Aethylla sighed, stroked my brow, and said numerous things that I suppose she thought might be comforting.
Her efforts made me sob all the harder. Stop it ! I wanted to tell her. Go away! I wanted to shout at her, but none of these phrases came to my lips.
Instead I sat there in the sand, my legs sprawled most ungracefully, my belly bulging between them, my robe half ruined, its hem rumpled somewhere about my thighs, and I cried like a child.
Aethylla eventually sat beside me, and held me, and soothed me and, eventually, when I had calmed down somewhat, wiped my nose with the hem of my robe, sat back a little, and lifted the child from her back.
I was vaguely aware that it had been crying itself for a little while.
Aethylla smiled at me conspiratorially as if we were somehow made sisters by the shared fact of our maternity, and cuddled the child to her. She pulled aside the bodice of her robe, and offered her breast to the baby.
Its mouth latched on to Aethylla’s nipple like a starving dog snatches at meat, and I winced, instantly vowing to find a wet nurse for this load within me.
She saw me frowning.
‘Do not think the feeding of a child is a burden,” she said. “There is no sensation a woman loves more than the feel of her child at her breast.”
I looked away. I didn’t want this child at all, let alone to have it grub for sustenance at my breast.
‘When you birth your baby,” she continued, her eyes watching me with a faint and highly irritating degree of condescension, “you will want to snatch it up and place it at your breast. All women do.”
‘I don’t want this child!” I said, balling up a fist and striking it against my belly. “I don’t want it! I don’t want it! I don’t—”
To my shame, I began to sob again, and Aethylla sighed—again—and looked away.
AETHYLLA, HER BABY, AND HER HUSBAND, PELOPAN, were to accompany myself, Brutus, Membricus, and Deimas (who showed not a single sign of grief at the destruction of the city that had sheltered and nurtured him) on a raft to Brutus’ lead ship.
Apparently Brutus had decided that Aethylla would make good company for me.
I didn’t care one way or the other. I was weary beyond belief, both my sadness and the physical effort I had been forced to undertake in order to escape the destruction had taken their toll on me. I just wanted to sleep, and some small part of me hoped that when I woke it would be to find that this entire day had been a nightmare—that this last seven months had been a nightmare!—and I was once more home with my father and a life to look forward to with Melanthus.
Membricus aided me to the center of the raft—I hated the feel of his hands on my flesh, but I did not complain—while some twenty or twenty-five other people crowded about me.
Brutus was the last to leap on the raft—his energetic leap causing the craft to rock alarmingly in the water—and he shouted to the men with the poles to take us out to the ship.
At this I raised my head, and looked ahead. All of the ships bar one had raised anchor and were under oar toward the mouth of the bay. The ship remaining was a sleek warship, its black hull sitting low in the water, its prow and stern curving gracefully in arcs at either end. I could see the heads of the men who sat on their oar benches, waiting for us.
I looked behind.
There was no one left on the beach. Somehow I had been so absorbed in my grief that I’d not noticed we were the very last to leave.
Something went cold and hard within me.
I was leaving. Leaving .
I cast one more glance at what was left of Mesopotama—nothing but a small hump of rubble that even still was collapsing into itself; in a week’s time there would be nothing remaining to tell anyone that once a proud and glorious city had stood on that hill by the Acheron.
Brutus had apparently seen where I looked, for I heard him say to Membricus, “Mesopotama no
longer. Necropolis now, I think.”
‘A fitting city for the river of Hades, my friend,” Membricus replied.
Oh, Hera! How I despised them both. I might berate myself for my part in Mesopotama’s destruction, but that did not stop me loathing those men who had pushed me to it.
The raft journey was brief, and soon we were at the ship. Most of the others boarded first, and then I had to suffer the indignity of having Brutus and Aethylla’s husband, Pelopan, lift me into the ship as if I were a loosely tied pile of goatskins.
What am I thinking? Brutus would have handled even those goatskins with more care than he did me.
I had never before been aboard one of these warships, even though many had docked in the bay at Mesopotama before, and so once aboard I forgot my exhaustion for a moment to stare curiously about me.
The body of the ship was open-hulled, a row of benches for the oarsmen on either side of a great gaping chasm that went down to the keel. This space was now filled with people, all turning themselves around and around like dogs as they arranged their blankets in the limited room available to them. Here and there chickens squawked, dogs barked, and—I could not believe it—several goats farted happily.
For one appalling moment I thought Brutus expected me to bed down in this chaos, but he put a hand to m,’elbowandnoddedtowardthebackofthe nP ‘There is a small cabin on the *ftdeck'”hesaid ‘ “where l havearranged a sleeping space for you.”
I wrenched my elbow away fro*11hishandandlooked-Therewasindeeda smaU raised deck across the steri*sectionoftheshi P’Onthiswasatimber construction that may, with imagU18*01*’havebeencalledacabin There was also a rickety enclosedaffair suspended over the very stern of the ship, which I instantly realize**wasameansofsome Privacytoallowone to void one’s bodily wastes.
I suddenly realized how full m,’bladderwasand – a%am> m ye yesfilled ™th^Embarrassingly, Brutus had s^enthe^ction in which my eyes had traveled and he turned to Aethylla. “ferhaps you could assist Cornelia? The deck of a ship can be treacherous for oneunused to it.”
Thus it was that I found myselfbeing aided aft by Aethylla, chatting all the way about how carrying a child i*>adeawomanaPltothemostembarrassing urinary accidents, and while I w*ntedtohateherasmuchas l hatedBrutus-all I could feel was grateful, be^ause l donotthink l couldhavemanaged unaided on this constantly tiltingfootin S’andwithm ytri Pleburdensofchild’
exhaustion, and sorrow.
‘Thank you,” I muttered as A^thyllaaidedmemtothe privy, and the woman nodded at me, as if I were a chiK1who had suddenly decided to be good.
Later, when she accompaniedmeintothe cramped and stifling cabin and to the straw mattress atop the sleeping pallet, she said to me, “How many months to go?”
«Twoor three,” I said, lowe<mSm yselftothemattress, and slghmg with And then the relief caught H^estoneinmythroat ‘anddread overcame me.
!LA Y ON THE MATTRESSALLTHELONE HOURS IT TOOKustor ow to the open ocean afldtoget under way-south, from what I heard someone shout from the open h”11oftheshiPasthecrewraisedthe ^at linenU Hay there as afternoon slid into night, and Aethylla brought some bread and wine for me to eat.
! lay there for hours, terrified for my life, and not knowing what to do aboutTw0 or three months to go.Twoorthreemonthsbe fore I gave birth to this baby.
Two or three months to live.
I had no illusions about how Brutus felt about me. I think he hated me almost as much as I him. If he initially hadn’t, then he most certainly did now after those viciously spiteful words I said to him the previous night. Oh, Hera, if only I could take back those words now!
If I was alive and on this ship now, then the only reason was because of this child.
I placed my hands on my belly, feeling the shape of the child within, and for the first time realized just how precious it was to me.
This child was the only thing keeping me alive… and when it no longer depended on me for survival, then Brutus could well hand it over to a wet nurse and decide I was eminently disposable.
Maybe Brutus would not actually kill me—although, frankly, I thought he would have no hesitation in doing so—but at best I would be abandoned on some tiny atoll or barren stretch of coastline.
I remembered again, with growing horror, the words I had thrown at Brutus last night. How I’d taunted him. How when he snatched at me as if to strike me, I’d said, “You wouldn’t dare! I carry your son. You wouldn’t dare.”
And how he had then said, “Then beware of the day you no longer carry that child, Cornelia. Beware the day.”