Hades Daughter (19 page)

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 certainly 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.

Frustrated, irritable, exhausted, sick to my stomach, close to tears, I was just about to put my hands on his shoulders and give him an almighty heave—I cared not if I disturbed his sleep—when a voice spoke.

“Cornelia.”

It was barely a whisper, but I was so surprised I jumped as if I’d been slapped.

“Shush, Cornelia, do not wake your husband. This is not for his ears.”

I looked about the room, and finally saw a figure silhouetted against the open windows.

“Hera?” I whispered.

The figure walked forward, and I saw by its movement and form that it was indeed a woman.

“Hera?” I said again, although now that she was closer I saw that she did not look much like the goddess who had come to me on the blasted rock to warn me of the impending catastrophe in my life, but someone slightly younger and of a more rounded build. I thought for a brief moment it might be that smaller, darker woman I’d seen with Hera in the great stone hall, but no, this woman was far taller than she had been.

“Shush, Cornelia, and listen. Tell me, do you want revenge on that man who lies beside you?”

“Yes!”

“Then hear what I say,” the visionary woman said, “and you shall have what you want.”

She stepped yet closer, and now I saw that she had glorious black hair with a curious russet streak through it.

I wondered if she were the distant sister Hera had talked of, but, in truth, I did not care who she was. If she could give me the means to destroy Brutus, then she was
all
that I wanted.

“Listen, Cornelia,” the goddess said, and, bending gracefully beside the bed, began to whisper in my ear.

L
ater that morning Cornelia walked the corridors of the palace to her father’s closely guarded chamber.

She walked gracefully, unhurriedly, her head high and her shoulders back, as if she still ruled this place as the beloved only heir of its king. Her dress was meticulous: the heavy, flounced embroidered skirts that flowed to either side of her as she walked; the wide tight girdle that flattered her still narrow waist; the tightly fitted emerald jacket with its stiffened high neck and lapels that flared to either side of her breasts.

But now she wore a filmy linen blouse under the jacket that, while it revealed the bounce and shape of her breasts, hid their more intimate features. It was a wife’s dress, and those that passed her in the corridor assumed Cornelia had accepted her place by Brutus’ side.

The two warriors stationed outside Pandrasus’ door nodded her through, used to Cornelia’s visits.

She ignored them, brushing past without a glance.

Pandrasus sat on a stool by the solitary small, narrow window. It was open, revealing the bustle of the city below.

He was staring out, his face expressionless, his eyes blank.

She found him thus on every morning that she came to visit.

In the past few months Pandrasus seemed to have shrunk. He was clothed in a simple waistband and short linen waistcloth, his belly folding over the waistband in flabby folds where once it had rounded firm and proud. His arms and legs had thinned as if, having no longer the duties of kingship to support, their muscles had lost their strength and dwindled into uselessness.

His hands, dangling between his legs, quavered with a slight tremor.

“Father,” Cornelia said, drawing up a stool to sit next to him.

He turned his head listlessly. “Daughter.”

“Ships have arrived,” she said, “two nights since. Eight of them.”

Pandrasus grimaced, the only sign that he’d heard.

“Your fellow kings betray you,” she said.

“They have been paid well with Dorian jewels,” Pandrasus said. “Riches buy any loyalty.”

“Then use those riches to purchase your own loyalty,” Cornelia said, keeping her voice low lest the guards at the door hear her.

Pandrasus shrugged, turning his eyes to gaze blankly out the window once more.

“
You
do not have to lie each night under the weight of his body,” Cornelia whispered harshly. “
You
do not have Trojan sweat ground into your pores! How can you just sit there and
shrug
when it is
I
who must endure him?”

Pandrasus turned his face back to her, his eyes a little less dull than they had been. For the first time he noticed the filmy linen she wore under her jacket, and he frowned.

His daughter was proud of her breasts, and enjoyed displaying them.

Lifting one trembly hand he tugged at the linen where it was tucked into her girdle, finally managing to free it so he could pull the material towards her neck.

The material caught on one of Cornelia’s breasts, and she flinched.

Pandrasus saw her movement, paused, then raised the material more carefully.

His face, if possible, became even more expressionless than previously.

Cornelia might be his only heir, his only legitimate child, but Pandrasus had impregnated so many of his concubines that he was well used to the early changes pregnancy wrought in a woman’s body.

He lifted a finger to one of her breasts, and traced the engorged blue veins as they marred her ivory flesh.

“You are breeding to him,” he said, now cupping her breast in his hand, as if to gauge its weight and value.

“You think to blame
me
?” she said. “You think this
my
fault?” She brushed his hand away and jerked the material back over her breasts. “Save
me,
father, if not yourself.”

“How? How?” Pandrasus was finally roused. “Here I sit day and night cosseted about with Trojan spears. How am
I
to save
you?
Would you like me to beat that child from your belly? Throw you from this window to a final release? Is that what you want?”

Cornelia drew back from her father, her expression hard. “I need a father. I need a man who can protect me.” She tossed her head. “That is not what sits before me now.”

Colour mottled Pandrasus’ cheeks, and his mouth clamped into a thin line.

She held his stare, where once she would have looked away. “Nichoria,” she said. “If you ask Podarces of Nichoria then he will help. Remind him of the debt he owes you.”

Pandrasus looked at Cornelia carefully, both surprised and a little disconcerted at her knowledge. “The ‘debt’?” he said.

“You knew Podarces well when you were young together. You found him one day, burying his youthful manhood between his mother’s legs even as he tightened his hands about her throat. You kept your silence, even though matricide—and maternal rape—is a most unnatural offence. Podarces owes you his throne. Call in the debt.”

“
How do you know this?
”

“A woman came to me,” Cornelia said, her very calmness unnerving. “She said she was a goddess, and showed me the manner of Podarces’ mother’s death. She said you knew, and it was a knowledge that you should now use to throw off this Trojan insult to your kingdom
and
your daughter.”

Pandrasus stared, then relaxed, nodding a little. “The gods came to you, and have shown you—and thus me—the means to our freedom.” He smiled, proud of his daughter, and patted her cheek. “I will need you to send him a message, demanding his aid. Can you do that?”

“Yes!” Cornelia leaned forward, taking her father’s hands and, not even flinching at the discomfort, pressing them to her breasts in the traditional Dorian woman’s gesture of gratitude. “Yes, I can arrange that!”

“
M
embricus?” Assaracus? How stand our preparations?”

Brutus and his two companions stood on the beach of the bay just west of Mesopotama. It had been three months since the first ships had arrived. Now almost one hundred black-hulled ships bobbed at anchor in the waters before them, crowded so closely together there was scarcely an arm’s breadth between their sides. Brutus called the flotilla his “kingdom”, for a man could step on to one of the outside ships and jump easily from ship to ship, traversing a territory of undulating wooden decks and platforms.

“The last of the ships arrived last night,” Membricus said.

“Pandrasus said he could get no more,” Assaracus put in.

“Hmmm,” Brutus said, not unduly upset. In the past six months Pandrasus had purchased, leased, begged, stolen and commandeered virtually all the ships along the west coast of Greece, and some from even further afield. Brutus could see, even from this distance, the distinctive lines of several Egyptian merchant vessels. “What ratio war vessels to merchant?”

“Seventeen war vessels,” Assaracus said. “The rest are merchantcraft. We shall be at risk from pirates, if we sail very far south.”

His last sentence was both statement and question. Brutus had, as yet, confided nothing of his plans to any of his lieutenants. Seven thousand Trojans were about to sail into the unknown, and to an as yet unknown destination, and Brutus wanted them to do so without question.

“The gods shall watch over us,” Brutus said, then turned so he could look at Assaracus. “Remember what happened to Pandrasus and his army.”

Assaracus grunted. What had happened to Pandrasus was a fading memory, both for the Trojans
and
the Dorians. Brutus had established his authority quickly and cruelly within days of taking Mesopotama, and for months the Dorians had been so cowed, and so shocked, by the turn of events that there had been no resistance or questioning of anything Brutus ordered.

But now there was a growing undertow of resentment and loathing within the Dorian community. Brutus’ preparations for the outfitting of his fleet had stripped the city and its surrounding farming land of all its wealth, both food and gold. Everything Mesopotama had was being poured, both literally and metaphorically, into Brutus’ fleet. Pandrasus himself had overcome the sloth and depression which had at first gripped him and was growing more confident, more ready to express openly his contempt of Brutus and the Trojans where before he had taken the effort to veil it.