One night, six weeks after I’d bathed in the pool under the Llandin, I made particular effort. I took his hands and rubbed them across my naked breasts. I pressed my body against his, and reached down my hand to his member, that I might rouse him to use me.
This time he did more than just turn aside claiming weariness.
‘I may not, Cornelia,” he said roughly, as if my initiative irritated him. “The ceremony to bless the city and begin the Game is only two weeks distant, and I must keep myself unsullied.”
‘I would sully you?” I said, trying somewhat unsuccessfully to keep my voice down in the house that Hicetaon and Aethylla still shared with us. “You did not use that excuse the night you so roughly took my virginity, as I remember.”
‘It was different then.”
‘Oh, yes, it was different then. Then you merely took what you wanted; now, when I want, I am cruelly brushed aside. Brutus, you said to me the day after Achates was born that we should make the best of the marriage we were doomed to. I have tried… have you?”
‘Cornelia, there are great matters that you cannot understand—”
‘There is only one ‘great matter,’ ” I said, truly angry now, “and her name is Genvissa.”
‘You cannot possibly understand,” he said, his voice cold and dismissive. “You are but a girl.”
And with that he rolled over, presented his back to me, and feigned sleep.
I lay awake the rest of the night and seethed, and in the morning, when he was gone, I went to see Erith.
I HAD AVOIDED HER SINCE THAT NIGHT AT THE SPRING.
In part because she had tried to keep me from Brutus’ bed that night (why, I have no idea, for had she not aided me in my quest to conceive?), but mostly because I felt slightly ashamed. I had behaved badly— again—and I did not wish to see the gentle censure in her eyes.
But I need not have worried. Erith greeted me kindly, did not remark on how long it was since I had been to see her, and hastened me inside from the wintry weather into the warmth and comfort of her house.
Coel was there, his clothes mud-stained as if he had only recently arrived himself, and he, too, greeted me warmly, bending to brush my cheek with his. I had not seen him much recently, and I felt a surge of guilt. Coel had been as good a friend to me as ever I could want, and—again—I had treated him poorly.
I peered over his shoulder into the depths of the house, and was glad to note that Loth was not present.
‘Erith,” I said. “I cannot stay long… but I need your aid.”
Something came over her face then—a hesitation, perhaps.
‘I need… I need to know if I am with child.”
She frowned. “Did you not lie with Brutus that night after your visit to the spring?”
‘Yes, but—”
‘Then you are with child. Here.” She drew me to her, and laid a hand firmly over my belly.
She let it lie there a moment, then she raised her eyes, now curiously flat and dead, back to my face.
“You have the daughter you wished for, Cornelia. Can you not know this?”
‘I was confused. I—”
‘You didn’t feel Mag within your womb, telling you it was so?”
I blushed, although I did not know why. “I was confused, Erith.”
Erith shared a glance with her son, and I felt as though I had been judged at that moment.
She let me go, stepping back. “You are with child, Cornelia. Is that not what you wished for?”
I sighed in relief. “Yes. Yes, it is Erith. Thank you.”
I turned to share my joy with Coel, and found him looking at me with a great sadness.
It stunned me, and momentarily drained away all my own happiness—had he wanted me that
much?—but then I tossed my head, put the smile back on my face, thanked Erith once more, and left the house.
I would find Brutus, and tell him, and all would be well.
GlD6JMGy-CU9©
,’Xapr RITH LOOKED AT HER SON WHO WAS STILL STARINGat the door where Cornelia had disappeared. “Oh, Coel, be ^hw’ careful. I feel doom in my bones, and cannot but help think you are somehow caught up in it.”
He pulled his gaze reluctantly from the door, and smiled gently at his mother. “There is doom abroad for all of us, Mother. The day of the Game draws near… and what can we do?”
‘Nothing,” she said, very low, her expression defeated. “Genvissa holds our people enthralled, no one will move against her.”
‘Cornelia?” Coel said, but his voice was hopeless.
‘She cannot see past Brutus,” Erith said.
She gave a low, bitter, hopeless laugh, and sank down to one of the benches before the hearth. “How can it be that Mag has chosen Cornelia as her weapon against Genvissa? If this is truly so, then we are surely lost, as is Mag.”
CORNELIA HASTENED BACK TO HER HOUSE, COL lected a warm cloak against the cold and slipped her feet into a pair of sturdy clogs against the mud, and then hurried out again, walking through Llanbank and then the Trojan settlement to the ferry crossing.
People were everywhere, despite the cold. Many of the Trojans still worked on fortifying their winter settlements—houses within the city walls would not be available for at least a year. Women worked at their household tasks, weaving and baking, minding children, drawing water.
The road that led north through the settlement was now virtually impassable—so many bullocks and carts had drawn building materials from the southern quarries northward toward the ferry over the Llan that the graveled GO surface had been trodden into ankle-deep mud—so Cornelia stepped carefully on its verges, mindful of the need to avoid slipping.
As she neared the Llan, she stopped, tightened her cloak about her, and raised her face to the northern bank.
It was a hive of activity. Where six weeks earlier had been three gentle grassed mounds, divided by the stream of the Wai and bounded on their southern edge by the clay cliffs above the Llan, were now three humps, their grass mostly trampled into the earth beneath, covered with teams of laborers, groups of engineers, piles of gravel, wooden piles, rough-cut stone sections that stone masons were hewing into neatly edged building blocks, and intermittent heaps of soil that had been dug out of the wall’s foundation trenches.
Cornelia had been to the site two or three times in the past weeks, but had not stayed long. She had felt in the way among all the scurrying and purposeful workers, and when she’d managed to talk to Brutus, he’d been distant, distracted, and had turned aside as soon as he could.
She held her breath, nervousness fluttering in her stomach. Where was he? What was he doing?
Surely he would not be distant with her when he heard she was carrying his child… would he?
Cornelia’s eyes traveled over the site, but she was too far distant to be able to see many details. With a sigh, and yet a further tightening of the cloak about her body, she set off to the ferry.
THE FERRY LANDED ON THE NORTHERN BANK OF THE Llan at the midpoint of the southern wall. Cornelia accepted the ferryman’s assistance in stepping from ferry to muddied foreshore, thanking him, then turned and studied the immediate area.
The foundations of this southern wall seemed all but done. The trenches had been dug, and were now filled with a mixture of gravel, flint, and clay. Already stonemasons were laying the founding course of stones for the wall. Cornelia stopped by the first group of men she came to, and asked where Brutus was.
The foreman stopped, straightened, stretched his back, and then wiped his sweating face.
‘You’re like as not to find yourself knee deep in mud, my lady,” he said, eyeing her cloak and footwear. “This is no pleasure garden.”
‘I need to see my husband,” Cornelia said, as firmly as she could manage.
‘He’s up on the White Mount,” the foreman said, nodding in the direction of the easternmost mound.
“Surveying the site of his palace.”
Cornelia smiled, her eyes alight. “He is beginning on the palace?”
‘Aye,” the man said. Several other of the men in his work squad hi put down their tools and were studying Cornelia silently.
Cornelia’s smile had now widened until it lit her entire face. “For n The man smiled, but it was brittle, false. “A palace fit for a king i queen, my lady.”
‘He hadn’t told me!”
And with that she was gone, moving as quickly as she could throu gangs of workers and piles of building materials.
The men watched her go.
‘Fool,” said one.
The foreman watched Cornelia pick her way toward the White Mounl for much longer,” he said. “Not when she finds there’s no chamber i palace for her.”