Gods' Concubine

I gasped, for although I swear I did not recognise him, nonetheless I felt I knew him intimately. Tall and well built, the man had cropped, almost blue-black hair, a strong, handsome and clean-shaven face, and compelling dark eyes that seemed to have noted my every flaw, for as he neared an expression of distaste seemed to come over his features. He was dressed in the finery of a Norman nobleman: a vivid blue, and beautifully embroidered, knee-length tunic over breeches and boots, and a sword at his hip.

  For some reason my eyes kept blurring, and I saw him with short black curls one moment, then with long curls that streamed and snapped in the breeze of his movement the next.

  “Cornelia? Is this you?” He looked at me, puzzled, as if I was some half-remembered companion to him.

  “I am not Cornelia!” I cried. “I am Caela. Caela!”

  He had stopped before me now, his black eyes unreadable. “You will always be Cornelia,” he said. “Always ready to betray me to Asterion—”

  I do not know why, but at the mention of that name a feeling of such fear came over me I thought I would collapse.

  He took another step to me, very close now, and he grasped my chin in his hand. “You are much more beautiful now than you were as Cornelia…” He paused, his black eyes running over my face as if he wanted to consume it. “Far more beautiful…but still as desirable.”

  His mouth twisted, cold and malicious. “But if the reports I hear are true, then Edward has more sense than I would have credited him with and has not touched you. I should have known better than to lie with you, bitch daughter of Hades.”

  At the contempt in his voice I cried out, and tried to wrench my chin from his hand. But he was too strong, and I remained caught in his hateful grip.

  “You want me to kiss you? Well, I will not kiss you, Cornelia, or Caela as now you are, Queen of England. I have a wife; I do not need your womb. I have a lover who awaits me; I do not need your kisses.” He hesitated, and something changed in his face, and his fingers became gentle and caressing, as did his voice. “But oh…oh, how lovely you are.”

  His face bent closer, and his breath fanned over my cheek. I shuddered, and he felt it. Then his mouth grazed the skin beneath my ear, then grabbed and held, and I cried out, and would have sagged had he not let go my chin and caught at my shoulders.

  Something occurred to me, almost a memory, though I knew I had never met this man before. I said: “Do you hate me still?”

  He had raised his head away from me, and I saw his lips form the word “Yes”, but then his expression became puzzled. “I never hated you,” he said. “Not really.”

  “But you just called me,” God help me, I wanted him to hold me close again, and do again with his mouth what he had just done, “bitch daughter of Hades.”

  He laughed, low and soft, and pulled me close enough that he did lay his mouth against my cheek again. “I am sorry for that. That was habit. Who knows if you deserve that epithet now?”

  “They call me God’s Concubine,” I said, relaxing even more with this strange Norman. “That I hate.”

  “You should have children,” he said, standing back from me. “You were a good mother.”

  Now it was I who laughed. “I? A good mother? And when, pray, did I have a chance for that?”

  “Tell me,” he said, “how is Swanne?”

  “Swanne?”

  “It is so long since I have seen her. Fifteen years. I miss her. I want her. Will you tell her that? Will you tell her how much I want her?”

  He was walking away now, his booted stride ringing out through the stone hall.

  “Tell Swanne I want her,” he said, throwing the words back over his shoulder, “and that I cannot wait for that happy day when we can be together.”

  Then he was gone, and I stood there in that cold, stone hall, and wept, for I felt so alone, and so empty.

  Far away, in Normandy, William woke with a hoarse cry, sitting bolt upright in his bed.

  At his side, Matilda roused, muttered sleepily, then sat herself, laying a loving hand on his arm.

  “William, what ails you?”

  He smiled, although it was an effort. “A bad dream only, my love. Let it not concern you.”

  Then he took her chin in gentle fingers, and lowered his mouth to hers, and kissed away the memory of that cursed stone hall and the woman who haunted it.

  The next afternoon Swanne joined my circle of women as we sat and gossiped over our needlework. I sighed, for I had good enough reason to dislike my brother’s wife, but her presence reminded me abruptly of the strange dream that had gripped me the previous night.

  “My Lady Swanne,” I said, putting my needle down, “I dreamed most unusually last night.”

  She tipped her head slightly, the movement one of supreme indifference.

  “I dreamed of a most handsome man, a Norman, with close-cropped black curls.”

  Several of the younger women tittered, and I managed to fight down the urge to blush. No doubt they thought I sought my pleasure in dream where I could not find it in my marriage bed. Suddenly I wished I had not brought up the topic, and would have dismissed it with a laugh had not Swanne leaned forward, her pale face now almost bloodless, her own dark eyes intense.

  “Yes?” she said.

  I made a deprecatory gesture. “Oh, I am sure it was nothing, save that this dream man asked to be remembered to you.”

  “Yes?” The word sounded as though Swanne had forced it through lips of stone.

  I almost smiled as I remembered his message. “He told me to say, ‘I want her and I cannot wait for that happy day when we can be together.’ He said it had been fifteen years since you had been together, and that he missed you. Why, sister, who can this be that is not your husband?”

  Swanne sat upright, rigid with emotion. Her eyes glistened, and she seemed unaware that everyone in our circle now stared at her.

  “Who is this man?” I asked again, softly.

  “A lord such as shall never love you,” she said, then rose and made her exit.

  THREE

  Saeweald sat with Ecub by the dying fire in the pit in the centre of the Lesser Hall where Edward held his evening court. Edward and Caela had long retired, and the only other people still in the chamber were two servants sweeping away the detritus of the night’s activities.

  They were silent, uncomfortably so on Saeweald’s part, for he wanted to grip Ecub by the shoulders and shake out of her whatever it was that she had to say to him; more comfortably so on Ecub’s part, for she still basked in the glow of what the Sidlesaghes had said to her.

  They awaited Judith, who had to complete her evening attendance on the queen before she could join them.

  They sat, eyes set to the floor, until even the servants had gone for the night.

  The moment the door had closed behind the last of them, Saeweald turned to Ecub and opened his mouth.

  “Wait,” she said, forestalling whatever it was he’d been about to say.

  He mumbled something inaudible, then turned back to resume his silent vigil.

  Eventually, Judith joined them, looking both weary and worried, a reflection of Saeweald’s own expression. She drew a stool up to Ecub and Saeweald, glanced at the physician, then looked at Ecub.

  “What has happened?” she said.

  Ecub took a very long, deep breath, then beamed, her entire face almost splitting in two with the width of her smile. “Today I sat amid the stones atop Pen Hill,” she said.

  “Yes?” said Saeweald.

  “They spoke to me.”

  There was a long moment of complete silence, during which time Saeweald and Judith stared at Ecub, their minds trying to make sense of what she’d just said.

  “They ‘spoke’ to you?” Saeweald finally said, enunciating very carefully.

  “Aye, they did. Saeweald, what do you know of the ancient tales of the Stone Dances?”

  “Only that they were raised by hands unknown, long ago, before even the Llangarlians came to step on this
land.”

  “Aye, that is what you would have heard. But I think that Judith may have heard something else. Judith?”

  Judith looked at Saeweald, but he was still staring at Ecub. She looked back to the prioress, who was studying her with a maddening calm, and licked her lips, trying to remember.

  “They were raised in monument to Mag, to the mother and the land,” she said. “They are more Magmonument than Og, although by association—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Ecub, “but tell me what you know of their raising.”

  Judith made a disparaging gesture, unsettled by Ecub’s questioning. “Oh, Ecub, there were only the tales that children told each other.”

  “Often the greatest mysteries are hidden within children’s tales,” Ecub said. “What safer place for them? Where every adult will discount them?”

  Again Judith looked at Saeweald, and this time he met her eyes.

  “Judith,” he said. “What tales?”

  Judith shrugged her shoulders, not ready to believe that the stories she’d heard as a child in her previous life were fact, rather than sheer childish imagination. “I heard…it was told—”

  “Judith,” Ecub said, “just spit the words out!”

  “The Stone Dances, or, rather, the stones themselves, are the surviving memory of the ancient creatures who walked this land long before mankind set foot here.”

  “Very good,” said Ecub. “And their names?”

  “Sidlesaghes,” said Judith. “The Sad Songsters.” Then, surprisingly, her mouth quirked in amusement. “Long Toms, we used to call them, for the height of the stones. Children’s tales though. Surely.”

  “Yet all this,” Ecub said, soft but clear, “is true, my dears. Come now, Judith, tell me more of your ‘children’s tales’. Why do the Sidlesaghes stand as stones and not trail their melancholy amid the meadows?”

  Judith’s mouth fell open, and she stared wide-eyed and unbelieving at Ecub as her mind suddenly made the leap to what Ecub was trying to draw from her.

  “They…” Judith’s voice hoarsened, and she had to clear her throat before she could continue. “They only wake and sing when it is time to midwive Mag’s birth.”

  Ecub nodded, smiling. “Aye.” She looked apologetically at Saeweald who was looking goggle-eyed between the two women. “This is a mystery only discussed among girl-children, my dear. You would probably not have heard it as Loth. Midwifery and birth are the realms of women only.”

  “Wait,” said Saeweald, shaking his head as if he were trying to shake his thoughts into some kind of order. “I don’t understand. Are you saying that, when you were atop Pen Hill, these ‘Sidlesaghes’ appeared to you?”

  “Aye.”

  “And you agree with what Judith just said, that they only ‘wake and sing’ when it is time to midwive Mag’s birth?”

  “Aye.”

  “But Mag already is! How can she be born again?”

  “Because tomorrow Asterion is going to murder her, my loves. And then Mag is going to need to be reborn.”

  Saeweald and Judith just stared at Ecub, aghast, then they both began to babble at once.

  Ecub let them speak for a few minutes, then she held up her hand for silence, and repeated to them what the Sidlesaghes had told her.

  Finally, Saeweald said, “But why can’t Caela remember?”

  “For her own protection, Saeweald. For her own protection. She will remember soon enough. Be patient.”

  But Judith frowned, and looked at Ecub. “But…but where will Mag be reborn? In whom?”

  Ecub smiled beatifically, then shrugged. “With that knowledge they did not grace me.”

  FOUR

  Tostig sat with his brother Harold before one of the fire pits in Harold’s Great Hall, which Harold had built two years previously, just to the south of Edward’s palace complex in Westminster. While not rivalling Edward’s construction, Harold’s own hall did nonetheless represent a significant challenge to Edward’s authority, and did nothing to allay the king’s resentment of the earl.

  The past fifteen years had treated both Harold and Tostig kindly. Both had grown: Harold into a greater maturity—the only physical changes wrought by the passing years were the greater sprinkling of grey through his dark blond hair and the deeper creases of care near his eyes—and Tostig into full manhood. Eight years earlier Godwine had settled the earldom of Northumbria upon Tostig, and it was this earldom and the responsibilities that went with it which now directed the conversation between the two brothers.

  Tostig was a dark, handsome man, and the insecurities of youth which had once so amused Swanne had been set aside for an assurance of manner that sometimes bordered on the arrogant and overbearing. Now, as he and Harold sat before the glowing embers of the fire, with only the soft presence of servants clearing away the tables in the hall behind them, Tostig leaned forward, his face set, his eyes snapping, and stabbed a finger at Harold.

  “Their insolence is unbelievable!” Tostig said.

  Harold, slouched back in his chair as if half asleep, sent Tostig an unreadable look from under lowered lids, but said nothing.

  “They demand that I step down from the earldom!”

  Harold closed his eyes briefly, resisting the urge to lean across to Tostig and shake some sense into the man. Tostig had ruled Northumbria well for years, but over the past eighteen months had begun to meddle in local politics with disastrous consequences. The situation had been exacerbated by Tostig’s assassination of two popular noblemen several months previously. Now Northumbria was threatening to rise up in revolt.

  “Tostig,” Harold said, “stifling opposition by murdering the voices who speak it has never been the best course of action.”

  “I have had to withdraw forces from the border regions closer to home,” Tostig went on, ignoring Harold, “with the result that now the Scots threaten to invade. Harold, you must aid me.”

  Harold leaned forward and emptied the dregs of his wine cup into the fire pit.

  The embers hissed momentarily, then fell quiet.

  “No,” he said.

  “No?”

  “That earldom is yours to keep or to lose as you will, Tostig. If you currently find yourself mired in mutinous resentment, then may I suggest you have only yourself to blame.”

  “You have an army at your disposal,” Tostig hissed. “Give it to me.”

  Harold sat up straight in his chair, his hands light on the armrests, the only sign of his anger the gentle thrumming of his fingers against the wood. “No.”

  Tostig stared at his brother, then abruptly spat into the fire. “You think only of yourself.”

  “I think only of England.”

  Tostig sneered.

  “Edward is old,” Harold continued in an even voice. “His days are numbered. He has no heir and, in his own sweet recalcitrant manner, refuses to name one. If he takes this truculence to the grave with him, England will disintegrate into crisis. I will need the army here when that happens, Tostig, not trapped in the north trying to settle your domestic disputes.”

  “You mean you want to grab the throne yourself. I can go to hell for all you care.”

  Harold took a moment to respond. “My primary responsibility is to the realm, Tostig. Not to you.”

  Tostig rose, his face twisted with anger. “Desert your family, brother, and you may find yourself without either throne or realm!”

  With that Tostig turned on his heel and stalked off.

  Harold sighed, refilled his wine cup, and spent the next hour staring into the fire as he slowly sipped the wine.

  Finally he rose, and went to his bedchamber for the night.

  FIVE

  Hawise checked to make sure that her lady’s gown was safely folded and settled into the chest, then turned back to her mistress. Swanne sat before a burnished mirror, brushing out her thick mass of curly, ebony hair with long, slow strokes, and Hawise hesitated before walking over and taking her leave for the night.

&nbs
p; Sweet Mother Mary, but she was beautiful!

  In the mirror, Swanne’s eyes slid Hawise’s way, and the woman dropped her own eyes and fidgeted with her skirt, embarrassed at being caught staring.

  “I am done with you for the night,” Swanne said.

  Hawise nodded, coloured a little—she had served Swanne for twenty-five years, but the woman still retained the ability to make her uncomfortable—dropped a small curtsey and walked from the private bedchamber that sat above Harold’s hall.

  As the heavy drapery that served as a door fell closed behind Hawise, Swanne smiled at herself in the mirror. “Oh, aye, my dear,” she murmured, “I am beautiful indeed.”

  Then her smile faded a little. What use was such beauty when William lingered within Normandy? Fifteen years ago they had believed that only a year or two separated them from each other and from their dream of completing the Game. But William’s problems in Normandy had continued; he could not turn for England, and Swanne had been forced to a wait far longer than she’d anticipated. She might have tried to see William again, to touch him, but both he and she had felt Asterion’s malevolent, cruel presence close by, and they had not dared. Together they would have presented the Minotaur with too tempting a target.

  Fifteen years since she had seen him. Fifteen years of frustration and of being tied to Harold. Swanne had never loved Harold, but now she also resented him. Fifteen years of Harold when she could have had William.

  And it had been that bitch whom he had visited in dream! It still rankled that William had graced Caela’s dreams, and not hers. William was so concerned about Asterion that he kept his mind and powers closely shuttered; Swanne had tried to touch him through dream previously and had not been able to get past the barriers he put in place.

  But he had visited Caela in dream. It mattered not that William had apparently done nothing but speak of Swanne.

  He had visited Caela in dream and not Swanne!

  “You foolish virgin bitch,” Swanne muttered. “Even now you can’t resist trying your petty, childish charms on him, can you?”