Coel shot Brutus a look as they remounted and headed back across the ford—their horses had to struggle through almost chest-high water now that the tide had begun to rise—and wisely decided to make no comment. He wondered what had happened on Tot mount to have made Brutus this dark with anger.
As their horses clambered up the eastern bank of the Llan, Coel’s eyes drifted to the north, to where the Veiled Hills sat behind their protecting cloak of mist.
He could feel Loth there, standing on the northern bank, staring out towards Llanbank with his strange, angry eyes.
Waiting.
They had to speak. Soon.
But not until after Coel discovered what had happened on Tot Hill.
Brutus jumped down from his horse, and strode into the house without so much as a word or a glance for Coel.
Inside, Corineus and Hicetaon jumped up from their stools about the hearth.
“Well?” said Hicetaon.
“Have they agreed?” said Corineus.
“Yes,” Brutus said, then proceeded to ignore them both. He strode over to where Cornelia sat, cuddling Achates. He bent down, ignored the apprehension on her face, took his son and handed him to Aethylla who, having taken one look at his face, retreated as far away within the circular house as she could.
“Why do I pretend that I can trust you,” Brutus said, standing before Cornelia with straddled legs and hands half clenched at his sides, “when time and time again you show me how little you can be trusted?”
“Brutus…” Corineus said, taking a careful pace towards him.
Brutus half raised a hand, and Corineus stopped dead. “Do not think to speak for her, Corineus, when she has kept her pretty mouth closed all this time about your wife’s death.”
Cornelia blanched, and shrank back. Now all eyes in the house were on her.
“Cornelia?” Corineus said, half in question, half in confusion.
“Did you witness Blangan’s death?” Brutus said to Cornelia.
She did not answer, her eyes huge and round, now flitting about the interior of the house as if someone might save her.
“Did you witness Blangan’s death?” Brutus said again.
She looked at him, straightening her back and regaining a little composure. “Yes.”
“What?” cried Hicetaon and Corineus together, although Corineus’ cry was distressed where Hicetaon’s was merely confounded.
“Yes,” Brutus said softly, his gaze still riveted on Cornelia’s face, “and yet she has never thought to remark on the fact to any of us. Did you plan it, Cornelia? Is that why you have kept so silent? Did you aid in the doing, is that why you have kept your knowledge to yourself? Or is it just your vicious, duplicitous nature not to remark on an event which has caused Corineus—”
Cornelia flinched.
“—so much grief and which,” Brutus’ voice rose to a shout, “the MagaLlan Genvissa has just thrown in my face? She knew—why didn’t I?”
One of his hands shot out, grabbed Cornelia by the arm, and hauled her to her feet. With the other he grabbed his knife from his belt, tossed it so that he held it by the blade, and thrust the hilt in Cornelia’s face. “Take this cursed knife now, and thrust it into my belly. No need to toy about behind my back.”
“I was scared,” she said softly. “As I am now.”
“Brutus,” Hicetaon said quietly, coming to stand by Brutus and Cornelia and taking the knife from Brutus’ hand. “We should hear what she has to say before we judge her harshly.”
“The fact she has not spoken before now is her judgement,” Brutus said bitterly, but he let go Cornelia’s arm and stood back a pace.
Cornelia took a deep breath, glanced at Corineus, flushed, then looked back to Brutus.
“That night Blangan disappeared, I woke, and saw her leave the house. I was curious, and followed. No, do not ask what bred that curiosity, for I do not know…perhaps the god who destroyed Blangan.”
“What ‘god’?” Brutus spat.
Cornelia licked her lips, her hands clasping and unclasping before her. “I followed Blangan to the Stone Dance where I hid behind one of the great stones. She did not see me. I watched for some minutes—”
“What was she doing?” Corineus asked, his voice breaking.
Cornelia’s eyes flickered to him, and her flush deepened. “She was walking about, tracing her hands about the stones. She looked…she looked as though she were remembering. I don’t know. How can I have known her mind?”
Her voice cracked on that last, and Brutus made a gesture of angered impatience.
“Go on,” said Hicetaon.
“I waited a long time, and I grew cold, and thought I should return to my bed. But before I could move, I heard Blangan cry out, and I saw…I saw…”
“What?” cried Corineus. He had come close now, staring at Cornelia as if he could drag the words from her.
“I saw a monstrous man enter the Stone Dance,” Cornelia said. “He was young, and muscular, and completely naked. If it had not been for his head I would have thought him most well made and pleasing.”
“Cornelia…” said Brutus, and she hurried on.
“He had bones growing from his head in four or five places. Like the horns of a beast of the forest. His entire head and face was distended, as if the underlaying bones bulged unnaturally. He…he stank of musk, and exuded an aura of such power and such bestiality that I cannot think him anything but a god, or an imp of some degree.”
Corineus made a strangled sound, but Cornelia swallowed, and continued, taking care not to look at him. “The man rushed to Blangan, and grabbed her. He snarled, and then…then…oh Hera, then he began to eat her. I could not stay, I was terrified he would murder me as well, and I ran back to the house and crawled into bed. I did not speak of it afterwards, for the terror continued. I thought if I spoke, then he would come for me, and bite into my breast, and tear me apart as well.”
There was a long silence. Corineus put his hands over his face, and his entire body shuddered.
Hicetaon laid a gentle hand on the man’s shoulders, then wrapped him in a tight embrace.
“He stank of musk?” said Brutus softly, his gaze still unrelenting on Cornelia. “How close was he if you could smell his stink? Why should I believe this?”
Then…“Was Coel there?”
“No!” she said, perhaps too quickly, for Brutus’ eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“No!” she said, more forcefully, meeting his eyes, and this time Brutus accepted it.
“How can I ever trust you,” he said, “when you kept this from me? I thought we had agreed to build a marriage, you and I. Then…this. What else will you do to me, Cornelia? What other dagger can I expect in my back?”
She was weeping now. “None, I swear, Brutus. I am sorry, I was scared.”
“What have I done to deserve a wife such as you?” he said softly, and turned his back on her.
As he walked away from Cornelia, Hicetaon rose from Corineus’ side. “It is ‘yes’,” he said quietly to Brutus, “we can stay?”
Despite his anger and frustration with Cornelia, Brutus managed a small smile. “Aye, my friend. And…and I am to rebuild the Troy Game.”
“The Troy Game? But how can that be? To rebuild the Game, surely, you would need…need—”
“Stop rattling on so, Hicetaon. Yes, to build the Game I need the Mistress of the Labyrinth. And I have her, my friend. I have her. The MagaLlan is the Mistress of the Labyrinth.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Coel straightened up from his position crouched against the point where the thatched roof met the outer walls, his expression thoughtful.
The “Game”? This was the Trojan magic Genvissa had brought to Llangarlia? And Genvissa was this “Mistress of the Labyrinth”?
This he must tell Loth, and soon.
But…Cornelia. Coel couldn’t believe that she’d kept so much silent. She’d protected him, she’d protected Ecub, she’d protected Mag in that she ha
d not told Brutus of the Dance or of some of the mysteries she had been privy to.
I do not deserve such a wife as you, Brutus had said, and Coel agreed wholeheartedly with him. Brutus most certainly did not deserve a wife such as Cornelia.
All Coel’s curiosity regarding Cornelia resurfaced a hundredfold. Yes, she’d told Brutus about Loth, but that was to be expected. Genvissa had placed Cornelia at the scene, and Cornelia had to tell some of the truth or risk further discovery.
Loth had to hear all of this. Now.
Besides, Coel was desperate to tell Loth that he believed Blangan innocent of the original darkcraft, and to learn what, if anything, had happened between Genvissa and Loth.
Coel looked about. Bladud was lazing about in the mid-morning sun at the door of a house some distance away. If anything else interesting was going to happen inside this house, then Bladud could just as easily spy as Coel.
Coel jogged towards him, whistling softly to catch Bladud’s attention as he drew close.
“I have a task for you,” he said as Bladud rose.
Once again astride his stocky, shaggy horse, Coel rode eastwards through Llanbank until he reached the outer market area and livestock pens of the town. Here the main road from the south-east coast joined the north–south road, and here, three times a year, the major trading and market fairs of Llangarlia were held. Livestock traded hands, shepherds won themselves work for the next year, tin and copper from the mines in the far west were traded for gold and silver, and for fabric from the foreign merchants who had sailed up the Llan from the coast eager for the metals to take back to their homelands.
Coel turned his horse along the northern road which twisted through the mud flats and tidal marshes of the Llan as it flowed east towards the coast. There was no place to ford the river here, the water being too deep, but a sturdy ferry operated to transport the traffic to the northern road where it continued at the far bank.
He was in luck. The ferry was waiting on the southern bank, the ferryman looking pleased to see someone to distract him from the boredom of his morning.
“Few people on the road today?” Coel said as he led his horse into the flat-bottomed boat.
The ferryman nodded towards the deep bank of fog on the northern shoreline of the Llan. “It makes people think twice,” he said, “even though the road skirts the dangerous places.”
“Well, that’s as it should be,” Coel said, and the ferryman nodded, now too busy with his oars (and with shouting at the two other oarsmen to put their backs into it) to answer.
Besides, he knew Coel, and he knew Coel had no reason to be afraid of the mist.
On the far side, Coel thanked the ferryman and his assistants, saying that he would sacrifice metal on their behalf.
Pleased, the ferryman bobbed his head, and grinned contentedly. “Will you be wanting transport back to the southern shore?” he asked.
Coel nodded. “Wait for me. I should not be long.”
From the ferry, Coel rode northwards for a time along the road. It led through the eastern sector of the Veiled Hills—many of the six sacred mounds and hills rose to the north-west, but two of the most sacred mounds were directly to his east—but was safe enough for the ordinary traveller so long as he or she did not leave the road.
But Coel was not especially ordinary and he knew Loth would give him protection, so when he’d ridden only some four or five hundred paces he turned his horse off the road towards the north-east where, a short ride away, lay the edge of the great sacred forest.
Where ran Loth.
Normally Coel would find Loth waiting for him among the outer trees of the forest, but today Loth met him halfway across the grassland, emerging out of the mist a few paces ahead of Coel’s horse, making the beast snort in startlement.
Loth smiled gently as he walked up and placed a hand on the horse’s forehead; it quieted instantly.
Then Loth raised his eyes, still and hard, to Coel. “There is more doing here than we ever realised.”
Coel slid from his horse. “I know,” he said. “Will you speak first, or shall I?”
“I,” said Loth. He closed his eyes briefly, and drew in a deep breath, humiliated to have to confess this. “I was used. Used by Genvissa. She tempted me with power and her body, then sent me to murder Blangan in order to finally destroy Og.”
“I thought as much,” Coel said softly. He could hardly bear Loth’s pain, and moved close enough to him that he could rest his hand on Loth’s shoulder.
“She has me trapped,” Loth continued. “If I try to move against her then she will say I murdered Og in my own maddened quest for power…and maybe that’s the truth, Coel. Maybe it is.”
“Do not be so harsh on yourself, Loth. Genvissa is not alone in this…she has the help and support and work of the five damned foremothers before her. This has been planned far longer than I think you realise.”
Coel told Loth what he’d surmised: that Blangan had never been the one to wield the darkcraft that had split Og’s power. Then he told Loth what he’d heard: that Genvissa was what she had termed the Mistress of the Labyrinth, and that the Trojan magic she’d brought to Llangarlia with Brutus involved something called the Troy Game and the building of a mighty city.
“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 o
nly 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.”
CHAPTER SIX
CORNELIA SPEAKS
Sometimes 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.
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