“Periopis has…had two children, Brutus. When she ran towards the back of the ship, that’s all I could think of. I heard them crying out for their mother from where they sat close to the stem.” She shivered and Brutus thought it the tremor of true emotion rather than an act. “I remembered the sounds of the children dying in Mesopotama, their mothers beside them. I couldn’t stand it.” She shivered again. “I don’t know, Brutus. I acted without thinking.”
She was shivering more violently than ever now, and Brutus rubbed his hand up and down her upper arm, trying to warm her. “You should have thought of your child first, Cornelia. You risked not only yourself.”
“Aye, I risked your son as well my body, his cradle,” she said, bitterness edging her voice.
Brutus let her remark go, remembering only that frightful moment when he’d seen Cornelia stumbling after the incoherent Periopis. In that moment he’d had not a thought for his child, but only for Cornelia. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but she spoke first.
“Who was that woman, Brutus?”
Confused by the sudden change of subject, Brutus could only say, “Who?”
“The woman.” Cornelia’s voice was sharp. “She who appeared before us on the deck and whom you called Artemis.” She paused. “Although that I cannot believe. I think she is the one you have dreamed and moaned for ever since you returned from that island. Tell me, Brutus. Who is she?”
Brutus stiffened. How had she known of his dreams? Had she lain awake each night watching him, marking each movement? Planning her next treachery? Or (and Brutus would not admit even to himself that this was worse) had she lain awake thinking of that damned piss-dampened Melanthus?
Brutus lifted his hand from Cornelia’s arm, and drew away from her. The last thing he wanted after enduring that terrible storm, and witnessing the deaths of so many of his people, was to have Cornelia set on him like a harpy.
“Who is she, Brutus?” Cornelia’s voice now had a hard note to it, and Brutus mentally threw up his hands and told her what she apparently wanted to know so badly. In the name of the gods, he had no reason to hide it from her! If Membricus’ vision was right then Cornelia had more things to fear than visionary women, and if Membricus was by some mischance incorrect, then Cornelia would eventually discover the truth anyway. There was no reason he should not tell her now.
“When I went to the island to sacrifice to Artemis,” he said, “the goddess showed me a vision of the land towards which we sail.”
“What has this to do with the woman of whom you dream?”
Brutus forced his jaws to relax. “The woman appeared in the vision of the land, walking out of the mist. She looked as if she was a powerful priestess, greatly favoured by the gods. If that was she on the deck, and it was she who stopped the storm, then now I know the truth of how much the gods do favour her.”
“And she makes you long for her, is that not so? God-favoured yourself, you look on others similarly marked with longing. On this woman, with lust. What am I to you but a trophy of war, and a breeding vessel for your sons, Brutus? Answer me, what else will I ever be to you?”
“What in all the gods’ names do you want to be, Cornelia?” He’d had enough. All the frustration and emotion of the past day suddenly threatened to bubble to the surface in a vicious, hurtful flood.
She did not reply, save for a slight stiffening of her features as she turned her face partly away from him.
Her chin tilted up, as if she thought him beneath her notice.
The bubble broke, and the viciousness poured forth from Brutus’ mouth. “And why berate me for some dream-woman when you mewl constantly about that pathetic boy whose member was of use for little more than spraying fear-driven piss about? Look at you! A foolish, self-obsessed young girl, filled with arrogance and resentments that deal death every time you open your spoiled, prating mouth. You’re no use even as a trophy wife, Cornelia. By the gods! Who would want to display you about?”
She’d shrunk as far away from him as she could now, her face pale, her dark blue eyes wide and staring and brimming with tears.
All about them people had their faces carefully averted.
Those wide, tear-filled eyes were too much for Brutus. Damn her!
“And if you do not bear me a healthy living son from that large belly, my dear, then I may have absolutely no use for you at all.”
And with that he rose to his feet, and picked his way over the legs and bodies of the people in the belly of the ship until he reached Membricus’ side.
As Brutus sat down, Membricus shot Cornelia a look of sheer triumph.
CHAPTER NINE
CORNELIA SPEAKS
Hate, hate, hate. How sick I am both of word and of emotion. All I have done in these past months is hate, and look what I have accomplished with it: the death of my father, of Tavia, of all my people.
Everything gone, sacrificed to hate.
Even my relationship with Brutus. I had bound our marriage with parameters of hatred, and if now I had come to regret it, then I could blame no one but myself.
As Brutus stalked off I sat back, closed my eyes against the contempt of all the Trojans about me, and succumbed to a fit of shivering that I could not control. I could not despise Brutus for what he had said. I suppose it was the sum of all I had said to him, and all I had done to him, over the past months. All the viciousness I had flung at him reflected back to me. Tavia would have tut-tutted and reminded me that all our words and actions return to haunt us eventually.
The thought of Tavia threatened to make my tears flow, but I stilled them as best I could. Ah, Hera, no wonder Brutus thought me a snivelling child! All I seemed to have done when around him was weep. I had tried so hard in the past weeks to be what Brutus expected in a wife, but obviously what I had said and done in Mesopotama was as yet too great a sin for him to forgive completely.
Or even slightly, come to that. I shouldn’t have asked Brutus about the woman, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d wanted to know. I needed to know who my rival was.
I opened my eyes, daring to search out Brutus.
He sat with Membricus, and both men were laughing and chatting lightly with two young women.
A nasty knot of jealousy in my chest tightened so painfully I could barely breathe. The two women smiled and laughed at Brutus, and tossed their hair, and pulled back their shoulders so that their breasts strained against their sea-dampened robes. Although they talked with Membricus, their attention was all on Brutus.
And why not? I was patently no threat to them, and Brutus was…well, Brutus was a highly desirable man. He had an aura of maturity and strength and command about him that was almost magnetic in its pull. The sun had finally crested the horizon now, its light catching his body, and I saw the muscles in his chest and upper arms ripple as he stretched out in the welcome warmth of the sun.
And what was that gibe I had once thrown at Brutus? That Melanthus was so much more athletic, so much more desirable than he?
Gods, what overweening arrogance to have said such a thing!
Poor, dead Melanthus. He hadn’t deserved to die in the manner that he had, but his death in no way made him the virile, athletic lover with whom I’d taunted Brutus. He’d been but a boy, naive, artless, inexperienced…and I’d been a stupid, conceited girl who had imagined herself in love with him.
I shifted uncomfortably, the baby heavy and burdensome within me.
The two women were still laughing, their attention solely on Brutus. He reached out, and touched one of them on the cheek, then ran his hand back through her hair as he leaned forward and whispered something in her ear that made her eyes widen and the breath catch in her throat.
I closed my eyes, trying to forget what I had just witnessed. It was too painful. I tried to turn my mind to other things…to concentrate on the dream of the stone hall and the daughter who waited within.
But it didn’t work. Even the peace and happiness of the stone hall could not distract me from
the idea that Brutus was now no doubt kissing the woman, gracing her with what he would never give me.
Perhaps he was pretending she was this woman of whom he dreamed. Perhaps she was the woman of whom he dreamed.
Alarmed, my eyes flew open and for an instant I could see neither Brutus nor the two women.
Then, my heart thudding in my chest, I saw that the women were stepping slowly over legs and bodies towards the back of the ship while Brutus had turned to lean over the deck railing and look out to the ocean.
My heartbeat slowly returned to normal as I confronted the startling knowledge that I was not so much concerned at losing my life when this child was born, but at losing Brutus.
CHAPTER TEN
For two days they drifted at anchor, spreading clothes to dry in the sun, doing what repairs they could, casting fearful eyes back to where the Pillars of Hercules lay some five thousand paces behind them lest another storm blew out of nowhere.
Brutus spent most of his time leaping between the close-anchored ships, speaking encouragement and warm words, keeping a smile on his face and the worry from his eyes. He had hoped that the three ships sent up the coast would have returned with news of some shallow, mild bay with natural springs and game and tall straight trees for their succour.
But for two long days there was nothing but the silence of the fore-lookers.
He kept as far away from Cornelia as possible. He had little idea what she did, but vaguely hoped that she kept herself busy as all women did during times of such enforced inactivity. Brutus doubted she would get much sympathy from the other Trojan women. They’d spent the best part of their lives slaving and sacrificing for her and her father’s comfort, and for what? To have Cornelia plot to have them slaughtered the moment they reached for their freedom.
If she sat uncomfortable amid their abhorrence, then Brutus had no sympathy for her. It was a far lighter punishment than what she’d wanted for them.
During those times that he didn’t think about Cornelia, or fret over the condition of his people and ships, Brutus allowed himself to daydream about the woman who had appeared to him in the island vision.
She was no mealy-mouthed hag. She no petty, semi-hysterical girl. She was a priestess of great power, undoubtedly a respected and admired leader among her people, and a woman any man would be proud to have at his side.
Damn Cornelia. Damn her!
At noon on the third day one of the fore-lookers finally raised the alert; ships approached.
Brutus, back on his own ship, rushed to stand with the fore-looker. “Where?” he said, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“There.” The fore-looker pointed, and Brutus squinted his eyes against the sun (and thank the gods it was sunny; Brutus did not think he wanted to see any more heavy seas or rain for the rest of his life).
The sunlight glinting off the water made it difficult to focus well, but Brutus gradually made out the sails of three—no four!—ships sailing towards them from the north.
“Four?” he said, and shifted restlessly from foot to foot as the ships slowly came closer.
“They must be dragging their anchors behind them,” Brutus grumbled as Membricus joined him.
Membricus did not reply, but concentrated on his own squinting inspection of the four ships. “Three are ours,” he said.
“Yes, yes,” Brutus said, annoyed that Membricus should so waste time stating the obvious.
Membricus’ mouth twitched. “And the fourth is ‘ours’ as well,” he said, then grinned at Brutus’ face as he turned to stare at him.
“What? What do you mean?” Brutus turned back to study the ships. They were clearer now, their full-bellied sails filled with wind, and Brutus screwed up his eyes, trying to make out the device on the sail of the fourth ship.
Gods, but Membricus must have good vision for a man of his age.
“I can’t see,” he said.
“Wait,” Membricus said, his smile broadening.
And then Brutus suddenly yelled in excitement. “It has a Trojan device! But how, Membricus…how?”
Membricus shrugged. “Who knows, Brutus? Trojans scattered in all directions when Troy fell. Is it so impossible that a few ships made it this far west?”
Brutus did not answer. He had shoved the fore-looker completely to one side, and had stepped right upon the stem post, wrapping one arm about it and shading his eyes with his other hand, staring ahead.
The ship was a beauty, a warrior vessel, slung low in the water and with oarsmen so magnificently skilled and smooth he could hardly make out the dip and lift of their oars in the water. The hull was daubed in the usual black pitch, but the stem of the ship had been carved into the head of a mystic serpent, and painted in blues, greens, silvers and golds. The great linen sail had been dyed in similar colours, and in its centre strained the familiar device of Troy—the spinning crown above the stylised representation of a labyrinth.
“They are brothers,” he said, marvelling. “They are brothers!”
He began to wave with great sweeping arcs of his arm, then, when the ships had approached close enough that their oarsmen had begun the dip-and-hold manoeuvre to slow them down, cast himself into the sea, swimming towards the great warrior ship of Troy.
He reached its hull, and placed one hand on its pitch-black surface as he trod water, shaking the sea from his hair and eyes.
“I have never seen a fairer mermaid,” said a laughing voice, and Brutus blinked, and looked up.
A man of brown hair and fair complexion stared down at him, his open, friendly face wreathed in a huge smile. He was robed in a splendid sleeveless scarlet tunic, a scabbarded sword was belted at his hips, and gold and silver armbands ran up his arms to his muscular biceps.
“But wait!” The man affected surprise, and stood back. “This is no mermaid. To be sure, it is a man. What do you here, man, and under what name do you pass?”
“I am come to greet you,” Brutus shouted, “and, if you would be good enough to throw me a length of rope that I might climb to join you, to embrace you in friendship and brotherhood. I am Brutus, son of Silvius, son of Ascanius, son of Aeneas who was hero of Troy and son of Aphrodite.”
“Good enough,” said the man, as if the progeny of gods was the least he had expected, and personally tossed Brutus a length of rope, holding it steady as Brutus climbed hand over hand up the hull of the ship.
As Brutus swung his leg over the ship’s deck railing, the man caught sight of the gold bands about Brutus’ arms and legs, and he audibly gasped.
“They are the kingship bands of Troy!”
“Aye,” Brutus said.
“Then you are doubly welcome to my ship, Brutus, blood of heroes and goddesses,” said the man, clasping Brutus first by the forearms, and then drawing him into a close embrace. “My name is Corineus, of the line of Locrinus of Troy, and I head the four clans who have descended from him.”
“How came you here?” said Brutus, standing back and studying the man closely.
“Why,” said Corineus, his expression lightening away from his shock and back to humour, “by ship of course!”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” said Corineus, his grin fading. “My great-grandfather escaped from Troy with your great-grandfather, Aeneas. They sailed together for many years, but when Aeneas decided to settle on the River Tiber, my great-grandfather decided he still had some wanderlust left in him.”
“Ah, yes, I remember. Five ships of men and women continued on after Aeneas settled. And you are of those ships?”
“Aye. They established themselves on this coast, some distance north, where they built a city and divided themselves into four clans descended from Locrinus’ four sons. Come, take this towel and dry yourself.” Corineus’ humour had faded completely, and he stared past Brutus, now busily drying himself, to the fleet that lay before him. “By the gods, Brutus, something has bitten you well. And so many ships…how many, for the gods’ sakes?” r />
“Seven thousand people, give or take a few hundred,” said Brutus, “and ninety-five somewhat battered ships…we were one hundred grand sailing vessels until we became the victims of a supernatural-driven storm.”
Supernatural storms and unnatural earth tremors, thought Corineus. What in Zeus’ name was happening to their world?
“And you survived.” He looked back at Brutus, and Brutus saw the sharpness in his light brown eyes, and knew that the man wore his natural humour as a mask to charm words from men who would otherwise be more careful.
Brutus suddenly felt a respect for Corineus; he would never be a man to be trifled with.
“We survived,” he said, “due to the intervention of…a wondrous and powerful priestess. We were favoured indeed.”
Corineus raised his eyebrows. “A wondrous priestess?”
“It is a long tale,” Brutus said. “Should I discuss this now, or wait, perhaps, till you have guided my people to a safe harbour? We have injuries aboard, and much of our dry stores are ruined. My people are exhausted and hungry and damp.”
“We attend to your people’s needs first,” said Corineus. “My home is not far away—a day’s sail, if you can bear it, or a day and a half’s row in your ships if they are too damaged to raise the sails. Perhaps, if we row, we can talk tonight, over a meal?” He stopped rather abruptly, and took a step forward, peering at the ship Brutus had so precipitously leapt from. “Who is that fair lady?”
Brutus followed his eyes. Cornelia was now standing with Membricus by the stem of his ship, shading her eyes as she stared at Corineus’ vessel.
“She? She is my wife.”
“Your wife? Then leave her not there, anxious and curious,” Corineus exclaimed. “I invite her aboard, to keep you from worrying on her behalf, and you both shall tell me your tales as we sail to my home.”