Gods' Concubine

  Swanne tried to scream, but she felt Asterion wrap his power about her, and she could do nothing but whimper.

  She tried to hit at him, but her arms were leaden.

  She tried to roll away from him, but because Asterion still chose to cloak himself within Aldred’s massive bulk—the ultimate humiliation—she could do nothing.

  Aldred lay down over Swanne, resting his full weight on her, and grunted.

  Swanne felt something vile, something cold, probe at her.

  She tried to writhe, but could do nothing, nothing, as Aldred shifted his hips, and grunted again.

  Something so cold and so painful that it felt like splintered, jagged ice slithered its way inside her.

  Aldred’s hips bucked, then pushed down deeply.

  Agony coursed between her hips and deep into her belly, but even beyond this, Swanne felt something else.

  Something cold and painful, a splinter, sharp-edged, icy, twisting its way into her soul.

  “You’re mine now,” whispered Aldred, and he forced his mouth over Swanne’s, and pushed his tongue inside her.

  His hips began to work frantically, and Swanne knew that she would have died under the suffering of his brutal assault—both on her body and her soul—had not Asterion deliberately kept her alive.

  Aldred lifted his mouth a little away from hers, his fat face wobbling with his efforts, and slicked with sweat that rolled from his skin’s open pores.

  “Everything you shall lay bare to me!” he said, and Swanne felt as if she was sliced open, her every secret laid bare, her every knowledge made understandable to this horror inside her.

  She felt her soul, her very being, kneeling in subjection before him.

  And then something terrifying, unendurably agonising, exploded within her belly, and Swanne mercifully lost consciousness.

  When she woke, her body throbbing in torment, Aldred was sitting—fully dressed—on the edge of her bed.

  “There,” he said, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Swanne tried to swallow, but her throat felt as if it had been stripped of its flesh, and she gasped in agony partway through the movement.

  “Poor dear,” Aldred said, and patted her hand where it lay on the bed.

  Then his entire demeanour changed, and malevolence shone through the man’s fat features. “You are now wholly my creature,” he hissed, and his hand tightened claw-like about hers. “You may make no move, and you may make no utterance, without my permission and guidance. Your powers as Mistress of the Labyrinth you shall use only as I direct. Do you understand me?”

  Tears now coursed down Swanne’s face, but she managed a tiny nod.

  And then a wince, as if even that tiny movement caused her pain.

  Aldred’s rubbery lips stretched in a grin. “I may not always be close, but there is a part of me always with you, always watching you, always knowing. Do you feel it?”

  Benumbed, Swanne could do little but blink at him in incomprehension.

  “This,” said Aldred, and lifted Swanne’s hand so that it lay on her belly.

  He pressed her hand down.

  Swanne’s eyes slowly widened in appalled understanding.

  “My little incubus,” said Aldred, his very voice as sibilant as a snake’s. “Always within you, always ready to bite and to whisper and to be. You are my creature, Swanne.” He laughed. “The Game is half mine.”

  Then Aldred sobered, and bent his vile face close to Swanne’s. “And all you have to do is please me, my dear. To start with, I think you can bring me William.”

  A pause. “Won’t that be nice for you? Eh?”

  Within her belly, the incubus bit deep with its tiny, icy fangs, and Swanne’s mouth opened in a silent scream.

  Her body arched and bucked, and Aldred waited patiently until the agony had subsided and Swanne lay relatively still, even though her moans had not quietened.

  “Later,” he said, “I might find some errands for you to run. Yes?”

  She gave a single, agonised nod.

  “You will do whatever I want,” he said, and Swanne sobbed, hopelessly, knowing that indeed, yes, she would do it.

  Within her, Asterion’s little incubus twisted happily.

  Darkcraft, come to life and form.

  In the morning Hawise exclaimed in horror at the blood covering her mistress’ sheet, and at the haggard painfilled face of Swanne herself.

  But Aldred, arranging the heavy golden crucifix on its chain over his chest, told Hawise that it was of no consequence. “It is but Swanne’s monthly flux,” he said. “A little more burdensome than usual. No need to send for the physician.”

  He turned to Swanne, fixing her with a cold, hard eye. “My lady should perhaps take as her inspiration the queen, who so valiantly struggles with her own womanly complaints. The physician is not needed, eh?”

  Swanne looked at him, then at Hawise, staring incredulously at her. “The physician is not needed,” she said hoarsely.

  Part Six

  Early 1066

  With Edward’s gentle piety was blended …

  With Edward’s gentle piety was blended a strange hardness towards those to whom he was most bound…his alienation from his wife, even in that fantastic age, was thought extremely questionable.

  A. P. Stanley,

  Memorials of Westminster Abbey, 1886

  London, March 1939

  “What do you need to do to win Eaving back from whatever darkness consumes her?” Matilda said. “Why are you so sure that darkness consumes her?”

  “Dear God!” Skelton said, standing up from the kitchen table so abruptly that Matilda had to take a step backwards. “Are you filled with nothing but questions? Can you talk in nothing but riddles?”

  “Find Eaving yourself,” Ecub said. “No one can do that save you. No one!”

  Skelton did not reply. He walked to the small window that overlooked the grim, concreted back yard, staring into it as if it somehow held his salvation.

  Behind him, Matilda and Ecub exchanged glances.

  Skelton sighed, and slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. “I need to trust in her.”

  “Yes,” Ecub said.

  Skelton sighed again, more heavily, and moved as if to turn back into the kitchen. But before he completed the movement, something in the yard distracted him.

  The rear gate, which led to the small service lane behind the row of houses, had moved slightly.

  As Skelton watched, his breath now held in a mixture of hope and fear, the gate swung open very slowly.

  Two boys slipped through, and Skelton let out his breath in a disappointment so deep he thought for a moment his heart would stop from lack of hope.

  Then he looked at the boys more closely. They were twelve or thirteen, identically dressed in short pants, shirts with their sleeves rolled up, and sleeveless jumpers. Each had a small cloth cap on his head.

  As one, they stopped, looking to where Skelton stared at them from the window.

  They were very swarthy, their eyes black, their mouths thin and sly.

  They smiled, humourlessly, uncomfortably, and one of them pulled from his pocket a tangled length of red wool.

  As Skelton stared, his eyes never leaving those of the silent, watchful dark intruders, the boy twisted the wool about his fingers, then drew his hands apart.

  The wool magically untangled itself and formed a complex woven pattern between the boy’s fingers.

  A unicursal Labyrinth.

  “My God,” said Skelton softly.

  “Ah,” said Matilda. “Is that Tim and Bob? They pop in for an hour or so before school most days.”

  “Why?” said Skelton, finally turning back to look at the women.

  “To help out,” said Ecub, and Skelton’s mouth dropped open in disbelief.

  “You dare trust them?” he whispered.

  ONE

  Caela was trapped within her marriage and Edward’s court throughout the Christmas festivities. For six
long days she smiled and danced and jested and, in the mornings and evening, attended chapel or abbey services with Edward.

  At night she lay beside Edward who, for once, did not sleep well, but tossed and turned and muttered throughout the nights, gripped with a slight fever, a presage of a chest cold. If she left for even an instant he would have missed her.

  There was no time for herself. No time to talk with any of the Sidlesaghes, nor, hardly, with Judith.

  No time to kiss Damson on the mouth and effect a glamour so that, at least, she could move within the laundress’ body.

  Caela had emerged from her almost catatonic state before the altar of St Paul’s to find Judith and Saeweald, and the remainder of her escort, waiting for her. There had been no chance to talk then, not with the men-at-arms and monks so close, and little chance once she returned to the palace, for Edward was in an unaccountably good mood and insisted on sitting in her chamber (behind a blanket that Judith hastily erected) while Caela took her bath and dressed.

  From there it was to chapel, and from there to court, and from there it was a merciless slide into Yuletide and all that those days of celebration entailed.

  Normally Caela enjoyed the Yuletide festivities. This year she loathed them.

  She finally had a chance to exchange a few hasty words with Judith on Christmas Eve, the day after she’d returned from St Paul’s. They were sitting within Caela’s solar, and although several other of the queen’s attending ladies were present, they were bending over a chest full of linens in the far corner, muttering about some damp sheets which would need to be aired.

  “Madam?” Judith whispered. “We have not had a chance to speak. How went it?”

  Caela’s eyes filled with tears. “Not well. Oh,” she said, glancing at Judith’s face, “I lost my virginity well enough, but it did not bring me the closeness to the land I had thought it would. It was just…”

  Bestial, she thought, and hated herself for the calamity of that bare truth. If it was nothing but the humping and grunting of animals, then that was, surely, her fault.

  “It was not a true marriage,” Caela finished. “And I do not know why.”

  “You still feel the emptiness?”

  “Yes. I have taken a wrong turning somewhere, and I do not know how, or what I should have done instead.” Caela rested a hand lightly on her belly. “Even my womb feels it, for it pains me greatly.”

  “Caela,” Judith began, laying a hand on the woman’s shoulder, but then two of the other ladies came over, a sheet draped over their arms, and distress written over their faces.

  “Madam!” one of them said. “Your bed linens have been quite soiled.”

  There was a silence, and Judith closed her eyes briefly, appalled at the timing of the woman’s concern.

  “I am very well aware of that,” said Caela softly, and turned her head aside.

  Later, Judith said to Saeweald: “It did not work. Caela still feels her lack.”

  “And why am I not surprised to hear of that?” said Saeweald, his voice weary despite the sarcasm in his words.

  She chose wrongly, he thought.

  Christmas Day was unseasonably wild. A storm front surged down from the north, laying snow two feet deep on the ground and trapping people inside with its icy blasts.

  Thus it was that no one was in the vicinity to see, at dusk, the figure capering atop the Llandin, now known as the Meeting Hill. It was something of the utmost evilness, now a man, now a bull, now something even worse, shifting and twisting into shape after shape, growing into something dark and humped and monstrous, then shrinking violently into something that existed only as a spark of light dancing among the driving snowflakes.

  It was Asterion, celebrating.

  Not Jesus Christ’s nativity, but the success of his own schemes.

  “She’s mine,” he sang, again and again, arms wild, legs cavorting. “She’s mine!”

  And then stillness, only the darkness of his eyes glowing through the storm.

  “She has no will now, but mine.”

  It was Saeweald who helped, in the end. Four days after the celebration of Christ’s Nativity, and after a long discussion with Judith, Saeweald brought to the king in his evening chamber a particularly strong sleeping draught.

  “It is to aid you to sleep, gracious lord,” Saeweald said as Edward sat on the edge of his bed in his nightshirt, his chest heaving in and out as he tried to catch his breath.

  On the other side of the chamber Caela stood in her own night robe, a light wrap thrown over her shoulders, her hair loose. She looked as tired and drawn as the king; more in need, in fact, of the sleeping draught than Edward.

  Saeweald glanced at her, then looked back to the king. “Madam, your wife, has told me how ill you sleep,” he said, his voice soothing and gentle. “Drink of this, I pray you, for you cannot exist much longer without the restorative power of a good sleep.”

  “Aye,” said Edward, sighing heavily. “Aye. You are right.”

  And he took the draught, and drank heavily of it.

  Later, when the king was fast asleep, snoring mightily, the bowerthegn accepted with a smile the cup of spiced wine Judith brought to him.

  Soon he, too, was deep in sleep.

  When all was still, and the only sound that of the snores of the two men, Caela rose. She drew a cloak about her shoulders, shivering a little in the coldness of the air, slipped her feet into leather shoes, and padded quietly to stand in the centre of the chamber.

  “Madam?” It was Judith, half rising from the pallet at the foot of Caela and Edward’s bed.

  Caela put her finger to her lips. I go to the Sidlesaghe, Judith. Be still.

  “Be fast,” Judith mouthed, “and be careful.”

  Caela nodded, then stared at the floorboards.

  A trapdoor slowly materialised and Caela bent down, lifted it and, with a smile for Judith, vanished below.

  The Sidlesaghe was waiting for her in the strange, brick-lined tunnel.

  “Oh, Long Tom!” Caela said, and stepped forward so that he could wrap his strong arms about her, and hug her to his chest.

  “What is wrong?” the Sidlesaghe said.

  Caela sighed. “I am still not as whole as I should be. I still…lack. Long Tom, what is wrong with me?”

  He frowned, puzzled. “You need to unite yourself to the land to attain your full self, sweet one. You know that.”

  “But I did!”

  The Sidlesaghe’s expression of puzzlement deepened. “You did?”

  “Yes. The night of the winter solstice. I lay with Silvius. You said…” Caela stopped as she finally looked at the Sidlesaghe’s face.

  “Silvius?” he said. “He who sits and waits within the heart of the Labyrinth?”

  “Yes. Long Tom—”

  “You lay with him?”

  “Yes!”

  The Sidlesaghe shrugged. “No matter. Was he enjoyable?”

  Caela gave a tiny laugh. “Well enough, I suppose, although I thought of no one but…”

  “But of him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, at that I am not surprised.”

  “But did that not destroy…well, whatever was supposed to happen? Long Tom, I feel such a fool. Silvius tried so hard—”

  The Sidlesaghe put a hand to his mouth, and actually chuckled.

  Caela could not help herself, she laughed as well. “Well, you know what I mean. And, surely, by thinking of no one but Brutus, and imagining him with me instead of Silvius, I destroyed the magic which would have united me completely to the land.”

  The Sidlesaghe shook his head. “It would have made no difference. You merely chose the wrong partner.”

  “Oh? And who, pray tell, is the right partner?”

  The Sidlesaghe grew soulful. “When you see him, lady, you will know.”

  “So I have lost my virginity to the wrong man?”

  “Your virginity is neither here nor there, sweet one. A marriage can be effected
with or without it. But why do we talk of inconsequential matters? There is greater danger afoot.”

  Caela frowned. “What?”

  “Seven nights ago,” the Sidlesaghe said, “something bad invaded this land.”

  “How so?”

  The Sidlesaghe was now shifting his weight from foot to foot, clearly agitated.

  “There has been a fundamental shift in the land,” he said. “And, I think, in the Game. Something has happened. Something corrupt. Something wrong.”

  “Asterion?”

  He shook his head. “Perhaps. Maybe. We don’t know. Something has happened that has altered the foundations of the Game and of this land. Something has tilted it slightly…I cannot know how else to describe it.”

  “Something bad?”

  “Oh, aye,” the Sidlesaghe whispered. “Very bad.” He had been looking down the tunnel, but now he refocused on Caela’s face. “You must move another band. Tonight. And the others as soon as we may.”

  Caela shivered. “Asterion…”

  “He will be waiting for us, yes.”

  “Long Tom…”

  The Sidlesaghe reached out a hand and took hers, enveloping it within his. “We will watch for you,” he said, his voice somehow immensely soothing. “As we have always watched for you.”

  TWO

  This time the Sidlesaghe led Caela through a complex labyrinthine enchantment that eventually brought them to the low-arched opening in London’s wall that allowed the Walbrook entry into the city. They stood once more just beyond the ring of columns encircling Brutus who, once again, was taking a band from his arm—his left forearm this time—and placing it in the centre of the columned circle. He made the complex enchantment with his left hand, the band vanished, and then so did Brutus.

  As Brutus disappeared, the Sidlesaghe felt Caela relax under his touch.

  “One day,” he whispered to her, “you can allow him to meet your eyes.”

  She made a dismissive motion with her head, clearly not wanting to talk about Brutus.