Gods Concubine (58 page)

“Swanne,” I said as we sat down in opposite chairs and arranged the furs about ourselves. “How do you?”

Her eyes gleamed strangely, and her mouth worked as if she wanted to say something but dared not.

“Well enough,” she said finally. She was staring at me now with a disturbing brightness, and I shifted, uncomfortable. I did not truly feel like trading barbed comments with Swanne at the moment.

“And you are comfortable at the archbishop’s palace?” I said. The news of Swanne’s move to Aldred’s residence had caused a stir and much comment in Edward’s court.

She jerked her head in what seemed like assent.

I looked to the door, wondering where Judith was. The mere presence of a third person in this chamber would be a welcome relief, even if she did nothing to ease the awkwardness of the conversation.

“You must be missing your children,” I said.

“Do you remember those golden bands Brutus wore about his limbs?” she said. Her entire body was rigid, and she stared at me unblinkingly.

I froze, although I truly should not have found the query unexpected. Swanne would have known another band was moved last night, and I was the only living soul in England with whom she might discuss the matter (apart from Asterion, of course, but then I could not imagine Swanne interrogating him about the bands’ movements!). She might even suspect me, although she would not think me capable.

Still, Swanne-who-once-was-Genvissa had been blaming me for most of the world’s ills for these past two thousand years, so, that she would blame me for this—without actually believing that I was responsible for it—was hardly a shock.

“Of course,” I said. “Brutus treasured them dearly.”

“He hid them. After you had murdered me.”

“They vanished from his limbs, that I know, but I did not know what he had done with them.”
Not then.

“Now someone is moving them.”

I swallowed. It wasn’t so much the topic of conversation, but the strange, unreal directness of it, that perturbed me. There was something odd about Swanne. Something…
un
-Swanne. It was the only way I could describe the strangeness that hung about her.

Perhaps it was her anger and shock at the movement of the band?

“We think it is Silvius,” she said.

We?
I thought. “Silvius?” I said.

“Oh, come now, you pathetic little wretch, you know who Silvius is.”

I fought the urge to drop my eyes from her direct stare. “Oh…Brutus’ father. Yes? Swanne, you must understand that in our dealings with each other Brutus and I spent little time talking.”

There, let her make of that what she would.

Swanne flushed, and I knew my barb had hit home.

“There are rumours, foul rumours I am sure,” she said, “that you were absent from Edward’s bed when he took ill last night. How may that be explained, do you think?”

It was not unexpected that Swanne would have heard this, and certainly not unexpected that she would comment on it to me…but that she would do so in the instant after discussing both the kingship band and Silvius?

I gave her the same explanation I’d given everyone else. I’d woken, realised Edward’s distress, and run to fetch Saeweald without thinking to wake anyone else.

I finished, but Swanne said nothing. She just stared at me with that unusual light in her eyes.

“I’ve taken Aldred to my bed,” she said. “Did you know that?”

Perhaps if she had said that she was really Og reincarnated she might have stunned me more, but, frankly, I doubt it. It was not merely that the comment was so totally inappropriate to the conversation immediately preceding it, but that
Swanne had taken Aldred to her bed
was…unbelievable.

I cannot imagine
any
woman willingly taking Aldred into her bed, but
Swanne
? Never! Not when events were so clearly moving towards a reckoning.
Not when William was so close!

Later, of course, I may have recognised that comment for what it was—a heavily-veiled scream for help—but at this moment I only sat there, my mouth agape, and finally managed to splutter, “But what about William?”

“He wasn’t handy at the time,” she snapped.

“But—”

“Do you know who is moving the bands?”

Again, the sudden twist in the conversation unnerved me. “No.”

“Is it Silvius?”

“I don’t know to what you refer, Swanne. I—”

“Are you moving the bands, Caela?”

“Me?
Me?
How can I, Swanne? I do not even know why you are so obsessed with these damned bands. And
Brutus
hid them, not me. Surely you have enough wealth and estates not to hanker after some long-buried relic?”

“Are you moving the bands, Caela?”

“Why are you asking me this, Swanne?”

“You were not with Edward last night when a band was moved.”

Gods, and to think I’d been worrying about what Asterion might have thought!
“I have explained where I—”

“Who do you keep company with, Caela? What strange creatures aid you those nights you are not with Edward?”

“What do you mean?”

She rose suddenly to her feet, the furs and coverlets tumbling about her feet. “
Who else has come back from that terrible life we endured? Who are your friends?
”

I defended with attack. I was now so truly confused, worried and disorientated by Swanne’s bizarre behaviour that I could think of no other way to respond.

I, too, leapt to my feet, and with one fist I beat against my belly. “Do you not remember, Swanne? Asterion tore Mag from my womb. I am no more than an ordinary woman—I
have
no insights, no secrets! What? Do you think that I am still Asterion’s pawn? Still dancing to his tune?”

Something in Swanne’s face changed.

There was a moment when she seemed terrified, and I assumed that her terror was because she might truly have thought I
was
Asterion’s creature.

“Look,” I snarled, spreading my hands wide. “No knife.”

She winced, but I carried straight on.

“I want nothing save to be left in peace, Swanne. I have no ambitions save to escape your malevolence and jealousy and retire to some hall in the country where I might live quietly. I do not want to see your and William’s triumph, Swanne.”

My face was twisting in bitterness now, and I think it was that more than anything else that convinced her. “I do not want William, Swanne. You can have him. I just want to escape you and him and all that happened.
I just want to escape!
”

I burst into tears, and as I put my hands to my face and sobbed, Judith entered the room, took one appalled look at me, and hastened over.

“Madam!” she said. “What—”

“My Lady Swanne is leaving, Judith. Perhaps you can close the door behind her.”

Swanne gave me one more strange, searching look, nodded tersely, then left.

Two days later, as I sat exhausted in Edward’s chamber, Silvius came to see me.

I was astounded at his daring—for he did not bother with one of his Aegean sorceries, but came to me openly—though grateful. In truth, Edward’s death chamber (once our marital chamber, but now utterly overtaken with the stink and business of his dying) was thronged with clerics, supplicants, nuns, abbesses, physicians, herbalists, nobles, members of the witan, sundry palace servants crowding in for a glimpse of the fun and a press of other bodies and ambitions I did not bother to recognise. Jesus Christ himself could have entered that chamber, and it would have elicited no comment.

I was sitting on a linen chest on the far side of the chamber, all but hidden from the view of those closely grouped about the bed by a group of nuns (from Mother Ecub’s order, I think, which may have given Silvius the courage, knowing they would do their best to keep him hidden from view) when a close-hooded monk came to me, murmured an apology for intruding, and sat on the chest beside me.

“My lady,” he said, and took my hand.

I almost jerked it out of the presumptuous man’s grasp before I realised who it was. Silvius’ good eye gleamed at me from deep within his hood, and I nearly burst into tears.

I almost spoke his name, but he put his finger to his lips and winked.

I contented myself with squeezing his hand. “What do you here?” I asked, speaking low.

“Come to see if you need any comfort.”

Oh, he was too good to me.

“Oh,” I said. “Good man—”
damn this audience for not allowing me to say his name!
“—I am glad you are here. I wish to say…that…”

I
wanted
to apologise to him for how I had acted that night we lay together, for not being what he deserved, but I did not know how to phrase the words.

“Do not worry, my lady, you were all that I deserved, and more. Tell me…have you lost that emptiness?”

I shook my head wordlessly.

“Ah, I am sorry for it. I had hoped…”

“I know.” Again I squeezed his hand. “So much has changed in so few days.”

He glanced at the back of the closely grouped nuns, as if he could see Edward through their substance. “I know. There is a disturbance in the Game.”

“Long Tom has felt it also.” Silvius’ eye jerked back to my face as I continued. “The foundations of both land and Game have tilted slightly.”

“And does he know what has caused this?”

“No.” Now it was I who looked about the chamber. “Swanne is altered. I wonder if it is she who has…has…”

“Has?”

“I don’t know.” I felt close to tears, and Silvius lifted his free hand and touched my forehead, making the gesture look like a blessing. I wished he could keep his fingers on my face, but of necessity he needed to drop them away as he did. I took a deep breath and tried again. “Her manner. Her very being. It is different in some way. Sharper, edgier. More acute.”

“Then what has happened, has happened to Swanne,” he said.

“But what could it be?”

He shrugged.

“Asterion?” I asked, glancing around me, wondering if
he
was here, among us.

Undoubtedly.

“If Asterion did anything to Swanne it would be to kill her.
That
I could imagine. Especially if he was angered that another band had been moved. Who else would he suspect apart from Swanne?”

“He could suspect me. He came to Edward while I and Long Tom moved the second band, and he saw I was not here. Then Swanne came to me, and asked questions…”

“Lady,” Silvius said very gently, “how could he suspect you? He is certain that Mag has been killed. He cannot know you for who you truly are.”

I shrugged, closer to tears than ever. If only I could sleep, rest, close my mind to everything…

Silvius’ hand tightened about mine. “I can feel him,” he said, beating his other hand in a closed fist gently against his breast. “I can feel that motherless bastard in here. He is confident. He is
crowing
with confidence. The Game has shifted, and he has caused it. Swanne has ‘shifted’ and I cannot think but that he has caused this as well. Caela…”

“Yes?”

“If Asterion murders Swanne or otherwise corrupts her, we are lost. You know that, don’t you?”

I closed my eyes, and gripped Silvius’ hand tightly.

“I know that,” I said.

S
IX

6th January 1066

E
dward lay dying. He’d taken almost a week about it, but now, in the heart of the bleak midwinter, it was his time.

He was screaming.

There was no need for him to scream so, but Edward was approaching his salvation and he wanted everyone to know that he was going to grab at it with both hands. There was no possible means by which salvation was going to avoid him. No possible means by which God and His saints were going to escape an eternity without the Confessor by their side.

Humility had never been Edward’s strongest attribute.

His screams were terrible to hear. Gurgling with the blood and pus that now almost completely filled his lungs, they rippled about the crowded chamber like a rotten sea.

It appeared that anyone who had even the faintest connection with the king had squeezed themselves into the chamber.

Caela was there, the chief mourner and witness. Her face was pale and expressionless, her every movement measured, as if she kept herself under tight control.

Most of the highest clergy currently within a day’s ride of London were there: Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester; Eadwine, the Abbot of the newly consecrated Westminster Abbey; Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Spearhafoc, the Bishop of London; Aldred, the Archbishop of York, his eyes weeping, his chins wobbling, his plump hands twisting and twining before his ample stomach; and sundry abbots and deacons, including many from Normandy.

Many earls and counts and senior thegns were there, including the earls Edwin and Morcar, brothers to Alditha, who were there less to witness Edward’s death than to ensure Harold wed their sister as soon as possible. Among the other men of rank who attended were at least eight members of the witan. Their eyes rested on Harold far more than they rested on Edward.

Swanne was there, standing well back and hardly visible, but with her black eyes darting about, watching the crowd more than they watched Edward.

Saeweald also attended. He stood at the king’s side, silently using linens to wipe away the worst of the effluent that projected from the king’s shrieking mouth before handing them to Mother Ecub, prioress of St Margaret the Martyr, who placed them in a basket at the bedhead.

No doubt, once the king was dead, the basket’s contents would be souvenired by eager hands, kept against the inevitable day when Edward would be sanctified and the purulent linens would become valuable relics.

Finally, packed at the furthest distance and generally jammed against the walls of the chamber, stood the king’s most faithful servants: his bowerthegn, his palace chamberlain, his royal men-at-arms, the laundresses (Damson among them) and the stable boys who had served Edward with love and devotion and who wondered, if Edward were to find himself a place with God and His saints this night, what place there might be for them in the new court.