberty had a similar effect on Honour but Liberty made her feel like she chose to be different, Glory made her feel like she needed to be more than different, to be exceptional, it was her very nature. She made Honour want to rail and rage against the universe and fuck it all. Honour also felt threatened, the small sentry hairs on the back of her neck were standing to attention and you always want Glory behind when you feel as vulnerable as that. Bea on the other hand was as still as an Elgin marble. She was sat on the stone edge of the fountain that the pair were idling next to. She seemed to be fascinated by the pointlessly ornate body of water.

  “Are you ok?” Honour asked.

  “Yeah I’m fine.” Bea said, looking up from the shoots of water.

  “Are you sure? Your old man is an Olympian right?” Honour was concerned for her young comrade.

  “It’s cool he walked past seventeen minutes ago and never batted an eyelid.” Bea said coolly as Honour patted her on the arm.

  “Glory finds it very difficult, her father is Olympian too and has never recognised her.” She realised that she had probably overstepped the mark and changed the course of the conversation. “I wonder where Glory has got to and Valour for that matter. I bloody rang her again this morning but it went straight to voicemail. How much sex can you be having that you don’t check your phone for two days?”

  Glory appeared real cool as the setting sun glanced off everything before it. She was wearing a cerulean empire line dress, enough diamonds to make Cartier wince and more bravado than is necessary in situations that recommend themselves to high heels. The heels were debilitating. Glory looked Honour up and down. “You look cute. Cute isn’t good in Olympus.”

  “Hey, you smell of bleach.” Bea said, finally rising from her ornamental pond inspired melancholy.

  “I stabbed my mother to death. Who knew she’d be so easy to kill? If I had known I would have done it far sooner” Glory said.

  “Mate, that’s way too dark for an engagement party.” Honour said.

  “I fucking hate Olympus.” Glory said.

  “It’s sort of eerie.” Honour said.

  “I’m surprised you’re here Honour after the fight last night.” Glory said.

  “Bea talked me into it.” Honour said.

  “Had we better not go inside to the party rather than loiter here like an errant girl band.” Bea said.

  “Yes.” Glory said, admiring the steel of Bea’s disingenuous determination. The dispirited trio all turned and walked towards the hall where Liberty and Apollo’s engagement party was about to take place. As they walked up the steps and in through the main door Glory noticed a subtle change in Bea. She had in fact become subtler. Bea, her very existence, was less obvious than before. Glory was focussing hard on her but the casual glance of a stranger would not take her in. What an interesting talent Glory thought, as she wondered where Bea had learnt to do that. The room was like that of a grand ballroom. They bustled through the door and promptly found the alcohol.

  “Don’t drink. Take one glass and nurse it all night. That is an order” Glory said as her quick eyes flitted across the room taking in all potential threats and categorising them in her head by their potential to harm her team.

  Glory had been unable to locate either Liberty or Apollo, they were probably too busy shagging. Dionysius was standing dangerously close to a large group of sylphs. Hera was fussing over a flower arrangement looking a bit pissed off; she was doing well to rein it in, although a bitchy comment would fly out here and there to Hestia who was only trying to help her. Hera always had the potential to flip where her husband’s bastards were concerned, so she would need to be watched carefully. Poseidon was showing pictures of his new surf board to a very bored Demeter as she picked the compost out from under her nails. Hades was being hen pecked by that petulant little brat Persephone over his inability to tie a cravat ‘properly’. Artemis was near the bar lamenting very loudly the existence of animal rights groups. They had passed Hermes on their way in. He had been yelling into his phone about peak oil prices. Athena was on her iPad editing entries in Wikipedia. Hephaestus had been plonked in a corner by Aphrodite and left there on his own for the remainder of the evening. So far no real threat, the Olympians were too concerned with themselves. Well that was all of them except for Aphrodite. As Glory turned the pair locked eyes. Aphrodite had clearly just had a fight with Ares who was standing next to her trying to talk at her but failing as the goddess of love seethed. Love hated Glory. Glory needed to tread carefully. She wondered where that little shit Eros was. The big Z had yet to be located.

  Athena had noticed Glory and with iPad in hand she came over to the girls. She was wearing comfortable looking loafers and the slightest frown. Glory wondered what Athena knew. Was it the encroachment of war in the heavens or was it something trivial like the state of the ozone layer that bothered her?

  “Good evening girls. May I first of a
ll congratulate you on your plan for the Second Korean War, most ingenious. I understand from Odin that you did some of the minor planning initially before he stepped in and masterminded the rest.” Athena said.

  “Yes, thank you Athena, we were ever so briefly involved. May I introduce you to our newest recruit Bea.” Glory said.

  “How do you do?” Athena said. Glory detected a flicker of a smile from Athena’s lips when she met Bea’s eyes.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you.” Bea said, as measured as ever.

  “Excuse me girls I must check on a little tactical skirmish I’ve organised in Kashmir. Glory we really should have a little catch up at some point in the near future.” Athena excused herself and walked out of the room.

  ***

  Honour stared at the full glass of champagne in her hand and thought it was a shame that it was intact. Those poor bubbles left to burst forlorn in her glass untouched by her lips. She looked around the room and saw a pretty blonde nymph laughing at one of Dionysius’s jokes. Then she looked at Bea. Now Honour liked Bea, she really did, but on Olympus Bea seemed strange. The light had died in her eyes. Switching thoughts and making idle chat Honour turned to effervescent Glory.

  “I don’t mind Athena, she’s smart, but I do always wonder what is wrong with these sworn virgins.” Honour said playing with her earrings.