Gods' Concubine

  Asterion. He stood, staring north-east towards London, very still, very watchful.

  He could feel the Troy Game moving. A shudder, part apprehension and part excitement, swept through Asterion’s body.

  The Troy Game was moving, and it was time for Asterion to put into motion the plan that he had spent this entire lifetime constructing.

  He turned slightly so that Edward’s palace came into view. There she waited. The one who would deliver to him everything. The bands. The Game. William. Power.

  “It is time,” Asterion muttered. “Time to begin my game.”

  A death, a seduction, followed by another death. A plan of beauteous simplicity. That’s all it would take, and the kingship bands and the Troy Game would be his.

  TWO

  CAELA SPEAKS

  I wonder how many women know what it is like to endure the hatred of one’s husband for fifteen long years. Many, I suppose, for while marriage might be a consecrated thing in the sight of God, His saints and the Holy Church, it was often a burden to us lesser mortals, the daughters of Eve who had to bear the torturous punishment for her Great Sin in our marriage and childbeds.

  Not that I had to bear anything but the sharpness of Edward’s tongue in our marriage bed and, for total lack of the warmth of his body, I never had to endure agonies in childbed.

  Fifteen years a wife, and still a virgin. It was a shameful thing, and not one I had to bear alone, for Edward made sure that the entire court knew that he’d never laid a finger on me. I remembered our marriage night so long ago when, a nervous and excited thirteen year old, I had allowed my sister-in-law to settle me into my marital bed with my new husband.

  I had been so fearful, and yet still excited. Not only had I become a wife, soon to learn the secrets of my marital bed (or so I had naively thought then), and chatelaine over my own household, I was also Queen of England. My father, the great Earl Godwine of Wessex, had successfully negotiated my marriage to Edward. I hadn’t known then that Edward hated and feared my father, and took me as wife only because he knew that if he refused, my father would see him tipped off the throne.

  Without my father’s support, Edward would have lost his crown years ago.

  Edward hated me, for I was the constant visible reminder of his humiliating dependence on Godwine and, later, his equally humiliating dependence on my elder brother Harold, who assumed the earldom of Wessex when our father died. Yet on that night, as I lay trembling and naked beneath the uncomfortably stiff linens of my new husband’s bed, I had no idea that my husband already hated me as much as ever he would. I thought only of my induction into womanhood, and of the joy and pride I would feel as I bore Edward an heir.

  When Edward, sullen and joyless, joined me in bed that first night, he turned to me, gazed at me with the greatest contempt, and said, “I find you most displeasing.”

  Then he humped over and went to sleep, and I was left trembling and silently weeping, wondering what I had done wrong.

  I eventually slept that night, and when I did I dreamed. I dreamed of another man, his face lost in shadows, who regarded me with contempt, and who spat at me words of hatred.

  He also had called me “wife”.

  I had gone to sleep weeping and I woke weeping, and it seemed that the first five or six years of my marriage were spent weeping.

  Everyone at court knew that Edward would not lie with me. Edward variously put it about that I was a whore (he even sent me into exile for a year over that particular lie); then, when I protested my virginity and had it proven by midwifely examination, he said that I refused his attempts to make a true wife of me. Latterly, Edward liked to claim that I was Satan’s temptation put into his path to tease him away from salvation.

  Edward the Confessor his people had taken to calling my husband, in tribute to his piety.

  God’s Concubine, they called me, for it appeared that in Edward’s pious disinterest he had passed over the sexual proprietorship of his wife to God Himself (not that God seemed interested, either). Some smirked at this appellation, and pitied me, but most seemed to feel that Edward’s saintliness had somehow rubbed off on me (how, I have no idea, for most certainly our flesh had never rubbed enough for the transfer).

  God’s Concubine.

  I hated that label. No doubt some wit would soon make the connection and start calling me the Virgin Mary’s apprentice.

  Latterly, Edward’s attempts to humiliate me had taken a more disturbing turn. My father Godwine had died some years previously, and now my eldest brother Harold held sway, not only as Earl of Wessex, but as the power behind my husband’s throne. Edward could not command enough men and arms to keep his throne safe from the ambitions of the Danes and Norwegians; for that he needed the immense power of the Wessex lands and the men within its army. The king’s dependence on the assets of Wessex gave whoever held the earldom a powerful hold over Edward. Edward resented this dependence, and he hated Harold as much as he had hated our father, and almost as much as he hated me.

  Harold and I were close, and Edward saw that closeness, and made of it a terrible thing. He hinted to me in our cold bed in the dark hours of night—he would not dare say it aloud where Harold might hear the words—that he knew Harold and I were unnatural lovers. He watched the way that Harold’s laughing eyes followed me about a chamber and said that Harold lusted for me.

  This tactic terrified me. I feared for Harold far more than for myself. I wished great things for Harold: for one, the throne, once my frightful husband had departed for his place at God’s right hand, but above all joy and contentment and achievement.

  Edward could destroy this with a single, hateful remark. I could imagine it now, Edward finally deciding that he no longer needed Harold’s support for his throne and remarking at court, as if in passing: “Ah, yes, the Earl of Wessex. His sister’s lover, don’t you know?”

  Maybe that would not be enough to destroy Harold. Maybe my brother was powerful enough to overcome even that slur.

  Maybe.

  And maybe Edward’s threat had so much power over me because, in my hearts of hearts, I wished that it were true. Because, in my dreams at night, I often imagined myself in Harold’s bed.

  I closed my eyes tight, hating myself. I could hear Edward’s voice murmuring as he spoke to some of his pet priests, and I felt more loathsome than the darkest worm.

  Mother Mary, I was repulsive! To lust after my own brother! When I was a child, I adored Harold. As I became older, that adoration grew into something…else. Something that should not grow between a brother and a sister. Harold knew it, for sometimes I caught him watching me strangely, darkly, as if I represented a threat to him.

  It was rare now that Harold allowed himself to be in a chamber alone with me. We should have been close, Harold and I, but instead we found ourselves avoiding each other, sliding our eyes away from the other, our words stumbling to an awkward close whenever we found ourselves addressing each other.

  Edward had noticed it, and I am sure most others did also. I know that Harold’s achingly desirable wife, Swanne, saw it and recognised the awkwardness for what it was.

  I know it for fact, for one day soon after my loveless marriage had begun, Swanne leaned her elegant, beautiful head close to me, and with her soft, red lips whispered in my ear, “Shall I tell you, my dear, of how fine a lover your brother is? How he makes me squeal and twist under him? Would you like to hear that, my poor virgin girl? Would you? Would you like it, my dear? I’m sure Harold has enough for you as well.”

  And then she’d leaned back, and laughed, and made a comment so crude that even now I could not bear to form the words in my head.

  “Wife?”

  I jumped, then blushed, for I was sure that somehow Edward could read my thoughts. He sat in a chair some distance from me, although not, unfortunately, so far distant that it prohibited conversation. About us in the Lesser Hall (that smaller hall we used when not holding formal court) our small evening court had fallen sile
nt, watching, wondering what humiliation Edward had in store for his wife tonight.

  A tongue-lashing, perhaps?

  An order to spend the night on her knees confessing her sins to Eadwine, the Abbot of Westminster?

  A tirade on the sins of the flesh, at the least…

  “My dear…”

  Only Edward could make an insult of those two words.

  “Are you not going to greet the Lady Prioress? She has been standing before you for the past few minutes while you have wandered in your thoughts. You have duties as queen, Caela. I would that you occasionally remembered them.”

  Humiliated, not the least because I knew I deserved the reprimand, I looked before me.

  There, sure enough, her cheeks stained pink in embarrassment, stood Mother Ecub as she had probably been standing waiting for my regard for the past half an hour.

  “Mother,” I said, stammering in my discomfiture, “I beg you, forgive me.” I held out my hand, and Mother Ecub shuffled forward—Lord Christ, when had she grown so old and arthritic?—and took it briefly, laying her mouth against the great emerald ring I wore on my heart finger.

  Edward had given me that as a wedding ring. Christ alone knew he had never kissed it.

  “My apologies to you, good prioress,” I said as Ecub stepped back and slowly straightened. “I have kept you standing far longer than I should. Judith…” I turned my head slightly, and beckoned to my favourite and most senior lady, “fetch a chair for Mother Ecub.”

  As Judith hurried to do my will, the court slowly relaxed, and muted conversation started to again fill the background. Our evenings were usually spent in this smaller hall rather than the great audience hall, and only the closest and most valued among the court attended us after supper. Around Edward were clustered several members of the witan, all looking grave, perhaps with the latest news from France, or Normandy, or with tidings of another crop failure. They were true men, and hardy, but they never seemed cheerful.

  Just behind that group stood Saeweald, physician to both Edward and myself. He saw me looking at him, and lowered one eyelid in a slow, reassuring wink.

  I looked away, both grateful for the gesture and annoyed at his presumption. I liked Saeweald, I truly did (how could a man stay so cheerful when his right leg and hip were so twisted as to make every one of his steps a painful, tottering journey?), but that liking had taken years to mature. Saeweald had been attending court since the first year of my marriage, but my liking for him had taken some time to establish itself. During his first six months at court, the physician had greatly unsettled me.

  When first we met Saeweald called me by another name—what was it again? Corvessa? Contaleia? Analia?—and had seemed irritated with me when I would not respond to it. I had tried to be patient—after all, the pain in his leg must surely addle his mind somewhat from time to time—but all the same his insistence had unsettled me. Over a period of some weeks and months Saeweald tried to talk to me of a time long ago, and I had bade him to be silent, for I had no mind to hear of the witchery which must have made him scry out such memories. And, at another time, he begged me to remember a woman, Mag he called her, to whom I apparently owed a debt…or some such…

  I would have none of his wanderings, and commanded him to silence with the greatest sharpness. I had said to him that even though he be the greatest physician within Christendom, I would have none of him at court if he carried on so. I wept.

  Eventually Saeweald, weeping himself, had lowered himself to his knees before me (and what agony that must have been for him!) and had said that he would talk of these matters no more. I had nodded, once, stiffly, and motioned him to rise, and Saeweald had done so, and had kissed my hand, and had kept his word and held his tongue.

  That had been many years ago now, and even if Saeweald had held his tongue, I still often came upon him watching me as though he expected me to…to do what I do not know, but that very expectation in his gaze unsettled me.

  I had grown close to him, nonetheless. He was witty, and comforting, and largely non-judgemental, and through several murmured remarks over the years I knew that Saeweald honoured me far above my husband. That was largely a novel sentiment (only Judith and Mother Ecub seemed to feel thus), and one which disposed me to have much good feeling for the man.

  And I liked Saeweald because the physician was the only person who had the requisite skill with herbs and potions to ease my monthly fluxes, which had become an increasing trouble over the past few years. One might have thought that my womb, finding itself not needed, would have settled into a resigned quietude, but, no, apparently it resented its empty state so greatly it wept increasingly copiously and painfully each month.

  Ecub had settled herself before me by this stage, and I smiled at her, and paid her my full attention.

  “My good prioress,” I said, “what have you to report?”

  Ecub began a recital of her priory’s good works, and even though I kept my eyes on her and a half smile on my face, my mind drifted off again. I could hear Aldred, the Archbishop of York and a frequent visitor to both London and Westminster, arguing with Abbot Eadwine over some trifling matter of theology, and behind their male, arrogant voices I could hear the soft whisperings and giggles of the five or six of my ladies who sat at their needlework just behind me. Judith, my sweet, dear friend, was standing directly behind my chair, her hand resting on its back just behind my right shoulder, and from its warmth I gathered all the love and support I could. It was not that Ecub bored me, for I took the greatest interest in her priory and the wellbeing of its inhabitants, but that in the past few hours my mind had seemed to be drifting off to strange, unknown regions of its own accord, as if it had business elsewhere and resented bitterly my every effort to concentrate it on the task at hand.

  “Madam?”

  There, my mind had betrayed me once again!

  “Ah, Ecub,” I said, blushing (one would think me still thirteen years old, and not the twenty-eight-year-old woman I was), “you must forgive me this evening. I cannot think what has come over me. I…I…”

  Oddly, for she never usually was so bold, Ecub leaned to close the space between us and held my hand briefly.

  “You will feel better soon, madam,” she said. “I have it on good authority.”

  “Ecub?”

  But the prioress was already rising. “I will stay the night within the women’s dormitory, if it pleases you. The way back to St Margaret the Martyr is long and cold for an old woman like myself, and I would rather attempt it on the morrow than tonight.”

  “Of course,” I said, rising also (which movement made Edward half start up, as if he suspected I was going to dash for the palace portal like a hind escaping the huntsmen; my bevy of twittering ladies started likewise, their needlework suddenly shuffling to the floor).

  “Perhaps, if it please you, madam,” Ecub continued, looking at me with those intense brown eyes of hers, “I might stay a day or two beyond this night? I have need to consult with Master Saeweald, and perhaps also to gossip with the Lady Judith about mutual memories.”

  “Of course,” I said again, feeling stupider by the moment. What “mutual memories”? I wondered momentarily if Saeweald had a potion against stupidity secreted somewhere. I managed to smile graciously at Ecub, murmur my apologies to my husband stating that my head ached and I must needs to bed, then made my exit accompanied by Judith and the other of my ladies.

  Perhaps sleep would untwist my wits.

  Sleep brought me no peace. Instead, I swear that as soon as I had closed my eyes I slipped into dream.

  I dreamed I walked through the centre of a stone hall so vast there appeared to be no end to it. It stretched east to west—I felt, if not saw, the presence of the rising sun towards the very top of the hall—and above me a golden dome soared into the heavens. Beneath my feet lay a beautifully patterned marbled floor; to my sides soared stone arches protecting shadowy, mysterious spaces. Even though thick walls rose high beyond those
arches, I could still somehow see through them to the countryside beyond where a majestic silver river wound its way through gentle verdant hills and fertile pastures. It was an ancient and deeply mysterious land, and it was my land, England, although an England such as I could not remember ever seeing.

  I turned my eyes back to the hall. Although this was a strange, vast place, I felt no fear, only a sense of homecoming. I also sensed that I had spent many nights dreaming of this hall, although I never remembered such dreams.

  Suddenly I realised I was not alone. A small, fey, dark woman walked towards me.

  My eyes filled with tears, although I did not know why.

  “Peace, lovely lady,” the woman said as she reached me. She half started forward as if she meant to embrace me, but then thought better of it and merely reached up a hand to briefly touch a cheek.

  “Are you ready?” she said.

  “Ready for what?”

  “The battle begins,” she replied. “You must be ready, Cornelia, my dear.”

  I frowned, for this was the name Saeweald had called me so many years ago. Was this woman as deluded as he?

  “Remember,” the woman said, “to meet us in the water cathedral beyond death.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, taking a step back. The woman was mad! A witch, no doubt.

  She laughed, as if I had made a jest. “Then follow Long Tom, my darling girl. Listen to him. He will show you—”

  “You! Will I never be rid of you?”

  The man’s voice thundered about us, and the small, dark woman gave a sad smile, then vanished with only a word or two reverberating in my mind. Remember, Cornelia, my dear…remember…remember…

  “What do you here?”

  I forgot the woman, and looked at the man striding towards me.