Gods' Concubine

  He smiled, and it contained no demands, nor hurt. Nothing but love.

  “Swanne,” I said, wanting to distract both him and myself.

  “Ah. Swanne. After Saeweald attended me last night I returned with him to his own chamber, mostly to avoid my damnable wife as much as to avoid the stink of murder in my bedchamber, but partly as a precaution should Tostig have decided to try again. I have not seen her this morning, nor shall I seek her out.”

  “Be wary of her.”

  “You do not need to warn me of that! Gods, Caela, she stood there and laughed as Tostig tried to murder me.”

  “She can do far worse, Harold. Please—”

  “I will be wary of her, my love. Now, to the reason I came to you this morning, apart from my desire to lay my eyes on your beautiful face yet again, and to thank you for saving my life. Caela, I need your aid further to what you have already done for me.”

  “You have it.”

  “You may not be so willing to offer it when you hear what I need from you.”

  “You will always have my aid, Harold. Whatever you plan.”

  “I have put it about that in four days’ time I intend to return to my home estates in Wessex. My stewards have some problems that require my attendance. Besides, I need the peace to recover from Tostig’s brutal attack.”

  I inclined my head. Nothing thus far seemed very difficult.

  He held my eyes steady. “But Wessex is not my true destination, sister.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I go to see William of Normandy.”

  “Harold!”

  “Shush! Keep your voice down! No one must know of this, Caela! I need you to help maintain the ruse that I am in Wessex.”

  “Why? Why?” My heart was pounding in my breast, and my emotions were so tangled I could not sort them out. Oh, gods, William was his murderer in his previous life…why go to see him now? “Why, Harold?”

  “I need to know William’s intentions. I need to know his ambitions. Caela, the crows are gathering for Edward’s death. I need to know who my rivals for the throne shall be. After last night, I can now be certain that Tostig will be against me, and will probably ally with Hardrada—only the gods know what Hardrada has promised Tostig in return. But William is an unknown. He could be either my rival or my ally. What does he plan?”

  Ah, mercies, I knew exactly what he planned, but how could I tell Harold this without shaking him to the very core of his being with the tale of his previous life? Harold needed strength and equanimity to survive what faced him. Saeweald and Ecub were surely right when they argued that he did not need to be distracted or tipped into uncertainty by what had happened to Coel. I believed that Harold had a better chance against William without the burdens of both their previous lives.

  “I need him to know, if he does not know it already,” Harold said, “that England will stand united behind me. Perhaps if he knows that, then he will ally with me, continue the partnership he had with Edward. He may not be such an eager rival if he knows that England stands behind me.”

  Ha! I thought, but again felt it would be better that Harold discover now where William’s ambitions lay than delude himself with the hope he might be an ally. “The witan will elect you king?” I said.

  “Aye. They have given me their word.”

  “And you hope that, in informing William of this, he might retract his ambitions? Reconsider his likelihood of success? Consider instead an alliance before a challenge?”

  “He already has Normandy safe in hand. Why lust for England as well when it might well kill him?”

  Oh, what could I say? That William-once-Brutus would have no compunction in slaughtering the entire witan, in razing the entire land, if he thought it would clear his way to London, to Swanne, and to his Trojan kingship bands?

  And yet what harm could Harold’s trip do?

  Particularly if I armed Harold as best I could for his venture.

  Besides, this he did need to know.

  “Harold,” I said, laying a hand on his knee, “I have some deeply private information for you that has only just come to my ears.”

  Had just come to my own understanding, more like, but there was no means by which I could explain this to Harold.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “It will be useful for you at William’s court,” I continued. “A weapon.”

  “Yes?”

  “William has an agent, a spy, within Edward’s court.”

  He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “I am not startled to hear of it. There are agents everywhere, I think.”

  “It is Swanne.”

  Nothing I could have said would have shocked Harold more. Well, perhaps one or two revelations may have shocked him more, but this one certainly had no small effect.

  He stared, white-faced. “Swanne?”

  I nodded.

  “Why? Why?”

  What could I say but the truth? “She lusts for him, and she lusts to sit as queen beside him.”

  Harold cursed. “Then no wonder she stood by and laughed as Tostig tried to murder me. Ah, I have misjudged both her and Tostig. I knew she disliked me, but to betray me to William? I had not thought she would go that far.”

  How could I tell him that Swanne wanted William, not for the title as queen, but because he was her Kingman, and with him she could achieve a greater immortality than ever she could as wife to Harold?

  Harold was a hindrance to the Mistress of the Labyrinth. William was a much-loved necessity.

  “There can be no doubt that I will set her aside after her behaviour last night, as well as knowing her betrayal of me to William,” Harold added, his face now rigid with anger. “By Christ himself, Caela, does Swanne not know that William is already wed, and securely so by all accounts?”

  A wife has never stood in her path before, I thought, and she will not allow one to do so now.

  “Be careful,” I said, meaning so much with those two simple words.

  “Aye,” Harold said, smiling in what, I suppose, he hoped would be a reassuring manner. He rose. “You will put it about that I am in Wessex, and perhaps send communications to me there, so that all may think I truly am within my estates?”

  “Aye, of course. Harold…” I took his hand as he was about to step away. “Will you do something for me?”

  “Anything.”

  “Will you talk to Matilda, William’s wife, and discover what kind of woman she is? I have heard so many rumours of her, and I would hear a report from eyes I can trust.”

  I was curious. Feverishly so. Matilda might make all the difference if she was indeed as strong as rumour had it. William had been married to her for some fifteen years. They had many children together.

  “Harold,” I continued, “will you tell me if…if she is someone William respects?”

  I could see he was agog with curiosity as to my motives, but he merely nodded. “Of course.”

  And will you tell me of William? I wanted to ask, but did not.

  Oh, merciful heavens, how I wanted to be there when Coel-reborn and Brutus-reborn met again for the first time in two thousand years.

  I hoped that William had learned enough that he would not instantly slide a sword through Harold’s throat.

  ELEVEN

  When Harold had been gone three days, ostensibly to visit his estates in Wessex, and the court quietened in its traditional lull between harvest celebrations and Christmastide festivities, Caela lay asleep beside her husband the king in the quiet darkness.

  The night was still and, now that autumn had taken firm grip on the land, very cold, readying itself for a heavy frost at dawn. Nothing moved, not so much as a night owl, not even a breath of air.

  King Edward and Queen Caela’s bedchamber lay as still and cold as the rest of Edward’s kingdom, as heavy and unyielding as the wall that Edward had built between himself and the woman who lay at his side. It was a large chamber, its floorboards covered in part by thick rugs, its timber-planked wal
ls hung with woollen tapestries and drapes. An enormous bed occupied the central portion of the chamber, its embroidered drapes pulled partway around the mattress where lay the king and queen, their motionless forms huddled far apart.

  The king’s bowerthegn occupied a trestle bed closer to the door. Beside the bed, unscabbarded on the floorboards, lay a sword that the bowerthegn could set his hand to the instant danger threatened.

  Unusually, the bowerthegn appeared to have forgotten to shutter the windows before he retired and now faint moonlight, occasionally shadowed by thin clouds that scudded across the night sky, spilled through the chamber.

  The sleepers did not move, save in the gentle breath of sleep.

  The moonlight intensified, almost as though the moon had suddenly waxed to its full girth within the space of a breath.

  A stray cloud scudded briefly across its face and, when it moved on, the strange, intense moonlight flooded the chamber once more.

  The chamber was not as it had been before the cloud had so briefly obscured the moon.

  Now, in that expanse of bare floorboards between the great bed and that of the bowerthegn by the door, there appeared a trapdoor. As yet it was little more than a faint outlining of lines within the boards but, as the moonlight grew ever stronger and the breathing of the sleepers ever heavier, the lines thickened and deepened until the trapdoor became a new reality within the chamber.

  Everyone slept on.

  The trapdoor quivered, then rose, achingly slowly, utterly silently.

  An arm lifted with the door, its hand gripping the bolt which raised the door. It was a very long arm, browned, and roped with muscle. There was a moment of stillness, as if whatever awaited beneath the trapdoor hesitated, to ensure all was well. Then a Sidlesaghe rose entirely from the trapdoor, laying it silently back against the floor.

  Again the Sidlesaghe hesitated, looking first at the bowerthegn, then at the sleeping king whose lips rattled wetly as a small snore escaped his throat. Finally, content that all was as it should be, the Sidlesaghe walked to Caela’s side of the bed, folded his hands before him, and waited.

  A moment later Caela’s eyes opened. She saw the Sidlesaghe, and, without comment, turned back the bedclothes as he beckoned to her.

  Once she had risen, the Sidlesaghe handed her a cloak that had mysteriously appeared in his hands, then he nodded at the trapdoor.

  She stared at it, clearly puzzled, for directly beneath this bedchamber lay the dais of the Great Hall. She looked at the Sidlesaghe, raising her eyebrows.

  He merely nodded once more at the blackness revealed in the mouth of the trapdoor.

  Caela gave a slight shrug, then walked to the trapdoor and descended through it into the unknown. The Sidlesaghe stepped down after her, and in the next moment the trapdoor had closed, and there was nothing in the chamber save for the smooth floor and the heavy shadows of the beds, coffers and the two sleepers.

  There was no Great Hall beneath the trapdoor, nor even the foundations of the hall, nor the worm-infested earth which lay beneath those. Instead, the Sidlesaghe led Caela on to the softly shadowed, barely discernible track of a vast forest. Above her reared massive trees—trees such as the land had last seen many millennia ago—which were tangled with vines and sweetly scented flowers.

  Was this the forest and the land of her youth? Of Mag’s youth?

  Caela tipped back her head and visibly stretched, almost cat-like, and drew in a deep breath. “This is so wondrous!” she said.

  “Aye,” said the Sidlesaghe, coming to stand beside her. “Do you recognise it?”

  She frowned, only slightly, just enough to crinkle the skin between her brows. “This is the land, as once it was. Yes?”

  He shook his head. “Not entirely correct. The land is not as once it was.”

  She shivered, and pulled the cloak a little more tightly about her shoulders as if she had suddenly felt more acutely the fact of her nakedness beneath it. “Ah,” she said. “We are in the Game.”

  “Aye. This is where Brutus and Silvius played the Game. This is where Brutus murdered his father.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “To learn,” said the Sidlesaghe. “To remember.”

  She turned from her regard of the forest and studied the Sidlesaghe. “Long Tom,” she said, “when you threw me into the waters, and I came to understand myself as I truly am, I saw many things. I saw my lover, Og, running through the forests,” her eyes flickered about the majestic trees dwarfing them both, “wearing the golden bands that once graced the Kingmen of Troy.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “That once graced my husband’s limbs.”

  “What did you learn from that vision, Caela? What did it tell you?”

  “It told me where the Game is going, Long Tom. It told me where the land was going, and where I must, too, tread.”

  “Aye.”

  “How?” she said. “How did the Game and this land become as one? Can you show me?”

  In answer the Sidlesaghe inclined its head, nodding to the path which had opened up through the trees before them. “Will you walk with me?”

  She nodded and, taking his hand, they walked through the forest track.

  As they went, the Sidlesaghe continued to speak. “The Game has grown, as you know. When you were Cornelia, and you witnessed Brutus and Genvissa dance the Dance of the Torches, what was the Troy Game then?”

  “A Labyrinth, atop Og’s Hill. A thing made of stone and gravel.”

  “Aye. And then when you had murdered Genvissa, and halted the Game before its completion, what became of the Game and its stone and gravel Labyrinth then?”

  Caela licked her lips, remembering. “Brutus buried it,” she said. “He caused it to sink into the hill, and atop it he built a temple,” she laughed, short and hard, “which he dedicated to Artemis.”

  “And his kingship bands? What did he do with those?”

  Caela stopped, and faced the Sidlesaghe. “I don’t know. I can’t even feel them. They merely vanished. When Brutus pulled me from my three-year confinement—and that was the first time I had set eyes on him since that day I’d murdered Genvissa—he was not wearing them and, to be frank, I was so much in fear of my life at that point, so much in fear of him, that I did not ask what had become of them. Not ever.

  “Silvius asked me about those bands a few nights ago,” she said, her mouth quirking in either memory or amusement. “Everyone wants to know about them.”

  “They are vital,” said the Sidlesaghe. “We dream of them as well. But first, I will show you what happened to this land and to the Game in the two thousand years that have passed, and then we will need to talk about the bands.”

  “You know where they are, don’t you?” she said, searching his face with her eyes.

  The Sidlesaghe smiled. “Of course! Did Brutus not bury them within this land? They have been itching at us for centuries.”

  She laughed, delighted at the humour that lurked behind the Sidlesaghe’s otherwise bleak face, and allowed him to lead her further down the track.

  “The Troy Game that Brutus made has grown,” the Sidlesaghe said once more. “Now that you understand who you are, and are beginning to understand the extent of yourself, perhaps you can tell me exactly where we are within the Game.”

  Caela chewed her lower lip, her eyes on the ground, thinking, feeling the ground beneath her feet.

  “We are within the Game, yes,” she said eventually, her eyes still on the ground, “but we are walking within that part of the Game which twists under the northern shore of the River Thames. We were walking north, but are now moving more eastward.” She paused. “We are walking toward the heart of the Labyrinth. Toward St Paul’s within London, atop what was once Og’s Hill. Gods, Long Tom, how far does the Game extend?”

  “As far south as Westminster, and a little under the river on the opposite bank to Westminster, where once stood Llanbank and where now stands the village of Lambeth. Eastwards the Game now encompasses
all that stands within the walls of London. To the northwest the Game stretches towards—”

  “Towards the Llandin,” Caela said. “What the people now call the Meeting Hill.”

  “Aye, and north to Pen Hill. The Game has grown to encompass all of the Veiled Hills. Blessed Lady,” the Sidlesaghe stopped, and as he faced Caela he dropped the hand he held and put both of his on her shoulders. “The Game wants to grow even further. It needs to, if it is to overcome what lies ahead. You need to help it do that.”

  She drew in a deep breath, nodding. “I still need to know—”

  “How it grew? Yes, be patient now. We are almost there.”

  They resumed walking again, and soon the sense of close forest fell back. Light—not sunlight and yet not quite moonlight either—filled the spaces between the trees, and the borders to either side of the path broadened.

  Caela visibly tensed, as if she knew what they walked towards.

  Then suddenly they were there.

  An emerald green glade, encircled by trees. In the centre of the glade lay a roughly circular pond, its waters still.

  On the far side of the pond, perhaps some six or seven paces from the water’s edge, and halfway between the the forest and the pond, lay the form of a white stag with blood-red antlers.

  His heart, half torn from his body, lay on the creamy pelt of his chest.

  Caela groaned, and made as if to step forward, but the Sidlesaghe seized her arm.

  “No! Touch him and you kill him!”

  She twisted about, partly trying to tear herself free from his grasp, partly in an agony of emotion. “Why? Why cannot I go to him? Why?”

  “Because you are not yet strong enough to heal him, or to help him in any manner. All you will do is push him towards the final precipice. One day you will be able to aid him, and midwive him through his rebirth, but you are not strong enough to do it now.”

  Caela sobbed, her knees slowly bending until she sank to the ground, and the Sidlesaghe let her go.

  “Can I not just touch him?” Caela said through her tears. “Just lay a hand to his face, and kiss him?”

  “No,” the Sidlesaghe said, then laid his hand on the crown of her head. “He knows you are here. It is enough for him for the moment. It is enough that he knows you are reborn, and are growing stronger.”