The Chosen Queen (5 page)

‘Father.’

‘Edyth, about time! Your mother’s clucking like a bantam. Where in God’s name have you been?’

Edyth stared up at him. She’d never lied to her father before; never had to. She’d been the victim of his ready temper many times but on the whole, whilst he was tough on her three
brothers, he’d ever been indulgent to her. Now though . . . Fumbling in her pocket, still thankfully attached to her belt, she drew out the ribbons she’d bought at market and held them
sheepishly up. For a moment he looked suspicious and then he grinned.

‘Really, Edie my love, only you could spend so long over ribbons! Still . . .’ He leaned in, an almost childish smile playing across his lips, ‘we’ve all had to make an
effort today.’

He patted his tunic, a new one in expensive dark blue which stretched paler across his belly, then nodded ruefully to the matching bindings around his trews.

‘You look very handsome, Father,’ Edyth provided.

‘Thank you, Edie, and I’m sure your ribbons are lovely; it’s important you look your best if you are to be the Earl of Northumbria’s daughter.’

‘Father . . . !’

‘Tush, ’tis a formality, that’s all. Before long everyone will know. Come now, though, let me take you through to the moot-point – your mother has been waiting on the
benches for ages and I must join the rest of the council.’

He straightened and, contorting his face into a look of studied gravity, offered her his arm. Edyth took it cautiously, worried he might sense the Earl of Wessex’s previous escort, but
Alfgar seemed oblivious and, as the great and good of England gathered for the spectacle of government, Edyth was left to keep that uneasy association to herself.

E
dyth! At last. Have you no conception of politeness? Where in the name of all the saints have you been?’

‘Sorry,’ Edyth muttered. ‘I lost track of time.’

Her mother, Lady Meghan, was sat on one of the front benches, frothed up in a new dress and three strands of amber beads and fuming with righteous anger. Edyth ducked around her and slipped in
between her two younger brothers, cheeks burning at the smirks from those sat behind them.

‘You’ve been naughty, Edie,’ nine-year-old Morcar said gleefully.

‘Very naughty,’ Brodie agreed smugly from Meghan’s other side. ‘Some people just have no idea about decorum, do they, Mother?’

Edyth resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at her elder brother and instead looked around her at the gathering crowds. The council was to be held, as always, on the stretch of Thorney
Island between the crumbling Westminster Abbey and the low shingle beach down to the great River Thames. Servants had been working since dawn to erect a wooden dais some twenty paces long and now
Edyth looked up to the two huge thrones sitting upon it, carved backs to the river, and willed the king and queen to take their places and start the meeting before her mother could complain
further.

‘We’ve been here for ages,’ little Morcar told her. ‘My bum’s sore from sitting.’

‘Ssh, Marc.’ Edwin, two years older than Morcar but at least five years more serious, frowned crossly at his brother. ‘You can’t say words like that in public.’

‘Words like what? Bum?!’

Edwin raised a hand and Edyth quickly sat forward and dived in her pocket for the remains of the marchpane she’d bought at the market. She divided it between the boys and, for the moment
at least, peace was restored. She gave a small sigh of relief and settled herself. She was in plenty of time, whatever her mother said. The eighteen councillors had not yet taken their places on
the elegant seats below the dais and many of the lords and ladies were still filing onto the semi-circles of benches facing them. Mind you, with the earldom of Northumbria up for appointment, every
last noble seemed to have made the journey to Westminster and Edyth realised her mother must have been here for some time to secure her prime position at the front. No wonder she was grouchy.

‘Not you too!’ she heard her mother mutter now and Edyth looked up, hiding a smile as her grandmother, the stately Lady Godiva of Mercia, slid graciously into a slim stretch of bench
next to her.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ Godiva said to her, settling her beautiful golden-coloured skirts and tweaking the richly laced sleeves of her undertunic so that they made a discreet
appearance at her still slim wrists.

‘You’re late,’ Meghan hissed.

Godiva glanced lazily at her daughter-by-marriage.

‘On the contrary; I am perfectly timed, my dear. I’m far too old to be waiting around for those lazy councillors to show their faces.’

Edyth giggled but at last the ‘lazy’ councillors – all the highest men of England – were emerging from the abbey precinct and making their way through the crowds and, in
a panic, latecomers were crushing into seats all around.

‘Must you push so?’ Edyth’s mother said now, turning indignantly to an ample woman trying to squeeze onto the end of their bench.

‘Yes I must,’ the woman fired back. ‘I can’t sit on the floor like a commoner, can I?’

She gestured superciliously to the mass of folk settled quite happily on the scrubland before the abbey’s domestic buildings to their left. They had arrived, as they always did, with rugs
and sacks and straw bales to sit on and with baskets full of food to feed the mass of children who played around them. The councils were a fine spectacle and no one within walking distance wanted
to miss the chance to eye up the fine clothing and see the theatre of government in action.

Edyth sometimes thought it looked like far more fun in the rough-and-tumble crowd but it wasn’t, so she was told, ‘dignified’ and clearly the pushy woman felt the same. As the
king and queen emerged to huge cheers the latecomer again tried to plant her bottom on the woefully inadequate space beside a horrified Brodie, but Lady Meghan was having none of it.

‘There’s no room here,’ she said icily. ‘Perhaps, if a seat was so important to you, you should have arrived earlier?’

She fluffed up her skirts, planting her feet firmly beneath them, and the woman was forced to back away. Lady Godiva leaned forward.

‘Quite right, Meghan, my dear. Who does she think she is, sailing in at this late hour?’

Edyth peered up at her grandmother who winked at her but Meghan just sniffed and said, ‘Some people need to learn how to comport themselves. I need space. I’m wife of the Earl of
East Anglia after all and very soon to be . . .’

‘Mother! Nothing is decided yet.’

‘Yes but . . .’

‘Hush! Look, the king is speaking.’

Edyth gestured gratefully to the dais as an expectant silence fell across the mass of humanity crammed onto the island. Queen Aldyth seated herself on her throne, her slim figure straight and
elegant and her head held high beneath an intricate crown, whilst King Edward stepped forward to address his people. As thin as his wife, but tall and straight-shouldered in a rich cloak of deepest
purple and a jewel-encrusted crown, he was regal to the core. Edyth remembered Torr talking so casually last night of his lack of heirs and suddenly she noticed how white the king’s hair was,
how gnarled his hands as he raised them to the crowd, and how stooped his shoulders beneath his heavy garments. She shuddered, then swiftly reminded herself that the queen was young yet and very
pretty. There was time, plenty of time. Torr had no business talking that way.

Despite herself, her eyes looked round for the arrogant lord and found him sat at Earl Harold’s side, looking ominously smug. Or perhaps he was always like that? Edyth hadn’t paid
him much attention before but now he seemed hard to avoid. He sat rigidly straight in a tunic so stiff with gold it looked almost solid and he glimmered in the low sun like a peacock next to his
more sombre falcon of a brother. His cloak was embroidered with his emblem – a sharpened spear – and he stroked it lightly, a small smile playing on his full lips. Was he remembering
his serving girl, she wondered, and then felt a spike of disgust at her own thoughts and whipped her eyes away from Torr and back to the king.

‘Councillors,’ he was saying, ‘honoured guests, lords, ladies and all my people – welcome.’

His hands swept wide and everyone craned forward. With the spring rains in full flood, the River Tyburn was gurgling and frothing against its banks, making it hard to hear. The king raised his
voice.

‘We are here today,’ he intoned, ‘to mourn the passing of a great man. Earl Ward held the earldom of Northumbria for thirty-two years with great wisdom and strength.’

A ripple of affection ran around the crowd. Earl Ward had been a bear of a man, eloquent on the battlefield if rather less so in court society. A straight talker who had come to power when the
Vikings continually threatened weak King Ethelred’s shores, he’d had a clear and simple view of life and had lived to keep his people safe. He’d been a stalwart of the council and
his huge shoes would be hard to fill.

Edyth found herself seeking out her father – the man who so hoped to do so. He was sitting to the king’s left next to his own father, Earl Leofric of Mercia, and Edyth could see his
knees twitching and his thick fingers clacking nervously through the rosary on his belt. Already his new tunic looked askew and one of the bindings on his trews had come loose and was flapping free
in the breeze. Edyth glanced nervously at Meghan but her mother’s face was set dead ahead and she had no choice but to listen once more to the king.

‘Archbishop Eldred will lead a memorial service after this council,’ she caught and felt Morcar tugging at her sleeve.

‘Do we have to go to that too, Edie?’

She placed a quick hand over his mouth to muffle his piping voice.

‘Yes, Marc.’

He rolled his tawny eyes.

‘But it’ll be so boring.’

‘It’s respectful.’

‘Boring.’

It was like an echo of Torr’s words last night and Edyth shifted again but this was no time to think of such things. On her other side Edwin was fixed on the king and Brodie was twitching
nearly as much as their father. Between them she could see Meghan’s nails digging into her palms as if she might carve her husband’s advancement from her own flesh.

‘But first we have a solemn legal duty to fulfil,’ King Edward said.

Edyth tensed. Lord Torr was quietly adjusting his cloak back from his feet as if, she could swear, he were preparing to rise. To their right Lady Judith, Torr’s skinny wife, stiffened her
back even more than usual and Edyth heard Lady Godiva, ever astute, sigh quietly. Suddenly she longed for the king to go back to extolling the previous earl’s virtues. She closed her
eyes.

‘Northumbria is a vast and challenging earldom. Its ruler protects this realm and all its people from our enemies – the wild Scots in the north and Hardrada’s ferocious Vikings
to the east. It is a grave duty and I have dwelled long and hard on my choice.’

Edyth felt her own nails digging into her palms and was grateful when Morcar’s little hand sank into hers, forcing her to stop. She opened her eyes and the moot-point swam for a moment
before settling. Every man, woman and child in the arena and beyond was silent, focused. Only the rivers tumbled carelessly past and she fixed on a small log bobbing its way down the Tyburn towards
the open Thames.

‘I need a fearless, authoritative and determined man for the role and I believe I have found him. From henceforth the earldom of Northumbria will be held in trust to the crown by . .
.’

The log hit the surge of the tide and was momentarily sucked beneath the surface.

‘Lord Tostig Godwinson.’

Around Edyth the crowd erupted but she was fixed on the log. Where was it? Had it been dragged down by the vicious Thames undercurrents? Everything seemed suspended as she stared into the
churning water but suddenly there it was, popping exuberantly up from a white-laced eddy and heading merrily downstream. Edyth almost raised a hand in farewell but as she moved to do so she felt
Morcar’s clammy grasp and sense rushed in.

‘No,’ Meghan was moaning. ‘No, no, no.’

Brodie was clutching her tight, but his arm looked so slender around her shaking shoulders and was surely not enough to keep his sensitive mother safe from the gossip already buzzing all around
them.

‘Why is Mama crying?’ Morcar asked Edyth.

‘Because we aren’t going to Northumberland.’

‘The “vast and challenging” place?’ Edwin queried, ‘with all the enemies?’

Edyth nodded.

‘You listened well, Edwin.’

‘But why would we want to go there anyway?’ Morcar again. ‘It sounds horrid.’

Edwin tutted.

‘It’s an honour, Marc.’

‘It still sounds horrid.’

‘It is horrid,’ Godiva said briskly, ‘but your father wanted it anyway and he has never been one to take a slight lightly. He needs to stay calm now.’

Her sharp eyes were trained on her son, like a hawkmaster on his bird, and Edyth turned nervously to look at Earl Alfgar. He had half-risen from his bench and was raking his hands through his
thick hair in a way that she recognised all too well.

Sit down, Father
, she willed him,
please sit down
. But Alfgar was not in a temper to pick up even the most ardently sent thoughts. As Lord Torr flicked his cloak back to let
his golden tunic shine, Alfgar rose too.