Gods Concubine (40 page)

Swanne gritted her teeth.

“—that William has promised Matilda that she shall be crowned next to him. What place for you in all this, then? Neither man seems to want to publicly associate himself with you. And yet, one or the other shall surely be England’s king.”

“William will never—” she began, leaning close to the archbishop, when the man’s eyes widened, and one plump hand whipped out and seized her forearm.

Swanne snapped her mouth closed.

“My good lord archbishop,” Caela said, inclining her head politely to both Aldred and Swanne as she walked close, “do you find this abbey pleasing?”

“Most pleasing, gracious queen,” Aldred said. “It is a true monument to Edward.”

Caela glanced about the frigid, empty stone interior. “Oh, aye, it is that,” she said, not a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “And you, my lady sister, what think you?”

Swanne tried to smile politely, then abandoned the effort, realising she was failing miserably. “I find it empty,” she said, tired with all the pretence and the lies. “And cold.”

Caela nodded slightly to her. “Not many people would have spoken such truth, sister. That was well done of you.”

Swanne momentarily closed her eyes, fighting back the impulse to slap the patronising bitch across her glowing cheeks.

At that moment, one of Swanne’s sons, Alan, who had accompanied the party, came over and greeted his mother and the archbishop. He exchanged one or two words with them, then made a small bow to Caela.

“Madam,” he said, “forgive me for not speaking to you first, but your beauty this morning, in this cold grey hall, struck me dumb, and I could not find the words with which to adequately greet you.”

His eyes sparkled as he spoke, and Caela burst into delighted laughter.

“Ah, I was standing in the good archbishop’s shadow, my dear,” she said, “and it was only now that you saw me. You thought to cloak oversight with flattery.” She paused, her grin widening. “You shall make a true courtier, indeed.”

Well, well,
thought Swanne.
You grace my son with your laughter and insult the archbishop all in one. From where did you discover this courage?
She glanced at Aldred, and saw his face tighten with humiliation, and had to dampen a moment’s grudging admiration for Caela.

Her boy had turned to Aldred, engaging him in conversation about the estates of his archbishopric, and Caela moved a little closer to Swanne, taking her arm and moving her away a pace or two.

“I am glad to have you to myself a moment,” she said, “and Alan’s delightful interruption has made me

curious about something. Let me phrase this as delicately as I might, considering always that there are other ears about.”

Swanne stiffened. She held Caela’s gaze with easy arrogance, but the queen did not let her eyes drop.

“Swanne,” Caela said, “I remember that you, a very long time ago when I was but a naive girl, said that you only ever wanted daughters. Yet here you are, a mother to three fine sons to Harold. How can this be? Has my recently returned memory somehow…misremembered ?”

Swanne knew what Caela was truly asking.
How does a Mistress of the Labyrinth bear sons when they only truly want daughters?

“I am glad for the sons,” Swanne said, sure she could actually hear her teeth grate, “for otherwise Harold would have set me aside.”

“Ah,” said Caela, and the expression on her face said:
the truth of the matter.

And then Swanne knew, as surely as she drew breath, that Caela was hiding something from her. Something
deep.

She remembered how, long ago, long, long ago when she had been Genvissa and Caela had been Cornelia, she had continually felt something strange about Cornelia. Something
hidden.

Now she felt it again. The woman was hiding something, something
sly.

What? What? Not Mag, for Mag was dead.

What else?

Again Swanne felt a shiver of fear slide through her.
What else?

Alan had departed, and Swanne became aware that Aldred was looking most peculiarly between the two women.

Swanne laughed, daintily and prettily, and patted his hand.

“You must forgive us, Father, for our chatter about babies. I am sure you are bored by it.”

“Indeed not, madam. You would be surprised at how much matters of the womb amuse me.”

Then he changed the subject, talking first about the abbey, and how splendid it must be for Eadwine to be able to conduct services within its grandeur (“My cathedral of York is, I am afraid, a sad affair, indeed”), then about Harold (“Has anyone seen the great earl recently? I confess to have missed his wit about the king’s court this past week”), then about the River Thames (“So grey and lifeless, don’t you think? I cannot but agree with those Holy Fathers who preach that such wide expanses of water are but examples of sinful wasteland, unfit for consideration”), before, eventually, bringing the subject back to the matter of children.

“My dear, gracious queen—”

Swanne looked at Caela, and saw that her face was strained, and paler than it had been. Either Aldred himself was beginning to try her (a distinct possibility, as far as Swanne was concerned) or some of what Aldred had been talking about had somehow upset her, and Swanne found herself intrigued by that possibility.

“—I have always sorrowed that your womb has borne no fruit,” Aldred continued, his face wrapped in palpably false sorrow and concern. “It must be a great tragedy for you that—”

“I am afraid, my good archbishop, that I can see my husband is looking for me. I should rejoin him.”

Swanne’s eyes had not left Caela’s face. So, she
was
upset over something.

“—you have proved so barren,” he finished. “Should I pray for you?”

From the corner of her eye, Swanne saw something quite horrible slither across his face. She half turned so she could see him more clearly, when Caela gave an audible, and patently horrified, gasp.

Swanne looked back to her, then saw that Caela was staring at the altar, some distance away.

Curious to see what it was that had so distracted Caela, Swanne looked also…

…and froze, so terrified she could barely continue to breathe.

The altar was not yet fully completed, and there was still some scaffolding behind it. This scaffolding was perhaps some fifteen or twenty feet high, and hanging from its central supports, in a frightful parody of the Christian crucifixion, stretched Asterion.

He was completely naked, his muscular body gleaming with sweat, his black bull’s head twisting slowly from side to side as though he moaned in agony.

Swanne was vaguely aware that Aldred was still babbling on about babies and wombs and barrenness, but she truly could not distinguish a word he said. All she could see was Asterion, crucified before her, blood trickling down his arms, his chest, his belly.

Then, horrifyingly, Asterion’s head stopped rolling from side to side, and his eyes opened, and they stared directly at Swanne.

Do you know,
the Minotaur whispered in her mind,
what Ariadne promised me? Do you know how much she
enjoyed
me?

Swanne realised, frightfully, that the Minotaur was fully erect.

Do you have any idea of how much good I could do you?

And then he was gone, and Swanne was left staring open-mouthed at the altar, trembling so badly that she thought she would tumble to the flagging at any moment.

“Swanne!” she heard Caela say, and felt the woman grasp at her arm. “Swanne!”

And then, in her mind,
It was trickery, Swanne. Ignore it! He thinks only to taunt you.

Swanne, so slowly she could feel the tendons behind her eyes popping with the movement, dragged her eyes away from the altar and to Caela. The woman was staring at her, looking almost as horrified as Swanne felt.

“Swanne,” Caela whispered, close enough now that she could put an arm about Swanne’s waist, “ignore him, I beg you.”

“Ignore me?” Aldred said indignantly, staring bemusedly between the two women. “Have I said something to upset such noble ladies?”

S
EVEN

E
xhausted by his day spent inspecting the abbey, Edward fell into a dreamless sleep as soon as he closed his eyes. The bowerthegn likewise, prompted less by exhaustion than a little too much ale taken at supper. Judith, who often slept on the pallet at the foot of the king and queen’s bed, was not here. Caela had told her she could spend the night with Saeweald, if she wished; that she, Caela, had no need for her.

In truth, Caela did not want Judith—who did not know of Asterion’s appearance—awake and near, fretting over Caela’s obvious and unexplained worry. And so Caela lay awake, staring at the canopy over the bed, replaying the events of the day over and over in her mind.

Her hands lay on top of the bed covers, and they twisted and warped the material until, eventually, broken threads began to work themselves loose from the weave.

The night deepened.

Well past midnight, when even the owls were silent, Caela’s hands paused, and she raised herself up on one elbow.

A trapdoor had materialised within the floor.

“Praise the lady moon!” Caela whispered and, rising from the bed, hastily threw a gown over her nakedness, slipped her feet into some shoes, and snatched at her cloak which hung from the back of the doorway.

The trapdoor opened, and an arm and hand emerged, beckoning Caela.

She stepped through the trapdoor, unhesitant, as the arm disappeared.

She walked with the Sidlesaghe through a tunnel that seemed not of this world, or of any that Caela could remember. Above them and to either side curved walls made of red clay bricks, of a uniformity of shape and colour and of a size that Caela had never seen before.

Even stranger, the floor of the tunnel consisted of a thick layer of gravel upon which her feet continually slipped and slithered. Stranger yet, through this gravel ran two ribbons of shiny metal as wide and as high as the palm of her hand.

Every so often Caela noted that the ribbons of metal quivered violently, shaking to and fro, and when they did then a moment later there invariably came a rush of air so violent that it almost blew Caela off her uncertain feet.

“We walk through a part of the Game that is yet to be,” said the Sidlesaghe. “Sometimes this happens.”

Caela nodded, curious but not unbearably so. Asterion, his naked form and his malevolent words—rich with unknown meaning—kept repeating themselves over and over in her head.

Eventually they came to an opening within the wall on their right. It was the height and just over the width of a man, and the Sidlesaghe turned and entered the aperture.

Caela followed, swallowing down her apprehension.

The footing was firmer here, gravel no longer, but what felt like brick.

Whatever relief the firmer footing afforded was consumed almost immediately by the fear caused by the dark. Caela put her hands to either side of her, using the enclosing brick walls to orientate herself and to give her some comfort within the blackness. She could not see anything, but could hear the Sidlesaghe’s footsteps ahead of her.

Occasionally, she bumped into his back, and whenever she did that Caela lifted one of her hands from the brick walls and rested it momentarily on the Sidlesaghe’s shoulder, seeking reassurance in his nearness and warmth.

They walked for what seemed like hours, but which, Caela realised, was probably only a fraction of that time, until a faint light emerged before them.

A doorway into the night.

Caela gave a great sigh of relief as she followed the Sidlesaghe into the cold night, taking a moment to recover from her claustrophobia before she looked at her surroundings.

They stood within London, near the northern approach to the bridge. Immediately before Caela was the bridge itself, the two stones of Magog and Gog standing to either side of its entrance way.

The Sidlesaghe put a hand in the small of Caela’s back, and she walked forward.

As she did so, the stones wavered in the gloom, and metamorphosed into Sidlesaghes, slightly shorter than Long Tom, who had brought her through the tunnel, but otherwise virtually indistinguishable.

“We saw Asterion,” said the one who had been the stone Magog.

Caela nodded, her hands pulling the cloak closer about her shoulders.

“He spoke,” said he who was Gog.

“It was vile,” said Long Tom.

“What did he mean?” said Caela, looking between the three Sidlesaghes. “What did Ariadne promise Asterion?”

“Who can tell?” said Gog. “Perhaps it was a falsehood, sent to disturb you and Swanne. Perhaps it was a truth.”

“If it is a truth,” said Caela, “then it will be a dangerous one.”

“We agree,” said all three Sidlesaghes simultaneously.

“We have little time,” added Long Tom.

“The bands,” Caela said.

“You must move the first one tomorrow night,” said Magog. “Long Tom shall aid you.”

Caela shivered, and Long Tom placed a surprisingly warm hand on her shoulder.

E
IGHT

Rouen

T
hey had left the castle at Rouen before dawn, heavily cloaked against the frost, their horses’ hooves dull thuds on the straw-strewn cobbles of the castle courtyard and then the frost-hardened mire of the streets that led to the city gate. They were a small party: William of Normandy; Harold of Wessex; Walter Fitz Osbern; Ranuld the huntsman, on horseback himself for this dangerous adventure; Thorkell, a thegn from Sussex, and Hugh, a thegn from Kent, both of them close companions of Harold’s who had accompanied him on this journey to Normandy; and, finally, two men-at-arms from William’s own personal guard at Rouen. All eight men were heavily armed with swords and knives and the men-at-arms also carried with them wickedly sharp, long pikes, two apiece, which they could share with any other of the hunters as need be.