Gods' Concubine

  “In which to wed yourself entirely to the land.” His gaze had not once wandered from my face. “To fill that lack.”

  He was right. Everything he said was right. Virginity was anathema to Mag and to all she represented, and the night of the winter solstice, the night when the land needed every particle of fertility it could summon to aid it through the long, frigid winter, was the perfect occasion to…

  “To wed myself entirely to the land,” I whispered.

  “And to the Game,” he said, as low as I, “should you choose aright.”

  Ah, I knew what he suggested, and I knew then what I would do.

  “Do not come to me as Damson,” he said, and his voice was thick with desire. “Not as Damson.”

  “No,” I whispered. “Not as Damson.”

  SIX

  Swanne was feeling edgier by the day. There was something happening, yet she could not scry out the “what” of that happening. Caela had changed, had become far more confident within herself, and Swanne did not like that. The Game was setting children to hopping over lines in the flagstones outside St Paul’s (and their fathers to battling out the Troy Game in labyrinthine horse games). Harold had vanished, ostensibly to his estates in Wessex, but Swanne had sent him a message there several days ago and he had yet to reply.

  Swanne wished she’d been more circumspect the night Tostig attacked Harold. She should have concealed her delight. She should at least have pretended some dismay. What if Harold decided to set her aside? She still needed her place at court. She couldn’t lose it now, when William was so close. Swanne resolved to make at least a pretence at contrition when next she saw Harold. She’d manipulated him for almost twenty years, she could do so again.

  As Harold worried her, so also did William; or rather, his refusal to answer her pleas for the location of the kingship bands of Troy irritated her. He must know that Asterion hunted them down. He could not afford to let them lie vulnerable.

  To cap all of this was Edward’s decision to request Swanne to accompany himself, the queen and a small group of courtiers and clerics to view the almost-completed abbey of Westminster. Swanne could not understand why he’d invited her. Edward and she barely spoke, and Swanne only attended the king’s court when Harold was in attendance. On the occasions when they did speak their mutual dislike was obvious to all. Edward disliked the Danelaw wife of Harold, not only because of the sensual beauty that Swanne never bothered to drape with modesty, but because Swanne and Harold’s union was not recognised by the Holy Church and was therefore, in Edward’s eyes, a horribly sinful affair. He had even referred to her and Harold’s children as bastards on more than one occasion.

  In Swanne’s view Edward was a contemptuous and cowardly old man, hiding behind his religion and his sharp, sarcastic tongue.

  Edward’s one great love was the abbey. It had been fifteen years in the building (the fact that Edward had been married to Caela for fifteen years, and that his Grand Plan for the abbey was conceived at the same time he wed her was the occasion of much ribald comment: Edward found in stones and mortar what he could not find in his wife) and had absorbed one-tenth of the total wealth of the realm. Edward meant the building to be a marvel of its kind, the most wondrous abbey in Europe and, Swanne supposed, Christians would think he had succeeded.

  The abbey was enormous, by far the largest single structure in England. It occupied the western portion of Thorney Isle, its central tower, crowned with a cupola of wood, rising some several hundred feet into the air, its cruciform layout (still a novelty in Europe) stretching over five hundred feet east to west. The abbey was constructed of huge blocks of grey stone, unusual in a country where most churches—indeed, most buildings—were constructed of wood, or wattle and daub, had a magnificent lead roof, a graceful rounded apse at its eastern end, and dazzlingly beautiful stained glass filling its windows. In the two towers at the western end of the abbey hung five great bells that were to be rung for the first time this day. From the southern wall extended the foundations and partly-constructed walls of the cloisters, infirmary, rectory and the infirmary gardens: they would be completed within the next few years.

  Edward, accompanied by Eadwine, Abbot of Westminster, and a bevy of other clerics including Aldred, Wulfstan of Worcester and the Bishop of London, his queen, Caela, two or three of her ladies, a handful of earls and a score of lesser thegns, guards and hangers-on, and three ragged children who tacked themselves on to the very end of the party, set out for the short walk on foot from his palace to the abbey at mid-morning. Swanne, who had decided that attendance might give her a better opportunity for observing Caela than that provided within the confines of court, walked a few paces behind the queen and her ladies. It was a fine day, if crisp and cold, and most people had wrapped themselves in fur-lined cloaks and heavy woollen robes, with sturdy leather boots on their feet. A fresh southerly breeze blew, tugging at the veils of the women and making everyone’s eyes water.

  Swanne kept her eyes on the ground, her skirts lifted delicately away from the ever-present mud. Gods, she thought, could not Edward have seen to the laying of a few flagstones to make the way a little easier?

  As they approached the eastern apse, the bells of the western towers suddenly burst into tongue.

  Swanne flinched, as did most people. Although everyone had known the bells were to sound out for the first time this morning to welcome the king into the new abbey, the actuality of their tremendous peal was a shock to both ears and nerves.

  If Swanne flinched, then Edward stopped dead in his tracks (forcing everyone to stumble to a halt behind him) and crowed with delight, clapping his hands and raising his face heavenward.

  “Glory be to God on high!” he shouted, and the shout was dutifully taken up by the clerics clustered in a small adoring flock behind him.

  Glory be to God on high!

  Swanne mumbled something which she hoped would be taken for a similar response, feeling such a rush of loathing for the entire Christian church and its damned crucified sons, saints and sundry martyrs that for an instant she had a surge of sentimental longing for Mag. At least that silly bitch hadn’t wrapped herself and her followers in ridiculous conditions, sins and unachievable objectives in order to keep them unthinking and under control.

  At least she hadn’t demanded the building of cold, dark, useless stone tombs in which to herd her mindless minions.

  Swanne looked ahead, and realised with a jolt that Caela had turned and was looking at her with a small smile on her face—almost as if she knew exactly what Swanne was thinking. The fine linen veil Caela wore about her forehead and over her hair had fluttered loose in the wind, as had a few wisps of her dark hair. The wind had also brought a glow to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eye, and for a moment, a single moment, Swanne was struck at how lovely the woman looked.

  How certain. How happy.

  Then Swanne hardened both her heart and her face, and Caela turned away as Edward resumed his triumphant march into his abbey and his immortality.

  As Swanne had expected, the internal space of the abbey could have been a block of ice for all its warmth. The abbey’s nave was full of dust, dirt and a few remaining scaffolds for workmen to put the final touches to the sculptures about its soaring walls.

  At least the screech of the bells was muted in here.

  Edward was almost capering in his joy, pointing out this and that for his equally joyous sycophants. He had taken William’s ball of golden string from a pocket within his robe, and Swanne supposed he was about to lay out the Labyrinth. Fool.

  Swanne turned away, trying to seek out Caela in the shafts of weak sunlight that filtered through the stained-glass windows.

  “Is this not a sight to gladden one’s heart?” came a voice behind her, and Swanne managed, just, to put a pleasant smile on her face as she turned around.

  It was Aldred, the Archbishop of York, beaming at her as if she would truly think this abbey the most wondrous site in creation.

>   “Indeed,” she said, inclining her head politely.

  Aldred looked around, checking that no one was within hearing distance. “And won’t William enjoy it, don’t you think? So…Norman.”

  Swanne drew in a sharp breath of dismay, her eyes glancing about, praying to whatever gods were listening this morning that no one had heard Aldred’s remark. The fat fool!

  “You need not be so indiscreet!” she hissed.

  His face hardened. “Indiscreet, madam, is passing written intelligence from your chamber to his!”

  “To which you have ever been a willing party,” she retorted.

  Swanne found Aldred repulsive, but he had been her means to contact William for the past eight or nine years. Aldred was a man of great influence who knew many people and he was a Norman sympathiser. Over the years he had told her (in foul-breathed whispers, his liking of sweet pastries having rotted away most of his teeth) that he would like nothing else than to see William ensconced on England’s throne and would work with her to ensure this end.

  Swanne wasn’t sure if she could truly trust the man…but he had not failed her over all the years she’d been communicating with William, and Swanne was sure that if treachery was to have been forthcoming, then it would have engulfed her by now.

  Aldred had his hands clasped across his not inconsiderable girth, his eyes narrowing as he studied her. “I have heard that Harold has set Caela to procuring him a more suitable wife, my dear. One who can comfortably sit next to him on a Christian throne. One who is not…” he drew out his pause with infinite delicacy, “…tainted.”

  Swanne considered his words. Aldred, after all, was a cruel man underneath his jovial flab and enjoyed a taunt almost as much as he enjoyed a pastry. “Are you certain?”

  Aldred raised an eyebrow. “Of course, my dear. Now you are more, ahem, married to William’s cause than ever, eh? A pity about Matilda, though. I hear also—”

  Swanne gritted her teeth.

  “—that William has promised Matilda that she shall be crowned next to him. What place for you in all this, then? Neither man seems to want to publicly associate himself with you. And yet, one or the other shall surely be England’s king.”

  “William will never—” she began, leaning close to the archbishop, when the man’s eyes widened, and one plump hand whipped out and seized her forearm.

  Swanne snapped her mouth closed.

  “My good lord archbishop,” Caela said, inclining her head politely to both Aldred and Swanne as she walked close, “do you find this abbey pleasing?”

  “Most pleasing, gracious queen,” Aldred said. “It is a true monument to Edward.”

  Caela glanced about the frigid, empty stone interior. “Oh, aye, it is that,” she said, not a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “And you, my lady sister, what think you?”

  Swanne tried to smile politely, then abandoned the effort, realising she was failing miserably. “I find it empty,” she said, tired with all the pretence and the lies. “And cold.”

  Caela nodded slightly to her. “Not many people would have spoken such truth, sister. That was well done of you.”

  Swanne momentarily closed her eyes, fighting back the impulse to slap the patronising bitch across her glowing cheeks.

  At that moment, one of Swanne’s sons, Alan, who had accompanied the party, came over and greeted his mother and the archbishop. He exchanged one or two words with them, then made a small bow to Caela.

  “Madam,” he said, “forgive me for not speaking to you first, but your beauty this morning, in this cold grey hall, struck me dumb, and I could not find the words with which to adequately greet you.”

  His eyes sparkled as he spoke, and Caela burst into delighted laughter.

  “Ah, I was standing in the good archbishop’s shadow, my dear,” she said, “and it was only now that you saw me. You thought to cloak oversight with flattery.” She paused, her grin widening. “You shall make a true courtier, indeed.”

  Well, well, thought Swanne. You grace my son with your laughter and insult the archbishop all in one. From where did you discover this courage? She glanced at Aldred, and saw his face tighten with humiliation, and had to dampen a moment’s grudging admiration for Caela.

  Her boy had turned to Aldred, engaging him in conversation about the estates of his archbishopric, and Caela moved a little closer to Swanne, taking her arm and moving her away a pace or two.

  “I am glad to have you to myself a moment,” she said, “and Alan’s delightful interruption has made me

  curious about something. Let me phrase this as delicately as I might, considering always that there are other ears about.”

  Swanne stiffened. She held Caela’s gaze with easy arrogance, but the queen did not let her eyes drop.

  “Swanne,” Caela said, “I remember that you, a very long time ago when I was but a naive girl, said that you only ever wanted daughters. Yet here you are, a mother to three fine sons to Harold. How can this be? Has my recently returned memory somehow…misremembered ?”

  Swanne knew what Caela was truly asking. How does a Mistress of the Labyrinth bear sons when they only truly want daughters?

  “I am glad for the sons,” Swanne said, sure she could actually hear her teeth grate, “for otherwise Harold would have set me aside.”

  “Ah,” said Caela, and the expression on her face said: the truth of the matter.

  And then Swanne knew, as surely as she drew breath, that Caela was hiding something from her. Something deep.

  She remembered how, long ago, long, long ago when she had been Genvissa and Caela had been Cornelia, she had continually felt something strange about Cornelia. Something hidden.

  Now she felt it again. The woman was hiding something, something sly.

  What? What? Not Mag, for Mag was dead.

  What else?

  Again Swanne felt a shiver of fear slide through her. What else?

  Alan had departed, and Swanne became aware that Aldred was looking most peculiarly between the two women.

  Swanne laughed, daintily and prettily, and patted his hand.

  “You must forgive us, Father, for our chatter about babies. I am sure you are bored by it.”

  “Indeed not, madam. You would be surprised at how much matters of the womb amuse me.”

  Then he changed the subject, talking first about the abbey, and how splendid it must be for Eadwine to be able to conduct services within its grandeur (“My cathedral of York is, I am afraid, a sad affair, indeed”), then about Harold (“Has anyone seen the great earl recently? I confess to have missed his wit about the king’s court this past week”), then about the River Thames (“So grey and lifeless, don’t you think? I cannot but agree with those Holy Fathers who preach that such wide expanses of water are but examples of sinful wasteland, unfit for consideration”), before, eventually, bringing the subject back to the matter of children.

  “My dear, gracious queen—”

  Swanne looked at Caela, and saw that her face was strained, and paler than it had been. Either Aldred himself was beginning to try her (a distinct possibility, as far as Swanne was concerned) or some of what Aldred had been talking about had somehow upset her, and Swanne found herself intrigued by that possibility.

  “—I have always sorrowed that your womb has borne no fruit,” Aldred continued, his face wrapped in palpably false sorrow and concern. “It must be a great tragedy for you that—”

  “I am afraid, my good archbishop, that I can see my husband is looking for me. I should rejoin him.”

  Swanne’s eyes had not left Caela’s face. So, she was upset over something.

  “—you have proved so barren,” he finished. “Should I pray for you?”

  From the corner of her eye, Swanne saw something quite horrible slither across his face. She half turned so she could see him more clearly, when Caela gave an audible, and patently horrified, gasp.

  Swanne looked back to her, then saw that Caela was staring at the altar, some distance aw
ay.

  Curious to see what it was that had so distracted Caela, Swanne looked also…

  …and froze, so terrified she could barely continue to breathe.

  The altar was not yet fully completed, and there was still some scaffolding behind it. This scaffolding was perhaps some fifteen or twenty feet high, and hanging from its central supports, in a frightful parody of the Christian crucifixion, stretched Asterion.

  He was completely naked, his muscular body gleaming with sweat, his black bull’s head twisting slowly from side to side as though he moaned in agony.

  Swanne was vaguely aware that Aldred was still babbling on about babies and wombs and barrenness, but she truly could not distinguish a word he said. All she could see was Asterion, crucified before her, blood trickling down his arms, his chest, his belly.

  Then, horrifyingly, Asterion’s head stopped rolling from side to side, and his eyes opened, and they stared directly at Swanne.

  Do you know, the Minotaur whispered in her mind, what Ariadne promised me? Do you know how much she enjoyed me?

  Swanne realised, frightfully, that the Minotaur was fully erect.

  Do you have any idea of how much good I could do you?

  And then he was gone, and Swanne was left staring open-mouthed at the altar, trembling so badly that she thought she would tumble to the flagging at any moment.

  “Swanne!” she heard Caela say, and felt the woman grasp at her arm. “Swanne!”

  And then, in her mind, It was trickery, Swanne. Ignore it! He thinks only to taunt you.

  Swanne, so slowly she could feel the tendons behind her eyes popping with the movement, dragged her eyes away from the altar and to Caela. The woman was staring at her, looking almost as horrified as Swanne felt.

  “Swanne,” Caela whispered, close enough now that she could put an arm about Swanne’s waist, “ignore him, I beg you.”

  “Ignore me?” Aldred said indignantly, staring bemusedly between the two women. “Have I said something to upset such noble ladies?”