Gods Concubine (14 page)

“They…” Judith’s voice hoarsened, and she had to clear her throat before she could continue. “They only wake and sing when it is time to midwive Mag’s birth.”

Ecub nodded, smiling. “Aye.” She looked apologetically at Saeweald who was looking goggle-eyed between the two women. “This is a mystery only discussed among girl-children, my dear. You would probably not have heard it as Loth. Midwifery and birth are the realms of women only.”

“Wait,” said Saeweald, shaking his head as if he were trying to shake his thoughts into some kind of order. “I don’t understand. Are you saying that, when you were atop Pen Hill, these ‘Sidlesaghes’ appeared to you?”

“Aye.”

“And you agree with what Judith just said, that they only ‘wake and sing’ when it is time to midwive Mag’s birth?”

“Aye.”

“But Mag already is! How can she be born again?”

“Because tomorrow Asterion is going to murder her, my loves. And then Mag is going to need to be reborn.”

Saeweald and Judith just stared at Ecub, aghast, then they both began to babble at once.

Ecub let them speak for a few minutes, then she held up her hand for silence, and repeated to them what the Sidlesaghes had told her.

Finally, Saeweald said, “But why can’t Caela
remember?
”

“For her own protection, Saeweald. For her own protection. She will remember soon enough. Be patient.”

But Judith frowned, and looked at Ecub. “But…but where will Mag be reborn? In whom?”

Ecub smiled beatifically, then shrugged. “With that knowledge they did not grace me.”

F
OUR

T
ostig sat with his brother Harold before one of the fire pits in Harold’s Great Hall, which Harold had built two years previously, just to the south of Edward’s palace complex in Westminster. While not rivalling Edward’s construction, Harold’s own hall did nonetheless represent a significant challenge to Edward’s authority, and did nothing to allay the king’s resentment of the earl.

The past fifteen years had treated both Harold and Tostig kindly. Both had grown: Harold into a greater maturity—the only physical changes wrought by the passing years were the greater sprinkling of grey through his dark blond hair and the deeper creases of care near his eyes—and Tostig into full manhood. Eight years earlier Godwine had settled the earldom of Northumbria upon Tostig, and it was this earldom and the responsibilities that went with it which now directed the conversation between the two brothers.

Tostig was a dark, handsome man, and the insecurities of youth which had once so amused Swanne had been set aside for an assurance of manner that sometimes bordered on the arrogant and overbearing. Now, as he and Harold sat before the glowing embers of the fire, with only the soft presence of servants clearing away the tables in the hall behind them, Tostig leaned forward, his face set, his eyes snapping, and stabbed a finger at Harold.

“Their insolence is unbelievable!” Tostig said.

Harold, slouched back in his chair as if half asleep, sent Tostig an unreadable look from under lowered lids, but said nothing.

“They demand that I step down from the earldom!”

Harold closed his eyes briefly, resisting the urge to lean across to Tostig and shake some sense into the man. Tostig had ruled Northumbria well for years, but over the past eighteen months had begun to meddle in local politics with disastrous consequences. The situation had been exacerbated by Tostig’s assassination of two popular noblemen several months previously. Now Northumbria was threatening to rise up in revolt.

“Tostig,” Harold said, “stifling opposition by murdering the voices who speak it has never been the best course of action.”

“I have had to withdraw forces from the border regions closer to home,” Tostig went on, ignoring Harold, “with the result that now the Scots threaten to invade. Harold, you must aid me.”

Harold leaned forward and emptied the dregs of his wine cup into the fire pit.

The embers hissed momentarily, then fell quiet.

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“That earldom is yours to keep or to lose as you will, Tostig. If you currently find yourself mired in mutinous resentment, then may I suggest you have only yourself to blame.”

“You have an
army
at your disposal,” Tostig hissed. “Give it to me.”

Harold sat up straight in his chair, his hands light on the armrests, the only sign of his anger the gentle thrumming of his fingers against the wood. “No.”

Tostig stared at his brother, then abruptly spat into the fire. “You think only of yourself.”

“I think only of England.”

Tostig sneered.

“Edward is old,” Harold continued in an even voice. “His days are numbered. He has no heir and, in his own sweet recalcitrant manner, refuses to name one. If he takes this truculence to the grave with him, England will disintegrate into crisis. I will need the army
here
when that happens, Tostig, not trapped in the north trying to settle your domestic disputes.”

“You mean you want to grab the throne yourself.
I
can go to hell for all you care.”

Harold took a moment to respond. “My primary responsibility is to the realm, Tostig. Not to you.”

Tostig rose, his face twisted with anger. “Desert your family, brother, and you may find yourself without either throne or realm!”

With that Tostig turned on his heel and stalked off.

Harold sighed, refilled his wine cup, and spent the next hour staring into the fire as he slowly sipped the wine.

Finally he rose, and went to his bedchamber for the night.

F
IVE

H
awise checked to make sure that her lady’s gown was safely folded and settled into the chest, then turned back to her mistress. Swanne sat before a burnished mirror, brushing out her thick mass of curly, ebony hair with long, slow strokes, and Hawise hesitated before walking over and taking her leave for the night.

Sweet Mother Mary, but she was beautiful!

In the mirror, Swanne’s eyes slid Hawise’s way, and the woman dropped her own eyes and fidgeted with her skirt, embarrassed at being caught staring.

“I am done with you for the night,” Swanne said.

Hawise nodded, coloured a little—she had served Swanne for twenty-five years, but the woman still retained the ability to make her uncomfortable—dropped a small curtsey and walked from the private bedchamber that sat above Harold’s hall.

As the heavy drapery that served as a door fell closed behind Hawise, Swanne smiled at herself in the mirror. “Oh, aye, my dear,” she murmured, “I am beautiful indeed.”

Then her smile faded a little. What use was such beauty when William lingered within Normandy? Fifteen years ago they had believed that only a year or two separated them from each other and from their dream of completing the Game. But William’s problems in Normandy had continued; he could not turn for England, and Swanne had been forced to a wait far longer than she’d anticipated. She might have tried to see William again, to touch him, but both he and she had felt Asterion’s malevolent, cruel presence close by, and they had not dared. Together they would have presented the Minotaur with too tempting a target.

Fifteen years since she had seen him. Fifteen years of frustration and of being tied to
Harold.
Swanne had never loved Harold, but now she also resented him. Fifteen years of Harold when she could have had William.

And it had been that
bitch
whom he had visited in dream!
It still rankled that William had graced Caela’s dreams, and not hers. William was so concerned about Asterion that he kept his mind and powers closely shuttered; Swanne had tried to touch him through dream previously and had not been able to get past the barriers he put in place.

But he had visited Caela in dream. It mattered not that William had apparently done nothing but speak of Swanne.

He had visited Caela in dream and
not Swanne!

“You foolish virgin bitch,” Swanne muttered. “Even now you can’t resist trying your petty, childish charms on him, can you?”

There was a movement at the door.

Harold.

Swanne smiled easily at him—at least those fifteen years had made her the mistress of deception—and turned back to her reflection in the mirror as Harold undressed and slid beneath the bed covers.

Finally, tiring of her pose, Swanne shook her head so that her ebony hair rippled luxuriously down her back, and put down the brush. She stood, slowly and elegantly, aware of every movement that she made, and smoothed down over her body (still slim and fine after the six children she’d borne to remain in Harold’s good graces, thank the gods!) the thin lawn nightrobe whose delicate weave scarcely hid any detail of the body over which it draped.

She placed a hand over her stomach, flattening the lawn against her, and again admired herself in the mirror.

“Do you think yourself with child again?”

For an instant, Swanne’s eyes hardened to a flat bleakness, but then she turned to the man who had spoken, and in that movement she masked her hatred with a practised coquetry.

“Are six children not enough for you, my love? Do you want me to swell again so that your manhood can be proven before all at court yet one more time?”

He lay on his back on the bed, the covers pulled down to his stomach exposing his well-muscled chest, hands behind his head, studying her with unreadable eyes. “
Are
you with child?”

“No.” Swanne sauntered over to the bed, allowing herself to admire the man’s physique and handsome face even if she loathed who and what he was.

Swanne parted her lips, allowing him to see the wetness of her tongue between her white teeth. Slowly she tugged the robe over her shoulders so that it fell to the floor, then climbed on to the bed, pulling the bed covers further down over his body, then lifted one leg over him so that she straddled his body as she settled her weight atop his warmth.

His eyes darkened almost to blackness, and she could see the muscles tense in his upper arms.
You are a very lucky man, Harold,
she thought,
to have me in your bed at night.

Her lips parted even more, and she moved her hips very slowly atop his.

He moved his hands and grasped her hips, pulling her the tighter against him.

She drew in a deep breath, and watched his eyes drift to her breasts.
I should have taken you as a lover when you were Coel. You were wasted on Cornelia.

“Harold,” she said, and leaned down so that he could take one of her nipples between his teeth. Hate him she might, but for the moment Swanne saw no reason to deny herself his body and the skills he employed as a lover.

Later, when she could hear him breathing in the deep steadiness of sleep, she moved away from the warmth of his body, rose from the bed, and used the wash bowl to wipe away the traces of his semen from her thighs. Tomorrow she would take the bag of herbs she had secreted at the bottom of her clothes chest, and brew a cupful of the tea which would ensure she did not conceive. Six children were enough and the last thing Swanne wanted was to be big-bellied with child when…

When
he
would soon be here, please to the gods.

Swanne dried herself, then wrapped about her nakedness the robe she had discarded earlier, shivering a little in the cold night air. She sat on a stool by the brazier, warming herself, and looked back to check that Harold was indeed fast asleep.

He was breathing deeply, and Swanne relaxed. She turned back to the brazier, placed her hands on her knees, closed her eyes, and sent her senses scrying out into the night. There was only one benefit that Harold brought her, and that was to give her the excuse to live so close to the Game.

Ah, there…there it was…

Swanne relaxed even further, wrapping her senses about the Game, feeling its strength. Gods, it was powerful. She and Brutus had built so well. Whenever Swanne was despondent or frustrated, or felt that she could cope no longer with Harold or with the pointlessness of her life in this damnable Christian court, Swanne found a quiet place so that she could communicate with the Game. Touch its power, feel its promise, believe in the future that she and William would build together once they’d completed the Game and trapped Asterion within its dark heart.

So powerful, and yet…different. Swanne recalled again, as she so often did, the conversation she’d had with William in that single brief encounter fifteen years earlier.

Could the Game have changed in the two thousand years it was left alone?
she had asked.

Perhaps
, he had answered too slowly, his own concern obvious.
We had not closed it. It was still alive, and still in that phase of its existence where it was actively growing. Who knows what…

He’d stopped then, but even now the unspoken words rang in Swanne’s mind.
Who knows what it could have grown into.

Swanne reached out with her power and touched the Game. Always before it had responded to her.

Tonight, although she could feel its presence and vitality, it did not.

A coldness swept through Swanne, and for one panicky moment she almost succumbed to her terror and projected herself into William’s presence. But she didn’t; it was too dangerous. As well as the Game, Swanne could feel Asterion’s presence more strongly than ever before. He was stalking the grounds and spaces of Westminster, waiting and watching.

And so Swanne drew in a deep breath and steadied herself. She went to her needlework basket and withdrew from its depths a small scrap of parchment upon which she scribbled a few lines of writing with a piece of sharpened charcoal.

In the hour after she and Harold had broken their fast, and Harold had departed to meet with some of his thegns, Swanne took the parchment, now folded and sealed, and handed it to her woman, Hawise.