Chapter Ten....Secret Place
Andromache approached it slowly, giving her eyes plenty of time to adjust to it as it got brighter before turning that
last corner. Two guards sat at the table in front of the open door playing dice and they looked up without alarm as
they heard footsteps from inside the passage. They watched the way in, anyone coming out was meant to be there.
One of them even smiled widely as he recognized the princess and remembered times in the past he'd seen her
approaching just so. Except the man directly behind her was new and they both jerked to their feet in surprise as
they realized who it must be accompanying the princess through the tunnels. The fact that neither of them had a
torch wasn't lost on the guards and it added to their respect. Thebe's royal family might wander the labyrinth without
light but no one else dared risk it.
Andromache waved them to relax.
"All quiet today?" she asked with a smile and the oldest guard that remembered her 'walks' so well nodded with his
own smile in response.
"Quiet as usual, my lady." he responded. Gave a nod to the man next to her. "Sir."
The door was already open and Andromache gave both the guards another nod and led Hector past to where the
floor suddenly cut away to reveal the steep, tree covered slopes below and the path that led up and away to the
right. Andromache took the path and in less than a moment the forest had closed in around them entirely so that
the world was full of bird song and a breeze through the giant trees and filtered sunlight.
"Thebes is practically on the other side of the mountain" she told her husband. As comfortable here dwarfed by the
hugeness of the primeval forest as she had been buried under the darkness of the mountain. She looked over her
shoulder at him, eyes teasing. "So I don't think we'll have many people trying to drown you in gifts. At least not for a
little while."
"Good!" He said with a chuckle. "Not that I'm ungrateful, I love the meaning behind it. I just don't need so
much....stuff." He said with another chuckle and a shrug. What they were going to do with all that fabric, and oils,
and handicrafts was beyond him.
Hector looked around and smiled. Troy wasn't like this. For the most part it was flat. Endlessly flat until right before
you approached Mount Ida, where it would turn into a rocky, formidable landscape. Such lush forests were as
foreign to him as possibly anything in the world. "but you're right, for the first time since we left Troy, no one can
bother us." He looked around again. "I like it here. We should make it a point to come visit." Especially now that the
specter of her mother would no longer be hanging over her head. He at least had been able to give her that.
She smiled at that. Not pointing out that they were visiting. Knowing he was talking about the future and it warmed
her heart. That he would love her people and her family here. That he would feel comfortable with them even as
different as they were from his own. He held his own in her family and that was a hard thing to do. And he did it
naturally and with such a way to him that her family, always jostling for position and prominence, accepted his place
among them without resentment. As if he'd always belonged.
His family, she suspected, would have loved and accepted any woman their oldest son brought home. And she was
grateful for that. Was grateful that it had been her he'd brought back from Sparta.
Her mother in law was someone Andromache would have done almost anything to please. And who asked for
nothing that difficult at all.
A striking counterpart to Triantifilla...
Andromache left the narrow path to steadily pick her way in the direction of a rise.
"We'll bring it all back with us" she stated calmly. "Along with everything my father decides to send back as well."
She looked at him over her shoulder. Eyes smiling as the organizer in her came to the forefront and she added with
a laugh: "And then we'll give it all away to your family and friends and guards and strangers on the streets as
souvenirs from our trip."
Eternally thankful that Hector was no more a collector of useless items than she was. And then they crested the rise
and she turned her eyes, not on what was spread before them but rather on her husband's face.
The ground slopped gently away in front of them into tall, thin grass that ended at a stream that rushed merrily
along through the trees and grey rocks that glistened with chips of lights. But what was impressive was the water
that fell from the mountain that rose on their right in a pure white column of mist and gentle rain to hang rainbows in
the air around it as it fell and filled the air with the fresh scent of mountain water and green growing things and
freedom. There were wilder, stronger, more majestic falls on the mountain. But this one had always seemed magic
to her. Her own private, quieter version.
Hector looked at the waterfall, then looked at Andromache. "I can see," he said with a soft smile. "Why it is you like
water so much." She had been impressed by Mount Ida, but he remembered her on the beach those first few nights
she had been in Troy.
He'd always been one for the mountains, himself, but she was like the water. Soothing and gentle....but always with
that little undercurrent that a flood or tidal wave could come at anytime! At least none of the storms had been
directed at him so far!
"You know, between my family and your family...our children are going to be eight feet tall."
There was a light mist from the waterfall that could reach them where they stood when the breeze blew and
Andromache felt it against her cheeks as she raised her face to look up at her husband. Wondering why he was
talking of children.
It wasn't that they didn't. They did often. About sons and daughters and filling the palace of Troy with their children.
Children she secretly hoped would all have his eyes and his smile. But she knew the way her husband's mind
worked and he wasn't mentioning children randomly. It was in response to something else he was silently thinking
about.
And Andromache suspected her mother.
Whether it was seeing a parent that so obviously hated their child or something her mother might have said about
the future of their own children, Andromache wasn't sure. But she suspected Triantifilla at its root.
The battle was over. The war was over for that matter and she felt a sudden unexpected move of sympathy for the
future that waited for her mother now that Triantifilla's carefully constructed power base had been destroyed. There
was no doubt her family would take advantage of it and have their revenge for her years of subtle torment. But,
even losing, her mother would have left her mark. Especially since the battle field this time had been their hearts
and the weapons had been words. After a battle, Andromache always had to carefully check over her husband. To
heal his wounds, baby his bruises and reassure herself that he was well. This battle was no different even if the
wounds would be.
So she moved around to stand in front of her husband, stepping close, and rested her slim hands against his chest,
feeling the steady beat of his heart and the warmth of his skin against her palms as she looked up at him. Her eyes
were soft and warm and full of the way she loved him.
"I love you." she said it softly, reaching up to cup his cheek. "No one could have done what you did. Back in the
tower." He'd freed not just her but her entire family as well. It would take some getting used to. "But I'm sorry." she
meant it as she met his dark eyes with her own. "I'm so sorry you went through that." She cupped his cheek gently
with her hand. Wishing more than anything that she could have taken whatever hurtful words and vile curses her
mother had tried to cut him with herself instead. Wishing he hadn't had to go through all that in the first place.
Wishing she'd been wiser or stronger or whatever it would have taken to see that there had never been a need for
him to face her mother in the first place. "I know she didn't surrender without trying to hurt you inside."
She was right, he had more or less just fought a war. And like after a day in physical war, she always checked him
for wounds and bruises, even as he would sit there and deny that he was hurt at all.
He always did. He could have been dumped half dead in their apartments and he'd still claim to have been fine, it
was just a scratch. But at least physical wounds could visibly heal, and she could silently track their progress, the
healing of cuts, the fading of bruises, as he knew she always did, when she thought he wasn't watching.
Sometimes it wouldn't have surprised him if she had a checklist of his marks and bruises to keep track of it all.
And they had talked about children, and worked on children, and it frightened him that they weren't here. He was
expected to father heirs, to carry on the lineage of the House of Troy. And there was only one woman in the whole
world whose children he wanted to father. Triantifilla's words just hammered home doubts in his own mind that were
already there.
Not in his pursuit and choice of Andromache. Never that. But that he would be the disappointment of his own family.
For he would not take another wife for the sole purpose of having children. He wouldn't do that to her, and he
couldn't do that to himself.
He turned toward that gentle hand on his cheek, feeling the mist from the waterfall clinging to his hair and his skin.
Troy would just have to depend on Paris, he decided. And that was the end of that, if Triantifilla was right, if she had
done something previously, before his life had collided with Andromache's, if she had maliciously destroyed her
daughter's chances of having children.
And if anyone ever whispered, or wondered, Hector would make up an unfortunate war wound, to take the 'blame'
off Andromache, so she would not be hurt by the whispers.
"No, she didn't." He agreed with her remarks about her mother. "She tried her best, but she failed. That woman has
no power over anyone anymore, including us. Everything is perfect now."
She slid her fingers gently across the cheek he turned into her palm, raising her face to nuzzle gently against his. If
everything was perfect than why did he look so sad and serious and determined?
"My mother is an expert at poisons." she murmured, resting her forehead against his. "She knows weaknesses and
she works until she finds the one that will hurt you the most. And then she refines it and uses it again. And refines it
and uses it again. She can't touch us now. But her words are poison too. And she meant them to hurt you. And to
stay with you and fester." She pressed a kiss against the top of his nose, stroking long fingers through his curling
hair. "If I had known you were going to do that, I would have gone there first. So she couldn't touch you. My family
and I could live with her, and the power she held, for the rest of eternity and I would rather that than the freedom
you've given us if she's hurt you." She touched her lips to his. Tasting the wild mist from the waterfall. And Hector.
Always her husband.
"I love you." she said it against him. "I won't see you hurt."