Gods Concubine (45 page)

When has there ever been trouble afoot that has
not
involved her?
William thought, but there was no hatred in that thought. He took a stool opposite Harold, pulling the cloak comfortably about his body, and leaning forward, close to the brazier. “Something is wrong tonight,” he said. “I also had a dream.”

“Of Caela?”

William looked at Harold sharply, but saw nothing in the man’s face other than genuine concern and puzzlement. “No,” he said. “Just of…of trouble. Harold…”

“Aye?”

“Harold, are you in league with Swanne against me?”

Harold stared at William, then grinned, genuinely and freely. “Nay, William. Put that from your mind. I do not plot with Swanne against you. I may plot with the rest of England against you, but I do not plot with Swanne.”

William stared at Harold, then laughed softly, deprecatingly. How twisted his life had become to be so relieved that Harold only plotted with all of England against him, but not with a single woman! And Harold
was
telling truth. William could see it. Coel’s spirit shone so true and bright from Harold’s eyes that William believed him utterly.

Whatever else Harold might be doing, he wasn’t doing it in league with Swanne.

“Will you share some wine?” said Harold, standing and walking to a chest, atop which stood several jugs and cups. “I think Thorkell and Hugh may have left us a drop.”

“Aye,” said William. “Thank you.”

But as he drank, and as he exchanged friendly words with Harold, William’s mind drifted back to London, where he could feel the armband moving further and further from that place where he’d left it.

Caela? No, surely not. Surely?

And if so, how?

William suddenly remembered that moment when he and Genvissa had been dancing the final dance which would have completed the Game, building the flower gate to the entrance of the Labyrinth. He remembered that single horrifying moment when he had seen Cornelia stepping forth, running forth, drawing from her robe Asterion’s wicked blade.

Caela?

Caela and Asterion?

God! Was Caela now so completely Asterion’s creature that she could manipulate the Game’s mysteries?

William realised that Harold had stopped, as if he’d said something that required William’s comment.

“What?” he said stupidly.

“I asked,” said Harold, “if you would swear your support to my succession to the English throne. Your lips were forming the word “Yes,” I think.”

William shot him an amused look. “That was not what you asked.”

“Well…no. But I thought you so lost in your own thoughts that I might catch you unawares and gain your support for my accession without a single blow being struck.”

“I do not want to kill you, Harold.”

“No,” Harold said softly, “I don’t believe you do. If you and I had met under different circumstances, I think we would have been true friends.”

William nodded, accepting the truth of it. “Harold…” he said.

“Aye?”

“Will you tell me of Caela?”

“How strange,” said Harold, “for when I return to my homeland, I have every expectation that Caela will ask me to tell her of you.”

T
HREE

CAELA SPEAKS

T
he Sidlesaghe had told me this moving of the first Kingship band would be a true test of my abilities and understanding, but I found it far easier than he had intimated.

I picked up the band, and held it in my cupped hands, studying it.

How it reminded me of Brutus. How many times had this band and its fellows rubbed against me, pressed against me, as Brutus lay with me? Early on in our marriage I had loathed it, for those bands and their pressing against me represented his victory over me. Later, when I had come more to my senses, I had loved the feel of them against my skin as I had loved the feel of Brutus against me.

Then, later still, when I had murdered Genvissa and Brutus had taken me back to wife in order to hate and punish me, I had missed those bands. Brutus had hidden them, and their lack represented all that had been buried and hidden between us: love, respect, warmth, want.

I breathed in deeply,
feeling
the band as it rested in my hands. It was not cold, as one might expect metal—even golden metal—to be, but was warm, as if it still retained the warmth and vitality of Brutus’ body. Of course, now I understood differently. These bands had power and life of their own, and this warmth reflected that life as also the life and power of the Game.

The band was beautiful. Strangely, given that I had spent so much time with Brutus in the two years or so before I destroyed everything between and before us in the interests of land and Game, I had never truly examined them. Almost three fingers wide, the band was finely wrought in metal that was itself so refined it visibly glowed. About its surface craftsmen had worked the symbol of the Trojan kings: the stylised crown spinning over the Labyrinth.

I rubbed a thumb over the decoration, and as I did so I swear that Brutus’ scent rose from the gold.

“Caela.”

The Sidlesaghe’s voice brought me to my senses, and I looked up.

“This you must do by yourself,” he said from where he still stood just outside the circle of columns.

I frowned. “You will not come with me?”

“No. You must be the one to move it. This travail only you can accomplish. Use your skills, Caela. Take it to Chenesitun.”

I looked back to the band.

“You have not long, Caela. You must be back in Edward’s bed by dawn.”

I was irritated with the Sidlesaghe now, for all I truly wanted was to stand and inhale the feel and scent of Brutus from this band…but he was right, and so I looked away from the Sidlesaghe toward the south-eastern quadrant of the circle.

I concentrated, my eyes narrowing.

I became the land, and I saw.

There, a trail, winding through a rocky landscape. Not the landscape that was reality, for that was not rocky at all, just sweet meadowland and marsh where the grasses bordered the river, but some
other
landscape. Although I did not immediately recognise it, this place felt safe to me, and right, and so I stepped forth.

The instant I left the circle the columns faded, but the golden radiance that had lit that circle now strengthened to such a degree that I felt I was walking through the noonday sunlight. A path stretched before me. Composed of dirt and scattered gravel, it wound its way between great piles of tumbled rock.

Paving, I saw, as I took my first steps along that path, the golden band still held in my cupped hands.

I was walking through the ruins of a once great and mighty city.

Tears filled my eyes. I knew this place, even though I had never been here. I knew it because I had heard stories of it from so many people: Brutus, Hicetaon, Corineus, even Aethylla. It was Troy. Troy destroyed.

I was seeing this because this is what the band remembered. It had
been
here, it had barely escaped the destruction itself, and it still sorrowed and wept for the great, beautiful city of its birth and initial purpose.

I realised also that I was seeing this for another and more vital reason. I had become the land in order to find my way to Chenesitun, but what the land became—in conjunction with the band—was Troy. My land, my
self
, and the Game, had merged to such an extent that this land
was
Troy, or at least, had absorbed the vitality and memories of that long-ruined place until Troy’s past had become part of its own past.

Or was it that I saw only one of many possible futures for this land that the Game played out, over and over?

I continued walking. Great drifts of tumbled masonry extended to either side of me. In some places the stones still leaked smoke from fires that raged within; in other, sadder, places bloodied bodies lay sprawled across the stones.

I wept, so sickened was I by the destruction and the carnage.

All this a part of Ariadne’s catastrophe. All this a part of her pact with her hateful brother, the Minotaur Asterion.

And what was that pact, that Asterion thought to use it to taunt Swanne? What part did I not understand?

Thinking of Asterion made me hurry my feet. They would know now that the band was being moved: William, Swanne and Asterion. Still in Normandy, William could do nothing but rage and fret. Swanne? Swanne would rage as well, and she might also fly into the night, seeking that person who had dared touch the band.

Or would she? In Swanne’s mind the only conceivable person who might touch the band apart from William was Asterion, and I did not think Swanne ready for a confrontation with him.

No, I thought it unlikely that, this first time, Swanne would make a physical move.

That left Asterion, and I admit the thought of him did worry me. I didn’t know Asterion, I couldn’t scry him out, I didn’t know the extent of his power, and I couldn’t be sure that he might not be lurking behind the next pile of rubble I walked around.

So I hurried my feet. I was walking amidst enchantment, so I knew the journey to Chenesitun would take a fraction of the time that would elapse if I walked the land in reality, but still I hurried. I began to fret about what I would find when I reached Chenesitun. Where could I hide the band? Did
I
have the skills to hide it from Asterion, as well as William and Swanne?

About me the destruction and horror grew even greater. The piles of masonry grew higher, the smoke and fires thicker, the stench of the corpses more sickening. Blood now trickled in rivulets across the path, and at every third or fourth step I had to make a small leap to avoid soiling either my feet or robe.

My hands tightened about the band, for I was fearful it might dislodge. Somehow I knew that if I let it fall, if it rolled away between the tumbled stones, then it would be lost
forever.

My breathing grew quicker, deeper, harsher, and I prayed silently that I would soon reach my destination.

I dared a glance ahead, and what I saw dismayed me. The smoking ruins of Troy stretched on forever, as if into infinity.

It would take me all night!

I began to panic and, in that panic, one of my feet slipped on some loose gravel. I almost lost my footing, and I cried out as my hands grabbed frantically at the band.

I stopped walking, taking a moment to try and calm myself. Gods, this was but the first band, and was going to be the easiest to move, surely! I could not let a vision of the past upset me.

Or was this a vision of the future? Not of old Troy destroyed, but of
this
Troy
—
London
—
destroyed?

Panic again threatened to overwhelm me, but then I pushed it down with every ounce of strength that I had, and I kept moving, one foot after the other, one foot after the other…and so I endured.

Within minutes, in the space of three footsteps, or so it seemed, I walked from the devastation of Troy into the strangest, most frightening chamber I had ever encountered.

In all of my existences.

Somehow I knew that this was Chenesitun, but not the Chenesitun I had once seen. Here were no scattering of wattle-and-daub dwellings, here no low-roofed timber house of the thegn called Cynesige. Here no barns or the soft lowing of cattle.

Instead, I stood within a chamber so vast I could barely comprehend it. It reminded me of my visions of the stone hall that I’d had both as Cornelia and in this lifetime, but only in its dimensions. There was no peace here, but madly scurrying bodies of people dressed in alien clothes. There was no joy here, but the irritation of bustling people, and I could feel from them a cacophony of words and emotions:
Late, late, late, hurry, hurry, hurry, delay, delay, delay, what is the time? Where is the platform? Where is my ticket? Have you a timetable?

And then, more ominously:
Hurry! Flee! Down! Down! The sirens have sounded!

A woman, dressed in a close-cut coat and skirt of a weave and material I could barely imagine, stepped up to me and stared me in the face. Her face was garishly painted, her shoulder-length hair elaborately curled and stiffened by some unseen agent. She held a small boy, dressed in close-cut clothes similar to hers, save that he wore trousers rather than a skirt and with a striped cap pulled low over his eyes.

“Do you know the way?” she asked me, her eyes wild—with fear, I thought, and perhaps even some desperation. “Which platform do I need?”

“I…” What could I say? Everything around me was so strange, so foreign, more terrifying even than Troy’s destruction.

“You cannot just
stand
here!” the woman said. “Save yourself!” Then, thankfully, she turned her back and scurried off, pulling the boy behind her.

He sent me a single, pleading look over his shoulder, and then they vanished into the hurrying crowd.

“My dear,” said a voice, and it was so soft and familiar I grabbed on to it.

“My dear…”

I turned to my left, and saw, some ten or fifteen paces away, a collection of tables and chairs. At one of the tables sat a man who, even though he was sitting, was of noticeable height. He was also very thin, and he had on a tightly-belted, calf-length brown coat, and a curiously-shaped soft hat pulled low over his long, thin, pale face.

Even so strangely disguised, I could recognise what he was.

A Sidlesaghe. Not Long Tom, but one of his kind.

His soft voice reached me again. “Is that my cup of tea? I will have it, if you please.”

I looked down at my hands, and noticed several things all at once. I was no longer dressed in my robe and cloak, but a tightly-belted dress of starched white material that seemed like linen and yet was not. My legs were encased in fine, woollen-like stockings, and on my feet were brown leather shoes of sturdy construction.

I no longer held the golden band of Troy, but a small round platter on which stood a cup. Both were made of a fine white pottery. The cup held a steaming, milky brown substance.