Gods Concubine (52 page)

This was the man that Cornelia had smiled at and spoken to, and he was as unaware of Brutus’ presence as Cornelia was.

A deep, vile anger consumed Brutus. Who was this that she met?

The man was as naked as Cornelia, and Brutus saw that he was fully aroused. Who was he? Corineus? Yes…no. Brutus had an unobstructed view of the man’s face, yet could not make it out. First he was sure that he wore Corineus’ fair features, then they darkened, and became those of a man unknown.

Cornelia said the man’s name, her voice rich with love, and it, too, was undiscernible to Brutus’ ears.

“Do you know the ways of Llangarlian love?” said the man.

“Of course,” said Cornelia, and she walked directly into the man’s arms, her arms slipping softly about his body, and offered her mouth to his.

They kissed, passionately, the kiss of a man and a woman well used to each other, and Brutus found his hands were clenched at his side.

“Caela,” Silvius said, his voice rich with love. “Do you know the ways of Llangarlian love?”

“Of course.”

“I am not Brutus. I am not my son. Know that.”

“I know that.”

“Yet you choose me? Freely?”

“Yes.
Yes!
Freely,
yes
! Gods, Silvius, enough words. I have had
enough
of this virginity.”

“As you wish,” he whispered, and grabbed at her mouth with his, and pulled her to him. She pressed her body against his, moaning, and together they half sank, half fell to the floor.

All his apparent doubts gone, Silvius wasted no time, nor did he seem to have care for Caela’s sensibilities. He put a hand on one of her shoulders, pushing her hard against the stone, and with the other hand he parted her legs and mounted her, thrusting deep inside.

Caela cried out as she felt the warmth of her virgin blood spill across the stone flooring. She struggled a little under Silvius, but he did not tolerate any resistance, and, both his hands now on her shoulders, he thrust again and again.

His face, and the one eye that shone from it, were very hard.

After a short while she subsided, accepting him, and then moaned.

“No!” William shouted, and lurched upright in the bed, grabbing frantically at the bedclothes. His eyes stared straight ahead, but they did not see his own bedchamber.

They only saw the dream.

“No!” Brutus shouted, and would have stepped forward and grabbed at the man now moving over Cornelia with long, powerful strokes save that he found himself unable to move.

He could witness, but he could not interfere.

The lovers’ tempo and passion intensified, and Cornelia moaned and twisted, encouraging her lover in every way she could, and they kissed again, their bodies now so completely entwined, so completely merged, that they seemed but one.

Caela held on to Silvius’ shoulders, remembering with every one of his movements those nights she had lain with his son, remembering how Brutus had felt inside her, remembering how he had made her feel, and she wept, silently and softly, because Silvius made her feel none of these things. Silvius was a powerful lover, almost cruel in his strength, but all he accomplished with his body and his sweat and his effort was to make her long for his son.

Silvius saw her tears, and his mouth caught at hers, demanding, powerful. He lifted his face away from hers for a moment.

“Do not weep,” he rasped, “for this is all you asked for.”

Then he lowered his mouth again, his teeth biting and grabbing at her neck and breasts, drawing blood here and there.

And then he paused, still buried deep inside her, and raised himself on an elbow, looking down.

His face was flushed and sweaty, his black hair tangled, his breathing harsh and heavy.

“Do you wish I was Brutus?” he said.

“No,” she said.

A strange look came over his face. “You lie.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“It does not matter,” he said, and she felt him move again inside her. “All that matters is that
I
am here, and that you took me freely.”

His hips rocked back and forth, smooth and practised. “Hang on to me,” he said fiercely, and her hands tightened on his shoulders, “and remember that you freely accepted what now I give you.”

“I feel nothing,” she said. “Silvius, what is wrong? I feel nothing.”

“All that matters,” he said, then grunted, thrusting more fiercely than he had heretofore, “is that
I
feel, my lady, and that your body lies beneath mine.”

Caela closed her eyes, wincing at Silvius’ now violent action, and then, as she felt the sudden wetness of his semen within her, cried out, her eyes flying open.

William sat upright in bed, his body bathed in sweat, his breath heaving in and out.

His eyes still stared wildly, his hands clutched among the bed linens.

He had seen, finally, the man’s face.

His father, Silvius, lay with Cornelia-Caela-whatever else it was that she had become.

And yet, Silvius notwithstanding, in that terrible moment when William had seen his father’s face, and heard him cry out as he shuddered over Caela’s body, William could only see the vision, and how it had ended.

The man’s form changed, blurring slightly. He was grunting now, almost animalistic, and for the first time Brutus saw that Cornelia had her hands on the man’s shoulders as if to push him off.

She cried out, and it was the sound of pain, not passion.

Brutus still could not move, and he watched in horror as the man’s form blurred again, and became something horrible and violent.

A man, yes, with a thick, muscled body, but impossibly with the head of a bull.

The creature tipped back its head and roared, and both Cornelia and Brutus screamed at the same moment.

The creature’s movements became violent, murderous, and Brutus saw that he was using his body as a weapon.

There was blood now, smearing across Cornelia’s belly and flanks, and her head was tipped back, her face screwed up in agony, and her fists beat a useless tattoo across the creature’s back and shoulders.

“Cornelia! Cornelia!” Brutus screamed, and for once both Cornelia and the creature heard him, and both turned their faces to him, and the creature roared once more, and Brutus knew who it was.

Asterion.
Cornelia had invited evil incarnate to ride her.

“Caela?” William whispered. He rose from the bed, throwing back the sheets angrily when they tangled briefly in his legs, and walked to stand naked before the window.

“Caela?” he whispered again, staring into the blackness and distance. “What have you done?”

Silvius pulled out from Caela’s body, but did not roll away. Instead he gazed at her, his face hard and watchful.

She lay as if asleep, her face flushed, her breasts rising and falling.

Silvius ran a hand over them, and then down to her belly.

At that her eyes opened.

“Well?” he said, his expression now soft.

She frowned. And then smiled, but it was half-hearted, and troubled. “Thank you,” she said.

“I was not what you wanted,” he said, and then laid a hand over her mouth as she tried to speak. “Never mind,” he continued, his voice a little hard, a little disappointed. “You were all that
I
wanted.”

Then he rose from her, and was gone.

Oh gods, it was not what I expected. He had constantly told me he was not Brutus, and yet all I could think about when he mounted me was Brutus, and all I wanted was Brutus.

“Do not take me only because I remind you of Brutus,” he’d said.

But I think that
was
why I
had
lain with him, the only reason, because his face was that of Brutus, only kinder, and his body was also that of Brutus, only sweeter and gentler.

And yet, when Silvius had mounted me, I could barely restrain from shouting Brutus’ name, from screaming for him. Gods, it was as if he’d been there, watching. All I had wanted was Brutus. All I had thought about was Brutus. All I had
felt
was Brutus.

So was that why I felt no different
—
save, of course, for that throbbing heat and the lingering discomfort between my thighs? Is that why that emptiness still echoed within me, why that sense of “un-rightness” had, if anything, grown? Was this
my
fault, my weakness?

I laid my hand on my belly. My womb felt strangely sore, although I knew there would be no child from this encounter. For that I was heartily glad. I hated to think what mischief my womb might breed from lying with one man while all the while dreaming of another.

I let my head roll to one side. “Brutus,” I whispered. “How is it you can torment me so?”

And then I wept, for the sheer stupidity of that question, and for all the good this night had done me.

Later, when Caela had long gone, Asterion stood in the stone hall, staring at the dark stain of her virgin blood on the stone floor.

He stood there a long while, his face expressionless, then he finally permitted himself a tight smile, and vanished.

F
OURTEEN

“
I
pray you, ladies, do not rise.”

The three women who slept in the chamber outside Swanne’s bedchamber, still blinking sleep from their eyes, glanced at each other in uncertainty.

“I merely go to the Lady Swanne,” the Archbishop of York said, grinning benignly, his fingers laced over his huge stomach. “As her ladyship and I had agreed. As part of our contract. Surely she mentioned this to you?”

The senior among Swanne’s ladies, Hawise, slowly shook her head, her eyes fixed on the archbishop.

Aldred grinned. “What? Swanne modestly unforthcoming? I cannot believe this. And she
begged
me!”

“I cannot think that my lady—” began Hawise.

“Well, my lady
did
agree,” Aldred snapped, suddenly waspish. “Do you think that I would have risked Edward’s and, for the sweet Lord’s sake,
Harold’s
, wrath merely out of the goodness of my heart? No, my lady has a payment to make, and tonight she is going to make good her debts.”

And with that he brushed straight past the one among the women who had risen from her bed, and opened the door into Swanne’s bedchamber.

Swanne had been fast asleep when the sound of a raised male querulous voice had started to pull her from her dreams into wakefulness. Before she could fully rouse, the door to her bedchamber had opened, a vast bulk had moved through the opening, then the door had closed again.

Firmly.

Then came the sound of a bolt sliding home.

Alarmed, Swanne half raised herself, clutching the bed covers to her naked breasts.

“Who…?”

“Your beloved archbishop, my dear. Come to claim his debt.”

“What?” Swanne had been so deeply asleep that she was still not completely awake.

The man—
the vast bulk
—moved close to her bed, and Swanne instinctively slid away until the bare skin of her back touched the stone wall against which her bed was placed.

Aldred—Swanne recognised him now—started to fumble at the neckline of his robe, where ties held it in place.

Swanne’s mind suddenly snapped into full alertness. Full awareness.

“Begone from here!” she hissed. “Get
out
!”

“Nonsense, my dear.” The robe now slid from his body and, in the faint light from the partly unshuttered window, Swanne saw the immense expanse of dimpled white flesh that stood before her.

The sight of this sickening mass of a man, the very
thought
of him clambering atop her, made Swanne feel nauseous, but that initial reaction was instantly overridden by a wave of immense anger.

“Remove yourself!” she shouted.

Aldred took a single pace forward, the numerous rolls of fat over his chest and down to the mound of his belly undulating like the river at high tide, and placed a hand over Swanne’s mouth, forcing her hard back against the wall.

Swanne’s round and furious eyes glared at him over the top of her hand, and she opened her mouth further, meaning to bite him, but just before she could bring her teeth down, something surged through her…

A sense of terror.

Her breath stopped. The terror had not come from Aldred, nor from the situation in which she found herself. Nor even from herself, for Swanne was furious, not terrified.

It came from memory.

It came from the memory of a woman silently screaming inside Swanne’s skull.

No! No! No!

Then Swanne did feel the first inkling of dread, for she knew who that was.

Ariadne.

No, no, no…

Aldred had clambered on to the bed now, his hand still held brutally tight over Swanne’s mouth, and was kneeling over her, straddling her with his legs.

Something, perhaps the sound of Ariadne’s terror, made Swanne look over his shoulder.

The faint illumination from the window cast Aldred’s shadow on to the far wall.

This shadow was not that of the fat, loathsome man who straddled her.

It was of a fit man, tightly muscled…

…and with the head of a bull.

Up to this moment Swanne had been struggling with the huge man who had forced her back against the wall. Now her efforts became utterly frenzied. She struck at him with her fists, beating without pause, and tried to jerk her knees into him.

She tried to bite him, but his hand had pushed her upper lip hard up against her nose, and she could not force her jaw to close.

He laughed, soft, joyous.

“You know me for who I am now, Swanne?”

She made a strangled sound under his hand, her body trying to buck under his.

“Come now, Swanne. No need for such histrionics. Ariadne didn’t put up a fight like this. You knew, of course, that she and I were lovers as well as siblings?”