Hades Daughter (56 page)

“What is this ‘Game’?” Loth said. “Of what manner of power does it consist? And what meaning this reference to the labyrinth? By all the gods in every land, Coel,
what is going to happen
?”

Coel shrugged his shoulders unhappily. “Perhaps at the Assembly we can—”

“Genvissa controls great power, Coel. What we
know
is not what the Mothers will
see.
If Genvissa tells the Mothers that she has a means, even through a strange magic, to counter the downfall of Og and ensure that their daughters will not die in childbirth,
then they will do whatever she says, even if it means they must lie down with dogs.”

“And your father?”

“Has been Genvissa’s willing tool for too many years to change now.” He paused. “Genvissa told me there was nothing I could do, that there was no weapon left.
Bitch!
What if she is right, Loth? What if she is right?”

“Loth, listen to me. I need to speak to you of Cornelia.”

“What of her? She had little—”

“Loth,
listen
.” Coel summarised what he knew of her. Cornelia’s strange attraction to the land; her unexplained knowledge of the Stone Dances; the feel of Mag within her womb, so strong when Coel had entered her in the rock pool; her uninvited appearance at Mag’s Dance
and
her intimate knowledge of Mag’s Nuptial Dance.

“Moreover, Loth,” Coel continued, “she remembered all that had happened. Neither the drugged wine she’d drunk in Ecub’s house, nor the frenzy wine she’d imbibed in Mag’s Dance hid the memory.”

“But later,” Loth said, “when Blangan was dead, there was no power left in her. I, too, had thought there was
something
, but…”

“She’d fainted, Loth. Might that not explain it?”

“I don’t know…”

“There’s something else you need to know, Loth. Genvissa told Brutus to ask Cornelia how Blangan had died.”

Loth went very still, and the mist rushed in close about them.

“Brutus was furious that she had kept this secret from him. He threatened her, with his voice and his fists.”

Loth lifted his lips in a silent snarl, and the mist trembled.

“Yet even so threatened, Cornelia only told him of you, and of the manner in which you killed your mother.”

“She did not mention Ecub, or what happened in Mag’s Dance before I arrived? She did not mention
you
?”

“No.”

“She did not mention the Nuptial Dance that she made with Blangan?”

“No.”

Loth frowned. Cornelia had
no
reason to protect Mag (or, indeed, anyone who had been within Mag’s Dance). None. Unless…

Loth finally looked at Coel from out of his hideously deformed face. “This woman is very enigmatic,” he said. “Very much so. Not only because she has protected so much when Brutus, as you say, threatened to beat it from her…but that Genvissa was so careful to set Brutus against her. Why would Genvissa feel threatened by Cornelia?”

“Because she is Brutus’ wife, when Genvissa wants him in her bed, as she surely does?”

Loth shook his head. “A wife here or there would not bother Genvissa. A wife would just be something to be ignored. No, she is somehow disturbed by Cornelia, and that makes
me
more than curious to discover why.”

He considered, looking away into the mist as if he could find hope there.

When he finally looked back to Coel, his friend thought that maybe he had.

“I think that you are going to find Cornelia’s company a compelling thing over the next few weeks,” he said. “I think you are going to become a very great friend to her.”

Coel smiled, very gently, very warmly. “And
I
think that your suggestion will not be a hard thing, Loth.
I
think that I will not find it an arduous task at all.”

S
ometimes I find myself wishing I could have bitten my tongue, and taken back unthinking words, and sometimes I find myself wondering why it is that I have remained silent.

Why did I not tell Brutus in the first instance about the manner of Blangan’s death and then, in the second instance, hold back so much when I
was
forced to tell him?

That night spent in Mag’s Dance remains with me so clearly. The dense mystery of the yellow mist, the sensuality of Blangan’s dance, the power of Ecub and her frenzy wine…that monstrous man, and the touch of his fingers on my breast and belly.

How could I tell Brutus that, and expect him to understand the beauty of it?

Yet holding back that part which was
not
beautiful—Blangan’s death—destroyed that which was growing between myself and Brutus. We had existed so long in mutual hatred that the slow and desperately fragile growing together after Achates’ birth had been the sweeter for what had preceded it.

Then that single omission, that simple silence, and Brutus’ angry face and the hilt of his dagger thrust into my face.

Aethylla, of course, made things no easier for me. She chided me for my stupidity, for my naivety, and my
unthinkingness.
Worse, she scolded me while nursing my son, ensuring I had to endure the double burden of my stupidity as a woman and my failure as a mother.

And all this she did while Brutus stood and watched.

I could have wept. I
did
weep, once Brutus, Corineus (shooting me a half-sympathetic, half-accusatory glance) and Hicetaon wandered off somewhere to discuss whatever Brutus had been told that morning, and I was left to my own devices.

Left to consider my failings.

And so I did, for Brutus’ departing face left no doubt in my mind that he considered me less than the dustiest, flea-ridden cur. I spent the first part of the morning sitting inside that round, stumpy stone house, alternately weeping and cursing myself silently as I rocked a sleeping Achates (Aethylla having generously allowed me to hold him) to and fro in my arms.

Later, when I managed to calm a little, and Aethylla had fed Achates once more, I noticed that it was a wonderfully clear morning. I ventured outside, Achates in my arms, wondering if the Llangarlian guards beyond the door would allow me to walk about the town.

The only guard, as such, was Coel, leaning against the outer wall of the house, idly chewing a twig, and looking for all the world as if he had been waiting for me to appear.

“Cornelia,” he said, spitting away the twig and standing straight, “I would like to make amends for creating this distance between us. Can we talk?”

Tears sprang unbidden to my already red and swollen eyes. I was so desperate for a moment’s kindness, a kindness from
anyone,
that I didn’t even consider that it was Coel who had begged me to remain silent in the first place.

“I thought,” he continued, “that I might be your escort for the day. What say you? Would you like to see some of this land and its people?”

And then he lifted his hand, and with the gentlest of fingers, wiped away one of the tears which had escaped down my cheek.

He nearly undid me, as he had undone me in that rock pool. No one, save Blangan or Corineus, had ever been this kind to me, or treated me as a respected equal.

I opened my mouth, unsure what to do (what if Brutus discovered it?), but before I made any sound I heard Aethylla calling my name, and her voice was hard, and spoke of further judgement.

“Yes,” I said in a rush. “Thank you.”

He nodded, his eyes twinkling at my obvious desire to escape Aethylla.

We walked away down a street towards what Coel said was the market area of the town. “Many of the local hamlets and farmsteads are herding their cattle and sheep to the pens here for the autumn sale,” he said. “It is one of the busiest times of the year for Llanbank.”

I could not have cared less about any market, but thought it impolite to say so. I nodded, and tried to look interested.

Coel laughed. “What am I doing?” he said. “Marketing is a man’s world and of no interest to you. Besides, the ground grows muddier towards the market, and your shoes are too fine to ruin. If we go this way, along this path towards the fen lands, we will come to some pleasant meadows, where we can sit and talk.”

Reluctantly (I truly did not want to spend a morning talking with Coel in some wild grassland to provide Brutus with yet more fodder for cruelty), I followed him along the path. The houses soon fell back, allowing sweet meadowlands to take their place. Coel led me to a spot underneath a stand of young ash trees, and we sat among the periwinkles and columbines that grew there.

“This is a very beautiful land,” I said, made uncomfortable not only by the silence, but by the warmth and gentleness of this man beside me.

“For a stranger,” Coel said, “you have a deep regard for Llangarlia, don’t you? A bond, almost.”

“It is very beautiful,” I said again, briefly closing my eyes in agonised disbelief that I could be so incapable of a coherent conversation.

Coel drew up one knee, resting his extended arm on it. He looked out at the meadowlands, and the glint of the Llan lying just beyond.

“Brutus has been cruel to you,” he said.

Oh Hera, if he continued on with this then I
was
going to cry again.

“Yet you did not tell him about Ecub, nor of Mag’s Nuptial Dance, nor of anything else save Blangan’s death. That was well done, Cornelia.”

I still could not speak.

“And you did not tell Brutus of me.” Now his voice was very soft.

He turned and looked at me. “I thank you for that, from the depth of my being. And Loth thanks you as well.”

“Loth!”

“Yes, Loth. There is no need to be afraid,” Coel said. “Not of Loth, anyway. He is no danger to you.”

“He killed Blangan.”

“He was the one who tore her apart, yes, but—”

“How can you defend
that?
”

“—he was sent there, Cornelia, sent by Blangan’s
sister
who wanted her dead more than anything.”

I was silent.

“Blangan has—had—a younger sister called Genvissa, who is now the MagaLlan of Llangarlia. She is the woman whom Brutus went to see this morning.”

I frowned, thinking there was some connection that I should be making.

“Loth did wrong, Cornelia, and no one is more aware and more regretful of that than Loth himself. But Genvissa sent him there saying that if he killed his mother then he would restore Og’s power to this land.”

“Og’s power?” I had no idea what Coel was talking about.

Coel talked for many minutes then, telling what I did
not
know about Blangan: the conception and birth of her son, the splitting of this power of Og, and of how Blangan had been blamed for what was probably the darkcraft of this Genvissa’s mother.

Now Genvissa, the MagaLlan, had apparently taken up the same darkcraft with as much success as Herron.

Coel was sitting very close to me now, our bodies touching at hip and thigh. “Cornelia, Loth is not the one you should fear. Genvissa is.”

“But…why?”

“Genvissa wants Brutus, Cornelia. She will make sure, one way or the other, that you are set aside.”

“No!” But it was true, for as Coel spoke my mind had suddenly, belatedly, made the connection it should have made minutes ago.

Was
Genvissa
the woman of whom Brutus dreamed? And then I wondered how I could have forgotten all about this dream woman—had I been so desperate to believe Brutus and I had a viable future together?

“No, surely not,” I whispered, hoping the denial would ensure the fact.

“Genvissa,” Coel said, “was the one who told Brutus that you had been in Mag’s Dance.
She
told him to ask you what had happened.”

Of course, I remembered Brutus mentioning her in those horrifying moments when he had accosted me.

“Genvissa,” Coel went on, cruelly driving home into my mind the name of my rival, “feels threatened by you, Cornelia. Why is that?”

“I am Brutus’ wife, of course. She wants Brutus and yet here I am. She is jealous.”

He gave a small, sad smile. “No. No wife would ever stand in Genvissa’s way…and it is hardly as if Brutus loves you, Cornelia, is it?”

Oh, how could he be so heartless? I was crying now, for I knew that Brutus indeed did not love me. He reviled me.

And all I wanted…all I wanted was for him to love me.

“Cornelia,” Coel whispered, and again wiped away the tears from my cheek.

I would have been completely undone then, I think, save that Achates stirred in my arms, and whimpered. I looked down, rocking him, glad of the interruption. “I will have to go. Achates needs to be nursed, and—”

“I saw that on the journey north you gave Achates to Aethylla to nurse. You do not wish to feed him yourself?”

I found myself flushing, not at the talk of nursing, but with shame. “I cannot. I have no milk. I will need to give him to Aethylla to suckle.”

Again Coel reached out with his thumb, this time gently touching my cheek. “You feel shame at your lack…and you should not, Cornelia. But I still do not understand. Many women give birth and find their milk does not come for several days. The child spends that time whimpering, or at the breast of a temporary nurse, but always a mother’s milk comes and she can suckle her own infant. Your milk never came?”

I found myself blinking, unable to believe I could be having this conversation with a man. “I…I tried to nurse him on the day he was born, but I had no milk. Aethylla took him from me, and fed him.”

And I remembered how my breasts had ached for a week afterwards…

“And she never gave him back?” His voice was angry, unbelieving.

“No.”

Achates’ whimpering was rising to a fully-fledged wail now, and Coel, giving me one more disbelieving look, rose effortlessly to his feet and walked a little distance into the surrounding meadowland. He spent a few minutes looking at the plants about him, then suddenly bent, pulled an entire plant out of the ground, and tore off its fleshy root.