Cornelia might even come in useful.
Genvissa wondered if Brutus had truly allowed himself to believe that the test “Artemis” had set was merely to free the Trojan slaves. If so, then he was in for a massive shock…Mesopotama held a much more dangerous and critical test…and Genvissa, thinking, came to realise that Cornelia might be just the one to propel him into it.
With luck, Brutus might be angry enough to take the foolish child’s head off after the event.
After all, what plump, shrieking virgin could hold a man such as Brutus for long?
So delighted at her visions of plump shrieking virgin deaths that all thought of Cornelia’s strange hidden shadows had vanished, Genvissa rose from her bed and walked over to where her three daughters slept cuddled together in the one bed. She gazed at them lovingly for several moments, then leaned forward and patted each one lightly on the cheek, raising them to wakefulness and the new day.
Part Two
London, March 1939
Major Jack Skelton walked slowly out of the underground at Monument Station, a newspaper tucked under his arm, relieved to have escaped the hearty joviality of the Bentley household, but apprehensive about what waited for him on London’s streets.
The night was bitterly cold, frosting his breath around his face. There were few other people about: a couple, laughing softly, walking hand in hand towards a brightly lit teahouse; a soldier who glanced curiously at Skelton before moving briskly down a side street; an old man, sitting hunched and broken in a doorway.
None of them was whom Skelton had come to see. None of them was part of Asterion’s Gathering, although all would be affected by it, one way or another. Eventually.
He turned east down Fish Street, drawn despite himself to the site where Asterion had engineered his last horror.
There it was, the great fluted Doric column that Sir Christopher Wren had built to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666.
Skelton stopped, shivering, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. He hated it that Wren had chosen to raise a monument to Asterion’s overwhelming evil—but then, what was it to Wren but a fire?
Oh God, the fire! He could feel it rage about him again, taking everything from him, destroying his life yet one more time.
He could hear Asterion’s laughter above even the maddened cackle of the flames.
Skelton shivered once more, cold from memory rather than the night-time frost, and left Fish Street for King William Street. He crossed over it quickly, not looking at London Bridge to his left, and strode briskly down Upper Thames Street towards Blackfriars Bridge and Victoria Embankment. He stopped once or twice, peering into darkened laneways, adjusting the newspaper under his arm.
Asterion was here, somewhere, smiling, not revealing himself, lurking within the darkness of the night. Pulling them all together, one more time.
For one last time. Twice before, Asterion had gathered them, each time garnering more and more control, both over them and over the Game. Skelton had no doubt that this Gathering would be the final one; this time Asterion meant to wrest from Skelton what little control of the Game he still commanded.
As he approached Blackfriars Bridge, Skelton looked up to his right to the dome of St Paul’s. God, how many years had it stood there, guarding its secret? How many years had it waited?
His steps slowed, and he stopped, his gaze riveted on the cathedral. He could feel the pull of the Game, feel the call of the labyrinth, feel…
He jumped, his eyes jerking to the shadows beyond the circle of light cast by a lamp.
Asterion stood there. Skelton could just distinguish his dark shape, but could make out no features.
Skelton kept his own face neutral, aware that he was spotlighted under the lamp. He nodded, acknowledging the Minotaur’s presence, then moved on.
Once past Blackfriars, Skelton moved down to the Embankment, and there she was, standing in her own pool of lamplight, waiting for him.
Genvissa.
CHAPTER ONE
Mesopotama
Three months later
Membricus walked through the dimly lit pre-dawn corridors of the palace in Mesopotama. Warriors stood about at various guard points, alert but not overly so: the Dorians had been subdued many weeks ago, and now no one expected much more from them save the odd resentful glance.
Membricus nodded at the guards, knowing each man from the many years he had travelled with Brutus. In the palace, Brutus used only his own men for sentry duty: in the city Assaracus’ men stood watch.
He murmured a greeting to the warrior standing at the entrance to Brutus’ chamber, then slipped silently through.
The chamber was large, and even though no oil lamps burned it was dimly lit by the quarter moon whose light slipped in through the large unshuttered windows. It was enough that Membricus could see well enough for his purpose. He moved silently to the bed, and stopped at its side, looking down at its two naked occupants.
Brutus lay on his stomach half covering Cornelia, as if even in sleep he needed to subdue her. She slept on her back, the moonlight glistening off her pale skin. Membricus could see dark shadows circling her eyes, and he wondered how many nights she actually slept, and how many she lay, wakeful but inert under the heavy weight of Brutus’ body.
Membricus’ eyes left Cornelia to trail over Brutus. He did not think he had ever seen a more beautiful man, and the sight made him draw in a deep breath…which he instantly regretted.
The warm night air was rank with the stale odour of sex.
Membricus’ nostrils flared in distaste, and his belly tensed in sudden jealousy. Many years ago it was he who would have been lying under Brutus’ weight…but as Brutus had aged into mature manhood his tastes had veered from his boyhood tutor towards women, and Membricus had been left with only memories. He’d long ago realised that Brutus would one day take a wife, and had long ago resigned himself to it.
But to marry this bitch! Every time he saw her Membricus was reminded of the malignant evil he’d seen crawling down the Acheron towards Mesopotama. What was the connection, he wondered, between this Cornelia and the evil that had crawled from Hades’ Underworld?
Membricus looked back to Cornelia, and started.
She was awake, her heavy-lidded eyes staring at him with flat hatred.
“Brutus,” Membricus said, not dropping his eyes from Cornelia’s stare.
Brutus woke, instantly and completely. “Membricus!” he said, half rising. “Is there—?”
“Nothing is wrong,” Membricus said, “but the first of the ships have arrived, and are at anchor beyond the bay. I thought you should know.”
“Ah.” Brutus sighed in relief, and relaxed back to the bed. Over the past three months he’d forced Pandrasus to purchase or lease (with Dorian gold, naturally) every available ship from those eastern Mediterranean ports still operating. Now they were arriving.
“How many?” he said.
“Eight,” Membricus said, then, as he was about to elaborate, he drew in a sharp breath, and sat down on the edge of the bed by Cornelia’s side.
She shrank away from him, and Membricus’ mouth curled in amusement.
“What is it?” Brutus said, staring at Membricus’ face.
In reply Membricus laid his hand on Cornelia’s breast.
She hissed, and made as if to strike him, but Brutus held her arms. “What is it?” he said again, with more concern this time.
“Her breasts are no longer those of the virgin girl,” said Membricus. “See how they have swollen, and their veins have become engorged. And see here, her nipple,” his finger brushed over it, and Cornelia’s entire body twisted as she unsuccessfully tried to dislodge his hand, “has darkened, and become more prominent.”
Membricus glanced at Cornelia’s face, then slid his hand to her belly. “And feel how her belly’s roundness has firmed from its girlish plumpness. Has she had her monthly courses since you have been sharing her bed, Brutus?”
&nbs
p; “No, I think not…or perhaps it is that I have not noticed.”
“She is with child, Brutus.”
Brutus’ eyes flew to Cornelia’s face. If she had known, and there was every reason to suppose she had, then frankly Brutus was not surprised she had neglected to tell him. They had not become the closest and most trusting of companions. He looked back to Membricus. “What do you see? Tell me, Membricus!”
Membricus drew in another deep breath, firmed the pressure of his hand on Cornelia’s quivering belly, and closed his eyes, searching for the vision.
It came to him quickly:
Cornelia, great-bellied with child, writhing on a bed in the agony of birth. Her face was twisted, but with terror as well as with pain.
Membricus frowned, and pressed his hand more firmly into Cornelia’s belly.
She lay on a bed made of rough wood and coarse blankets. It was a dark night, but in the flickering torchlight Membricus could make out that this was no palace, only the sorry tumbledown hut of a peasant.
A midwife was crouched at the foot of the bed, her hands extended to the baby’s head as it emerged from Cornelia’s body. Her face was stretched in terror as well, and Membricus wondered why, what it was about this birth that so—
Swords flashed, glinting in the lamplight, and there came the sound of close combat.
Both women screamed.
The baby slithered forth, and Membricus looked at it.
It was a boy, and on his arms and legs he wore the gleaming golden bands of kingship.
Then the visionary Cornelia screamed again, and Membricus’ eyes jerked towards her. A sword flashed down, and buried itself in Cornelia’s now flaccid belly.
Blood spewed from the wound, smothering both Cornelia and the baby that lay crying between her legs.
Cornelia jerked and twisted in her death agony, but the baby remained unharmed, warmed by the blood that bathed him.
He stopped crying, and, as his mother died, waved his gold-banded arms and legs as if in celebration.
Or victory.
Membricus lifted his hand from Cornelia, and looked at Brutus. “It is a boy, and he will be a king. All is well.”
Brutus smiled, first at Membricus then, to Membricus’ horror, at Cornelia.
At that moment Membricus had never hated Cornelia so much, and even the knowledge that she harboured within her the manner of her own death did not assuage his jealousy.
Safe within her stone hall, feeling better than she had for many scores of years, Mag smiled at the small boy who sat under the arches framing the side aisles. He was regarding his toes as if they were the most fascinating things in creation.
She walked over to him, softly so as not to frighten him, and held out to him a red ball made of finely combed sheep’s wool.
He lifted his eyes from his toes and regarded her with solemn dark eyes—his father’s eyes.
Mag waggled the ball at him, and the boy smiled, and reached out his hands.
“Silly, spiteful Membricus,” Mag said. “We can’t have your darling mother dying in your birth, can we?”
Now the boy laughed, and grabbed the ball.
“What a dark, ugly vision,” Mag continued, then paused to laugh at the boy’s joy. “I can’t think who could have put it into his dark, ugly mind.”
CHAPTER TWO
CORNELIA SPEAKS
I had known for many weeks about the child but, naturally, had not told Brutus. It was one more reason to hate him. Hating Brutus had become the focus of my entire existence. If I didn’t hate him, if I didn’t concentrate on that hatred and nurture it with everything I had, then I was sure I would lose my mind.
Since that first night when he had raped me with such violence, and then wiped away my tears and was gentle with me (had he thought that would somehow appease me?), the daily ritual of my life was centred about him. Apart from Tavia, who came to me every morning and stayed with me until noon (when she was sent away to her new lodgings beyond the palace until the next day), Brutus was one of the few constants in my life in those first weeks since that disastrous day when Melanthus had been so abominably slain and my father and I so horribly humiliated. For weeks Brutus kept me relatively isolated; everyone I knew, save Tavia, was gone. The servants in the palace were replaced with Trojans, the courtiers were either dead or dismissed, and my father imprisoned.
Brutus usually ate alone with me in the evenings in my chamber (I could not yet think of it as our chamber), but sometimes he caused me to sit with him and his fellows in the megaron for the evening meal. That was true torture: to be forced to sit among his companions, and listen to their laughter and jests, and to feel their eyes slide over me, considering, perhaps enjoying my humiliation.
Deimas, whom my father had treated so well, who had been given so many privileges, was generally among Brutus’ companions, as was Assaracus, the ill-bred renegade. I thought the both of them traitors. They’d been dealt with well, they’d had good lives—why then betray my father and myself to this degree?
Of Brutus’ own warrior companions, Hicetaon and Idaeus were always present, as was Membricus. Hicetaon and Idaeus were pleasant enough to me, but Membricus always looked at me with eyes dark with hatred and, I eventually realised, jealousy. He was a vile man, a snake in a man’s skin, and a man who lusted for Brutus. I had not known it until that wretched morning when he had touched me as Brutus lay beside me in my bed. I had not realised before then that Membricus resented me, but I saw it clearly that morning—as I also saw that Membricus was one of those men who preferred a man’s touch before a woman’s.
For weeks all I heard was Trojan laughter, all I saw were Trojan faces, all I had was my own despair and fright and pain. Tavia did her best for me, but her efforts did not, could not, counter the weight of sheer “difference” in my life. Everything that had been familiar and which I had loved had been replaced with Brutus; everything had been swept away in the most brutal fashion possible.
All I wanted to do was destroy him as repayment for the destruction he had wrought in my life.
I ceased to fight him in bed after his first, horrific assault on my body. There seemed to be no point in hurting myself and besides, after that first night, I decided that my revenge would be the easier if he thought he’d completely cowed me. So I lay there, night after night, my eyes closed, my head turned aside, and let him do what he wanted.
Eventually, and perhaps naturally, this merely gave me one more reason to loathe him. The first time had been painful, frightening beyond belief, humiliating. It was never so again. Having conquered me, Brutus had become much gentler. He took care, he took his time, he tried to make me respond in the way that he wanted. Infuriatingly, he sometimes succeeded. It was all very well for me to decide not to resist, and to merely turn aside my head, but once my fear of his lovemaking had gone it was difficult to completely ignore what his teeth and tongue and hands were doing to my body.
I hated him for that. I lay there and tried to remember Melanthus’ face, tried to remember the feel of his hands on me, but all I could feel was Brutus. One night, one terrible night, he made me moan involuntarily and arc my body hard against his. He paused, and stared at me, his eyes laughing, and said, “So Cornelia is a woman, after all,” and then resumed tormenting my flesh into a state of arousal I did not want it to experience. Not with him.
I swore silently that I would see him dead. This was the ultimate degradation: that he should have so destroyed my life, that I should hate him so greatly, but that even so my traitor body should respond so eagerly to his touch.
Worse was the day I realised I was pregnant. He put that child in me, I think, that first horrible night. Now I was going to swell with the child of Melanthus’ murderer. I begged Tavia to find me the means by which to abort the child—I was sure she would know the herbs to use—but she refused. She said it would be too dangerous to anger Brutus that much. He was around me day and night; he would hardly be likely to overlook a miscarriage and would ce
rtainly suspect the reason for it. I argued vehemently with her: Brutus had not noticed the absence of my monthly courses…and surely I could pass off a miscarriage as merely a heavier than normal flow.
But no, she would not do it. It is your child, she said, how could you want to murder it?
I loved Tavia, she was the mother I had never known, but when she said that to me I could cheerfully have slapped her. This was not my child within me—I could not even conceptualise the fact that it was as much my flesh and blood as Brutus’—it was an alien creature that fed off my body in order to grow, a horrible hateful thing that, with the changes it increasingly wrought in my body, reminded me every waking moment of Brutus’ power over me and my father, and of his murder of Melanthus.
It was a daily reminder of Brutus’ success, as measured against Melanthus’ pitiful failure, in the battlefields of war and sex.
Hate Brutus I might, but I think I disguised the depth of that hatred reasonably well. I was compliant, I did not hiss and spit and, while I was not the most pleasant of companions (that would have surely roused his suspicions), I did enough to make Brutus think my spirit was truly vanquished. I certainly did a good enough impression of the compliant wife for Brutus to allow me, after a few weeks, to move freely about the palace and to visit my father once or twice a week.
I was sure that eventually that would prove his fatal mistake. Once I could move freely and widely, then the possibilities for revenge increased exponentially.
Especially after the vision that came to me the night after the repulsive Membricus had revealed my pregnancy.
Brutus had made love to me, as usual, and had then fallen into a deep stupor. As usual. I lay awake for some time, unable to get comfortable—partly because Brutus had fallen asleep across my body and his muscular frame was an uncomfortable weight to bear, and partly because his child was making me feel a little nauseous. I moved slightly, trying to ease Brutus’ weight away from me, but he grunted in his sleep and moved even more heavily across my body.