The sight was so astounding I merely frowned, unable to comprehend what was happening.
Had the horses panicked, and bolted for their stables?
But how could that be? All the war horses had been trained for years, and were experienced in battle. Well…in the mock battles my father had arranged, and surely they were more warlike than the real thing?
If the fault lay not with the horses, then had the men controlling them panicked and caused their horses to dash for home?
But that was even more inconceivable, for all my father’s warriors were brave beyond belief, and the best warriors in all of Greece.
Had not my father told me thus on countless occasions?
There was movement below me, at the gates, and I saw they were being opened. I returned my gaze to the chariots, now very close, and I realised with a horrifying lurch in the pit of my belly that one of them contained my father.
His face wore an expression I had never seen before, and which I had never thought would fit my father’s features—fear.
“Shut the gates!” my father screamed, even as I was still making my way down the ladders to the court just inside the gates. “Shut the cursed gates!”
If his face had showed fear, then his voice revealed defeat, and that was so incomprehensible to me that, as I reached the ground and walked towards where my father stood by the heaving horses of his chariot, my legs gave way beneath me, and I crumpled to the ground.
“Cornelia,” my father cried as he caught sight of me. “Daughter! What do you here? Get back to the palace. Go! Go!”
“Father,” I reached for the hand he extended to me, and managed to regain my feet, “what is wrong? Why…?” I stumbled to a halt, not knowing what should follow that “Why?”
“Trickery! Magic! Foulness!” my father spat, and I frowned all the more, for I could understand none of this.
“Where is Melanthus?” I asked.
“Dead, most like,” my father said, shoving me into the hands of one of the guards. “Get her to the palace, and keep her under close care, or I will take your life for your negligence. Now!”
And so I was dragged off without a chance to further question my father.
Melanthus? Dead? How could that be?
“Melanthus,” I whispered, in shock I think, as the guard eventually handed me into the care of Tavia. “How can that be?”
My father must be wrong…and that thought was almost as unintelligible as the one that proposed my beloved hero might be dead.
Tavia eventually discovered what news there was. The Trojans had tricked my father into a trap, and then used the black arts—as would cowards—to ensnare my father’s army in a slaughter. My father escaped, but only because of his heroism and skill, while most others had died.
Melanthus…dead? My mind could not grasp it, and could not pass beyond that concept. I thought nothing of the greater implications of this defeat, had no thought of the other men I knew who must have died, but only tried without success to grasp the idea that Melanthus might be dead.
This could not happen. Not to me. Not to my beloved Melanthus. No. No…
For hours, all through the afternoon and into the night, Tavia held me as we lay on my bed. She whispered nothingnesses to me, and stroked my brow with soft hands, and begged me to eat and drink to maintain my strength.
And, when I responded to none of that, she tried to shame me into responding by suggesting that I behaved in a manner most unbecoming to a woman of my nobility and station.
At that I wrenched myself away from her. All I wanted to do was think about Melanthus, to find some means of explaining away my father’s news.
“My dear,” said Tavia, “he must be dead. So few returned…and he is not among them…I know you adored him, but he was but a boy, and—”
“Get out!” I yelled, bursting into tears. “Go! I don’t want to hear that!”
She went, and I fell back to the bed and succumbed to such a fit of sobbing that I thought my heart would break. He was not dead! He could not be! I remembered how we had caressed earlier in the day; I remembered the crushing of his mouth against mine, and I vowed that if Melanthus were dead, then I would allow no man to kiss me again.
There was no one who could ever take Melanthus’ place. No one who could match him in nobility and bravery and prowess.
“If not you,” I eventually snivelled, blowing my nose on the hem of my skirt, “then no one. No one save you, beloved Melanthus, shall ever lay his mouth to mine!”
Slightly hysterical that vow may have been, but it made me feel better. After all, as a vow it was assuredly quite useless. Melanthus could not be dead. I would wake in the morning and he would be here, and he would fall to the bed beside me, and…
I drifted off to sleep, content that I should pass the night in dreams of Melanthus.
I dreamed most peculiarly. I found myself standing in a stone hall of such construction and such overwhelming beauty that I am sure it was of the gods’ making. Above me glowed a golden vaulted roof, around me soared huge stone arches which lined the shadowy side aisles of the hall. Although the outer walls of the hall were of solid stone, I could somehow still see through them to the countryside beyond where a majestic silver river wound its way through gentle verdant hills and fertile pastures. It was an ancient and deeply mysterious land, such as I had never seen nor even imagined.
Oddly, it felt like my homeland, and yet this was nothing like the hills surrounding Mesopotama.
There was a sound of laughter, and from the very corner of my eye I saw the figure of a small girl dashing between the stone arches. It was my future daughter, I knew this, and my joy deepened, for this must be Melanthus’ child, too. I was sure of it.
Then a great joy swept over me. There was a man here, a man I loved beyond any other, and he me. Melanthus! I turned full circle, but I could not see him.
Melanthus?
I frowned, and looked more carefully, and saw instead two women standing at some distance from me. One was…one was Hera, while the other was a smaller and darker woman, mysterious like the land I had glimpsed beyond the arches.
Hera put her hand on this dark woman’s shoulder and bent to her, and spoke in her ear.
Although I could not hear, and certainly not comprehend, I had a sense of many words being spoken and also, most remarkably, a sense of a vast amount of time passing.
And then, just as I walked closer, and opened my mouth to speak to Hera, the dark woman took a step towards me, then another, and then she was rushing at me as if she were not a woman but a pinprick of brilliant light.
I tried to take a step backwards, to evade this light, but there was nowhere to go, and suddenly the light was upon me—it was so hot!—and then it was gone. Vanished as if it had never been, although there was a horrible burning sensation in my lower belly.
“Hera,” I whispered, thinking to ask her of Melanthus, but I was alone. The hall was empty save for me, and suddenly it seemed a very forsaken place indeed.
The dream was so nasty I woke with a start. I laid a hand on my belly, feeling a warm heaviness in its lower extremity. For a moment, still befuddled by sleep, I wondered if my monthly courses were about to flow, then realised it could not be as they’d only completed themselves a week previously.
I frowned, and thought to rise and pour myself some wine so that I might put the dream from my mind, but just then the door opened and a shape approached my bed. I thought it must be Tavia, and I was glad, for I had need of her comfort. I opened my mouth to apologise to her for my earlier spitefulness, then closed it with a snap.
This wasn’t Tavia.
It wasn’t even the strange dark woman of my dream.
Nor even Hera.
Instead, it was horror most foul come to snatch me.
“Get up!” the shape said, and I realised—to my total stupefaction—that it was a man. In the instant between when he spoke and when he strode to my bed and grabbed me by my hair I wondered con
secutively whether this was somehow, wonderfully, Melanthus come to me, or my father returned to explain it was all a bad dream, or perhaps a god come to take me as his own.
But then the man, this intruder, grabbed the hair at the crown of my head and dragged me naked and crying from the bed—“I said to get up, girl”—and I knew then that this was neither Melanthus, nor my father, nor even a god.
He dragged me several paces away before I managed to regain either my feet or my voice. “Let me go! How dare you touch me!”
And I kicked at him with a foot.
He evaded me easily, and in the next moment delivered a stinging blow to my breasts.
I gasped in twin shock and pain, and he gave my hair a vicious twist for added measure. “I have no time for kicking, squealing girls,” he said, his voice harsh. “Now keep quiet and do as I say!”
Now terror had overwhelmed my shock, and I tried—difficult with someone’s hand twisted tight into the hair of one’s head—to nod. He seemed to understand my efforts, for he gave a curt jerk of his own head.
“Good. I have not come to rape you, but to take you to the megaron. If you remain quiet and amenable, you will come to no harm.”
I managed an almost-nod again, and he grunted, and, hand still in my hair so that I had to walk with my head cruelly twisted, pulled me out the door and down the palace corridors towards the megaron.
I could not see his face, but somehow I had no doubt this man was a Trojan.
And not one of the tame slaves I had known all my life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Singly, or in their twos and threes, Brutus’ men dragged variously shocked and compliant, still-sleepy and murmuring, or angry and struggling people into the megaron.
Every single one of them, as soon as they entered the megaron, fell silent on seeing Pandrasus’ burly figure kneeling, head bowed in his utter humiliation, several paces before the dais on which stood the throne. He was completely naked save for minor gold jewellery at his wrist and neck and ears. Then, as if they’d been instructed, every one of them in turn shifted their eyes from Pandrasus to the warrior slouched in the throne. He was of some thirty years, wore nothing but his boots, a golden and scarlet waistcloth and six magnificent golden bands about his limbs. His long, black curly hair was left unbound to course down his back and about his blunt-faced and dark-eyed visage. A sword rested across his knees, and Pandrasus’ gold and ruby bracelet lay on the floor between his feet.
Brutus, staring unblinking at Pandrasus.
Finally, as a guard signalled that all the palace Dorians had been brought to this chamber, Membricus walked across the megaron, paused momentarily to stare at Pandrasus, then moved to Brutus’ side to murmur something in his ear. Brutus nodded, gave Membricus a brief smile, then stood.
Membricus stepped back to stand just to the left of the throne.
Brutus walked very slowly to the edge of the dais where he stopped, his sword swinging idly in his hand, staring about the assembled peoples.
With only the exception of Pandrasus, who kept his eyes on the floor, they were all staring at him.
“My name is Brutus,” he said slowly, but very clearly, his eyes moving with deliberate precision from person to person within the megaron, “born of Silvius, born of Ascanius, born of Aeneas, hero of Troy and son of Aphrodite herself. I am of the blood of gods and princes, and I am heir to Troy, and to all that Troy claims. This man,” he lifted his sword and pointed it at Pandrasus, “has denied the rights of freedom of body and dignity to my people, whom he keeps as slaves. I have come to rectify this matter.”
Brutus stepped off the dais, his booted footsteps ringing about the megaron.
“I offered to Pandrasus the means to free his people without harm to him or his, but he refused.” Brutus was now circling the megaron, staring at each of the Dorians in turn, as if assessing their worth. “He thought to deny my people their freedom, and the gods, in their anger, have humiliated him.”
Brutus paused before a girl of some fourteen or fifteen years. She had a round, somewhat plump face—typical of so many girls her age—above a body that also still carried a remnant of its childish plumpness. While her features were unremarkable, the long, shining hair that tangled over her shoulders and her startlingly deep blue eyes showed that she would one day grow to an attractive woman.
She was naked, although apparently unconcerned about the matter, and Brutus was surprised by the shudder of need that ran through him as he studied her flesh. She did not have a particularly seductive body—Brutus would certainly not have looked twice under normal circumstances—but there was something about her…something compelling…
Brutus looked back to her eyes, trying to see past the anger within them, trying to see what it was about her…then she moved her arm slightly, and a gleam caught Brutus’ eye, and he saw the gold and ruby bracelet that encircled her right wrist.
Apart from its size and weight, it was a mirror image of the one that Pandrasus had worn.
Brutus smiled, certain now of what it was that must have made him study her so closely. She would prove as useful as Melanthus.
“I am Brutus,” he repeated, his voice soft, his eyes holding the girl’s, “and I am god-favoured. It is not wise to deny me.”
He began to move once more about the megaron. “I control Mesopotama. I control this palace. I control you. Be wise. Do not deny me.”
Abruptly Brutus turned on his heel and walked back to stand before Pandrasus.
“My price for your freedom, and the freedom of your people, is but a small one,” Brutus said, and Pandrasus finally lifted his face to Brutus. “Give the Trojans their freedom from slavery, as graciously as you may. And,” his mouth twitched, “as a mark of your sincerity, I ask that you give to them the means of their freedom.” He paused, his grin growing wider, more substantial, as he saw the hatred in Pandrasus’ face.
“The means to their freedom being one hundred ships, and provisions and livestock for their sustenance for one year, as well as seven hundred talents in gold, silver and other jewellery.”
Pandrasus laughed, a big, belly laugh, his body shaking with the strength of its merriment. “Who do you think you are? A god yourself, to demand such things of me? Ah!” He spat on the floor before him. “You are nothing but a dung-merchant who has let the stink of the shit he peddles addle his wits.”
Brutus gave a small nod in the direction of a guard, and Pandrasus suddenly stiffened, his laughter vanished, as he heard his daughter shriek in protest.
The guard dragged Cornelia over, his hand once more in her hair, and Brutus grabbed her from the guard’s grip.
Before Cornelia could react, Brutus twisted her hair and neck with a vicious force, subduing all her fight, then forced her to her knees.
Then, with one hand still in her hair—as it had been in Melanthus’ not so long ago—Brutus put his sword to Cornelia’s rib cage just under her breast.
She reflexively jerked away from its cold touch, but Brutus easily managed to keep it pressed against her.
“With one movement,” he said, noting Pandrasus’ frantic eyes, “I can slide this blade deep into her heart. And if you doubt me, for one instant…”
“He will do it.” Antigonus, heretofore kept in the shadows at the back of the megaron, now stepped forward.
Pandrasus looked over his shoulder, shocked, and Cornelia stiffened in Brutus’ grasp, her eyes, impossibly, growing even wider than they had been.
Antigonus walked forward, each step a shuffling testament to his own sense of shame, his face haggard.
“He will do it,” Antigonus repeated softly as he finally halted a few paces away from Brutus, Cornelia and Pandrasus. “He took my beloved Melanthus from me, and taunted me, and put his sword to Melanthus’ throat…and then he tore it out. He killed him.” Antigonus’ voice broke. “He killed him,” he whispered.
“And he died badly,” Brutus said, giving Cornelia’s head another twist as she let out an appalle
d sob. “He was so terrified he pissed himself. Do you want that for your daughter? In front of all these people?”
Silence, save for Cornelia, who was moaning.
“Freedom for my people,” Brutus said, his voice dangerously quiet. “One hundred ships. Provisions for a year. Gold and jewellery…and…”
He had not meant to add that “and” but suddenly, stunningly, he was overwhelmed by a staggering desire and need.
It was almost as if he had been god-struck.
“…and your daughter as my wife, for I find in these past few minutes that I have grown accustomed to her flesh.”
“No!” Cornelia screamed, struggling, heedless of the blade. “No!”
Standing forgotten behind the throne, Membricus was again overwhelmed with the vision he had had when first he cast his eyes on the distant city of Mesopotama. Shadows. Death. Bewilderment. “No,” he whispered, his eyes blank, but no one heard him.
“No!” Cornelia shrieked yet again, writhing desperately.
“All of this,” Brutus hissed, his hand tightening in Cornelia’s hair in the struggle to hold her, and his other hand tightened as well, and the sword shifted, and Cornelia screamed as it bit across the flesh of her rib cage. “All of this!”
“All is yours,” whispered Pandrasus, his eyes on Cornelia.
“Say it! Stand and say it to these people, who shall bear witness.”
Pandrasus stood, almost slipping, his eyes unable to tear themselves from the sight of his daughter unsuccessfully trying to pull away from the blade, her pathetic efforts only serving to add more cuts to the one already marring her flesh.
“All is his,” he shouted. “Freedom for the Trojan slaves, one hundred ships and provisions for a year. Gold and precious gems. And…and, oh gods, oh gods, my daughter, whom I hereby give to him as wife.” And with those words, Pandrasus knew that he had, surely, killed his daughter.