Gods Concubine (11 page)

Daddy
, she mouthed.

And then she held out her hands.

In each palm rested one of the golden kingship bands of Troy.

The two lost bands of Troy, for which Asterion had searched for centuries.

O
NE

England
Autumn 1065

M
other Ecub, prioress of the small but wellendowed priory of St Margaret the Martyr, which lay just off the northern road from London, sat worshipping in the weak mid-morning sun.

She did not sit in the chapel of her priory, which had been well constructed of the best local stone and decorated with beautiful carvings and statues, as well as rare and costly stained-glass windows.

Neither did Mother Ecub sit before the altar in her solitary cell, nor in the refectory where hung a cross on the wall, nor even in the herb and vegetable gardens of the priory, which were close enough to the wall of the chapel to do in a crisis.

Mother Ecub did not worship within the walls of the priory, nor even within shouting distance of them.

Rather, Mother Ecub sat worshipping atop the small hill which rose two hundred paces west of the priory.

Pen Hill, as it was known both in ancient times and present.

The ring of stones that had graced the hill two thousand years ago still stood, although they were now far more weatherbeaten than once they had been, and there were gaps where the Romans had hauled away the better stones to use as milestones on their roads. Two of these milestones now stood guarding the London-side approach to the bridge over the Thames. Londoners called them Gog and Magog, and carved crude faces into them, claiming the stones housed the spirits of the ancient ones who had built the city.

Their faith made Mother Ecub, and the seventeen personally picked female members of her order, smile and manage to keep the faith. If people remembered the ancient gods of this land, the stag god Og and the mother goddess Mag, even in this corrupted form, then that was all well and good.

All was not lost.

Mother Ecub had come to the top of Pen Hill not only to worship the land which she could see spread about her (and where better to do so?), but to gather her thoughts for this evening’s audience with Queen Caela.

She shuddered at the thought, distracting herself with the view. To the south, some three or four miles distant, lay London behind its ancient Roman walls, which stood on the even more ancient foundations of the walls which Brutus had built. The city enclosed many acres of ground, only about a third of it built upon. Most of it, in fact, was given over to the cultivation of orchards, vegetables and corpses—London had an inordinate number of Christian churches, all of which closely guarded their right to bury the dead members of their flocks within spitting distance of the church walls. The fluids from the rotting corpses invariably found their way into the wells and streams which watered the city, prompting outbreaks of disease in the summer and autumn of most years, but nothing could make the Church give up its right to bury its dead within London’s walls.

For that matter, nothing could make the Christian faithful give up their right to be buried as close to their church as possible. After all, come Judgement Day, when all the dead would rise once more, one didn’t want to have to totter too far to the church altar and, hopefully, eternal salvation on barely held together bits of crumbled bone and rotted flesh.

Ecub’s mouth twisted in derision at the thought, and she made a convoluted gesture with her left hand which, to the initiated, would have instantly recalled the movements of Mag’s Nuptial Dance, which Ecub had once watched Blangan and Cornelia perform within Mag’s Dance itself.

She squinted a little in the winter sun, focusing on the stone cathedral which sat atop Lud Hill, once Og’s Hill. Here, where Brutus had constructed his Labyrinth, now stood a great Christian cathedral: St Paul’s. Ecub wondered if the monks and priests and sundry clerics who shuffled about the cathedral’s nave in absorbed self-importance had any idea what lay so far beneath their feet.

How
alive
it was.

Ecub’s face, wrinkled as it was with lines of laughter and care, went completely expressionless as a momentary hopelessness overcame her.

It had been fifteen years now since she’d first come to London to establish her priory. Fifteen years of waiting for Caela to remember her duty to Mag or for Mag herself to make some sign that she was ready to begin that campaign which would witness the final destruction of the Troy Game and the devastation of Swanne and William’s hopes. Fifteen years of waiting for that time when the ancient gods Mag and Og could once again take their place within the land and restore harmony and goodness.

Fifteen years.

Fifteen years she and Saeweald had waited, the last three shared with a noblewoman called Judith, who was Erith-reborn. The widow Judith had come to Westminster and taken a place as one of Caela’s attending women. Unsurprisingly, over those three years Caela had come to like and trust Judith greatly, and now, of Ecub, Saeweald and Judith, it was Judith who enjoyed the closest and most trusting relationship with the queen.

Ecub and Saeweald had hoped that Judith’s appearance had been what Caela or Mag had been waiting for…but nothing. Caela persisted in her unremembering; Mag still lingered useless and ineffectual within the queen’s womb.

Why this delay, Ecub did not know. Was it the Game itself? Asterion? Mere fate? Mag? No one was sure, but what Ecub knew for certain was that if Caela or Mag did not do something soon, then all hope would be lost.

Edward was now an old man. He would not last many more years. When he died, Ecub knew that Duke William would swarm across the seas and reclaim both the Darkwitch—his former lover—and the city and the Game…taking the throne of England almost as an afterthought.

Even worse was the possibility that Edward’s death would sting Asterion into some terrible action. Ecub knew of Asterion from Loth, as well as from the knowledge she had gained during the long death between her last life and this one. Asterion might want the same end as she and Saeweald, the destruction of the Game, but what he would replace it with—the frightful reign of the unrestrained malevolence of the Minotaur—was an even more horrific future than a Troy Game triumphant.

“I trust in Mag,” Ecub muttered, “I trust in Mag,” repeating the mantra over and over until she restored some peace in her heart.

Caela’s continuing forgetfulness no doubt kept the Darkwitch Swanne giggling in delight, but it left Ecub, Saeweald and Judith in despair. They could do little but stay close to Caela and wait for her to come to her senses, and to do whatever it was that Mag required of her. Still, there was hope, as Saeweald constantly reminded Ecub and Judith. Caela had endowed Ecub’s priory, and continued to support it, when Edward had refused (and Caela had done this for no other religious order). Caela had also taken Erith-reborn, Judith, under her wing as the most senior of her attending ladies without any prompting from either Saeweald or Ecub. She kept Saeweald and Ecub close to her, although she did not have to. She was obviously
drawn
to her allies from her former life…but she just could not recall that life.

“Mag directs her thoughts and actions,” Saeweald often told Ecub, and with this Ecub had to be content, although in her darkest moments she wondered if Mag had forgotten as well.

Ecub sighed, and thought about rising. She was almost sixty years old, far too old to be spending an entire morning sitting cross-legged in this damp grass, even if such close proximity to one of the sacred sites of Llangarlia brought her peace of mind and spirit. Damp grass aside, Ecub needed to return to the priory to brush out her robes and set out on the slow ride south to Westminster. This evening she was required at court, to present to the queen an account of the priory’s activities this past quarter. Ecub grinned broadly as she contemplated what she could tell Caela, as opposed to what Caela herself probably wanted to hear.

What Caela would want to hear was an account of how many hours a day the sisters of St Margaret the Martyr spent on their knees in prayer to the Virgin, or how many days a week they spent attending the needs of the sick and ill, or how they distributed the alms Caela provided among the small community of lepers that lived five miles further to the north.

What Ecub
could
tell her, if she had the nerve, was how many nights the sisters spent dancing naked among the ancient stones of Pen Hill, or how they whispered to the stones of Gog and Magog on their numerous visits to London, and of their efforts toward keeping alive the ancient ways and beliefs among the people in and about London.

Or perhaps Ecub could tell the queen of how she and the sisters of St Margaret the Martyr spent their nights praying to Mag to give them a sign, to show them she still lived and cared and that there was hope for this land amid all the horror which had visited it.

“And perhaps not,” muttered Ecub, wincing at the ache in her joints as, finally, she rose slowly to her feet. She spent a moment testing her legs to make sure they would bear her weight, then straightened her somewhat grass-stained and damp robe before taking the first step towards the slope which led back to St Margaret the Martyr’s.

One step only, and then Ecub froze, her heart thudding in her chest.

Something was…wrong.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and the breath in her throat caught and held.

Something was…different.

Very carefully, trying to keep her fright under control, Ecub slowly turned, looking around the top of the hill.

Nothing. A blue sky interspersed with heavy dark clouds that foretold rain for the afternoon.

Thick, wet, green grass that moved sluggishly in the slight breeze.

Stones, twenty-five or -six of them, encircling the entire hill-top…

Ecub’s heart felt as though it had stopped entirely.

The stones.

There was something about the stones.

“Oh, sweet Mother Mag,” Ecub whispered and, unaware of the discomfort, dropped to her knees and clasped her hands before her.

The stones were humming.

Ecub’s mind could hardly comprehend it.

The stones were
humming!
Moreover, their harsh outlines were softening, as though the stones were dissolving into warmth and movement.

As though they were living.

In her previous life, Ecub had heard tales, ancient even in that time; tales of how the stone circles had come to be, and why they were so important to the worship of Mag herself.

Could it possibly be that they were true?

“You are singing!” Ecub exclaimed, her mind still struggling to comprehend what was happening around her.

Indeed, the stones were singing—a sad, haunting, lilting melody.

Moreover, the stones were now swaying back and forth in liquid, delicious movement, as if they wanted to dance.

Then, before Ecub’s astounded eyes, they let go the shape of stones and took on their true forms.

Although each had individual aspects, all shared similar characteristics. They were tall with rather long, sinewy arms, their hands broad and long-fingered. Above their thin mobile mouths and hooked noses, each had dark brown hair, shot through with flecks of iron grey; their eyes were of the same colour as their hair, also flecked with grey, and despite their bleakness managed to convey a surprising sense of humour, perhaps even mischievousness.

They were very watchful, these eyes, and Ecub realised that all the creatures’ eyes moved at the same time; if one looked slightly to the left, then all eyes looked slightly to the left. It was very unsettling, and gave Ecub the impression that they shared a silent communication.

All wore the same clothes: undistinguished and well-worn leather jerkin and trousers.

All had bare feet, their toes curling into the grass.

All sang, the sound humming through their thin-lipped mouths, and the song was very sad, and very bleak, and very beautiful. It reminded Ecub of the whispering, sorrowing sound that the wind made when it hummed through the stones of Mag’s Dance.

She felt conflicting emotions surge through her. Joy, that she should have been privileged to see this. Fear, that the stones’ metamorphosis portended doom. Reverence, before the oldest and most sacred creatures this land had ever known.

Terror, that she should not prove worthy of…

The Sidlesaghes. The most ancient inhabitants of this land—so ancient they
were
the land—who rested within the stones.

By Mag herself
, Ecub thought,
I had imagined them to be only legend!

She momentarily closed her eyes, blinking away her tears.

Very slowly, inch by inch, hand in hand, the Sidlesaghes closed their circle about Ecub.

When, finally, not a handspan separated Ecub from the circle of Sidlesaghes, the tallest and most watchful of them leaned forward, touched Ecub on the top of her head, and began to speak.

Some six miles to the south-west stood Tot Hill, another of the sacred hills of the ancient and forgotten realm of Llangarlia. While Pen Hill still retained a similar aspect to that of two thousand years previously, Tot Hill—now Tothill—had changed enormously. In Brutus and Genvissa’s time it had housed only a simple rectangular building, the Meeting House, and a platform of stone at its peak. Now Tothill boasted a thriving community, consisting of the religious community of Westminster itself as well as King Edward’s vast palace complex—not merely the Great Hall, but kitchens, dormitories, barracks, chapels, storerooms, infirmaries, scriptoriums, as well as offices for a score of officials, a dairy, meat-houses, bake-houses, and all the other buildings, orchards, herberies, vegetable gardens and necessities required for a lively and growing community. Westminster had now become the site of government within the kingdom of England, a rival city a mile or so to the south-west of London.