Hades Daughter (12 page)

I paid all this little attention. It had nothing to do with me…Melanthus was all that mattered.

My father finished with the detestable letter, then threw back his head and roared with laughter.

“I have heard of this Brutus,” he said. “Cornelia, shall I tell the court of what I know?”

Startled by the direct question, I gathered my thoughts. “Of course,” I said, “unless what you know is unseemly.”

“Oh, it is unseemly enough, but I think you should hear it.”

Somewhat interested now (scandal was always delicious), I lifted my eyebrows—newly plucked and darkened to just the right shade to complement the rich blueness of my eyes—and hoped that Melanthus was close enough to see their full effect.

“A Trojan,” my father continued, and I would have dismissed Brutus from my care instantly save that he had so impudently demanded such nonsense of my father. From the tone of his communication, one could almost have believed that Brutus thought himself the equal of my father. It was laughable. Ridiculous! I found it difficult to believe that a Trojan had found the temerity to write thus to my father. He must suffer from a malaise of the mind. I shivered at the thought of how my father would deal with him.

“A Trojan,” my father said again, his voice venomous, and spat on the gleaming floor of the megaron.

The phlegm sat there, glistening in the sun as it streamed through the windows, a fitting response to this man Brutus’ slur.

“He is an exile, even from his own people,” my father continued. “He tore his mother apart in
childbirth and then, when he was a youth of fifteen, slew his father with a ‘misplaced’ arrow. He is a man who has murdered his parents, who is condemned, even by the Trojans,” he spoke the word as an insult, “and now, having come to disturb
my
peace, he thinks to demand I set my slaves free! Ah!”

One of my father’s advisers, a man by the man of Sarpedon who was known for the prudence of his advice, stepped forward and raised his head as if seeking permission to speak, but my father waved him back to his place. This was no time for
prudence,
surely!

“Cornelia, beloved,” my father said, holding out the parchment to me. “You are my daughter and my heir. What would
your
answer be to this man?”

I tossed my head, enjoying the moment. My father, the mighty Pandrasus, asking me for advice when he had waved Sarpedon back. How everyone must admire me at this moment! I walked forward, my step springing, knowing how pleasingly such movement would make my loosely-bound dark curls and my ivory breasts sway and catch the sun.

I took the parchment from my father. “He is ridiculous,” I said, and tore the parchment into two, then two again, and then even again, until the thing lay scattered about the floor in tiny pieces. “He cannot know of your greatness to send such a thing. Do not our laws state,” I was showing off my learning before Melanthus at this point, “that such disrespect should be rewarded only with death?”

My father laughed, proud of me. “Well said, daughter. Shall I kill him for his impudence then?”

It was a game to me. I thought nothing of it. All I wanted was to make Melanthus smile. “Indeed, father. You are too mighty to let such impudence pass unheeded.” And, oh, Hera, how I wished in the weeks and months to come that I had never spoken such thoughtlessness.

“As my daughter wishes. There shall be a slaughter so great that when next you bathe it may be in Trojan blood!” My father laughed again, hearty and confident. “Antigonus!” he called to his younger brother (and sire of the most adorable Melanthus). “Set the trumpets a-blowing and the archers a-racing to their chariots. We shall go a-hunting this morning.”

A movement from the corner of my eye distracted me from the excitement, and I saw Melanthus approach his father, and lay a hand to his arm.

His waistcloth now lay smooth against his thighs.

Suddenly worried, I hastened over.

“Father,” I heard Melanthus say in his honeyed voice, “allow me to ride with you, I pray. I am old enough now to play at war.”

Antigonus roughed the black curls of his son’s head, considering. “Your mother treasures you, the last of her sons to remain at her side. Should I so distress her to allow this?”

“I am a
man
,” Melanthus growled in as deep a voice as he could manage. I would have laughed were the situation not so serious.

Antigonus leaned forward and kissed his son’s brow with soft lips. “Ah, my best beloved son, I forget that last summer you passed your sixteenth year. Very well then, this will be no more than a skirmish in any case. You may ride with me.”

Melanthus was too excited to do anything but glow at his father, but I was not so lost for words.

“Uncle! How could you risk your best beloved son this way? Surely he needs a year or so yet before he must ride to war?”

“He is a man, Cornelia,” my uncle said. “Have you not realised?”

I blushed, as I was meant to, and Melanthus laughed, and spoke to his father. “I will go to mother and tell her that finally you have allowed me to stray
beyond her skirts. Cornelia, will you walk with me? Knowing mother, she will have need of a woman’s comfort at the news that her youngest son has now stepped into his manhood.”

Antigonus grinned at both of us, then walked away with a quick step to organise the raiding party needed to subdue this absurd Brutus.

“Come with me,” Melanthus breathed into my ear. “We can have a moment in peace before Tavia seeks you out for your morning milk.”

My flush deepened, but with indignation now. “I am a woman grown—my nurse does not rule
me
!”

“Come,” Melanthus said again, and pulled me down the corridor towards his mother’s apartment.

We never reached it. The corridor was bustling with people hastening to and from the courtyard where the soldiers were gathering, and when Melanthus pulled me into a small storeroom no one noticed.

Melanthus closed the door, and, presumably, hot both with his lust for me and his pride at going to war, thrust me against a wall and grabbed my breasts in his hands. I gasped at his daring, but then leaned in against him, pushing my breasts the more firmly into his hands and, for the first time, laid my mouth to his.

It was our first kiss, and—I must admit—it was a little more brutal and uncomfortable than I’d dreamed. His mouth crushed mine, our teeth clinked, and then his tongue was thrusting deep into my mouth. His hands about my breasts squeezed, painfully, and I felt his hips shove against mine.

I was startled at his ardour, but it was what I had wanted for too long, and so, in a spirit of great adventure, my eyes staring into his, I pushed my tongue against his.

Suddenly his hands had left my breasts and were tugging at my skirts, bruising their silk in his desperation to pull them above my waist.

I was about to lose my virginity. I was both scared and excited; this wasn’t the gentle, romantic experience I’d always imagined, and I was beginning to think that Melanthus was a little too knowledgeable for my peace of mind, but at the same time my spine felt as if it were on fire, and I had an ache deep in my belly that I knew only Melanthus could relieve.

He grabbed at my thighs, then my buttocks, and half lifted me up so that I sat against his hips.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he said, his voice breathless and hoarse, and, hesitating only momentarily, I did as he asked. I was trembling now and, to be honest, a little more scared than excited.

His mouth was back on mine, his tongue driving deep, and I felt the first determined thrusts of his erection bruising the delicate skin between my thighs. He pushed against me, and I screwed my eyes shut, knowing that there would be a momentary pain when he finally managed to pierce me. I sent a quick prayer to Hera, begging that the pain
was
only brief and more than compensated for by the wondrous sweet feel of Melanthus deep inside me.

And then, suddenly, it was all over—for him, at least. Melanthus gave a ridiculous hiccupy gasp, and I felt a warm sticky wetness flood over my inner thigh.

He sighed, and closed his eyes as I opened mine in bewilderment and with a horrible sense of failure. I might be an innocent when it came to what happened between a man and a woman, but I knew that this was not all that there should be.

I was still a virgin to start with.

My cheeks flooded with warmth (had I done something wrong? Had Melanthus not found me desirable enough?) and I placed my hands on his shoulders to push him away (all I wanted to do at this point was to pull down my skirts and find somewhere
private to clean myself), but before either he or I could move the door to the storeroom flew open, and there stood my nurse Tavia in a narrow rectangle of bright light.

“Princess!” she wailed, and Melanthus dropped me so quickly my bare buttocks hit the stone floor with a bruising force. He fumbled with his clothing, but Tavia paid him no mind as she ran over to me, patting incoherently at my face and hands and sobbing something unintelligible.

I managed to rise to my feet, surreptitiously trying to wipe the mess off my thigh with a corner of my skirts as I did so. But Tavia was fussing too much, so I gave up the effort, and let my skirts drop down to cover my nakedness.

His clothes now in some order, Melanthus looked at me, his mouth opening and closing as he fought to find something to say. He gave up, gave me a lopsided grin, and fled out the door.

By this time I was so embarrassed I succumbed to a shameful display of waspishness. “Be quiet, Tavia! Do you want attract the entire household with your fuss?”

She did quieten, although it took her several gulping breaths to do so. She looked at me, noting well the stain on my robe. “Princess, did he…did he…?”

“Yes,” I said, wishing it were so, then decided to tell the truth. “But not in me. You may rest assured, Tavia, that I am as yet still intact. It was but play.”

There. Let her think what she would. I brushed past her and marched back to my chamber, trying to ignore the increasingly uncomfortable stickiness between my thighs and Tavia’s fussing at my back. But by the time I’d washed and changed, my good humour had returned. Melanthus
did
desire me. It was only my inexperience which had thwarted him.

Tonight, when he returned victorious from battle, I would ensure that I was better prepared and that we would have the time, the privacy and the comfort to more fully consummate our passion.

Tavia, unfortunately, would have to take her snores elsewhere.

I smiled, happy once more, and slipped back into my fantasies.

B
rutus moved cautiously across the slope of the hill, ducking behind the trunks of the thick beech, elm and oak trees and the occasional outcrop of limestone rock that had erupted forth from the earth.

All about him, hidden within shadows and behind trees, stood still, silent men armed with swords, daggers and lances, their bodies protected with hardened leather corsets, greaves and helmets. Small circular shields were slung across their backs, ready to be pulled about and used at a moment’s notice. Their faces, as any reflective surface on their bodies or armour, were dulled with dirt.

Warriors similarly lined the shadowy spaces of the forest on the other side of the gorge. There were almost eight hundred all told, Assaracus’ men as well as Brutus’.

Between the two slopes of the gorge gurgled the shallow River Acheron. Its clear waters slipped over the sand and gravel of its bed as if it had not a care in creation, and yet, watching, some of the waiting warriors wondered how that could be, given that surely the Acheron’s waters carried within them the moans of warriors long dead and trapped by Hades.

Even if not contemplating the waters that flowed from Hades’ realm, every one of the silent warriors was tense with the waiting.

Surely Pandrasus would not ignore Brutus’ taunting letter? Surely he must soon issue forth from his citadel?

“He will not ride up this gorge.” Assaracus slid on his haunches down the slope to join Brutus. “He will know it is a trap. Pandrasus may be many things, but he is not stupid; he will have his brother Antigonus with him, a tried and true general.”

“He will come,” Brutus said, knowing the doubts that riddled Assaracus. The man had chanced everything on Brutus’ plan. “They both will. And they will
both
slip into the trap.”

What trap? Assaracus wondered. We have the advantage of height, to be sure, but the floor of the gorge is flat, and wide, and Pandrasus and Antigonus will have their chariots filled with archers. Moreover,
who
is trapped? Not a hundred paces further into the gorge the river sank into a sheer face of rock descending into Hades’ realm, and if Pandrasus blocked the entry to the gorge, then Brutus’ and Assaracus’ men were dead, trapped here for Pandrasus’ army to pick off at their leisure.

“Brutus—” Assaracus began, his nerve finally failing as he realised he wanted to be anywhere but here, and then stopped as one of the forward scouts waved a coded message.

“They’re coming,” Brutus said and signalled the men on both sides of the gorge to move slowly down the slopes to prearranged locations. He moved his head so he could stare Assaracus full in the face. “It is too late to change our plan now, my friend.”

Antigonus rode in the leading group of sixty-five chariots. He clung to the handrail, his feet firm against the stiffened leather and wood deck, bracing his body against the lurching, jolting movement of the chariot. Beside him the charioteer hung on to the reins of the team of three horses, his shoulders bunched against the
strain, his eyes narrowed in concentration, keeping the horses to a slow trot, even though they wanted to race.

On either side of Antigonus chariots fanned out, archers braced beside the charioteers, their quivers of arrows tied firmly before them to the front walls of the chariots.

Behind this forward wave came Pandrasus leading a second wave of some fifty chariots. And behind this came almost a thousand men, jogging easily, their shields across their backs, swords sheathed, helmets firmly placed, minds and hearts set on proving their own glory against the descendants of the Trojans their forefathers had defeated.