Gods Concubine (44 page)

Ecub looked at Matilda, then back to Skelton. She smiled. “You are going to have to fight for both Eaving and your daughter. Are you prepared to do that?”

“Yes, damn it. Yes!”

“Are you prepared to do everything in your power to—”

“Yes!”

Ecub raised her eyebrows, and shared a look with Matilda.

“I will destroy the world if that is what it takes,” said Skelton. “Please…”

Ecub studied him, seeing in his haggard face all she needed to know.

“What if I said to you,” she said, “that ‘destroying the world’ means giving Eaving to Coel, forever and aye?”

Skelton sat back in his chair and studied Mother Ecub through narrowed eyes. “No,” he said slowly, “you say that only to taunt me. Giving Eaving to Coel is not required. It is not even possible. She cannot be given to Coel. Nor would he accept her.”

“But
you
having her is possible?” Matilda asked.

Skelton looked at the woman who, so many centuries ago, had once been his wife. His only answer was a small, tight smile and the slightest of nods.

Both Ecub and Matilda burst into delighted laughter as if he were a favourite child who had just passed a crucial test. Matilda rose, and, stepping forward, placed her hand on his bare chest.

His skin was very warm, the muscles beneath very tight, and her touch brought back many memories for both of them.

“Tell me what to do,” Skelton said. “Tell me what I have to do to win Eaving back from whatever darkness consumes her.”

O
NE

M
atilda was always a light sleeper, drifting in and out of awareness as a night progressed. She would wake to hear William’s heavy breathing beside her, and she would smile, and touch him, knowing all was well with her world, and drift back into a deeper unconsciousness for a time. William lapsed into deep sleep the instant he lay down, slumbering soundly the entire night through, but Matilda did not for an instant begrudge him his deep rest. Those secret, brief moments when she would wake, and touch him, were precious to her.

She woke this night as she so often did, still half-dreaming, and reached out to touch William’s arm.

The instant her fingertips touched his skin, he burst from the bed, shouting,
screaming
, incoherent with…
what?
Matilda did not know. She cried out herself, stunned, unable for the moment to make any sense of a world which had so suddenly erupted into the unexplainable.

Were they under attack?

Were there assassins in the bedchamber?

William was raging about the chamber, crying out imcomprehensibly, beating at walls, at his head, smashing a ewer and several wine cups halfway across the chamber.

The door burst open, and men-at-arms and valets and chamberlains, groggy with either sleep or shock or both, staggered into the room to instantly reel out of the way as William continued his maddened rampage.

“William!” Matilda shouted, snatching at a robe to clothe herself as she stumbled from the bed. “
William!
”

“The band!” he screamed. “The band!”

Matilda burst into terrified sobs, certain that her husband had been struck with a brain fever so appalling he would shortly drop dead. She sank to her knees, unable to cope, her hands laced over her bowed head, while above her William continued to shout, to rage and to
roar.

“
The band! Who has laid hand to the band?
”

Like William, Swanne also knew one of the bands had been touched,
handled
by someone
other
than her or William.

Who? Who?
Who?

Unlike William, Swanne did not roar and rage. Instead she curled up in her bed, sweating in terror, the coverlets pulled up to her chin, staring frantic-eyed around the darkness of her chamber.

If it was William who had laid a hand to the Kingship band, then she would have known it.

But this was not William’s doing. This was the work of someone
else.

Who?

No! No! Not…Asterion?

Swanne whimpered, feeling all her habitual arrogance and surety bleed away into the unknown night. It was no accident, surely, that so soon after Asterion had taunted her (
Do you know what Ariadne promised me? Do you know how much she
enjoyed
me?
) a band was moved.

Swanne fought back panic.

She had never felt so alone, so powerless, in her entire life.

Asterion had been awake, torturing with cruel words and spiteful fingers a small naked boy he had tied face down spreadeagled across his bed.

He stopped suddenly, frozen half-bent over the sobbing boy, then he slowly raised his head, his eyes narrowed, his lips drawing back over his teeth in a silent snarl.

“Who?” he hissed. “Who? Who has found a band?”

William? Had William slunk unnoticed into the country?

Asterion felt a moment of intense fear.
He had not expected William to be this bold!

And yet why not, eh? What if William was not willing to dance to Asterion’s tune? What if he had decided to circumvent everything Asterion had so carefully planned?

What if William had donned the garb of a merchant, or a common seaman, and jumped off ship in London dock, seeking out the bands before Asterion was ready to intercept him?

“No!” Asterion said. “It cannot be William.
Think
, man.”

He looked down to the boy, who continued to cry, save that now his wails grew louder as he twisted his face about and saw the expression on the face of the man standing over him.

The man reached down and touched the boy,
tweaked
him, and the boy shrieked.

“Not William,” said Asterion softly. “Not William at all.”

Who then?

Her. It had to be. Damn her to all hells. It had to be her.

“But how has she found them? What magic has she employed?”

Was she stronger than he thought?

That thought disturbed Asterion, and he sighed, and considered the boy. It would have been fun to play with him a little longer, but…

He took hold of a large wooden crucifix that hung on the wall next to the bed and dealt the boy a shattering blow to the back of his head, then one to the back of his ribs, and then yet again to the boy’s neck.

When he had done, the boy lay still, barely alive, blood seeping from his battered body.

In any other circumstances, the sight would have stimulated Asterion into the heights of sexual passion. Tonight, however, he merely tossed the crucifix down on to the boy’s body with a grunt, and reached for his robe.

When he had garbed himself, and wiped away spatters of the boy’s blood which marked his face, he left the chamber.

“Throw him in the river,” he said to the shadowy man waiting patiently outside, and the man nodded, and slipped inside the door.

By the time the man emerged, the boy’s shattered body wrapped in a blanket, Asterion had long vanished into the night.

“Harold!” William suddenly declared, and Matilda carefully raised her head.

There had been the suggestion of sanity in that single utterance.

“Harold,” William said again, his voice firmer now. “Harold.”

To Matilda, it seemed as if William uttered that name as a mantra, as the lifeline that would pull him back into reality.

She very carefully rose to her feet. About the chamber stood various men-at-arms and servants, all staring, none knowing what to do or say.

“Harold,” William said one more time, then, as naked as that moment he’d erupted from the bed, shouldered his way through the watching men and half ran through the halls and chambers of the castle toward Harold’s chamber.

Grabbing a cloak, Matilda hurried after him.

T
WO

H
arold shared a chamber with Thorkell and Hugh off a cloistered walk some distance away in the castle complex.

That distance gave William time to think.

At first he’d raced from the bedchamber he shared with Matilda as though every moment it took to reach Harold would somehow mean another moment for
whoever it was
to steal the armband away completely. William could
feel
which band it was—the lower right forearm band, that which he’d secreted at the western gate of Troia Nova—and could feel its movement
away.

He couldn’t have explained that sense of “away” to anyone else, let alone himself. The armband,
his kingship band, his power, his future
, was being stolen from him.

Away.

And yet how could this be? That band,
all the bands
, were protected by a labyrinthine enchantment that meant only another Kingman or William’s partner in the Game, Swanne, could touch it, let alone find it.

And it could not be Swanne, for he had not told her where the bands were.

Yet she had asked for their location.
Could she have scried out the bands’ resting places, and decided to move them anyway?

It was the only explanation that William could think of, unless…unless Asterion had somehow managed to find a band.

Could he move it?

William didn’t know. Possibly. Asterion was a creature of the Labyrinth and of the Game; he was the brother of Ariadne, the most powerful Mistress of the Labyrinth who had ever been, and he had increased in power and knowledge through all the lives he had enjoyed since Ariadne had set him free of both death and the Game.

Could it be Asterion?

“Oh God,” William groaned, and stumbled to a halt just as he reached the door of Harold’s chamber.

He was vaguely aware that he’d been followed in his mad dash through the castle by a bevy of servants, men-at-arms and Matilda, all of whom doubtless thought he was about to murder Harold in a state of dream-induced madness.

And what was he going to do now that he
was
here? Break down the door, haul Harold from his bed and demand the name of whoever it was who had the armband?

Harold would not know. He was not even aware of what part he played in this cursed Game.

Was he?

What if Harold
was
aware, and had thus far deluded William into thinking he had no idea who he had been?

What if Harold and Swanne were in league, against William?

No! No, that could not be.

William suddenly realised he was standing inanely by the closed door to Harold’s chamber, so close his forehead was actually resting on the wood, and the sentry who stood further down the cloistered walk was staring at him as if he were moon-crazed.

William sighed, straightened and, looking to where Matilda stood several paces away with his cloak, smiled ruefully and held out his hand.

“Are you well, husband?” she asked as she handed him the cloak. From what William could see of her expression in this barely lit place, her eyes were narrowed and suspicious.

“I have had ill news given to me in a dream,” he said. “I need to speak with Harold.”

“Be careful,” she said, and William knew she was not saying,
Be careful of Harold
, but,
Do not harm Harold.

William nodded, threw the cloak around his shoulders, and dismissed the crowd of watchful, concerned men who stood at some distance. “Go now,” he said to them. “I am sorry that I have disturbed your night.”

“William?” said Matilda.

“I will talk a while with Harold,” he said, and bent down to kiss her. “Do not fret. I shall not slaughter him. But perhaps he can calm my mind. Wait for me in our chamber.”

When she had gone, the servants and men-at-arms trailing behind her, William turned once more to Harold’s door, and thumped softly on it with his fist.

It opened almost immediately.

Harold stood behind the door, fully dressed, his chamber glowing with the light of several lamps.

Thorkell and Hugh stood only a pace behind Harold, their expressions wary, hands on the knives in their belts.

“You’re awake?” said William, and again doubts assailed him. “Why?”
Had he made that much commotion in his mad race from his own bedchamber to Harold’s?

“There is trouble,” Harold said, and William’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, aye, there
is
trouble. But how do you know of it?”

In answer Harold looked to Thorkell and Hugh, then to William, then back to his two companions.

“I would speak a while with William,” he said, and, understanding the message, Thorkell and Hugh left the chamber, pushing past William with set, careful expressions on their faces.

“You will find warmth and light and companionship in the kitchens,” William said to them. “I have no doubt that most of the castle is awake and restless this night.”

The instant Harold closed the door behind him, William spoke again. “There is trouble in London,” he said, searching Harold’s face for knowledge of what had—
was
—happening.

“You dreamed it?” Harold said. He walked to a stool by a glowing brazier, and sat down heavily.

“Aye, I dreamed of it. But it was a dream of reality, not of fancy.” William stayed by the door, watching Harold closely.

The Saxon earl looked haggard, as if he, too, had dreamed horribly. William saw him rub gently at his belly, and wince slightly as he shifted on the stool, and thought that the wild boar’s bruises must be paining him.

“Caela is in danger,” Harold said, and William’s jaw almost sagged in surprise.

“Caela? You dreamed of Caela?”

“Aye. She and I have ever been close—”

William’s mouth twisted.

“—closer than most brothers and sisters. Sometimes when she has been frightened or unwell I have known it, even though she be at a great distance. Tonight…tonight I dreamed that a great beast, something
monstrous
, pursued her through a land of broken stone and tumbled walls. Ah!” Harold lifted his hand from his belly and rubbed at his eyes. “I cannot understand it. What I
do
understand is that there is trouble afoot, great trouble, and that somehow it involves Caela.”