Hades' Daughter

by Sara Douglass

  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.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CORNELIA SPEAKS

  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.

  Aethylla was still screaming about something, leaning back and pointing behind me, but I didn’t care.

  “Shush,” I murmured to the boy, and oh, hear his cries! “Shush, my lovely, shush…”

  Then someone grabbed my hair.

  Everything changed. I abruptly became aware of what was happening about me: the foul smell of Membricus’ spilled bowels, and the shrieks and howls emitted from his lips; Aethylla’s screams as her terrified eyes focused on someone behind me (the man who had my hair? Was it Brutus, returned to view his son?); the humped body, also curiously disembowelled, of the other woman who’d been assisting my son’s birth; and then the stink of the man who had his hand so cruelly buried in my hair—a stink more foul even than that of Membricus’ bowels.

  I suddenly realised I was very likely about to die.

  Perhaps strangely, this did not particularly perturb me. After what I’d been through, sure that I was going to be torn to pieces anyway, I was quite resigned to a death of some sort. So long as Aethylla managed to get my son to safety I wasn’t particularly concerned about it.

  But I twisted my face, and looked anyway.

  The great naked hulk of a man loomed behind me. His body—ugh! What a hairy gut he had!—was caked thick with blue clay. His face was a messy web of close-woven black inked lines, his eyes wild and staring from their midst.

  His genitals, wobbling on a level close with my eyes, looked as though they’d been tattooed completely black.

  They smelt diseased.

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust, and out of the corner of my eyes, saw him raise a blood-daubed sword on high.

  His mouth parted, and his teeth gleamed.

  Aethylla was screaming in the background, and something inside me just snapped.

  I’d simply had enough. This day had been bad enough without this disgusting hulk trying to murder me.

  I raised my hand, so recently on my son’s head, and grabbed the monster’s penis.

  Then, infuriated with everything from Brutus’ cruelty to Aethylla’s insults, I yanked and twisted the repulsive member as hard as I could.

  He screeched, his sword dropping from his hand. He half doubled over, his eyes popping, his mouth open and making funny gasping sounds.

  I pulled again, really viciously this time, and the man toppled over, and fell directly on top of a (still screeching, for sweet Hera’s sake!) Membricus.

  My attacker’s face was buried in Membricus’ disgusting, shredded entrails.

  I put my hands to my mouth, looked at Aethylla who was now silent and staring at me, and began to giggle.

  Only one semi-hysterical chortle managed to escape me, then suddenly the room was full of men. Brutus, shouting something; Corineus, calling my name; someone else, Hicetaon perhaps, covered in blood and lacking an ear.

  Someone sank a sword into the naked man’s back, and pulled him off Membricus.

  There was a moment, very still, when Membricus looked at Brutus and said something—“It was my belly, not hers!” I think it was—and then, thankfully, he died. The moment spent, Brutus leaned over me. He spared me a glance, his face shocked, then looked at the baby.

  He reached down to pick him up, but Aethylla, who had finally regained her wits, brushed his hands aside. She twisted the cord that still connected my son to my body, tied it with something to hand (a piece of Membricus’ entrails, for all I know), and then bent her head down and bit it in two.

  Then she tore a piece of cloth from Membricus’ cloak, wrapped my baby in it, and handed him to Brutus.

  “No,” I cried, reaching out, but Brutus was gone, and it was Corineus who reached down, wrapped me in my cloak as gently as Aethylla had wrapped my baby, lifted me up, and carried me outside.

  Then, so strangely, another of those life-altering moments, just when I thought I would never have another.

  Men, Trojans as well as more of those blue-daubed naked savages, lay in various poses of death, limbs hacked off, bellies peeled back as Membricus’ had been, throats opened to steam in the cold air.

  I saw faces I knew, men who had died that I might give birth to my son.

  Idaeus, his entire body torn apart by several sword strokes.

  And beside his corpse, moaning quietly, was Aethylla’s husband, Pelopan. He would be dead soon, for there was a gaping wound in his left flank through which blood spurted, and his left arm had been severed completely below the elbow.

  Poor, in
nocent Pelopan. He would die also, that I might fulfil my desire to give birth on land.

  And all to what purpose? I had insisted on giving birth on dry land only because it would force Brutus to my will, and I had so hungered for a single, small victory over my husband that I would have done anything to accomplish it.

  But this? These men, dead and dying so that I could have one pointless, foolish victory over my husband?

  Oh, Hera, had I done this? Had I learned nothing from my father’s death, and that of all of Mesopotama?

  “Look you at the death you have wrought,” Brutus’ soft voice said to one side, and I twisted my head in Corineus’ arms, and saw him standing several paces away, our son curled quiet in his arms. “See the lives you have destroyed. Remember, Cornelia, what you accepted. Responsibility for all that your demands spawned.”

  Corineus’ arms tightened about me, and, ever my saviour, I think, he said to Brutus, “You agreed to it, Brutus. You rushed to agree to it. You and Membricus. Why? Did you know this was going to happen? What did Membricus say back there…‘my belly, not hers’? You knew? Your responsibility as well, Brutus. Yours as well.”

  There was no reply from my husband save the cold glint of his eye on me.

  And then I heard Aethylla cry out, and saw her rush to her husband’s side, and I also cried out, undone.

  The trip back to the boat was a journey into Hades’ hateful realm itself. Corineus carried me the entire way, as gently as he could, but as he stepped into the first of the rolling waves at the shore’s edge, my belly cramped with pain again, and I twisted in his arms.

  “She is expelling the afterbirth,” Aethylla said. “It will not kill her.”

  Her eyes were hard, hateful, and I could not blame her for any particle of that hardness and hatred.

  Corineus carried me back to the ship through the rising surf, and all the time I bit my lip to keep my cries muted, hoping that the pain would overwhelm me and I could lose myself in it.

  It would be better than facing my guilt.

  He carried me to the cabin, and laid me on the bed, and then retired as Aethylla, hard-handed, took the afterbirth from me. (Blangan, I think, was with her husband, and I thanked every god there was that he had not been killed as well. Blangan’s grief I could not have faced.) Once my afterbirth was gone, Aethylla fetched a bowl of water, and cloths, and washed and attended me, and all the time I wept, and cried out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but I think that she never heard me.

  When she was done, and I dry and well blanketed again, she went outside, and when she returned she brought with her Brutus, still carrying our son.

  “He will need to feed,” Aethylla said and Brutus leaned down and handed the baby to me.

  I could not look at my husband’s face.

  I concentrated on my baby, folding back a corner of the blanket, and lifting his dear face to the nipple of my breast.

  He clasped hold of it, his mouth strong, and I gasped in delight.

  He suckled, then again, hard and demanding, and then he let go my breast and wailed.

  I tried again, pushing the nipple into his mouth.

  Again he suckled, and then once more let go, and wailed his disappointment.

  Aethylla leaned down and snatched him from my arms. “She has no milk,” she said, and with that single condemnation, lifted aside the bodice of her robe, and put my son to her breast.

  He suckled, and was instantly contented. All the happiness of his birth vanished, and I was left a husk, a failed mother, and a woman who trailed death behind her at every turn.

  Hades’ daughter, hadn’t Brutus once called me?

  Hades’ daughter.

  Very much later, well after dawn, Brutus came to see me.

  I had my son back from Aethylla then, and I was weeping that the smell of milk from his mouth was not the smell of my milk.

  I raised my head as I heard his step in the door.

  “You’re still awake,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Aethylla?”

  “She has gone, perhaps to mourn her husband.” My voice trembled as I said that last, and Brutus walked over to the bed.

  He stood a long moment, then pulled up a stool and sat, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling between his legs.

  His face was haggard.

  I thought I was surely dead, and I thought also that I deserved it.

  And what need had he of me? Aethylla could feed his son.

  Brutus reached out a hand, and touched the baby’s face. “It has been a hard night,” he said.

  “Brutus—”

  “Say nothing. I do not need to hear what you have to say.”

  He paused, and his hand strayed from his son’s face to mine. He lifted my chin so he could the better look me in the face, then he dropped his hand away from me.

  “We are doomed to each other,” he said, “by the gods, I think. It was you who should have died in that hut. Membricus had seen it.”

  “No wonder you were so willing to allow me ashore,” I said, a little surprised there was no bitterness in my voice.

  “Cornelia, Corineus spoke truly outside that hut. I knew from Membricus’ vision what would happen, and I ordered those men to accompany us, not to protect you, but to ensure that you died. I ordered them to their deaths, for a foul reason. In all of this, you were as much the victim as the instigator. I have just come from talking with Aethylla, and I have told her what I have just told you. If her husband lies dead, then his death lies on my soul, not yours.”

  I closed my eyes, almost unable to bear what he confessed to me. I ordered those men to accompany us, not to protect you, but to ensure that you died. Strangely, that degree of honesty comforted me. It did not hurt.

  And to admit that he was as wrong as I…was I to be allowed to breathe, and to take pleasure in life? My arms tightened about my son, and I looked once more at my husband.

  “We are doomed to each other,” he said again. His face became ever more drawn and exhausted with each word. “The gods will have it no other way. Cornelia, I need to know…do you dream of another man? I could not bear being married to a woman who—”

  “No,” I said. “If I taunted you with Melanthus, that was to be cruel, to punish you for his death. And Corineus…you accuse me of lusting after Corineus, and I do not. If I smile at him, it is merely because he has been kind to me.”

  “And your dreams? Why do you laugh in your dreams?”

  “I do dream of this land towards which we sail. Not of a man, but of green meadows and secret places. And also of this great stone hall that you mentioned. There is a child who plays there, and I think she is our daughter. Brutus, how did you know of this hall? Did you also dream of it?”

  “Aye.” His eyes were veiled now, and I wondered at his thoughts. “But I do not see this child.”

  “If we both dream of this hall, then it must be.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, and his tone was cooler than ever. Then he sighed, and his face relaxed a little. “If we can trust each other, Cornelia, perhaps…”

  “Yes,” I said, so relieved I swear my eyes were brimming all over with tears again. “Yes.”

  We stared at each other a long time, then he forced a smile to his mouth, and looked once more at the baby. “Aethylla said that after all your weeping and wailing and cursing, the instant you laid eyes on our son you changed. She said she saw it.”

  “Aye. I loved him, even though I had hated him ever since I first knew he was growing inside me. I could not believe that I—” my eyes flew to his “—that we had made this between us, between all our hatred. I could not believe it, and yet there he lay.”

  He sighed, then stood. “Make your peace with Aethylla, Cornelia. We cannot afford to war with each other.”

  He walked to the door, and then turned back once more. “The child. Is there a name you wish to call him?”

  Would I never stop weeping? I did not realise a single
woman could have so many tears inside her, or that she could ebb between despair and joy so many times in a single night. “You choose,” I said. “He will be a king in your steps.”

  He stared at me a long time. Then…

  “We shall name him Achates.”

  “It is a good name,” I said, and he nodded, and left.

  “Achates,” I whispered, and kissed my son’s head.

  Part Four

  London, March 1939

  “Does Asterion have Cornelia?” said Stella. “Ah, my love, I cannot answer that. You know I may not speak of him.”

  Skelton regarded her bitterly, wishing he could step back three thousand years and do everything so differently. Wishing he could have forced the truth from her then. Wishing he could do so now.

  Something in her face shifted, and Skelton saw the yearning deep within her.

  “The remaining kingship bands?” she said. “Are they safe?”

  “Is it you who asks, or Asterion?” he said.

  Her eyes filled with tears, and she dropped her gaze.

  “This is the last opportunity we will have. The last Gathering,” Skelton said softly. “What chance do we have, Stella?”

  “There is always hope,” she whispered, still not looking at him.

  “Do you think I find comfort in clichés?” Skelton said. “Look!” He took the newspaper he’d kept folded under his arm and shook it out. “Look!”

  Despite herself, and even knowing what it revealed, she glanced down at The Times. “Munich Betrayed!” screamed the headline.

  “Hitler has invaded Czechoslovakia,” Skelton said. “The Rhineland, Austria and the Sudetenland have all gone. Now Czechoslovakia. Asterion is behind this. I can smell it.”

  She said nothing.

  “This is a bleak tide indeed sweeping down upon us,” he said. “Aimed at you…at me…at that.” He jerked the newspaper towards St Paul’s. “This time he is going to destroy the Game completely, and you and me and Cornelia with it. The world with it, Stella. Everything.”