Gods Concubine (27 page)

I lay down naked, and I closed my eyes, and I put my hands on my breasts, and I dreamed—not of the young boy Melanthus whom I had thought to love in my previous life as Cornelia, nor even of Brutus-now-William, but I dreamed of my beloved white stag with the blood-red antlers, pounding through the forest towards me.

One day,
I thought.
One day, beloved.

And then I began to weep.

Silently, deep into the night.

T
HREE

M
atilda watched through hooded eyes as William, as naked as the day he had been born, stood before the fire in their bedchamber, reading the letter that Yves had delivered earlier.

They had retired some hours ago, made love (which Matilda hoped had driven all thought of Adeliza from William’s mind for the time being), talked, and then William had waited until he thought Matilda asleep.

Now he stood before the fire, his head bent over the letter, frowning.

He couldn’t allow Matilda to see this!
William thanked all the gods that existed that he’d delayed opening the communication until Matilda had been asleep. Previously, Swanne had been circumspect in her communications, but now she had abandoned caution. Swanne wanted him to tell her where the kingship bands were. She wanted to move them before Asterion could get to them. She needed to do it before William arrived, or else it would be too late. She wrote of the strange events of the day the Troy Game was enacted in Smithfield, and of the children who played at the Game on the flagstones outside St Paul’s. They needed to act fast, before everything disintegrated out of their control. Her unwritten fear, which William discerned easily, was that Swanne was just as worried about the Troy Game’s intentions as she was about Asterion’s.

William understood Swanne’s fear about Asterion. It was evident that matters were careering to a head: Edward was sliding towards death, the new abbey was almost complete…and the Londoners were dancing the Troy Game? Children playing it across paving stones?

To be honest, William was not surprised at the manifestation of the Game above the stones. It had existed for two thousand years; it was no shock to find that the people who lived their daily lives above it should also find their feet moving unwittingly in its steps. Swanne’s belief that the Game was trying to take matters into its own hands, however, was an overreaction. William could not conceive for a moment that the Game would ever try to divorce itself from its Mistress and its Kingman.

But the bands…on that subject William was prepared to share Swanne’s concern. The golden bands of Troy were vital. If Asterion had them, then all hope that William and Swanne could work the final Dance of the Flowers and complete the Game—thus trapping Asterion within its heart—were gone.

If
William
could retrieve them, however…

William’s body tensed, his eyes staring unfocused into the fire.
If he had the bands, if he wore them, and if he and Swanne had the time and space to raise the flower gate…

Then all would be won, and he and Swanne would live forever within the stones of London.

Strange, that he should feel no joy at this thought. “I must be getting old,” William muttered. Once, every bone in his body would have been screaming with joy at the thought of controlling the Game completely.

William collected his thoughts and concentrated on what Swanne asked him:
Tell me where lie the bands of Troy, and I shall take them, and keep them safe for you. What do you want otherwise? That Asterion should
snatch them before you can collect yourself enough to arrive
?

The tone of that last sentence irritated William immensely. What did she think: that he had idled his life away in his court of Normandy? Drinking fine wines and laughing at the antics of court jesters? By the gods, did she not know that he’d had to battle rivals and enemies for the past thirty years? That’d he spent most of those thirty years merely spending each and every day ensuring his survival? That there had not been a single chance—not
one
—to turn his armies for England and for London so that he could, at last, take his rightful place on its throne?

William fully realised that his troubles had been caused by Asterion’s meddling. He knew that Asterion had his own dark, malevolent reasons for ensuring William kept his distance from London for all these years.

And William knew, with every instinct in his body, that the fact that these internal problems within Normandy had miraculously receded over the past couple of years meant that Asterion was preparing the way for the confrontation all knew was coming.

“What news?” said Matilda from their bed, surprising William so much he visibly jumped.

“Little,” he said as lightly as he could, and tossed the paper into the fire.

It crackled, flaring in sudden flame and burning to ash within moments.

“You did not want me to read it?” Matilda said.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Swanne was incautious.” William looked Matilda directly in the eye. “She spoke of things I did not want you to see.”

“What things?” Matilda hissed, finally allowing her jealousy free rein. She rose from the bed, snatching at a robe to cover herself as she did so, hating the fact that her body was still swollen from the child she had so recently borne, and hating Swanne even more bitterly for the fact that all the news Matilda received of her spoke of a beautiful and elegant woman despite the six children she’d birthed.

“She did not speak of love,” William said, walking over to Matilda and kissing her gently on the forehead. “But there are matters so terrible that you will be safer not knowing of them. I speak nothing but truth, Matilda, when I say that what Swanne wrote has irritated me. I did not throw that letter into the flames because I am a shamefaced adulterer, but because I was angry with her who wrote it.”

“I should not have taxed you over the matter,” Matilda said, more angry with herself that she’d allowed her jealousy to cause her to speak tartly.

“You had every right,” William said very softly, his lips resting in her hair. “You are my wife, and I honour you before all others.”

“But Swanne is the great love of your life,” Matilda said, keeping her voice light.

“When I spoke those words to you, fifteen years ago,” he said, “then I thought I spoke truth. Now I am not so sure.”

“What do you mean?” Matilda leaned back so she could see his face.

William paused, trying to find the best words with which to respond. “You have taught me a great deal during our marriage,” he said eventually. “You have taught me strength, and tolerance, and you have given me maturity. What I thought, and felt, fifteen years ago, are no longer so clear to me.”

Again Matilda arched an eyebrow. “Are you saying that
I
have suddenly become the great love of your life?”

William laughed, knowing from all their years together that she jested with him. “What I am saying, my dear, is that ‘great love’ no longer appeals to me as once it did.”

She held his eyes, her jesting manner vanished. “When you win England—”

When,
not
if.
William loved her for that.

“—a marriage to Swanne would consolidate your hold on the throne, especially if, as we expect, the witan elects Harold as king to succeed Edward. When you have dealt with Harold, what better move for you than to marry his widow?”

“I will never renounce you!” William said. “Never!
You
will be Queen of England at my side. Believe it!”

Matilda, studying the fervour in his eyes, believed it, and was content.

F
OUR

J
udith thought the change in Caela so stunningly obvious that the entire realm would have taken one gigantic breath and screamed its incredulity, but she supposed, on second thoughts, that maybe most people who came into contact with the queen on the following day thought her “eccentricity” merely a result of the turbulent state of her womb.

She woke Caela as she usually did, just after dawn, with a murmured word and the offering of a warm flannel with which to wipe the sleep from her eyes.

Caela took the flannel, smiling, and wiped her face. Then she stretched cat-like under the covers, pushed them back and rose in one fluid, beautiful movement, apparently unconcerned at her nakedness.

Edward’s bowerthegn, or bedchamberlain, aiding his king to dress, stilled, and stared.

Normally, Caela stayed modestly covered in bed until both her husband and his servants had left the chamber.

Now she walked slowly over to one of the closed windows, threw back the shutters, and stood gloriously outlined—and gloriously naked—in the dawning light.

“Wife! What do you? Clothe yourself instantly!”

Judith froze, wondering if Caela would strike him down.

Instead, Caela inclined her head in Edward’s direction, as if she found his presence mildly surprising. “My nakedness disturbs you?” she asked.

And turned her back to the open window.

Judith bit her lip, suppressing a deadly desire to giggle. Both Edward and the bowerthegn were staring goggle-eyed at the queen.

Caela smiled, sweet and innocent, and drew in a deep breath.

The bowerthegn’s mouth dropped open, and, frankly, Judith was not surprised. Caela looked magnificent, her pale skin subtly shaded by the rosy light of dawn, her mussed hair gleaming in an aura about her face and shoulders.

Her body, which Judith knew so intimately from their long association, appeared somehow different, and it took Judith a moment to realise that where once Caela’s body, although slim, had been soft from her life of inactivity at court, it was now taut and finely muscled as if she spent her time, not at rest at her needlework, but running through the forests, or slipping wraith-like through the waters.

“A robe perhaps, Judith,” Caela murmured, turning slightly so that the slack-jawed men could see her body in profile.

Judith hurried to comply, not daring to look at Caela’s face.

“That was most unseemly, wife,” said Edward.

“I am sorry my nakedness offends,” said Caela, allowing Judith to slip a soft woollen robe over her head and shoulders.

Even then, the soft robe clinging to every curve and hugging every narrowness, Caela managed to give the impression of nakedness as she moved slowly about the chamber, lifting this, inspecting that, and Edward finished his dressing in red-cheeked affront before he hurried from the room.

The bowerthegn, hastening after him, shot Caela one final wide-eyed glance, which made Caela grin.

“How sad,” she remarked to Judith, dropping the robe from her body so that she might wash, “that Edward should be so afraid of a woman’s body, and that the bowerthegn should be so shy in admiring it.”

Fortunately for Judith’s peace of mind, Caela managed to perform her usual duties of the court demurely and quietly, although with an air of slight distraction. Several people looked at her oddly, frowning, as if trying to place what was unusual about Caela (among them Swanne, who stopped dead when first she saw Caela enter court, then wrinkled her brow as she unobtrusively tried to discern exactly
what
was different about the queen on this morning).

When Harold came to her, and wished her a good morning, Caela visibly glowed, and Harold responded in kind. He, too, seemed puzzled by her, but also pleased, and he stayed longer than he normally would when he had business elsewhere, laughing and chatting over inconsequential matters.

I wonder if some part of him knows
, thought Judith, hovering nearby and wondering if Caela was being a trifle indiscreet with her openness and patent happiness in the presence of her brother. There was a subdued sexuality to every one of her movements that had never been there before, and Judith prayed that no other observer noted it to spread further dark and malignant gossip about the queen and her brother.

Edward, certainly, kept a close eye on his wife, closer than usual.

However, when Caela bade her brother a good morning, and turned her attention instead to chatting with one of her more recently arrived attending ladies, a young widow called Alditha, Edward relaxed and allowed himself to be distracted by the priests and bishops gathered around him.

In the late morning, Caela beckoned Judith closer. “I have decided to take an interest in my Lady Alditha,” she said, gracing the said lady with a lovely smile. “I wonder if you could see to it that her sleeping arrangements are changed. Currently poor Alditha shares with five other of my ladies, as well as one of the under-cooks, and she sleeps badly. Perhaps…” Caela paused as if thinking, one finger tapping gently against her lower lip. “Perhaps Alditha can take over the chamber in that annexe which runs between our palace and Harold’s hall? You know the one, surely. The Bishop of Kent occupied it before he so sorrowfully succumbed to his ailments.”

Judith blinked, trying to mask her confusion. She glanced at Alditha, a pretty woman with a heart-shaped face and generous hazel eyes, who looked just as confused with the attention she was receiving as felt Judith. And the chamber of the (sorrowfully now deceased) Bishop of Kent? Why, not only was that a sumptuous chamber, it was also a very private chamber in a palace complex where privacy was a highly valued thing indeed. She wondered what Caela was up to…why establish Alditha in such a fine, and finely private, chamber?

And one so close to Harold’s own private apartments?

“Of course, madam,” she said, inclining her head.

“And when you have done that, and settled Alditha comfortably,” Caela continued, “I wonder if you might bring the physician Saeweald to attend me? And the prioress Ecub? Mother Ecub has been complaining recently about her aching knees and I think it time I grant her a consultation with Edward’s own physician. Don’t you agree?”