CHAPTER ELEVEN
CORNELIA SPEAKS
I was stunned into breathlessness. I had not seen a ship so proud and so beautiful since one of the Egyptian Pharaoh’s vessels had docked in the bay before Mesopotama several years ago.
Then I had been a girl, and had not truly appreciated its beauty and power.
Now I was a different person entirely, and I could see that this ship was the vessel of a proud and noble man.
I could see Brutus—dripping wet—talking with a richly dressed man, and I overcame my revulsion of Membricus enough to stand with him in the stem of our ship so I could see the better.
“It is a Trojan ship,” said Membricus, no doubt hoping to impress me. He was far too late. I was already hopelessly impressed.
The beautiful vessel had drawn very close now and I saw that the man who talked with Brutus had turned to look at me.
He smiled, wide and genuine, and it stunned me. I suppose I had vaguely supposed that Brutus’ contempt of me would have already infected this man. I had not expected such open delight and even—no, that could not be possible, not in my state—frank and open admiration.
The strange warship and the vessel in which I stood were now no more then two or three arm-lengths’ distance and men from both ships hastened to position buffers of close-packed straw so that neither ship should stave in the other.
Before all the buffers were in place, the man leapt gracefully between the rapidly narrowing gap, landing not two paces distant from me.
“My lady Cornelia,” he said, stepping closer to me, “I am pleased beyond measure that you have survived such a dreadful ordeal. Will you join me on my ship, where you may rest on silken pillows, and eat from the sweetest figs I could gather?”
I could do nothing but stare. There was not a shadow of contempt in his eyes, not a spark of hatred, not even a single measure of speculation. There was merely good-natured acceptance and curiosity and—I still couldn’t believe it—an unabashed admiration.
I was horribly conscious of my sodden, shapeless, crinkled robe, my large belly, my hair all in oily tendrils, my bare feet. I was wearing no jewellery, no perfumes, not a single mark of nobility.
And yet here he was, standing there with an unconditional smile all about his mouth and eyes, treating me with friendliness and respect.
I grinned. Under the circumstances, with both Membricus at my side and Brutus on the deck of the stranger’s ship watching me, it wasn’t the most advisable thing to do, but I grinned anyway.
“You know my name,” I said, studying him with as much frank admiration as he gave me. He was not a young man, older even than Brutus, and even though he wore a sword at his hip he carried about him the air of the ambassador rather than the warrior. His tunic and jewellery were rich and finely made…but none of this mattered much to me.
All that mattered was the acceptance I saw in his mild brown eyes.
He reached out his hands, and took one of mine between them. “I am Corineus, of Locrinia,” he said, “and you are most welcome to me.”
Then he leaned forward and planted a polite, but very warm and very soft, kiss on my mouth.
When he leaned back, all I could see was Brutus glowering at me.
I pulled my hand from Corineus’ as gently as I could and, as well bred as Corineus very obviously was, he understood the message immediately.
He turned to Membricus, exchanged greetings, then asked after the injured. “Brutus tells me you have wounded among your fleet, and your people are hungry and sore.”
“Aye,” said Membricus, and then the two men proceeded to discuss how best to distribute the three physicians Corineus had brought with him, as also their herbs and unguents to replace those we’d lost during the storm.
I just stood there happily; in fact, I don’t think I’d had a happier moment in my entire life. Everything before Brutus’ arrival in Mesopotama had been so superficial, everything after so terrible (and, yes, so much of that my own fault), that this man’s simple gesture of unreserved friendliness had the power to totally transform me.
I even smiled at Brutus, still staring down to where Corineus, Membricus and I stood.
Eventually Corineus and Membricus had arranged matters to their satisfaction, and Corineus turned to me again.
“Will you join your husband aboard my vessel, princess?” he said.
I shifted my eyes doubtfully towards his ship—although the gap between his vessel and this one was not overly large, the two vessels ground against each other, and anyone who fell between them would surely be crushed to death.
“Ah!” he said, perceiving my doubts. “Allow me…”
And in the next moment I found myself swung into his arms as he turned to the gap.
I gasped, all my joy lost in concern, and my hands tightened about Corineus’ neck.
“Do not be afraid,” he said softly. “I will not drop you.”
With that, he began to climb into his slightly higher vessel, one arm under me, his hands on the rope, his feet braced against the outer planking of his ship: he was much stronger than I had thought him and my fear subsided somewhat.
He even made me laugh, for he thought to amuse me by singing under his breath a silly seafaring ditty about the dangers of ravenous marine worms to beautiful princesses.
We were both laughing by the time he’d hauled me to the deck railing of the ship, and there was Brutus to take me from Corineus. I breathed a sigh of relief as I felt my two feet on firm decking again, and straightened out my robe as best I might, still smiling at Corineus.
I was about to thank him when Brutus spoke.
“You are a strong man, Corineus, to carry such a load!” he said, and—oh, the insult!—patted me on my belly.
I flushed with humiliation, then caught a glint of empathy in Corineus’ eyes, and managed to regain my composure.
“Do you have a maidservant, Cornelia,” Corineus asked, “that I can have brought aboard to help you with your ablutions and toilet?”
“My wife has a companion, Aethylla,” Brutus said. “Corineus, if it would not be too much to ask…”
“Then this Aethylla shall join your wife,” said Corineus. “Please,” he continued, “I have a well-appointed cabin on the aft deck. If I may escort your wife?”
I sighed, deeply content. This was a truly well-furnished cabin. Tapestries and linens hung from the walls, hiding from view the wooden planking. Luxurious furs covered the floor, allowing the eye only a peek of the mosaics beneath.
And it had a bath. A real bath in one corner that I sank my swollen body into gratefully—only the gods knew how Corineus had caused the water to be heated, but I cared not to think on such trivialities. I luxuriated in the comfort, closed my eyes, and leaned my head back against the rim of the bath.
I heard a step.
“Could you toss in some more of the herbs, please, Aethylla,” I murmured.
“These?” Brutus’ voice said, and my eyes flew open. He was holding a jar, his eyebrows raised.
I nodded slowly, my joy evaporated.
“Do not worry,” he said, and scattered some of the herbs over the surface of the water. “I have no thought to join you. I need to show Corineus’ physicians where they are the most needed.”
Then, in part lie to his words, he sank down to sit on the side of the bath. He reached out a hand, and ran it over my belly, then raised his eyes and looked at me.
“What was that I witnessed?” he said.
“What?” I said, confused.
“Did you think to make me jealous?”
I sat up in the bath as far as I was able. “I do not know what you mean.” His hand was still heavy on my belly, rubbing back and forth, back and forth.
“Your little display with Corineus. It shamed me.”
My mouth fell open. “He was courteous to me. And I was no more than courteous in turn. What do you accuse me of?”
He did not answer, but continued to stare at me with hard eye
s, his hand now very heavy on my belly.
My temper snapped. “Did I put my hand to his hair, and caress it, and whisper sweet nothings in his ear? No! I am not one for such things!”
“He kissed you.”
“I did not ask for it!”
“Did you beg him?”
“It was a greeting only!”
“Beware, Cornelia. Do not think to use Corineus as a weapon as you have tried to use Melanthus.”
And with that he gave my belly a hard, painful slap, rose, and was gone.
I burst into tears, consumed with the unfairness of his attack.
I was too young, too inexperienced, to recognise Brutus’ temper for what it was.
Much later that evening we ate on the spacious aft deck of Corineus’ warship. Brutus had returned, and with him he had brought his immediate command: Membricus, whom I caught watching me carefully from the corners of his sly eyes; Assaracus, Idaeus and Hicetaon, who had kept to other ships during the voyage, and whom I had managed to virtually forget existed; Deimas and, of course, Aethylla, my “companion”, twittering and blushing with pleasure at the company she found herself in.
Corineus sat with us, and to my delight I found myself seated on the cushion next to him. The food he caused to have spread before us was mouth-watering: fine maza and turon made of the best flour, honey and cheese; sweet fresh figs; almonds and plump olives; sweet roasted game, both partridge and venison; salads sprinkled with mint and oregano; honeyed cakes and fresh apples and pears.
Corineus served me himself, taking the best and sweetest from every platter and lifting it to my mouth on a golden prong. I smiled agreeably, but no more than was respectful or due, and tried not to allow our eyes to meet.
Brutus watched with an unreadable expression, and from time to time I had to bury my hands in the skirt of my robe to conceal their shaking. I was both angry and fearful. All I would have liked was to enjoy the company of Corineus, but Brutus had effectively managed to ruin that simple joy with his cruel barbs.
Fortunately, Corineus made no attempt to make me the entire centre of his universe during the meal. Once our group had eaten sufficiently, Corineus put down the prong with which he had fed both himself and me, and leaned towards Brutus.
“Tell me what you do with such a grand fleet, and so many Trojans, Brutus,” Corineus said. “By the gods, I had thought that my city held the only sizeable population of Trojans left alive.”
“I am here as the instrument of the gods,” Brutus said, and at my side I heard Corineus breathe deeply in awe.
Brutus continued to talk, much of it new even to me (why had I never asked him this myself? I’d been dragged across oceans…and I had never talked to him about it). Some of the others, Membricus, Idaeus and Hicetaon, put in their words as well, as did Deimas and Assaracus when it came to the means by which Brutus had so horribly tricked my father and destroyed Mesopotama.
This was uncomfortable for me, and I kept very still, my head bowed, my concentration all on the empty plate before me. I did not want to live this through again.
But I was forced to. Every word that was said cut through to my heart.
Then Brutus began to talk of how he had forced Antigonus to trick the guards into opening the gates.
He described his murder of Melanthus and how he had used that murder to force Antigonus to his will. He described Melanthus’ death in detail—although he never mentioned his name—and I knew that detail was meant for me, although as a warning or as a punishment I was not sure.
“The instant I had torn out the boy’s throat, Antigonus capitulated,” Brutus said, leaning towards Corineus and stabbing in the air with an eating prong to underscore his words, “and I had my entry unopposed into Mesopotama.”
I think Corineus was about to say something but I, stupidly, opened my mouth first.
“The ‘boy’s’ name was Melanthus,” I said, “and he was my intended husband. I loved him dearly.”
“But I slit his throat and took her instead,” Brutus said and, I could hardly believe it, laughed.
Corineus glanced at Brutus, then took one of my hands from my lap and held it. “I am sorry for you,” he said, and, indeed, I could hear the sympathy in his voice, and it almost undid me. “We men rush to war, and we never think of the sorrow and heartache we cause in the homes of the dead.”
“But Cornelia had her revenge,” Brutus said in a hard, hateful voice.
My heart almost stopped. Oh! Why had I given him this chance? He would tell Corineus all of my shame, how my arrogance had murdered my father and all my people, and Corineus would now regard me with the same contempt that all the other Trojans about me did…and I suppose I could not blame him for that.
I tried to pull my hand from his, but Corineus held it tight.
Brutus began to speak, relating in vivid detail what I had planned, what I had done, what I had, in the end, accomplished. Genocide.
I closed my eyes, waiting for Corineus to drop my hand.
Brutus finished. There was silence.
Then…
“Can you blame her, Brutus?” Corineus said softly. “Would you have done any different in her place?”
And he gave my hand the tiniest of squeezes.
A vast silence this time. I could not believe what Corineus had said. That he had offered me a little understanding. My heart was thudding so heavily I felt sure that it was audible to everyone around me.
I could not imagine what Brutus would make of it.
“You do not know the half of it,” Brutus said, his voice tight.
“I am sure that I do not,” Corineus said, “and I apologise if I have offended, Brutus. I am only saying that we can all do foolish things in our youth and you are…what? How old, Cornelia?”
“Fifteen,” I whispered.
“Fifteen,” Corineus said, giving my hand another brief squeeze. “We all did foolish things when we were that age. I know I did, and—”
“Gods, Corineus, she murdered—”
“And I am sure,” Corineus continued through Brutus’ interruption, “that you also did things you may have regretted at fifteen. Yes?”
Yet more silence, this time one of deep-drawn breaths and averted eyes, and suddenly, suddenly I remembered what my father had said of Brutus that first day he’d mentioned him in the megaron. He tore his mother apart in childbirth and then, when he was a youth of fifteen, slew his father with a “misplaced” arrow.
And Corineus, as most of the civilised world, it seemed, had heard of it also.
I removed my hand from Corineus’—he made no attempt to hang on to it this time—and raised my head to look at Brutus.
“You cannot compare an accident with what I did, Corineus,” I said. “You cannot use my youth to excuse my foolishness.”
Brutus was staring at me with such flinty eyes that I knew he was furious.
“I am weary,” I said, despair making every one of my bones ache. Oh, what a day this had been. Anger to joy to despair. What else would it offer? “And I think my presence is troubling. Will you excuse me, Corineus? I will retire, I think.”
Corineus rose and helped me to my feet and, as he gently kissed my cheek, whispered, “I will talk with him, Cornelia. I have made him angry, not you.”
Not daring to look at Brutus, nor any of the other Trojans present, I nodded, turned, and made my way to the cabin.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“That needed to be spoken, Brutus,” Corineus said, sitting down as Cornelia vanished into the gloom, “and it were easier said by a man who is a stranger to you than someone close. I meant no disrespect by it, not to you nor to any of yours. Cornelia has been a fool, but all of us here, all of us, have been fools at one time or another.”
“Cornelia is a murderess!” Membricus snapped.
“She had just discovered that her lover had been murdered, and she had just been forced into a marriage with the man she could think of only as his murderer. She repaid violence with violence
, and I am not excusing that, I am simply understanding it.”
Membricus made as if to speak again, but Brutus laid a hand on his arm, and Membricus subsided.
“It was not welcome, what you said,” Brutus said, looking steadily at Corineus, “but I will respect your reason for saying it.”
Corineus nodded. “If my words have caused ill will and ill-feeling, then do remember that they were my words, and not those of Cornelia. And remember also that what she said following were the words of a wise woman, not those of a silly girl.”
“She has a fine champion in you,” Brutus said.
“She would be better,” Corineus said very softly, “in having a fine champion in you.”
“I think,” Hicetaon put in, “that we have spoken enough of guilt and youth and misdemeanours for this night. Troia Nova awaits us. Can we not discuss that?”
He finished on such a plaintive note that everyone laughed, the sound breaking the tension even if the merriment was a little forced.
“Well said,” Brutus remarked. “Troia Nova does await us, and all our mistakes and follies lie well behind us.”
“You actually intend to rebuild Troy in this land of Llangarlia?” Corineus said.
“Aye,” said Brutus. “I do.”
Corineus smiled, warm and friendly. “Then hate me or not for what I said earlier, Brutus, but I am much afraid that I am your man.”
“You want to join with me?”
“Oh, aye, I do!”
Brutus was not sure how to regard this. Earlier he would have greeted it with enthusiasm. Now…
“But surely,” said Brutus, “you are established and happy and free already, and from what you have said of your city I cannot think that any would want to leave it—”
“Ah, Brutus,” Corineus said, “I have not told you all. Some weeks ago a great earth tremor struck Locrinia during the night. Some buildings collapsed, and some people died, but the true horror was not realised until the next morning. Every building within the city, every single one, has been cracked so badly that none will stand for much longer. Within weeks, a month or so at the most, Locrinia will crumble into the bay, and it will be as if the city never existed.”