“This has nothing to do with women, Brutus. It has everything to do with my abilities as a seer, with my position at your side as an adviser, and as your friend, Brutus. Not your once-and-forever-jealous lover, but as your friend, who cares for you.”
Brutus sighed, then leaned an arm across the railing of the ship, gazing across the water to where the rest of the fleet lay at anchor. He sat there a long while, then, finally, he rose and handed the flask of wine to Membricus.
“How can you question what we do,” Brutus said, “and where we go? Do you want to spend another fifteen years wandering purposeless? Another fifteen years living from hand to mouth with no pride? No, of course not. Now, perhaps I will cast Aethylla from her place at Cornelia’s side and rest there myself.”
And with that he was off, stepping between the sleepers towards the aft deck.
Membricus lowered his head into his hands, wondering how he could have allowed his warning to be so misinterpreted. These two women, Cornelia and ‘Artemis’, had both trapped Brutus, each in their own, different ways.
After a while he lifted the flask of wine to his mouth, and drank of it deeply.
He did not sleep all night.
CHAPTER FOUR
Genvissa was delighted at how well Brutus had received and honoured her, but her mind was increasingly consumed with Mag’s vexatious disappearance. Mag was an irritating loose end when Genvissa wanted no loose ends at all.
Mag should not have been able to escape…let alone conceal herself so well.
Damn Mag!
How could she have vanished so effectively?
Genvissa was very tempted to believe that Mag was dead, that she hadn’t vanished so much as winked out of existence. However seductive and comforting that theory, Genvissa knew it wasn’t correct. She hadn’t sensed Mag’s death, and had it occurred she would have done.
No. Mag was alive somewhere. Hiding. The fact that Genvissa could not scry out the where of that hiding was as effective as Mag dealing her a sharp slap in the face.
Then there was the question of what Mag was doing while she had secreted herself away.
“Nothing,” Genvissa whispered to herself as she sat before the central hearth in her house, sipping the broth that her middle daughter had brought her for her morning meal. “There is nothing she can do.” There was nothing anyone could do. Asterion was too far away and hopelessly weak; Mag and Og had been crippled and Og would soon be dead (as would Mag once Genvissa got her hands on the silly witch); all the ancient gods of the Aegean were dead or so close to it that collectively they were less nuisance than a single three-legged and blind house rat.
There was nothing anyone could do to stop her now.
Nevertheless, Genvissa felt on edge. Perhaps it was that girl, Cornelia. She’d hoped that Brutus would slit her throat once he discovered her part in the Mesopotaman revolt. But he hadn’t, and Genvissa supposed that, like all men, he was hopelessly enamoured of the son she was carrying.
Well, the girl couldn’t hide behind her belly for the rest of her life. Once that child was born…then Cornelia could be disposed of.
Genvissa sighed, and rubbed at her eyes. Why was she troubled by such inconsequentials as Mag and Cornelia?
“Mother?”
Genvissa glanced up at her daughter, standing a few paces away looking puzzled. She was a lovely girl, this middle daughter, all creamy skin and gentle spirit, and Genvissa loved her dearly.
“Ah, sweet, I am but muttering away my lack of sleep. Or perhaps I have succumbed to a passing feeble-mindedness.”
The girl laughed, and Genvissa smiled with her. “This broth is better than any I could have made. I thank you for it.”
“My sisters have run to help the Gormagog hunt out the red-lipped mushroom for the frenzy wine, Mother. May I—”
“Of course, love. Go and catch them up. It would be best, in any case, for I will need my solitude this morning.”
The girl grinned, made a hasty bow of respect towards her mother, then was off out the door.
Genvissa smiled as she finished her broth, thinking dreamy thoughts of the daughters she had borne, and the one she was yet to bear, and by the time she was ready to begin her morning’s labour, she was in a more cheerful frame of mind.
Her task required much thought, and some delicate spell-weaving, but once she was done, Genvissa’s good mood had only increased.
Time to set in motion those events which would bring Blangan home.
Locrinia lay still and quiet under the clouded night sky. It was warm, and the city’s citizens had left doors and windows open to catch any passing breeze that might lift off the bay or the vast seas beyond it.
That was fortunate, or else far more of the sleepers would have died.
In the darkest hours of the early morning, when sleep was deepest, a faint tremor ran through the rocky foundations of the city.
Then another, a little stronger.
Then a frightful surge of energy that lifted up houses and buckled the paved streets.
Blangan had been sleeping by her husband’s side. As the room lifted about her, and their bed slid sideways, Blangan grabbed at her husband, Corineus, and cried out in terror.
He half slid, half fell out of the bed, dragging Blangan with him.
“Outside,” he yelled, terror hoarsening his voice. “Now! Out! Out!”
Blangan needed no further encouragement. She grabbed at a sheet, winding it about her slim form and, Corineus’ arm about her waist, struggled towards the door.
They barely made it on to the wide verandah that ran around their house before the doorway’s lintel fell crashing behind them.
“What is happening?” Blangan cried.
She cried those words because she knew it was expected of her. The gentle, wise wife of the city’s leading citizen was not supposed to know of the origin and meanings of earth surges and dark happenings, but, despite her pretence, Blangan knew very well what was happening.
This was the work of her sister. She knew it.
“Blangan,” Corineus said, taking her hand and leading her down the steps into the wide street, “away from the building. Now. It might collapse.”
But it didn’t. There were no more tremors, and the only casualties were in buildings less well constructed than Corineus’ house, and which had collapsed in that single, destructive surge.
Corineus relaxed after it became obvious that the earth was going to confine itself to that single, albeit frightening, tremor. He organised the people of Locrinia into open spaces for the night until their tenement buildings and houses could be examined for damage in the morning light, and walked among them, Blangan at his side, murmuring reassurances.
In the morning, his words were shown for the empty hopes that they were.
Every single building in Locrinia was cracked, so badly that it was apparent that when the heavy autumn rains arrived the mud-brick buildings would collapse.
Come two or three months, and Locrinia would be uninhabitable.
“It is unbelievable,” Corineus muttered, squatting at the foundations of one of the houses.
Behind him, Blangan, staring transfixed at the cracks, could believe it very well.
Genvissa wanted her home, and she wanted her badly.
CHAPTER FIVE
CORNELIA SPEAKS
I do not know what my husband saw on that island, but when he came back his eyes were strange and power seeped from every pore of his body. If ever I had needed proof of the blood of Aphrodite that I knew flowed through his veins, then those eyes and that power would have been enough.
It was as much as I could do not to step back from him, nor flinch when he put his hand to my cheek.
He told me to rest, and that he would not disturb me, but late that night, when I was deep asleep, I woke to hear his voice ordering Aethylla from my side on the sleeping pallet. He lay down beside me, his breath thick with wine, and told me to sleep, and that he would not make any demands of me. Ne
vertheless, merely to have him there, to feel his body close to mine, and to sense the remnants of whatever power had infested him on the island, was enough to keep me sleepless until dawn broke the night.
I stirred, meaning to rise, but he held me back with a hand on my belly.
“How long?” he said, and I quailed.
“Two months, perhaps a few weeks more than that,” I said, then rolled a little so I could see his face. “Brutus, I—”
But he had risen, and was gone.
We sailed south some nine days. The wind blew briskly at our backs, and the seas rolled us gently forward. I remembered all the tales I’d heard about the black nature of this sea: how it never stayed calm longer than a day or two before it blew itself into a ship-eating gale, and how pirates patrolled its surface and monstrous marine worms its depths.
But this sea was not that of the tales and rumours. It was unnatural—even I could feel that—as if a god had passed his or her hand over its surface and calmed it for the betterment of our passage.
Brutus must clearly be god-favoured, and I shivered as I wondered whether or not I could ever win enough of his affection to ensure my life.
Brutus left me well enough alone for those nine days of sail. During the day I sat with Aethylla and one or two of the other Trojan women on the aft deck, raising our faces to the sunshine, and passing stories between us of children and childbirth.
I hated it. I loathed it. Could these women talk of nothing else but babies? They even put their hands to my belly—ugh! I felt violated—and felt the shape of the baby within, and nodded their heads sagely, and said it was bound to be a fine son for Brutus.
They said nothing to me of how this “fine son” had been got on me, or of how it bloated my body most horribly, or of the pains that shot up and down my legs and through my groin when I walked, or of its odious twisting and turning at night when I wanted to sleep, nor even of the pressure the thing put on my bladder so that I dribbled urine at the most inopportune moments. They spoke only of the fine son it was for Brutus, and how that must please me.
I smiled, and nodded, and hoped they did not see through my eyes to the fear beneath. I could laugh and gossip with the best of them when it came to saving my life.
At night Brutus came to lie beside me, but he rarely spoke to me and made no demands on my body. I was not surprised; in the past two weeks my belly had swollen most hideously, and I doubted that even the most lustful of men could climb it.
He did, nonetheless, disturb me, for when he slept he dreamed of such strange things that he tossed and turned and murmured. Among the night-visions which passed through his mind was a dream of a woman. I know this because, as I sat wakeful and watching, I heard him murmur to her, and reach for her, and twice I noted that his member grew hard and erect.
Then I drew back in horror, not only that I feared he might wake and use me to sate his longing for another, but that he actually dreamed of someone else.
Someone to replace me once I’d fulfilled my purpose and delivered him a son? Someone he preferred to me? Someone he…liked?
Those hours, when I sat there and watched Brutus dream of another woman were among the blackest I’d ever known. It seemed, then, that any hope I had of gaining his regard was very slim indeed.
Sometimes I tried to remember Melanthus, but under my current trying conditions—the burdensome weight of another man’s baby within me, the strangeness of shipboard life, the constant worry that Brutus would abandon or murder me once I’d given birth (an even greater fear now I knew he dreamed of another woman)—I found Melanthus’ face ever more difficult to recall.
Besides, he belonged to a life long gone.
On the morning of the tenth day at sea the forward fore-looker cried out and pointed, and, between the scores of craning necks between where I sat on the aft deck and the stem of the ship, I could see a faint line on the horizon. It was an immense land, Aethylla’s husband, Pelopan, told me, towards which we sailed. Vaster than could be imagined, and filled with creatures stranger than the wildest fantasy.
“Is this where Brutus leads us?” I asked, hating it that I had to ask Pelopan and so reveal my own complete ignorance of my husband’s intentions. “Is this where he will build the new Troy he speaks of so often?”
“Who can know?” he said, then turned aside to his own wife, holding her hand and smiling with obvious care at her.
I felt a sudden surge of ill will towards them. There they stood, simple, untutored folk, at ease and in love with each other, while I…I, who had been bred to such luxury and such privilege, and who should have had love aplenty for the asking, was condemned to a husband I feared and a child I resented. Unbelievably, shamefully, I began to cry again, and had to stand there, enduring Aethylla’s deep sighs and condescending pats on my shoulder, as I wept for all the love I’d lost.
At least Brutus was not there to witness my continuing humiliation. He spent most of the morning shouting and gesturing; doing what all men must, I suppose, when they direct a fleet so large towards a suitable anchorage point. By noon all the shouting and gesturing had paid dividends, for the entire fleet had anchored in shallow waters off a long sandy beach that appeared to extend for a lifetime to either side of our ships. Beyond the beach rose a low range of hills, covered with brush and topped at one point with two strange stone pillars. These, Pelopan informed me, were what was known as the Altars of the Philistines.
When I asked why, he shrugged, but said they were well known among sailors for the natural spring at their base.
The entire afternoon was spent in rafting people to the shore. The word was that this was, indeed, only a temporary stop. We were to camp here and be able to stretch our legs, replenish our supplies both with water and with fresh game, and to hear what Brutus had in store for us.
Many of the adults and some of the older children would not wait for their place on the rafts, and jumped overboard from their ships to wade through the shallows to the beach, but I, naturally considering my dignity and my pregnancy, waited for my place on a raft.
I was surprised when Brutus came to me and indicated he would aid me to the first of the rafts.
“Will you behave yourself?” he asked me.
“Do I have much choice?” I said.
He did not smile, and regarded me a moment with uncomfortable speculation, but then he nodded as if I’d somehow answered a question in his mind and helped me down the side of the ship to the raft with a little more consideration than the manner in which he’d bundled me aboard.
Membricus and Deimas were already waiting on the raft, and Deimas stood and aided me, stone-faced, to a clear spot. I murmured my thanks, and prayed that my plan to win Brutus might actually be having some effect.
I cheered considerably, and did not even mind when Aethylla dropped aboard so inelegantly the raft rocked and I was splashed all down my right side with a wash of sea water.
She was the last to board, and so, waving a goodbye to Brutus who was staying aboard to supervise the loading of subsequent raft-loads, I turned to this strange new land where we were to rest for some days at the least.
I was glad this was not where Brutus meant us to stay permanently. Although the beach itself was pleasant enough, the wind that blew from the interior of the land was hot and dry, and carried with it the stink of hardship and toil. I walked slowly up the beach, enjoying the coolness of the water that swirled about my ankles, my hands in the small of my back, trying to ease some of the discomfort of the child. About me groups of Trojans, clearly relieved to be on dry land, were moving tents and cooking pots a short distance into the low hills beyond the beach to set up sheltered camps.
I stopped, and closed my eyes, and sighed in pleasure. Even the hard soil of this land would prove a more comfortable bed than that damned sleeping pallet on board ship.
“Cornelia.”
I opened my eyes and turned, a twist of discomfort in my stomach.
It was Membricus, Brutus’ never
far distant friend. I feared him more than I did Brutus. I sensed that where Brutus might be swayed, Membricus was implacable.
There were no charms I could use against this man, and so I employed none.
“Yes?” I said.
“You are needed,” he began, and his cold eyes slid to my belly, reminding me of exactly why I was needed. “Brutus has landed with the last of our people,” not my people, “and is now asking that you join him at his side while he speaks to the assembled gathering.”
My eyes widened slightly, and I smiled spontaneously. Brutus wanted me at his side while he stood and addressed his people?
And it was Membricus who must bring me this news, when he undoubtedly would prefer to be the one standing at Brutus’ side?
Ever mindful of the precariousness of my position, I repressed my smile, nodded, and followed Membricus back to where the Trojans gathered.
“I am graced with the will of Artemis,” Brutus said, his voice clear and strong. I stood slightly to one side of him on a small rise that faced the beach; before us spread the assembled mass of the Trojans. Although it looked as if I had my eyes on the crowd, I was surreptitiously watching Brutus. Even though I feared him greatly, I had to admit he looked magnificent as he stood in the last rays of the afternoon. Even my father had never commanded so much authority, nor exuded so much confidence. Brutus had apparently waded or swum ashore, for his waistcloth clung to him wetly, and his skin gleamed with droplets from the sea.
About his limbs the golden bands glistened, and for no apparent reason I remembered how, when Brutus lay with me, those bands had always felt hot against my skin. I shuddered, and saw Brutus’ eyes shift my way momentarily, and I dropped my eyes too quickly.
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