Gods Concubine (79 page)

When William had left her earlier that evening, Matilda waited until she’d heard the clatter of his horse’s hooves leaving the courtyard, and then she’d snapped her fingers at one of his sergeants.

“Find me a quiet mare to ride,” she said, “and an escort. I need to visit a priory just beyond the walls.”

The sergeant thought about arguing with his duchess for all of two heartbeats.

Then he nodded, and within the half hour was riding with the escort surrounding Matilda through Cripplegate.

A half hour after that, Matilda stood before the gates of the priory, watching as the door slowly swung open.

“You are Mother Ecub,” she said to the woman who stood there.

Ecub nodded. “Sister,” she said, and stepped forward and embraced Matilda.

Swanne sat in her chamber, once again within Aldred’s palace. She didn’t know where the good archbishop had

got to, and she didn’t care. Asterion was the only one who came to her now, and for that she was heartily glad.

All Swanne could think about was Matilda’s, and then William’s, murder.

Aldred’s palace held many comforts. One of those, blessedly, was a bath—Swanne had soaked for what seemed like hours within a tub set before a fire—and the other was access to Hawise. Hawise had not accompanied Swanne south (Swanne had told her to stay within London, thinking then that she’d be able to take William and return to London herself within a day or so of the battle), and Swanne had missed her sorely. Not for her company, for Swanne had grown to detest Hawise’s prattling, but because Hawise was one of the best people she had ever met for procuring things.

Now Swanne sat in a comfortable chair, holding in her hands a vial of one of the deadliest poisons she had been able to concoct. Hawise, of course, had no idea she was procuring a poison for Swanne, nor did she have any idea what Swanne was going to do with the collection of herbs her mistress had sent her out for.

But when Hawise had brought those herbs back, Swanne had spent a delightful hour or two mixing and fermenting them, distilling from them the purest, blackest poison she could manage.

Matilda’s death.

It would look like a miscarriage gone terribly wrong. She would lose the child, and then bleed to death. What could be simpler? All Swanne would have to do was slip the poison into Matilda’s wine cup herself or, more like, pay someone a handsome sum to do it for her.

God knows London was full of resentful Saxons who would jump at the chance to hurt the Norman cause in any manner they could.

And then poor William. Distraught. In need of comfort.

Swanne smiled, setting the vial to one side. Soon. Within the day.

She closed her eyes and imagined how it would be when William finally rolled atop her, and entered her, and the imp snatched…

She was looking forward very much to his scream of terror and agony, a scream that would, within the moment, disintegrate into a whimper of submission. Then she could roll him away, and leap from their bed, fall to her knees before Asterion, and say,
I have done it. I have worked your will. Love me!

Meantime, she would comb out her hair, and pinch some colour into her cheeks, and perhaps Asterion would come to her and would love her again.

Soon. Swanne closed her eyes, dreaming.

“Will he love you enough to take your imp, do you think?”

Swanne’s eyes flew open, her heart pounding, then she stumbled, terrified, to her feet. The far end of the chamber seemed to have opened into a huge hall made entirely of emerald water, and Swanne remembered enough of her previous life to have some idea of what she was seeing.

“No,” she whispered. “Go back! Go back!”

Harold was walking towards her out of that emerald watery cathedral. He looked fit and well, better than she could remember having seen him in many, many years.

He looked as he had before he had touched her, except,
more.

And however much she screamed and shrieked for help, he kept walking towards her, closer and closer, until she could see the terrible gleam in his eyes, and she understood it for what it was.

Vengeance.

“I will not let you do to William,” he whispered, “what you did to me.”

And he reached out his hands,
stretched
them out

over the three or four paces that still separated them, and seized her by the neck.

Asterion found her on the floor some two hours later. Her neck had been twisted until it had snapped.

Her black eyes, dulled by death, were staring at something that Asterion could not even imagine.

Who had done this? William? Those strange and as yet undetermined companions who had aided Caela to move the bands?

“Useless bitch,” he snarled, and dealt Swanne’s corpse such a massive blow with his booted foot that it skidded away some three or four feet.

Asterion stepped forward and kicked the corpse again.
Curse the idiot bitch! Curse her!
Not only had she failed to kill William, but she’d managed to get herself killed instead.

And now Asterion was left without a Mistress of the Labyrinth.

Damn her to all hells. Now they’d have to come back again.

Another life, another set of years spent scheming, planning, manoeuvring.
Waiting.

Asterion’s lip curled, and he began to batter Swanne’s body with slow, deliberate, hate-filled fists.

After a long time, time enough to almost cover himself in Swanne’s blood, Asterion paused and raised his head.

She was moving.
She.

She was going to meet with William.

Suddenly, in all his anger and frustration, Asterion forgot his caution.

“I think it might be time to ruin a life or two,” he muttered.

And grinned.

T
WENTY
-O
NE

CAELA SPEAKS

I
received William’s message after supper when Ecub and Matilda sat with me.

I had no choice but to go. He had asked for me, and the last thing I’d said to him that night was that should he need me, then he should seek me out. I could not refuse to go. It was my nature not to refuse him should he need shelter.

Besides, I wanted to see him again. I hungered for it.

So I told Ecub and Matilda not to worry (a useless piece of wordage), and I sent William’s man off carrying a message containing place and time.

The time was unimportant, save that William’s need seemed so urgent that it needed to be as soon as possible, but the place…the place…

I sent word to William that he should meet me over his dead body.

I thought, if nothing else, that would make his mouth curl in dry amusement.

So here now I stood, early, wanting to have time before William arrived to contemplate what we had been, what we were, and what we might one day be, all gods permitting.

This was the first time I had been here (the first time while still breathing, of course). It was unbearably sad.

The chamber, rounded out of living rock, was bare save for the two plinths of stone, each of which bore a shrouded corpse. One, that which was Cornelia’s

corpse, had its wrappings disturbed, and my fingers briefly touched the bracelet that I wore about my left wrist.

But my eyes were drawn irresistibly to Brutus’ wrapped figure. I stood a long time, staring at it, before I walked over and, hesitatingly, rested a hand on its chest.

Brutus.
Oh, gods, how I had loved him. Why? I wondered. What was there about Brutus to love? He had mistreated me and abused me, humiliated me and abandoned me, and still I could not resist him. I loved him, when there were others who would have suited me better, and who offered me more than Brutus ever had.

But perhaps even then I had known.

My hand drifted slowly up the wrappings covering his chest to his throat. Here had swarmed the growth which had, finally, killed him. I remembered the long months of his dying, his fading from strength into weakness, the rough rasp of his voice as he ordered some servant or the other to remove me from his presence.

How he had hated me.

My eyes filled with tears and I tore my mind away from the memory. I slid my hand further up, over his cheek, and then his forehead, imagining the features that lay swathed below my touch, to the crown of his head.

Did that wondrous, thick, long curled hair still live beneath these tight shroudings? If I unwrapped his beloved head would I be able to run my hand through its blue-black crispness again?

Would there ever be any way of recapturing that single moment we had, that moment in the hills behind the Altars of the Philistines, when he had lowered his mouth to mine, and for a heartbeat almost loved me?

A tight hand closed about my throat, jerking me back, and, terrified, I let out a strangled cry.

“Caela,” he said, his mouth close to my ear, and pulled me back against his body.

His other hand was now about my waist, as hard and as cruel as that about my throat. I was caught, I could not move…I could barely breathe.

And then he let me go, stood back from me and looked about the chamber. “This is where they buried us? In this chamber?”

I nodded. I could not take my eyes from him.

He walked slowly over to the plinth on which lay poor Cornelia’s corpse, and he touched the wrappings. “They have been disturbed. Why?”

I raised my wrist, and showed him the bracelet. “Silvius took this from the corpse, and put it on my wrist.”

William’s eyes darkened. “And why did he do that?”

“He thought to make me remember. At that time I slumbered in forgetfulness, remembering nothing. It was a device to make Asterion think me no threat. To make him believe that Mag was dead.”

“And that artifice worked, of course.”

He was looking at me strangely, and I found myself shivering. “Yes.” In truth, of course, Asterion had then found out about Damson, and had “murdered” poor Mag all over again, but I sensed that now was not the time to leap forth into such explanations.

What was wrong with William? Why did he regard me with such peculiar wild eyes?

“William? What is wrong? Why summon me here?”
Sweet gods, was this the time for us?
I felt a mad rush of hope and joy within me, and even though I tried to suppress it, I knew I could not keep it entirely from my face.

He lifted those unsettling eyes from me and began to walk slowly about the chamber, sometimes running a hand about its walls, sometimes touching briefly one of the plinths. “I have seen Silvius,” he said.

“That cannot have been pleasant.”

He shot me a look, but continued speaking in a normal tone. “From what you said to me, and from what I have gleaned, he has been of great help to you.”

“And to this land. I owe him a great deal.”

“Be careful you do not owe him too much,” he said. “Caela, how much does he know?”

I frowned. “Know about what?”

“About the Game, about the bands—and their location—about
you.”

My frown deepened. “He knows many things. He has been at my side for almost a year. And at Saeweald’s. He has become our closest ally.”

At that William closed his eyes briefly, as if I had said something so painful he could hardly bear it. And I suppose I had. Brutus had ever hated his father.

“You lay with him,” William said. “You
lay
with him.”

“I wanted to,” I said steadily, wishing William would leave this be. “I had no wish to stay God’s eternal virgin concubine.”

“You gave him your virginity,” he said, his voice bitter. “That gives any man a powerful hold over a woman.”

“It certainly gave you a powerful hold over me.”

“But Silvius even more power, Caela, considering what you are now.”

I shrugged. “He is my friend. He will not think to use it to—”

“God curse you, Caela. Have you no wits?”

I flinched, taking a step back. William’s face was suffused with fury, and something else which frightened me far more than did his fury: fear.

“It is not the time now to discover yourself jealous, William. I—”

“Damn
you for your unthinking naive stupidity!” He strode forward and, before I could stop him, before I

could even think or utter a protest, he seized me in cruel hands, and forced his mouth down to mine.

For an instant I resisted, and then all my want and need, all my desire for him flooded through me, and I opened my mouth under his.

How many years had I wanted him to kiss me?

Oh gods…I melted against him.

“You bitch,” he exclaimed, almost throwing me from him, and, horribly, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand. “You corrupted piece of
filth.”

I could not believe it. How could he possibly say that to me?

“Don’t you understand, Caela?” he spat. “Silvius is not my father, nor Brutus’ father.” He paused, and in that instant, seeing the terror in his eyes, I suddenly knew what he was going to say.

I went cold, frozen with horror.

“Silvius
is Asterion. Not only Aldred, although Asterion certainly used Aldred’s body as he needed.
Silvius is Asterion also.
I tasted it then, in the corruption in your mouth. You are as much his as is Swanne.”

“No.” I gasped, taking yet another step back. My stomach coiled and then clenched, and I thought I might vomit. “No!”

“Yes, God curse you again, Caela!
How much does he know?”

I could not think. My world had been torn apart around me.

William had walked up to me, and now he grabbed my shoulders, giving me a little shake. “How much does he know?” he said again.

“Silvius cannot be…he cannot be…”

“How much does he know?”

“Many things,” I managed to whisper, my mind churning. “Saeweald and I…we trusted him. We trusted him. He knew so much that…things only Silvius could have known…”