Gods Concubine (57 page)

“Aldred has treated you poorly,” Asterion said. “Your belly is battered almost to the point of uselessness.”

What are you
saying? Swanne thought. You
have treated me “poorly”.

“Very poorly,” Asterion murmured, and Swanne relaxed a little further under the touch of his hands, closing her eyes as even the ache abated. To feel such a cessation of pain, just for a moment, was worth this brief compliance.

“Do not judge me by Aldred’s actions,” Asterion said.

Swanne could do nothing but nod, just once, jerkily. Her eyes were still closed as she desperately concentrated on savouring the living of every pain-free moment.

“My dear, I need you to look upon me,” said Asterion.

Swanne reluctantly opened her eyes.

“I wish you to present yourself at Edward’s side—”

“I cannot. Harold dismissed me from court…” She stopped, terrified by the Minotaur’s thumbs which had suddenly dug into her belly.

“Remember what Aldred put in you,” he said, very softly.

“Yes,” she said dully. “I will do it. I will go to Edward’s court.”

“Good. Poor Edward’s health appears to have taken a turn for the worse. He is busily engaged in his dying. I wish you to watch for me, be my eyes and ears.”

“But you…but Aldred has better reason to be there—”

“And be assured he
will
be there. But you have your ear attuned to the world of women, and can be admitted to their presence.” He stopped, his black brow wrinkling as if in perplexity. “Now, I know that you and William—the sweet, sweet boy—believe Silvius is moving those bands. That may be so. But whoever
is
moving them has assistance. Someone aids him. Or her. If someone
is
aiding Silvius—or whomever—then I need to know who, or what, they might be.”

He smiled, and ran his hands up to Swanne’s breasts, caressing them gently. “After all, my sweet, you must have some duty to keep you occupied until you deliver William’s life into my hands, mustn’t you?”

She moaned.

“You
will
deliver William’s life into my hands, will you not?”

Silence.

“
Will you not?
”

Swanne jerked her head once in assent.

“Good.”

Asterion let her go, eventually, and Swanne, her face dull, lifted her cloak from where it lay draped over a chest and moved to the door.

“Swanne, my sweet,” Asterion called to her just as she laid a hand to the door catch. Her back stiffened as she heard his voice. “I heard a rumour that Caela was not at Edward’s side when he took ill last night. I do rather hope you can discover for me where she was…and who she might have been with. This is most important. What strange company does Caela keep these nights when she doesn’t lie with Edward? You
will
ask her, won’t you? I am most curious to know.”

Later that morning Aldred sat in his bath, slowly washing himself, puzzling things over in his mind.

Everything this past week had been so dim…and yet so vaguely pleasurable. Somehow he seemed to have acquired the Lady Swanne as a mistress, but he could not always remember those nights he spent with her so very well.

That he was spending them with her was undoubted. Everyone was looking at him differently—and Swanne herself, why, she practically fell over herself to cater to his every wish. The proud lady he’d known for so long seemed to have decided to admit herself his utter slave.

Aldred smiled, then sighed happily. He wasn’t sure about the “why” of his current circumstances, but he wasn’t about to complain.

F
IVE

CAELA SPEAKS

E
dward sat through the day and wheezed a little further into his dying with every breath, and enjoyed every moment of it.

Finally, he was vindicated. The Devil and his evil roamed everywhere and now, due to the inattention of careless priests and the apathy of Edward’s subjects, the king had been struck down in all his glory.

No matter that Edward was an old man anyway.

No matter that he’d whined of his aches and pains and fevers for as long as I had known him (and well before that if the mutterings of his long-suffering mother were any guide).

No. He rambled and he moaned all through that morning:
See how your lack of attention and love has struck me down. See how your lack of piety has allowed the Devil into the very heart and soul of the realm. If only you
(and he took in the entire realm with that single “you”, although his feverish eyes did tend to linger on me as he said it)
had loved me and cared for me and tended me as your duty insisted.

By noon I could gladly have gone to the window, thrown back the shutters, and screamed for the Devil to come back and finish the thing properly.

Oh, I knew it was Asterion, and I knew why. He was pushing matters forward to suit his own pace. Catch us off-balance. Snatch at the Game before any of us—whether William or Swanne or Silvius or myself, or even Saeweald—could snatch back.

What was Asterion planning? I wondered if Long Tom was pacing through the Game, wondering and worrying. I wondered if Silvius worried, and I had an urge to see him, not only to seek his forgiveness for what I could not give him on the night of the solstice, but to just have him hold me, and tell me all would be well. I know
I
spent the hours after my return ignoring Edward’s vilenesses and wondering and worrying. I was outwardly the dutiful wife, bending my head in contrition at every barb Edward spat my way, aiding Saeweald as first he bled Edward, then applied hot herbal and honey poultices to his armpits and chest and groin, then wiping down Edward’s face and arms and legs to wash away his stinking sweat.

Around us hurried and muttered various court and church officials, moaning and blessing and praying and, no doubt, wondering how best to position themselves in the upheaval following Edward’s undoubted soon-to-be death.

Harold came to attend the debacle as well. He’d hurried from Alditha’s bed (Harold had wasted no time in knocking at the door of Alditha’s chamber, and I knew also that he had broached the subject of marriage with her ecstatic family; I had no doubt that Harold would be making sure he had a legal heir as soon as possible. He might not, after all, have much time once Edward had succumbed), glanced worriedly at me, then, with the rest of us, endured Edward’s ranting throughout the remaining hours of the night and through the morning. He’d pushed a chest against the far wall—as far from Edward’s bed as he could manage—and there he’d sat and watched, his face haggard, his eyes deep with worry. Occasionally one of the chamberlains or counts or thegns or courtiers would bend close to him, and mutter, but Harold only ever responded with a nod.

My eyes slid his way more often than need be, I expect, but I had so little chance to see him, or be with him, and the sight of him comforted me.

I would have liked—desperately—to be able to sit down next to him, and allow him to wrap me in his arms and hold me, but that was impossible under these circumstances.

Under any circumstances, I expect.

Sweet gods, how close had I come to discovery during the night? Or
had
I been discovered? Asterion would have noticed my absence when he’d visited his little dance of death upon Edward. Would it have seemed strange to him? Or would he have thought only that I slept in a different chamber so that Edward’s piety would not be disturbed by my female form?

In which case, Asterion must have wondered why my attending lady, Judith, slept on a pallet at the foot of the bed.

Would Asterion have remembered that brief moment when he’d held me by the magical waters of the pond, and connected that woman with my absence from Edward’s bed?

As the night progressed my worry combined with my fatigue to make me nauseous, and, when one of the servants leaned close to me just after dawn and offered me a cup of warm mead, I felt my stomach heave and sweat break out on my face.

Saeweald noticed as well, and grabbed my arm just before I toppled from the bed.

“Madam,” he said, sharing a glance first with Harold and then with Judith, “you must rest. You cannot do more for your husband at present than you have.”

“What?” screeched Edward, lurching up from where he’d been reclining against the pillows. “The whore feels ill? What, Caela, a bastard child you’re breeding there to some peasant lover? A thick-witted boy you’re going to claim is mine? A bellyful of some lustful—”

“You go too far, even for a king,” snapped Harold, rising and coming to the bed. “If you think yourself dying, Edward, then concentrate on that dying, and ensure your own salvation rather than searching out imaginary faults in those who seek only to aid you.”

He turned his back on Edward, who was spluttering and hacking his way through a coughing fit brought on by his outburst, and took my arm, leading me back to the chest where we both sat down.

Judith hurried over with a fresh dampened cloth to wipe my face, and I smiled my thanks at her.

There was a clear question in her eyes, and I shook my head slightly. There was no baby, I was certain of that, even though my womb had been cramping badly in the past week or so.

Judith wiped away my sweat, then brought me a cup of milk and egg and honey mixed, and I took it gratefully, thanking her as she turned to return to her stool by the door.

“He
is
dying?” Harold said softly, his lips barely moving.

“Yes.”

“Saeweald cannot save him?”

“Do you want him to?”

Harold, who had been staring at Edward, looked at me. “No,” he admitted. “I do not. It has come time for me to take my heritage.”

I shivered, a black wave of despair making me feel ill all over again. “Harold…”

“I know, my love. I know.”

That “my love” almost undid me, and I had to set the half-drunk cup of milk down on the floor.

Harold mistook the reason for my distress, and took my hand, no longer caring, I think, what all the watching eyes thought.

“I am strong. I can face whatever comes at me. England will not accept either Hardrada or William.”

Oh, Harold, my love, I thought, you have no idea what it is you will face. I had a sudden, crazed hope that Asterion
would
best all who ranged against him, for then Harold would not have to die. He could reign as king, never knowing that beneath him reigned a far viler lord in a far more wretched land…

The thought vanished even before I had completed it.
England would not accept Asterion either.

Harold’s gaze returned to Edward, now lying back on the pillows and struggling for breath. He spoke, keeping his voice very low. “Edward will die, but he has chosen the best time of year to do so.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is the dead of winter. Neither Hardrada nor William can invade until late summer at the earliest. I have well over six months before…”

He stopped, and I squeezed my eyes closed so that he might not see the pain in them. Oh, I knew very well what that “before” encompassed.

Before William came home to kill Coel all over again.

William would win whatever battle he engaged in with Harold. William would become king. Hardrada, if he was to be a player at all, would be little more than a nuisance.

“Do not fear for me, Caela,” Harold said in the gentlest voice I had ever heard from any throat. He was going to say more—I was by this stage beyond any coherent speech—but then his head jerked towards the door, and he cursed, not taking the trouble to lower his voice.

I raised my head.

Swanne had entered the room.

She looked…I don’t know…she looked different in some aspect. She was very pale, but then, she’d always had pale skin, although it did seem far more translucent than normal. Her eyes were over-bright, but then might that be because she had a winter chill?

There was a strange rigidity in the manner in which she held her body, but was that because she’d heard Harold’s curse, and because she undoubtedly knew she would not be much welcomed within this chamber?

Edward had always disliked her (the man had
some
sense!), and Harold had made his feelings for Swanne known throughout the court.

Harold was within one or two weeks at the most of being crowned the new king, and there was no one in this chamber likely to try and alienate him by taking Swanne’s side in their rift.

The chamber was already crowded, and there was little room for movement, but still people managed to draw back from Swanne as if she carried the pestilence within her person.

“What do you here?” Harold asked. He had let go my hand and risen.

Swanne’s eyes moved about the room, as if searching for supporters, but she answered Harold calmly enough. “I am here to pay my respects to the king,” she said, “and to offer my assistance, howsoever that may be required.”

Without waiting for a reply Swanne moved to the side of Edward’s bed—the opposite side from Harold and myself—and sank to the floor in a graceful curtsey, bowing her head almost down to her breast.

“My lord and liege,” she said to Edward as she finally raised her face to look at him, and I was shocked to see her eyes glistening with tears. “I am sad to see you in such distress. How may I best help?”

Edward was in no mood for courtly niceties. “You can remove yourself from my presence,” he said, “and take that slut with you. I have had enough of her.”

He waved a hand feebly in my direction.

Harold tensed, and before he could speak I rose and said calmly enough, “I will be glad of the time to rest. Judith, perhaps you might bring some bread and cheese so that the Lady Swanne and I may break our fast together? We can sit in peace in the solar, I think.”

Away from all these people. That would be a relief, at least, even if Swanne’s company was not. I determined to rid myself of her as soon as possible. All I wanted was to sleep…

Curiously, Swanne seemed pleased at this suggestion, and she and I made our silent way to the solar. There was no fire burning in the brazier because of the fuss Edward’s sudden sickness had caused, but there were furs and blankets enough to wrap about us, and Judith could send someone to attend to the fire shortly.