Hades Daughter (39 page)

Her eyes were terrified and hopeless, staring at him from sunken flesh bruised with deep, blue shadows.

Her limbs trembled, and she let out a moan as Brutus walked slowly over to her.

All her defiance had fled hours ago.

He stood before her, staring, then looked at Aethylla. “Well?”

“It will not be long,” Aethylla said, her voice sounding almost as exhausted as Cornelia looked. “Whatever happens, it will not be long now.”

Brutus took a deep breath, and Aethylla looked at him sharply, wondering why it had trembled in his throat.

“Cover her with a cloak,” he said, “and yourselves as well, and bring her outside.”

“I cannot walk,” Cornelia said, her voice thin and desperate.

“You have legs, and you have life,” he said. “Use them both while you still can.”

“I don’t want Aethylla with me,” Cornelia gasped. “Please.”

Brutus paused on his way to the door. “You want me to risk
Blangan’s
life in your foolish misadventure? No! Aethylla and one of the other midwives will accompany you. I will not risk Blangan to your stupidity.”

Then he walked out.

Aethylla narrowed her eyes at Brutus’ back, resentful that Brutus was willing to risk her where he was not willing to risk Blangan, then looked consideringly at Cornelia. After this dreadful day spent trying to make Cornelia cooperate, Aethylla felt that if Brutus decided to take the child by force, she would hand him the knife herself.

“No…” Cornelia moaned, but Aethylla had finally had enough. She swiftly threw a cloak over Cornelia’s shoulders and, together with one of the other women, propelled her out of the cabin.

If Cornelia wanted to give birth on dry land, then that is what Cornelia would do.

“You will be well, Cornelia,” Blangan called after them, tears in her eyes. Poor Cornelia. Brutalised at both the conception of the child and at its birth by a husband who had no idea of the jewel he had acquired. “Mag be with you, Cornelia,” she whispered.

There were some thirty or thirty-five armed men cloaked and wrapped against the cold, standing at the side of the ship. Brutus stepped up as Aethylla and the other woman pushed Cornelia forward. The girl kept trying to fall to her knees, but Aethylla and her
companion were strong, and their hands gripped tightly under Cornelia’s armpits, keeping her more or less upright.

It was full night now, and Brutus’ body loomed large and threatening in the dark.

“Give her to me,” he said, taking Cornelia with rough hands. Then, nodding at the other men, he stepped over the side of the ship and dropped into the shallow water.

Even though Aethylla knew she, too, shortly would be up to her thighs in the freezing water herself, she could not help but smile at the sound of Cornelia’s shocked cry.

Hicetaon stepped forward to help her, and Aethylla climbed down a rope ladder set against the hull, dropping the final few feet into the water.

Gods, but it was cold!

Aethylla gritted her teeth, hugged the dry portions of her cloak closer about her, and looked ahead.

Brutus, half carrying, half dragging Cornelia, was little more than a black hulk against the slightly less black night sky.

There were splashes about her as the other midwife and the warriors jumped into the water. Thirty paces distant, additional warriors dropped from several other ships, and Aethylla clenched her jaw, and set about wading towards the dim shoreline.

It was a long, hard and viciously cold wade, and by the time Aethylla reached the shore, she hated Cornelia like she had never hated anyone before.

They huddled together twenty paces in from the waterline under the shelter of a group of wind-blasted bare trees.

Brutus spoke quickly, ordering the majority of the warriors, perhaps numbering one hundred and fifty, to fan out about them.

He still held tight to Cornelia, who was moaning incessantly now, her hands clenching then releasing where they gripped Brutus’ cloak. She sagged against Brutus, her almost dead weight threatening to drag him down as well.

“We must hurry,” Aethylla said to Brutus, “if you do not want your child born on this beach.”

Brutus began to order several of the remaining warriors to search for shelter, but Membricus, shivering so badly that Aethylla thought he looked as if he was in labour himself, interrupted him.

“It is that way,” he said, pointing to a small rise some forty or fifty paces away. “On the sheltered side of the hill.”

His eyes were cold, and so grey they shone almost silver in the faint light.

Brutus nodded, and walked forward, dragging the now sobbing Cornelia at his side.

Membricus stepped forward, and grabbed Cornelia’s free arm, taking some of her weight from Brutus.

The two men exchanged glances over her twisting, weeping body, and Membricus smiled, bright and eager.

For the first time, Aethylla felt a twist of unease. Beside her, Corineus murmured in concern.

The soil was sandy, soft, and hard on the calves. Aethylla found herself panting within paces of starting up the slope of the hill, the sodden portions of her cloak and robe twisting about her legs so that, on several occasions, she fell over.

Every time she fell Corineus stepped forward, aiding her to rise.

At the top of the hill Aethylla looked down, and almost sobbed with relief. There
was
a small hut not thirty paces away; little more than a lean-to, it had wicker walls, branches and the tattered remnants of matting as a roof, and a bleak gap to serve as a door.

Humble as it was, the hut would keep most of the wind out, and it looked reasonably dry, and for that Aethylla thought she would offer sacrifice to the gods as soon as she was able.

Brutus and Membricus were already dragging Cornelia towards the hut, and Aethylla, calling out to the other woman, who had been lagging behind, hurried after them.

There was little in the hut save a cold hearth in the centre of the packed dirt floor, and a raised bed of turf and rushes against the far wall. Brutus and Membricus hoisted Cornelia on to the bed, where she instantly rolled her back to them, and drew her knees up to her belly in agony.

“There is a lamp,” said Membricus, “I will light it.”

Brutus motioned Aethylla and the other woman inside—they hastened immediately to where Cornelia lay curled about her belly on the bed—then walked to the door.

He hesitated just before he stepped outside. “You will stay, and bear witness?” he said to Membricus.

Membricus’ teeth gleamed in the first sputtering light of the lamp. “Oh, aye.”

“There will be fighting. You know that.”

Membricus nodded, then glanced at Cornelia. “It will not be long before they attack. Keep safe, Brutus.”

Brutus nodded, looked one more time at Cornelia, then vanished into the night, his sword in his hand.

Aethylla had not liked the sound of that conversation at all. She looked at the other woman, who returned her look with wide-eyed fear, then turned back to Cornelia. By rights Cornelia should be squatting to deliver her child, but Aethylla held no hopes of being able to get Cornelia off this bed.

Well, if she wanted to give birth lying down, then she would just have to endure the additional suffering in the doing.

Without any gentleness in their hands, Aethylla and her companion grabbed Cornelia’s knees, rolled her wailing on to her back, and forced her legs up and apart.

Aethylla gave a great sigh of relief. “Look, the baby’s head crowns. It must have turned in the cold water.”

And if I’d known cold water would help so much,
Aethylla thought,
I would have dropped Cornelia overboard long before this.

A shout from outside, then a blood-curdling war cry, and a clash of sword against sword.

Aethylla and the midwife glanced fearfully at each other, but Membricus merely grinned. “It begins,” he said, and Aethylla wondered at what she had been caught up in, and whether she would survive it.

The woman beside Aethylla whimpered, glancing apprehensively towards the open door. Aethylla herself was growing more and more concerned, especially remembering Brutus’ reluctance to allow the nobler Blangan to come ashore, but she also knew that if they succumbed to their fear now then it might well be the death of them. She gave her companion a sharp pinch to bring her mind back to the task at hand, then reached between Cornelia’s legs to place a hand on her belly, giving the girl a reassuring pat.

“It will not be long,” she said, “but now, when the pain comes, you will need to bear down with all your might.”

Just then another contraction did begin, and Cornelia writhed on the bed, sobbing in her agony.

Membricus smiled.

The sound of fighting drew much closer, and Membricus tensed, looking to the door. He could see bodies silhouetted against the faint starlight outside,
struggling, the blades of swords and knives flashing, sometimes clean, sometimes dulled with blood.

He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry—not with fear, but with a sudden strange flowering of sexual excitement.

Soon…Soon…

Cornelia was screaming now, her body almost lifting off the bed with the strength of her agony, and Aethylla was shouting at her to
bear down! bear down!

The other woman was no longer at the bedside, but had scuttled on her hands and knees to the door as if seeking escape.

The fighting drew much, much closer, and Membricus, still watching—eyes wide, mouth open, breath panting in the extremity of his own excitement—could plainly now make out the features of those who fought.

The attackers, Goffar’s men, fought stark naked, their hairy bodies daubed with blue clay, their faces strangely tattooed in blue-black ink, and their bouncing genitals stained with some black substance.

As Membricus watched, only barely aware of what was happening on the bed before him, one of the Poiterans suddenly screamed, his sword dropping from nerveless fingers as the blade of a Trojan sword emerged from his belly.

At that precise moment, the baby slithered from Cornelia’s body to the accompaniment of a final, brutal scream from its mother. Aethylla gave a triumphant yell, and the other woman, now terrified witless, made a dash for the door…

…where she was impaled on the sword of the gigantic Poiteran who had just stepped through the opening.

His fierce eyes fixed on Membricus, the Poiteran put his hand to the dying, screaming woman’s shoulder, and pushed her off his sword.

She fell on the floor, hands to her belly, her mouth open in now silent shrieks, convulsed, and died.

No one noticed.

Membricus gave one glance to the bed: a baby boy lay between Cornelia’s bent legs, his arms and legs waving weakly, his tiny face screwed up with the injustice of his barbaric entry into the world; Aethylla, her hands held out to the baby, was nonetheless staring horrified at the Poiteran who had now taken one further step towards Membricus; while Cornelia was trying to raise herself to reach down to the child, oblivious of everything but it.

Membricus looked back to the Poiteran who towered only a pace away.

“Kill her,” he said. “Kill her now.”

The Poiteran looked at the woman and the child, hefted his sword, and, with a fierce cry of utter joy, buried it in Membricus’ belly.

He twisted the sword, crowing with delight at the shock on Membricus’ face, then jerked it to one side, then the other, opening up Membricus’ entire abdomen.

Then he took a step back, grinning hugely as he dragged the sword from Membricus’ flesh.

Membricus gagged, took a staggering step away from the Poiteran and, too late, tried to stop his bowels erupting from his body.

The glistening pink ropes of his entrails steamed in the night air, so many lengths that it seemed impossible they could have been stored within one man, and slipped gently, irretrievably, from Membricus’ abdomen to cover Cornelia’s breasts and belly.

Membricus gave one surprised hiccup, sank to his knees, grabbed at his entrails, and tried to stuff them back inside his ruined body.

The Poiteran, still screaming with battle-lust, lifted his sword and stepped towards Cornelia.

I
think that in everyone’s lives there is one moment, just that one single moment, where something happens that is so shocking, so profoundly extraordinary, that your life forever is changed.

For me that moment was when my son finally fought his way free of my body. After all the hatred and savageness of the past months, and most particularly of the preceding day, to have that child battle his way into life from my body was the most joyous moment of my entire existence.

I loved him instantly, simply and unconditionally. The mere fact of his existence wiped away all the pain and troubles of those long, terrible months he grew inside me.

I—
I
—had produced
this.

How could I ever have not wanted him? How could I ever have said I loathed and resented him? At that very moment I was so full of overwhelming love that I swear I also loved the man who had put him inside me (and at that thought I also wondered if my wits had been totally addled by the pain).

Everything Blangan had said to me was true. The instant he was born, and I could see what I had made, I adored him.

If I’d had the strength, I would have pushed damned Membricus’ entrails and steaming shit off my belly and
snatched him to my breast, but as it was, all I could do was try and shovel what was left of Membricus off my body and reach down between my legs to touch my glorious child.

I didn’t even think about why Membricus should have so suddenly and inexplicably burst apart before me, or why Aethylla was screaming at me (or was it at someone behind me?). I just wanted to touch my child.

I did, I touched his downy shoulder with one finger, and I burst into sobs of sheer joy.

Something whistled through the air where an instant before my shoulders had been, burying itself in the bed behind me, but that fact only barely penetrated my mind. I leaned further forward, disregarding the pain it caused my body, and ran my hand over his head.