Gods' Concubine

  “Sweet one,” said the Sidlesaghe, “if Asterion meets you within the ruins of Troy while you are moving the band, he will kill you. Caela,” the creature’s voice roughened, and he had to pause and clear his throat, “don’t walk through those ruins. Run. Run, for your life depends on it.”

  She drew in a deep breath. “To Holy Oak,” she said. It had been the Holy Oak when she had been Cornelia, and still it graced the tiny bubbling spring at the foot of the Llandin.

  Mag’s pool, still there after all these years, and Caela’s natural escape route, should she need one.

  “I will be there to meet you,” the Sidlesaghe said, and his voice had dropped so low that Caela had to strain closer to hear him. “Be safe, sweet lady. Be safe on the journey.”

  She touched his cheek, then stepped forth into the circle of glowing light, and picked up the band.

  Asterion was roaming. He’d known even before the sun sank that tonight would be special, that tonight she would attempt to move another of the bands.

  Asterion grinned. And if she did move a band, then it was of no matter. He didn’t care if she moved it to the cold heart of the moon, for he would still be able to find it.

  Now that he controlled her.

  But he had to play his part. There was no point in causing suspicion—and thus unexpected actions—through inactivity. So he needed to make it appear as if he wanted to snatch the band as it was being moved. He needed to appear angry.

  “Frustrated,” he whispered. “Inept!”

  And he laughed.

  He did not want to attempt the ruins of Troy again. The memory of that land was still too vivid.

  Besides, the ruins bored him. Best to make an appearance where she would emerge…which was…Asterion lifted his bull nose to the wind and sniffed.

  North.

  It would be north…north-west.

  Asterion’s smile stretched even further. He knew where she was going.

  Caela once again traversed the terrible path which wound through the ruins of Troy, the band clutched tightly in her hands.

  But this time, mindful of the Sidlesaghe’s concerns, she ran as fast as she could while still able to avoid tripping over loose rocks or the rigid hand or foot of a corpse that lay partway across the path.

  Troy lay bloody about her, the dead lay mouldering in their stinking heaps as they had previously, but Caela did not find them so disturbing this time. Instead she concentrated on holding the band, and keeping her every sense strained for indication of pursuit. Every twenty or thirty steps she paused and half-turned, her breath still, her body motionless, her face white, listening.

  Nothing, save the dying of Troy.

  Then she would hurry forward, her face even more strained, so that, perversely, she did not hear the sound of someone behind her.

  Was he ahead? Crouching behind rocks to her side?

  The further Caela moved through the destruction of Troy, the quicker became her steps, the tighter her face.

  Eventually, safely, she reached the end of her journey.

  Asterion could feel the passage of the band, feel its movement closer and closer towards him. It almost felt as if the band were rushing to meet him, and, as he stood before the rock pond under Holy Oak, Asterion literally held out his hands as he intuited her imminent arrival.

  There was a sound, a great sound of rushing water and wind and song, and suddenly a figure burst from the air before him, directly into his arms.

  He laughed in sheer enjoyment, but turned it into a roar, as if of fury, and grappled clumsily with the figure, allowing it to slip partly from his grasp. He grabbed at it again, meaning to pinch a little, but just as he tightened his fingers it seemed as if the air itself erupted about him.

  Asterion’s composure evaporated as tall, bleak figures surrounded him. He panicked, not so much because he was afraid, but because these strangenesses were so entirely unexpected. The figure, she, slipped from his grip, but he was not worried about that, only the who and the what of that which attacked him.

  Gods, they were singing, and such a mournful sound.

  Asterion began to flail about with his arms, trying to see what it was that surrounded him, what gripped him, what was trying to smother him, but all he could make out was enveloping greyness, as if he were enclosed within a thick, viscous fog.

  There was the sound of water splashing, and he knew that she had escaped. Furious (not with her escape, but with the unknowns which attacked him), Asterion lashed out with virtually the full extent of his darkcraft.

  The air exploded, and there came the sound of moaning as the strange creatures fell back.

  There came the sound of a single sob, and then Asterion was standing alone by Mag’s Pond, the ancient oak tree stretching out its bare limbs cold and dark above him.

  Caela heaved in great gulping breaths, hardly daring to believe she had escaped the Minotaur. Oh gods, the feel of his hands upon her, the heat of his body, the stench of his breath!

  She looked around. She still stood close by Holy Oak, save that now the countryside had vanished, replaced with a terrible aspect that, for one frightening moment, made Caela believe she had fallen back into the ruins of Troy.

  She stood in a landscape covered over with bricks and mortar, pale smooth stone, and a wide roadway of hard blackness along which dreadful beasts roared. People moved shadowlike about her, and Caela realised she was seeing with that awareness she’d tested inside Ludgate on the night she had moved the first band.

  Women, mostly, bustling along busily with baskets over their arms, and clothed in tight gowns that came only to their knees. Most of them wore hats; silly, small round bonnets that clung to stiffened curls. Some of the women had children with them, or pushed babies before them in wheeled conveyances that looked to Caela for all the world like backward-running carts.

  There were some men hurrying along the crowded street. They were black, like ravens, and one or two of them swung sticks covered in material in their hands.

  What to do with the band? Where to leave it?

  She looked across the road, and saw there a small red-brick building. Access was via a large arch which Caela could see led to an open paved area beyond the building. People stood about on this paved area, looking anxiously to and fro as if expecting something.

  She turned her attention back to the building. Just inside the building was a small window in one of the walls, barred with metal, and she could see behind this window the tall form of a Sidlesaghe.

  He was looking at her, and once he saw that he had her attention, he lifted a hand and motioned to her, slowly, yet managing to convey the utmost sense of urgency.

  Again Caela looked around, her hands now gripping the band even tighter in her anxiety.

  To reach the building and the Sidlesaghe, she had to cross this strange roadway.

  And there were great beasts that periodically roared along the road, black and blue creatures, twice the size of oxen, and red creatures the length of five oxen, and three times as high.

  “Oh, gods,” she whispered. “What possibility is this the Game has created for me?”

  She looked at the Sidlesaghe again—he was still motioning to her to hurry, hurry—and then back to the road.

  It appeared to be clear.

  Taking a huge breath, Caela stepped on to the road, moving as fast as she could without risking tripping over the sodden robes that clung about her legs.

  Something roared past her.

  She shrieked, almost dropping the band, and stopped motionless in the middle of the road.

  She didn’t know what to do. Her very will seemed frozen. She could step neither forwards nor backwards, and Caela was certain that her life would be snatched by one of those great speeding beasts at any moment.

  “Here now, miss,” said a soothing male voice, and Caela jerked as a firm hand took her by her right elbow. “Can’t have you standing in the street like this, you know.”

  She risked a glance to he
r right—then sighed in relief. A Sidlesaghe stood there, although he was dressed in the most extraordinary jacket and trousers, tightly-fitted, and of very dark blue worsted cloth and with a blue and silver conical helmet on his head held on by a strap under his chin.

  “If you will, miss,” said the Sidlesaghe, his grey-brown eyes watchful and reassuring beneath its strange helmet, and Caela allowed him to guide her across the street, into the building and thence to the barred window.

  There the Sidlesaghe, who had been so impatiently motioning to her, said, “Where to, miss?”

  Caela stared at him.

  “Miss?” said the Sidlesaghe who stood behind the counter at the window. Now that she was close Caela could see that he was dressed in similar fashion to the Sidlesaghe in blue who was still standing beside her, but his close-fitted jacket and trousers were of a maroon colour, and on his head he had a peaked cap with a leather brim.

  “I think miss would like to go home to Westminster,” said the Sidlesaghe standing beside her.

  “Will that be a first-class ticket, miss?” said the Sidlesaghe behind the window.

  “Definitely,” said the other Sidlesaghe.

  Caela stood, her eyes not moving off the Sidlesaghe behind the bars, unable to comprehend any part of this conversation.

  The Sidlesaghe behind the window held out his hand, palm upwards. “A first-class ticket demands payment in gold, miss, if you don’t mind. London Transport regulations.”

  Caela stared at him.

  The Sidlesaghe stared at her.

  Caela slid the golden band of Troy through the aperture under the bars.

  “Thank you very much, miss,” said the Sidlesaghe, handing to her a small rectangle of cardboard and placing the band into a drawer full of coins under the counter at which he stood. Then he nodded to his left. “Train’s through there, miss. Should be arriving any minute now.”

  “Thank you,” said Caela, who still felt in a state of shocked unreality. “Is Long Tom about?”

  “I think you’ll find him waiting on the platform, miss,” said the Sidlesaghe who had helped her across the road and, hand still on her elbow, he led her towards Platform No. 1 at Gospel Oak Station.

  It was too much. Not that the band had been moved, but that her strange, unknown companions had thwarted him. Asterion was anxious, unsettled, and determined to make circumstances just that little more uncomfortable for…well, for everyone, really.

  Time to begin the process that would see William dead. To bring the Game under his control. Once and for all.

  Asterion moved through the night as a shadow, an unreality, rather than as flesh. He entered the palace at Westminster, and he slid under the door of Edward’s bedchamber.

  There was a bowerthegn fast asleep on a bed by the door, and a woman on a pallet at the foot of the king’s bed.

  There was no sign of Caela, but Asterion was not concerned about the lack of the queen. She was not what he needed this night.

  His form shimmered, coalescing into a black cloud of miasma which hovered above the sleeping Edward’s face, then, suddenly, it slid down to cover the man’s face, then seeped inside his slightly open mouth.

  There was a moment of peace, of stillness, and then Edward suddenly reared forth, his eyes starting.

  “The Devil!” he screamed. “The Devil has taken me!”

  THREE

  Long Tom was indeed waiting for Caela on the “platform”, and before she could speak, he took her elbow from the Sidlesaghe in blue, saying, “Hurry, there is mischief about at the palace, and you have been missed.”

  As when she’d moved the band to Chenesitun, a new tunnel awaited them, and Long Tom hurried her along it.

  “I have a ticket,” she said, holding out the rectangle of cardboard at the Sidlesaghe.

  He tut-tutted. “We have no time for that now!” But he took it anyway.

  Soon they were underneath the palace of Westminster, and even here, deep in the magical tunnel of possibility, Caela could sense the commotion above her.

  “Go,” said Long Tom.

  Caela did not dare to reappear within her bedchamber using her power. It was too late. The entire palace was alive with shouting and consternation.

  What to do? What to do?

  There was little she could do, only one possibility, and Caela seized it. She reappeared in a still corner of the palace—a storeroom that was partway between the royal quarters and the bachelors’ quarters—then slid stealthily into the palace proper, arranging her features into those of the panicked wife (something, in truth, she did not have to pretend too much) and ran back to her and Edward’s quarters.

  People—clerics, servants, thegns, chamberlains, men-at-arms—had thronged the approaches to the quarters, but they stood back as Caela approached, glancing at her curiously.

  Where had she been?

  Caela ignored them, restraining her pace to something more dignified although she kept the worried expression set on her face, moving through the chambers until she reached the antechamber just before the bedchamber.

  Here thronged yet more people—as well as the echoing sound of Edward’s shouts—and, thankfully, Judith, whose face reflected even more trepidation than Caela’s.

  “Madam!” Judith said, then, in a softer tone, “Where have you been?”

  Caela put a hand on her arm, and drew her in close.

  “Is Saeweald here yet?”

  Judith, her eyes round and frightened, shook her head slightly.

  Caela drew in a deep breath which Judith thought had the feel of sheer relief.

  “How is my lord?” Caela asked in a stronger voice. “I had felt a change in his breathing as he slept, a horrid rasping, a deep difficulty, and saw a ghastly pallor cross his face. I rose, dreading what this portended, and without thinking to wake anyone else, fled for Saeweald.”

  Apart from Edward’s echoing shouts, the entire antechamber was silent, everyone staring at Caela, watching.

  Judith’s tongue flickered over her lips, then she managed to speak. “Aye, madam. It must have been your rising that woke me just before my king shouted.”

  “You did not think to wake me, or any other of the king’s servants?” said the bowerthegn, staring at Caela in disbelief.

  “I was panicked,” said Caela, keeping her voice calm. “I thought only of the physician.”

  There was a movement at the door, and the shadow of someone entering. Judith glanced over and then, before anyone else could speak, said, “Ah, Saeweald! How fortunate that my mistress reached you so quickly.”

  Caela turned, and managed a wan smile at Saeweald who regarded both women carefully. “I am sorry for waking you so precipitously, Saeweald, and I thank you for responding so quickly. My lord is ill, desperately so, and I fear greatly for him.”

  Saeweald bowed slightly to Caela. “The desperation in your voice, madam, roused me as nothing else could have done. Our king is fortunate indeed that he has such a caring wife at his side.”

  A great smile, clearly one of relief, spread over Caela’s face, and Judith hoped that most of the observers standing about would think it merely relief that Saeweald had arrived.

  “I, and my king, are fortunate in having you as a servant,” she said. “Come, physician, let us waste no more time.”

  With that, she straightened her shoulders and led Saeweald, Judith directly behind, into the bedchamber.

  Edward’s bed was surrounded by almost as many people as had been waiting in the antechamber. There were several clerics, of whom Wulfstan was of highest standing, all muttering prayers or wailing invocations for the speedy aid of almost every saint imaginable. Several women, a midwife among them (Judith supposed she had been one of the few people within the immediate vicinity who had any claim to healing skills, and so had been hauled into the chamber), rocked back and forth on their feet, wailing and wringing their hands. The palace chamberlain held position at the very head of the bed, an island of stillness and silence among the
commotion, his steely eyes roving about the chamber as if seeking someone to blame for the current crisis. Armed men stood several paces back from the bed, nervous, alert, unsure what they could do. The bowerthegn, entering before Caela, went to stand at the foot of the bed. He picked up the coverlets over the king’s toes, squeezing and twisting the material until it seemed he would rip it at any moment.

  The instant people realised Caela, Judith and Saeweald at her back, had entered the chamber the murmuring and crying and caterwauling ceased—even Edward, who was sitting bolt upright in the centre of the bed, bedclothes twisted to one side, stark naked, sweat glistening over his entire body—and everyone turned to stare at Caela.

  “Wife!” croaked Edward in a horrible, thick, raspy voice. “Explain your absence!”

  “Thank God and all His saints and angels you still live,” Caela said, her voice one of apparent joy. “See, I have bought Saeweald to your side.”

  “Your beloved wife realised the change in your vitality even before you woke,” Saeweald said, pushing aside several of the clerics and women to reach the side of the bed, Caela directly at his shoulder. “She came to me before anyone else had thought of my name, weeping that you were ill nigh unto death. How lucky you are, my lord king, to have such a wife.”

  Still close to the door, Judith closed her eyes and sent a heartfelt prayer of thankfulness to all water and forest gods in existence for Saeweald’s quick wits.

  Edward folded his lips into a thin line, his bright, feverish eyes darting between Saeweald and Caela. “You were not here,” he finally said, his gaze settling on his wife. “The Devil came a-visiting and you were not here.”

  “My lord,” Caela said, and sat on the bed. “I was here, until I heard your breath gasp. Then I rushed for the physician.” She glanced at the women present. “Hasten now, and bring me cloths and warm rosewater. I would wash this sweat from my lord’s flesh.”