Ecub caught Coel’s eyes, and smiled secretly.
Once the food had gone—but with the flasks of wine still being passed about—Ecub said a word to one of her sons, and he picked up a small drum and began to play upon it a complex, throbbing beat.
Shoulders dipped and swayed, and eyes half closed as people gave themselves to the power of the music.
Again Ecub said a word, and her two daughters rose, loosened their hair and the belts that held their robes close to their bodies, and began to dance.
Like the throb of the drum, it was a slow, sensual dance. They moved separately about the outer circle of benches and stools, but nevertheless danced to each other as if there was no one else present. It was a dance of lovers, and even though both the daughters were mothers themselves, and one was some five or six months gone with her next child, it was as though they were virgins, moving ever closer to that moment of their first bedding.
They twined about behind the people seated on the benches, their hips or hands or bellies occasionally brushing someone’s shoulder or back, but always Ecub’s daughters kept their eyes firmly fixed between themselves, acknowledging no one but the other, demonstrating desire for no one but the other.
Whenever they passed in their intricate orbits about the benches, their hands and lips would graze that of the other woman in abandoned promise.
Brutus was stirred by the women’s dance as he had never before been moved. Part of it was sexual desire—the way these women moved their bodies, the patent sexual intent of theirrhythmic motion, combined with the throb of the drum, meant that no one in the house could fail to be aroused—but the larger part was a sense that the dancers led him into a far deeper plane, an ancient mystical realm where strode gods and powers he could never hope to understand.
He drank heavily of the wine every time the flask came by him, and soon the wine throbbed inside his veins with the same beat of the drum, and every time one of the dancers passed behind him, and brushed him with hip or belly, ho moaned, his hands clenching into fists where they lay on his thighs.
The Llangarlians, women and men, had closed their eyes to sight, and let themselves drown in the sound of the drum and the touch of the dancers. They seemed to know whenever the flask was being passed their way, for they put out their hands at precisely the right moment, grasped the flask, drank of it, and passed it on without ever opening their eyes or interrupting the swaying movements of their bodies.
The Trojans, too, although more inhibited, gave themselves to wine and music and dance, and soon everyone was half mad with drink and sensuality, and the dancers’ rhythm increased until they were twirling about the circular rim of benches, their colorful robes a blur of brilliance, their hair and hands flying, and soon there was nothing but madness and pleasure, and people took partners as they pleased.
LATER, MUCH LATER WHEN THE NIGHT WAS STILL AND cold, Ecub rose from her sleeping niche, leaving Coel fast in sleep behind her, and walked naked to where Blangan lay with Corineus.
She reached out a hand, but Siangan’s eyes flew open before Ecub touched her.
‘Is it time?” Blangan whispered.
Ecub nodded, and stepped back.
Blangan slowly rose, careful not to wake Corineus, then stood next to the bed, gazing down at her
husband.
‘How I have loved him,” she said, then, her face composed but her eyes desperate, she followed Ecub out the door.
GUD6CV coRnelia speaksROLLED OVER, AWAY FROM BRUTUS’ WARMTH, AND
peered from under the thick wrapping that lay heavy and comforting over me.
gid with foreboding, yet I could remember no dream, nor think of any reason why this should be.
Then I saw two naked female figures briefly highlighted in the open door.
It closed, but I’d only needed that brief glimpse to know who they had been: Ecub and Blangan.
Hera! What was going on? What were they doing to set out unclothed into the frigid night?
The deep, horrible sense of foreboding increased, and I felt as though my stomach was turning over and over in its panic. I’d begun to sweat, as though I were consumed with fear, and I felt my heart racing.
And yet there was nothing to fear… was there?
Unable to lie still, I slipped quietly from the bed, slid my feet into my leather shoes lying close by, and grabbed a cloak.
Pausing to make sure that everyone else slept on, I opened the door and followed Blangan and Ecub into the night.
I COULD NOT SEE THEM, BUT THAT DID NOT DISTURB me. I was certain I knew where they were going.
The night was almost freezing, and I shivered, and pulled the cloak tight about me as I hurried through the few circular houses of the village, past the pens where the village goats and sheep slumbered the night away, and onto the path that led through the harvested fields toward the plain in the distance.
Once I was on the track I saw Siangan and Ecub walking side by side, now well ahead of me. How could they walk so calmly? They must be frozen!
They were almost to the embankment that encircled the Stone Dance, and they had shifted from the path I was on to a broad raised pathway clearly denned by ditches on either side.
Something made them stop, and turn to look behind them.
They saw me instantly: in this treeless landscape they could hardly have missed me.
Blangan became excited, turning to Ecub and grabbing at her arm with one hand, pointing to me with the other.
Ecub shook her off, and said a few words.
Blangan subsided, but her entire body language projected misery. I wondered why she didn’t want me to come to the Dance. I suppose I should have taken note of Blangan’s fear, her wish that I not follow,
but my foreboding had grown stronger with every step toward that Dance that I took, and there was nothing that could stop me now. What was wrong?
All I knew was that my foreboding somehow involved Blangan, and for love of her I kept on going.
As I continued to walk forward, my breath frosting about me, Ecub lifted a hand, pointed it at me, then slowly moved it about until it pointed at the raised path on which they stood.
The message was clear: You may join us, but to do so you must walk this path . I nodded, and cut across the turf between their path and mine. The going was difficult, and I stumbled several times, once almost falling.
I was wondering why on earth I was out here in the freezing night, and had started to think that the wise and sensible thing would be to return to my warm bed and husband, when the raised pathway suddenly loomed before me. I climbed down into the ditch, then scrambled up to the path’s surface using my hands for purchase.
Blangan and Ecub had gone, presumably inside the Stone Dance where the great dark monoliths, topped with their oppressive lintel stones, were now wreathed in thick garlands of a faintly yellowed fog.
When I had left the smaller pathway to cross to this raised one, the night had been frosty and clear.
It still was, where I stood, but not where the Stone Dance rose. There, mystery gathered.
Suddenly Ecub appeared, standing alone, dwarfed by the stones towering over her. She saw me, and beckoned again.
I took a step toward her, hesitated, then took another, then another, and before I knew why I was walking swiftly toward the Stone Dance.
Ecub held up a hand just before I reached the circle of stone—twin circles, I could see now, as there was an inner ring of smaller stones.
‘Stop,” Ecub said. “Why have you come?”
I licked my lips, then spoke the truth. “Because I fear for Blangan.”
‘How did you wake?” Ecub said, ignoring my remark about Blangan. “The wine was drugged so most would sleep insensible.”
Most? Hera, who else was going to join us?
‘Fear woke me,” I said, my eye sliding past her beyond the stones. “Fear for Blangan.”
‘Blangan is not deserving of such care,” Ecub said, her voice hard.
‘To me she is,” I said quietly. “I love her dearly.”
Ecub was unmoved by my words. “Only Mag herself knows why you are here,” she said. “Only she could have woken you.”
‘Then Mag must care for Blangan, too.”
Ecub’s face flushed—with anger, I think. “Mag has no care for Blangan at all!” she said. “Now, as you are here, and I must assume there is a reason for it, then you may enter. But stay with me, and do only as I tell you.