Gods' Concubine

by Sara Douglass

  There was a movement at the door.

  Harold.

  Swanne smiled easily at him—at least those fifteen years had made her the mistress of deception—and turned back to her reflection in the mirror as Harold undressed and slid beneath the bed covers.

  Finally, tiring of her pose, Swanne shook her head so that her ebony hair rippled luxuriously down her back, and put down the brush. She stood, slowly and elegantly, aware of every movement that she made, and smoothed down over her body (still slim and fine after the six children she’d borne to remain in Harold’s good graces, thank the gods!) the thin lawn nightrobe whose delicate weave scarcely hid any detail of the body over which it draped.

  She placed a hand over her stomach, flattening the lawn against her, and again admired herself in the mirror.

  “Do you think yourself with child again?”

  For an instant, Swanne’s eyes hardened to a flat bleakness, but then she turned to the man who had spoken, and in that movement she masked her hatred with a practised coquetry.

  “Are six children not enough for you, my love? Do you want me to swell again so that your manhood can be proven before all at court yet one more time?”

  He lay on his back on the bed, the covers pulled down to his stomach exposing his well-muscled chest, hands behind his head, studying her with unreadable eyes. “Are you with child?”

  “No.” Swanne sauntered over to the bed, allowing herself to admire the man’s physique and handsome face even if she loathed who and what he was.

  Swanne parted her lips, allowing him to see the wetness of her tongue between her white teeth. Slowly she tugged the robe over her shoulders so that it fell to the floor, then climbed on to the bed, pulling the bed covers further down over his body, then lifted one leg over him so that she straddled his body as she settled her weight atop his warmth.

  His eyes darkened almost to blackness, and she could see the muscles tense in his upper arms. You are a very lucky man, Harold, she thought, to have me in your bed at night.

  Her lips parted even more, and she moved her hips very slowly atop his.

  He moved his hands and grasped her hips, pulling her the tighter against him.

  She drew in a deep breath, and watched his eyes drift to her breasts. I should have taken you as a lover when you were Coel. You were wasted on Cornelia.

  “Harold,” she said, and leaned down so that he could take one of her nipples between his teeth. Hate him she might, but for the moment Swanne saw no reason to deny herself his body and the skills he employed as a lover.

  Later, when she could hear him breathing in the deep steadiness of sleep, she moved away from the warmth of his body, rose from the bed, and used the wash bowl to wipe away the traces of his semen from her thighs. Tomorrow she would take the bag of herbs she had secreted at the bottom of her clothes chest, and brew a cupful of the tea which would ensure she did not conceive. Six children were enough and the last thing Swanne wanted was to be big-bellied with child when…

  When he would soon be here, please to the gods.

  Swanne dried herself, then wrapped about her nakedness the robe she had discarded earlier, shivering a little in the cold night air. She sat on a stool by the brazier, warming herself, and looked back to check that Harold was indeed fast asleep.

  He was breathing deeply, and Swanne relaxed. She turned back to the brazier, placed her hands on her knees, closed her eyes, and sent her senses scrying out into the night. There was only one benefit that Harold brought her, and that was to give her the excuse to live so close to the Game.

  Ah, there…there it was…

  Swanne relaxed even further, wrapping her senses about the Game, feeling its strength. Gods, it was powerful. She and Brutus had built so well. Whenever Swanne was despondent or frustrated, or felt that she could cope no longer with Harold or with the pointlessness of her life in this damnable Christian court, Swanne found a quiet place so that she could communicate with the Game. Touch its power, feel its promise, believe in the future that she and William would build together once they’d completed the Game and trapped Asterion within its dark heart.

  So powerful, and yet…different. Swanne recalled again, as she so often did, the conversation she’d had with William in that single brief encounter fifteen years earlier.

  Could the Game have changed in the two thousand years it was left alone? she had asked.

  Perhaps, he had answered too slowly, his own concern obvious. We had not closed it. It was still alive, and still in that phase of its existence where it was actively growing. Who knows what…

  He’d stopped then, but even now the unspoken words rang in Swanne’s mind. Who knows what it could have grown into.

  Swanne reached out with her power and touched the Game. Always before it had responded to her.

  Tonight, although she could feel its presence and vitality, it did not.

  A coldness swept through Swanne, and for one panicky moment she almost succumbed to her terror and projected herself into William’s presence. But she didn’t; it was too dangerous. As well as the Game, Swanne could feel Asterion’s presence more strongly than ever before. He was stalking the grounds and spaces of Westminster, waiting and watching.

  And so Swanne drew in a deep breath and steadied herself. She went to her needlework basket and withdrew from its depths a small scrap of parchment upon which she scribbled a few lines of writing with a piece of sharpened charcoal.

  In the hour after she and Harold had broken their fast, and Harold had departed to meet with some of his thegns, Swanne took the parchment, now folded and sealed, and handed it to her woman, Hawise.

  “Take this,” she said, “and hand it to the good Archbishop of York.”

  Hawise, who knew far better than to ask what the message contained, merely nodded and slipped the parchment into the pocket of her robe.

  Deep under London and the hills and rivers which surrounded it the Troy Game dreamed as it had dreamed for aeons.

  It dreamed of a time when its Mistress and Kingman would return and complete it, when it would be whole, and strong, and clean. It dreamed of a time when the kingship bands were restored to the limbs of the kingman, and when he and his Mistress would dance out the Game into immortality.

  The Game dreamed of things that its creators, Brutus and Genvissa, could never have realised. It dreamed of the stone circles that still dotted the land, and it dreamed of those ancient days when the stones danced under the stars.

  In its dreaming the Game began to whisper, and the stones responded.

  SIX

  “Saeweald?” Saeweald jerked from sleep, the dark-haired woman beside him murmuring sleepily.

  “It is I, Tostig.”

  Saeweald relaxed a little, but not a great deal. He and Tostig had once been great friends, but as Tostig had grown first into manhood and then into his distant earldom, their friendship had ebbed.

  Saeweald slowly swung his legs out of bed, wincing as his right hip caught within the blankets and twisted uncomfortably.

  The woman beside him also started to rise, but he laid a hand on her shoulder. “No, keep my space warm for me, Judith. I will not be long.”

  Tostig had disappeared into one of the outer chambers, and now he returned with a small oil lamp. He grinned at the sight of the woman. “I know you,” he said. “You are one of the queen’s ladies.”

  Judith inclined her head. “Indeed,” she said, “and a better mistress I could not hope to serve.”

  “Does she know you spend your nights here?”

  “I cannot imagine that the queen would object,” Saeweald said tersely, pulling on his robe and belting it about his waist. “Tostig, what do you here?”

  Tostig shifted his eyes from Judith to the physician. “I need your advice,” he said. “And your…Sight.”

  Again his eyes slid back to Judith.

  “She knows who and what I am,” Saeweald said. “You need have no concern for her.”

  He led Tostig
into an adjoining chamber. “What can be so urgent that you need to wake me from my sleep?”

  “Edward,” Tostig said, then grinned charmingly, which instantly put Saeweald on guard. “I need to know how long he shall live.”

  “You and most of England,” said Saeweald. “Why? Why so urgent?”

  “I…I am concerned for my brother. I need to know what I can do that shall most aid him to the throne.”

  Saeweald studied the Earl of Northumbria through narrowed eyes. “That is not what you want to know.”

  Tostig abandoned his charm. He grabbed at Saeweald’s arm. “I want to know my future,” he said. “I want to know where I stand.”

  “Why?”

  “Does not every man want to know what lies before him?”

  Saeweald gave a hollow laugh. “Some say that a wise man would give all his worldly goods not to know, Tostig.”

  “I want to know. Why won’t you tell me…Do you want gold? Is that it? Does the physician Druid need gold to share his Sight?”

  “If you think yourself brave enough, Tostig, then I can share my Sight with you. Give your gold to the beggars who haunt the wastelands beyond the gates of London. They need it more than I.”

  Saeweald reached for the oil lamp that Tostig still held. The lamp consisted of a small shallow pottery dish in which swilled an oil rendered from animal fats. A wick extended partway out, resting on the rim of the dish, spluttering and flickering.

  Saeweald rested the shallow dish in the palm of his left hand, passing his right palm over it several times.

  “Well?” Tostig demanded.

  Saeweald’s eyes shifted to the earl, and in the thin glimmer of light thrown off by the lamp they appeared very dark, as though they had turned to obsidian from their usual green.

  Wait, he mouthed before bending his face back to the lamp.

  Tostig stared at Saeweald, then lowered his own eyes. And gasped, taking an involuntary step backwards.

  That tiny lamp seemed to have grown until it appeared half an arm’s length in diameter, although it still balanced easily in Saeweald’s hand. The oil was now black and odourless, lapping at the rim of the dish as if caught in some great magical tide.

  The wick sputtered, and the smoke which rose from it thickened and then sank, twisting into the oil itself until the lamp contained a writhing mass of smoke and black liquid.

  What do you wish to know?

  “How long does Edward have to live?” said Tostig, unaware that Saeweald had not spoken with his voice.

  The oil and smoke boiled, then cleared, and in its depths Tostig saw Edward lying wan and skeletal on his bed, a dark, loathsome miasma clouding above his nostrils and mouth.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  The clouds gather. He does not have long. What else do you want to know?

  “Harold,” Tostig said in a tight voice. “Tell me of Harold.”

  Again the oil and smoke boiled then cleared, and Tostig bent close.

  He saw Harold climbing a hill. He was dressed in battle gear although he did not carry a sword, and he appeared weary and disheartened. He reached the top of the hill, and suddenly a shaft of light slid down from the heavens, wrapping Harold in gold, and Tostig saw that Harold wore a crown on his head and that the weariness had lifted from his face.

  Then Harold turned around, and Tostig drew in a sharp breath, for Harold’s face was beautiful and wrathful and consumed with power all at once. As Tostig stared, Harold very slowly raised his hands, palms upwards, and light shone forth from them, as if they carried living, breathing gold within them.

  “By the gods!” Saeweald muttered, and he suddenly dropped the dish, spattering oil over both robes and legs.

  “I need to see more,” cried Tostig, but Saeweald shook his head.

  “You have seen enough,” he said. “Edward has not long, and Harold will be a king such as England has never seen. What more can you want to know? What more can you desire for your blood kin?”

  Tostig stared through the gloom towards Saeweald, but he could not make out the man’s face. Wordlessly, he turned on his heel and left.

  Saeweald stood very still for a long time, the remnants of the oil dripping down his robe.

  Eventually he turned, went back to the bedchamber, disrobed, and crawled in beside Judith.

  “I think I know why Coel is back,” he said.

  SEVEN

  He stood on the hill, the westerly wind ruffling the short dark curls of his head, the sun making him narrow his almost-black eyes. Behind him a group of his men-at-arms chattered quietly where they stood by the horses, and his close friend Walter Fitz Osbern sat in the grass, watching him carefully.

  To his side stood Matilda. She was heavily pregnant, only weeks away from giving birth, and she and William were engaged in what had become one of the rituals of their marriage. In each of her pregnancies, a few weeks before she gave birth, Matilda asked William to bring her to the coast where she could stand and feel the sea wind in her hair and riffling through her clothes. It was this, and its memory, which enabled her to endure the weeks of confinement just before and after the birth of a child. Matilda hated the sense of detainment, almost of capture, that surrounded the rituals of childbirth; this single day of freedom, feeling the wind in her hair and her husband standing beside her, gave Matilda enough strength to endure it. Despite her diminutive stature, Matilda gave birth easily, although she found it desperately painful: this child would be their seventh.

  Matilda also liked to stand here, her belly swelling towards the sea, because it gave her a sense of superiority over this witch that William still dreamed of. Well might Swanne be the first love of William’s life, but it was not she who bore his children, and it was not she who stood here now, William’s companion and mate.

  She looked at William, and saw that he had his eyes fixed on the wild tossing grey seas and the faint smudge in the far distance, that line of white cliffs.

  England.

  “How you lust for that land,” she murmured, and William flickered his eyes her way.

  “Aye. And it will be mine soon enough.”

  She nodded. In the past two years William had finally managed to bring Normandy under his control. Rival claimants had been quashed, dissent had evaporated, and William enjoyed power such as he’d never had previously. Normandy was his, and would stand behind him whatever he ventured. Matilda only hoped that when William did venture, she wouldn’t be so heavy with child that she could not accompany him.

  Their marriage was strong, stronger than Matilda had ever envisaged in their early months together. They had both agreed that truth was the only possible foundation on which they could build their partnership, and the truth had served them well.

  Of course, there were always a few small secrets and, on William’s part, the occasional infidelity, but neither small secrets nor infidelities rocked the essential core of their marriage: Matilda and William were good for each other. Together, they managed far more than either of them could have managed individually.

  “When?” said Matilda, although she knew the answer.

  “When Edward dies,” he said. William was strong enough to venture an invasion now, but William also wanted to coat his claim with legitimacy, and he could not do that if he tried to wrest a throne from the incumbent king.

  Once Edward was dead, however, then the path would be open for him.

  William shifted slightly, as if uncomfortable, and he frowned as he gazed across the grey waters of the channel that separated Normandy and England.

  “What is it?” said Matilda.

  “There is something about to happen…matters are moving,” he said. He lifted his closed fist and beat it softly against his chest, underscoring his words. “I feel it in here.”

  Matilda felt a thrill of superstitious awe run up and down her spine. Fifteen years had been long enough for her to realise that there were depths to her husband that she had not yet plumbed.

  If th
e witch Swanne loved him, then why was that so? Was it because some power in William called to Swanne?

  “It is not Edward,” she said, and William looked at her.

  “How so? What do you know?”

  Matilda managed to suppress the small smile that threatened to break through. One of the “small” secrets she had kept from William was that Matilda had her own agent in place within Edward’s court.

  “I think you will find,” Matilda said, “that Edward’s queen shall be at the heart of it.”

  “Caela? Why?”

  Now Matilda allowed that secretive smile to break through. “A woman’s intuition, my dear. Nothing else.”

  Caela intrigued Matilda. Initially, Matilda had set her agent to watching Swanne, but that watchfulness had, over the years, grown to include the queen as well. At first this had been because Swanne so clearly and evidently hated Caela, and that made Matilda wonder if Swanne feared the queen as well, and wonder further why this might be so. But then, as the years passed, Matilda came to understand via her agent that there was a small but dedicated coterie that surrounded the queen, and that Caela herself sometimes exuded an air of strangeness that Matilda’s agent found difficult to express.

  “Caela is nothing,” William said, and the harsh tone of his voice made Matilda look sharply at him.

  I wonder, she thought.

  As William lifted Matilda on to her horse his mind drifted to the dream he’d had some nights previously. Cornelia, or Caela as she was now, in her stone hall. That dream had been so real. The stone had felt hard beneath his feet, Caela’s flesh so warm beneath his fingers; the plea in her eyes as vivid as if he’d stood there in reality.

  William had dreamed of her at other times—would this woman not cease tormenting him?—but never had the dream seemed so real.

  Nor Caela so close. She was older than she had been as Cornelia, and lovelier. Her hair was darker, her skin paler, but her eyes still that strange depth of blue that they had been two thousand years ago.