Gods Concubine (18 page)

It was Harold, looking almost as wan and exhausted as Caela did in her sleeping.

He walked quietly to the bed, held aside one of the drapes momentarily to look down on his sleeping sister, then came over to the fire where Judith had rejoined Ecub and Saeweald.

Ecub began to rise, her eyes on a stool stowed in a corner, but Harold motioned her to remain seated, and fetched the stool himself.

“My sister the queen?” he said softly as he sat down with them.

“She will be well enough,” Saeweald said. “Her monthly flux was bloodier than normal, but that is all that it was. With rest and good food Caela shall be well.”

Gods, how he hated to deceive this man, but it was better that Harold not know of the love and loss of his previous life. To enlighten would be only to torment.

“To so accuse her!” Harold said, low and angry, and it took the others a moment to realise that he referred to Edward’s hateful accusation at court. “My sister should have babies and love and laughter, but all she has is…is
this!
” He waved a hand around the chamber, but taking in with that gesture the entire palace and her life as Edward’s wife.

To that there was nothing to say, so the others merely nodded.

Harold’s shoulders slumped and his face suddenly looked old and grey. “I wanted to come sooner, but Edward detained me, first with this nonsense and then that, and then sent me to interrogate some fool who had imagined he’d seen a pair of dragons mating in the skies over London during the afternoon. Now,” he glanced at the bed, “it is too late, and Caela sleeps. Well, I shall not wake her, and will leave my visit until the morrow. Mother Ecub, Judith, if she wakes during the night, will you tell her that I came, and that I cared?”

Ecub nodded, and Harold gave a small half-smile. “Tell me,” he said, “has Tostig been here to ask after Caela?”

Saeweald shook his head, and Harold sighed. “Ah well, I expect he was detained as was I.”

He rose, made his farewells, and was gone.

Ecub sighed. “Such a waste,” she said when he was out of the room, and even though she did not elucidate on that statement, the other two knew precisely what she meant.

“And now,” Ecub continued, smiling at Saeweald and Judith, “I will sit with the queen through the night, and you two can have some precious time together.”

Judith started to protest, but Saeweald took her hand, squeezed it so that she subsided, and smiled at Ecub. “I thank you, Mother Ecub,” he said. “You will send for us if…?”

“If there is any trouble, which there shall not be,” the prioress said. Then she winked. “Enjoy your rest.”

Saeweald’s apartments within the Westminster complex were spacious and well appointed, a sign of the regard in which Edward held him. Situated in a long, half-timbered, half-stone building fifty paces from the palace and (for Saeweald), a comfortable one hundred paces from the abbey complex, the building housed the domestic apartments of various court officials, the occasional visiting nobleman and his family, and a few highly-placed servants. Saeweald’s quarters were at the very end of the building, and he had his own separate entry so that he could make his way to the beds of the sick at all times of the night and day without disturbing the other residents of the building.

Of course, this also meant that Saeweald had far more privacy than others when it came to the comings and goings from his chambers.

Now, several hours after they had left Caela’s chambers, he and Judith lounged naked before the hearth on coverlets they’d pulled from the bed. They had made love, but the greatest familiarity came now, when Judith gently, lovingly, massaged soothing oils into Saeweald’s twisted leg and hip. This was an intimacy that he allowed no one else, the touching of his deformity, and that Judith did so was a measure of the love and trust he held for her.

They’d been lovers ever since she’d come to court to serve Caela. The instant they first met in this life, and
knew,
there had been such a sense of relief and of companionship renewed, that their first bedding had been accomplished with unseemly haste…in a stable, which had been the first place they had been able to find that gave some privacy.

Except for the resident horse, who had been quite agitated and who had snorted his disquiet for the fifteen turgid minutes it had taken the pair to sort themselves out.

Since that day, Saeweald and Judith found every spare hour they could to spend together. The lovemaking was evidence not so much of lust, but of the deepest friendship and respect
and
of shared purpose. To serve Caela and Mag, and to serve the land, by whatever means possible.

They were extremely discreet. Ecub knew, and Tostig of course, and Judith thought that Caela, and perhaps even Harold, suspected, but (apart from the horse, who still watched them warily whenever he saw one or the other cross the stableyard, and tended to utter panic when he saw both of them together) no one else knew. They’d even managed to keep their love secret from Swanne. In King Edward’s court, stiff with morality and piety, their discretion was just as well.

In a world where Asterion strode unknowable and unrestrainable, their secret was doubly important, for even this simple knowledge might be a piece of priceless information the Minotaur could use at his destructive leisure.

Judith ran her hands down Saeweald’s leg, leaning her weight into his crippled flesh, massaging away tensions and cramps and aches. Saeweald’s hip had been so brutally twisted during his birth (and who had commanded
that
midwife’s hands? Judith had often wondered. Fate? Brutus’ deadly hand reaching through two thousand years? Asterion? Genvissa’s lingering malicious humour?) that the ball of his hip joint jutted out beneath his right buttock, making even sitting uncomfortable for the man. As a consequence Saeweald either stood, or balanced precariously on the edge of stools and seats; when he rode, as he needed to if he was to get about at all, he had to sit twisted on the saddle so that his left buttock bore most of his weight. Even then, riding was often agony.

At least he could walk. Praise Mag that at least he could walk.

“What do you think will happen?” Judith said.

Saeweald, who was lying on his left side, his head propped up on a hand, watched the movement of Judith’s body in the firelight appreciatively. “Hmmm?” he said.

Judith looked at him, then grinned. “You would have me to be your slave forever, would you not, physician? Bending over your body, rubbing away your aches…”

“Are you offering?”

Her expression sobered. “Would it help?”

In response he only held out his free hand, and she gripped it silently. They locked eyes, and for a moment nothing at all needed to be spoken.

“Mag,” Judith finally said. “Where is she, do you think?”

Saeweald sighed. “Caela would know…but how to make her remember? Ah! She cannot be pushed, yet…”

“Be patient, Ecub said.”

Saeweald muttered something that Judith was rather glad she did not catch. She grinned again, and was about to say something when, horrifyingly, the door to the chamber swung open and a man stepped through.

“Stay,” he said to the startled couple, raising a hand, palm outward, a gesture that was both conciliatory and reassuring.

Judith looked at Saeweald, who stared in disbelief at the man, then she unhurriedly reached for her linen under-tunic and pulled it over her shoulders.

“Your name, good man?” she said.

The stranger’s mouth lifted in an admiring smile at her composure. He was a strikingly good-looking man of middle age. His long, black curly hair was pulled into a leather thong behind his neck, a few strands escaping to trail over his broad shoulders. His chest was broad and well muscled, his limbs long and strong. He wore nothing but a snowy white waistcloth threaded over a wide leather belt and leather-strap sandals.

His face was stern and handsome, and not at all marred by the leather patch he wore over his left eye. His right eye was dark, gleaming with humour and power.

It was not the stranger who answered Judith, but Saeweald.

“Silvius,” he breathed, leaning forward so that Judith, now standing, could lend him her hand and aid him up.

At the mention of that name, Judith’s eyes flew sharply to the man.
Silvius? Brutus’ father? The man Brutus had murdered at fifteen in order to seize his heritage?

“Aye,” the man said. “Silvius, indeed. It has been a long time, Loth, since we met within the dark heart of the Labyrinth.” His eyes slid down Saeweald’s body, marking the deformities. “My God, boy, does Brutus’ hand still mark you?”

“As much as it marks you,” Saeweald said, his tone still cautious, but nodding towards the patch over Silvius’ empty left eye socket. Judith passed Saeweald his robe and he, too, clothed himself. “Silvius, what—”

“What do I here?” Silvius’ face suddenly seemed weary, and he raised his eyebrows at a chair that stood to one side of the hearth.

Saeweald nodded, and Silvius sat down with an audible sigh. “I am as trapped as you, Saeweald, and,” he looked at Judith, “as I suppose you are, my dear. I take it from your intimacy with Loth here—”

“Saeweald,” Judith put in quietly.

“Your intimacy with Saeweald here, that you, too, are reborn from that time when we all suffered at the hands of Brutus and that
woman
,” he spat the word out, “he tried to make the Game with?”

“Aye,” she said. “My name was Erith then, and now I am Judith.”

Silvius nodded, his expression still weary. “ Asterion is back.”

“We know,” said Saeweald. “Silvius.
What do you here?
And
how?
”

“Brutus trapped me at the heart of his Game with my murder,” Silvius said. “I am as trapped as any of you.”

“But you seem flesh, not shade,” Saeweald said.

Silvius grunted. “You’d be astounded at what has happened in the past two thousand years, my boy. I sat there within the heart of the Labyrinth, and somehow I took power from the Game. I am as much a player in the battle that is to come as either of you two are.”

“But you cannot move from the Game,” Saeweald said. “You were trapped within its heart.”

Silvius looked up at him, his one good eye seething with knowledge and power. “Who says I have moved from the Game?” he said quietly.

Saeweald and Judith said nothing.

“The Game was left unfinished,” Silvius went on. “It continued to attract evil…and it grew.”

“Grew?” said Saeweald. He shared an appalled glance with Judith.

“Oh, aye. Grew. Grew in power and knowledge
and
in magnitude, my boy. You think that the Game, the Labyrinth, occupies only the top of Og’s Hill—Lud Hill as now you call it—where my son first built it?”

The other two were silent, staring at Silvius.

Silvius’ mouth twisted. “Nay,” he said, very softly, and he threw his arm out, as though encompassing not only Saeweald’s chamber, but the whole Westminster complex. “The Game occupies the
entire
area of the Veiled Hills now, my boy. It has burrowed deep, indeed.”

Then Silvius leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, and looked at them intently. “I have had enough of this disaster my son helped construct. I feel partly responsible, and so I am here to help you.” He paused. “To help Caela.”

Saeweald narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Caela?”

“Oh, for the gods’ sakes, boy! You think me a fool? I know Caela is Cornelia-reborn, and I know how important she is to you, and to your Mag and Og besides.
And
I know she does not remember, and this she needs to do. Yes?”

Silence.

“And Caela is the only one who is likely to know where Mag truly is, yes?”

More silence.

“Yes, and yes again,” Silvius answered for them. “Caela needs to remember very badly, for if she does not then all of our causes are lost. Saeweald, perhaps all that Cornelia needs is something from her past life to jolt her into awareness.”

“What?” said Saeweald, finally, grudgingly deciding to trust Silvius just a little bit. “What possibly remains from her previous life save want and need and hope?”

Silvius grinned, holding Saeweald’s eye. “A bracelet,” he said.

Saeweald frowned, but it was Judith who spoke. “Saeweald, you may have never seen it, but Cornelia had a bracelet, a beautiful thing of gold and rubies that she brought with her from her life as a princess of Mesopotama. She rarely wore it here in Llangarlia, but I know she looked upon it occasionally, remembering her life as a girl.”

“Aye,” said Silvius, “
that
bracelet. What would happen, do you think, if we slipped it on her wrist again?”

Silvius was still frowning. “And you know where it is?”

Silvius nodded. “But to retrieve it safely I need you and whatever ancient magic of this land you still command. Saeweald, will you aid me?”

“No,” Judith said, but it was already too late, for she could see the light in Saeweald’s eyes.

E
LEVEN

V
ery late that night, when the moon had sunk and the streets of London were lost in silent stillness, two men on horseback approached London Bridge from Southwark.

“They will not allow us to pass,” Saeweald muttered, squirming uncomfortably in the saddle. His mare, Maggie, was well used to her rider’s habitual wriggling, and strode on unperturbed.

“Is that so?” said Silvius, his teeth flashing white in the darkness, and Saeweald saw him make a gesture with his left hand.

“A sign of the Game,” Silvius said. “Look.”

Ahead was a guardhouse that protected the entrance to the bridge. Normally four or five men stood night watch here, but as the horses approached Saeweald could see, through the open doorway into the dimly lit interior, that the watchmen slouched dozing around a brazier.

“They shall not wake,” said Silvius. “And likewise with the guards who stand watch at the other end of the bridge. The way shall be open for us.”

“You can manipulate the power of the Game?” Saeweald said, and Silvius glanced at him, hearing the distrust in his voice.