She’d still held her face up to his, and yearned for him to kiss her.
And he had wanted to kiss her, whatever he might have said to her. He had wanted to kiss her more than he had ever wanted anything else in his life. More than the Game? Aye, at that moment, when Caela’s face had been so close, William thought he might have squandered even the Game itself in order to feel her mouth yield under his, to taste her sweetness…
Yet he’d stopped himself, just in time.
Was she the trap Asterion had laid?
Again?
William turned from Matilda—watching him curiously—and stared back across the wild tossing seas.
Soon. It was starting today—he could feel it surging through his blood—and within a year all would be won or lost.
EIGHT
The Great Hall, Westminster
Harold Godwineson, Earl of Wessex, slouched in his great chair in its habitual place to the left of King Edward’s dais. His dark eyes were hooded, his right hand rubbed through the short dark hairs of his moustache and beard, his left arm lay draped, apparently relaxed, over the carved armrest of the great chair, and his legs stretched out before him, one foot idly tapping out a rhythm only Harold could hear.
He looked almost half asleep, but in reality Harold was coiled, tense and waiting. Harold had spent his life either at court or on the battlefield, and over the years he’d developed a sense of danger so acute he could almost smell its approach.
His nose has been full of the stink of danger ever since last night.
Ever since Swanne had dropped her robe and straddled him with her naked, tight body.
Ever since he’d lain awake all night, observing her sitting before the brazier through heavy-lidded eyes.
Ever since he’d seen her scratch out that secret communication and hide it within the folds of her clothes.
Now he watched and waited, more certain of this than anything else he’d known in this life. There was danger afoot, and Swanne was somehow connected with it. Harold knew he should worry about Tostig as well, but for the moment the sense of danger that seemed to surround Swanne was so immediate that he pushed all thought of his brother to the side.
His eyes moved slowly over the crowds gathered for King Edward’s harvest court in the Great Hall of Westminster Palace, seeking Swanne out. Ah, there she was, chatting with several members of the witan.
Harold’s expression remained studiously neutral as he watched his wife. This morning she looked lovelier than ever, her ivory gown clinging to the swell of her breasts and hips, pinching in about the narrowness of her waist, both swell and slenderness emphasised every time she moved.
He no longer loved her, nor even respected her. Oh, once he had adored her, patterned his life about her every movement and want. That lovelorn man had been left behind years ago, murdered through years of cohabitation with the lady he’d taken as his common-law wife. Now that the delusion of love had been stripped from his eyes, Harold could see that there was a coldness about Swanne that even she, most expert of deceivers, could not entirely hide. There was a sense of waiting about her that made him think of the deadliness of a coiled snake about to strike.
Harold had absolutely no doubt that, were it to suit her purposes, Swanne would not hesitate to murder him.
A great wave of blackness washed over him, and Harold had to close his eyes momentarily, trying to recover his equilibrium. All his life he’d been plagued with terrible dreams of a love and a land lost; of Swanne standing over his murdered body, laughing; of a man with raging, snapping black hair reaching out over his corpse to a woman whose face was that of…that of…
Harold opened his eyes, staring at Swanne, forcing his mind away from his dreams. In his youth they’d been the province of the night only, nightmares he could laugh away in the sanity of wakefulness. But over the past few months they’d been taking over his waking hours as well.
And whenever he looked at his sister, his mind was filled with such carnal thoughts that Harold was sure the devil himself must have ensnared him.
Last night, when Swanne had lowered herself to him, he’d closed his eyes and imagined that it was not Swanne atop him, but…
No! He must stop this. God, what was happening to him? Was this some sickness of the mind? Some devilish possession? Desperate for distraction, Harold looked slowly about the Great Hall, seeking whatever it was that was causing chills to run up and down his spine, and nerves to flutter in his belly.
The hall was filled with Normans…who would imagine that this was a Saxon kingdom, and at its head a Saxon king? No wonder his nerves were afire when his king preferred the Normans to his own countrymen.
Currently Edward sat on his carved wooden throne on the dais, his snowy hair and beard flowing over shoulders and chest, robed in the Norman manner as though he was a woman rather than a warrior, a crucifix in his hand, an expression of wisdom and dignity fixed on his aged face. Harold’s eyes narrowed. Edward cultivated the demeanour of a scholarly yet shrewd king, but Harold doubted that any honest appraisal of the man would value him at anything more than the mediocre. Edward had begun his reign twenty-five years ago in a burst of bright hope, and looked like ending it in an agony of indecision.
Edward’s advisers—sycophants all—were gathered about him nodding and smiling and agreeing and sympathising as the occasion demanded. A Norman nobleman, no doubt from Duke William’s court, was smiling and laughing and presenting the duke’s compliments. Several churchmen, never slow to flatter such a powerful benefactor, bowed their heads in assumed wisdom and piety. Within the cluster Harold recognised Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester and the much-travelled Norman sympathiser Aldred, Archbishop of York (now much fatter than he’d been when he’d officiated at Edward’s wedding so many years past). There also was Eadwine, the Abbot of Westminster Abbey, also nodding and smiling whenever Edward so much as looked his way.
Fools, all.
Saeweald stood slightly behind and to one side of the adoring cluster, his copper vials of herbs and potions dangling from his belt and catching the light, leaning on a crutch which Harold knew that he only used on days of supreme discomfort. The physician’s face was masked in blandness, but Harold knew him well enough to recognise the irony which lay behind his expression. Saeweald hated the Normans as much as Harold did.
Saeweald caught Harold’s appraisal and, very slowly, lowered one eyelid in a wink.
Despite his continuing sense of imminent danger, Harold’s mouth twitched beneath his hand. It was Tostig who had first introduced him to the physician many years ago, but despite the current tension between Harold and his brother, his friendship with Saeweald remained strong. It was not simple liking that bound the two men (although sometimes Harold wondered at the rapidity with which they had established such a deep friendship, almost as if they’d been renewing it, not forming it) but also their common preference for the ancient pagan ways of the country. They shared a mutual love and reverence for the land itself, for the turf and the stones and the meanderings of the streams and rivulets. A love and reverence that meant far more to them than did the petty mouthings of Christian priests. Sometimes, in the depths of winter, Saeweald would take Harold to the top of one of the hills that surrounded London, and there he would shuck off his robe and, clothed only with the tattoo that marked him as a priest of the ancient paths, would take Harold on journeys of such mystery and power that the earl was left shaking for hours afterwards.
Always, after these mysteries, Saeweald would half smile at Harold and say. One day…one day…
Harold did not know what he meant, and never dared ask.
Saeweald also took Harold to some less private, although still very exclusive, celebrations. At the times of solstice and equinox, and the festivals of Beltane, May-tide and the Green Man, Saeweald took Harold to the very top of Pen Hill to meet with (Harold had laughed in disbelief the first night he had attended such a celebration) Mother Ecub and her very un-virginal nuns, as well as a
host of men and women he had recognised from the councils and markets of London. There he’d partaken in the dances and meanderings, the fires and the spirit-soarings, the choruses and (Harold shivered with remembered longing) the strange matings within the circles of stone about the hills of London.
Harold’s mouth curled behind his hand: if only Edward knew what went on in his realm while he knelt before his altar…
A snippet of conversation from the group around the king reached Harold’s ears. Abbot Eadwine had begun a long and loud boast about the beauty of the almost-completed abbey.
Edward was hanging on every word, almost drooling in his excitement. Harold’s lips thinned in disgust. Eadwine was Edward’s special creature. It had been many years since the king selected Eadwine from among the gaggle of black-robed monks who lived within the abbey precincts to be the new abbot, and had then glorified both abbey and abbot by financing one of the most spectacular building programmes ever seen in England—or Europe, come to that. Westminster Abbey had gone from being a damp, dark, sullen stone church with too many draughts for any but the most desperately pious to enjoy to the almost-completed, imposing church and abbey buildings that now rose up from Tothill. The new abbey, due to be completed within the next few months, was one of the most beautiful and impressive churches within all of Christendom.
Edward meant it as a fitting burial chamber and memorial to his reign. Harold thought the entire matter beyond contempt. Other men, other kings, would have preferred that their deeds and victories remain as their memorials.
Not Edward. Childless, victory-less, and increasingly meaningless in his impotence and powerlessness, even within his own kingdom, Edward had chosen to erect a monument of stone to his glory.
Harold had no doubt that the Church would eventually canonise the king for it. Spectacular donations were ever the easy road to sainthood.
Saeweald was still watching Harold, and seemed to understand some of the earl’s thoughts, for his own mouth curled in amusement. Soon the damned physician would have him smile openly, and in this court that would never do.
His gaze drifted, as it so often did, to Caela. She looked particularly beautiful—and particularly sad within that beauty—on this morning. She was robed in soft blue silk over a crisp white under-tunic, a mantle of snowy linen about her shoulders and draped demurely over her dark hair. The colours suited her, and Harold found himself thinking on how beautiful she would look were she within her and Edward’s private chambers, where she could remove her veil, and let that blue silk shimmer against the darkness of her hair…
Caela turned slightly on her seat, handing some needlework to a woman behind her, and as she did so the material of her robe twisted and tightened about her waist and breasts.
Harold stilled, his very breathing stopped.
Caela spoke softly to the woman, and then laughed at some small jest the woman made to her, and Harold let his breath out, horrified to hear its raggedness.
Damn it! Look elsewhere, lecher.
Desperate, Harold dragged his eyes away from his sister and towards the back of the hall where thronged the thegns and stewards, and even a few ceorls, who came each day to court in the hope of gaining a moment of the king’s time for their supplications.
Harold saw several that he knew, and nodded a terse greeting to them. And there was Tostig, just entered.
Tostig caught Harold’s gaze, and pointedly looked away.
Harold sighed. Perhaps he should send one of his thegns down to his brother and bid him sit with Harold. Then they could talk and jest away the tensions that had arisen between them the previous night.
But, just as he was about to summon a thegn and send him to Tostig, Harold stilled in puzzlement.
At the very rear of the hall, where opened the doors to the outer chambers, stood a tall, pale figure.
Harold blinked, for the figure seemed very slightly out of focus…as though it stood behind a veil of water. Whatever—whoever—it was, the person was very tall, and dressed in plain, poorly sewn garments.
A beggar, come to elicit pennies?
For an instant, just an instant, the veil lifted, and Harold found himself staring at intense grey-flecked brown eyes. The eyes transfixed him they were so clear in focus, even from this distance, that he did not think to expand his view to the larger face.
Then the veil was back again, and the figure muted.
Suddenly his sense of imminent danger exploded. Harold straightened and slid to the edge of his chair, a hand to the knife at his belt.
Even as Harold was rising, the strange, discomfiting figure gave a discernible moan, raised a long, thin, almost diaphanous arm, and pointed towards Caela.
Before Harold could say or do anything further, Caela half rose from her seat, her face a mask of terror and pain, and cried out with a half-strangled moan.
Asterion marched through the stone hall, his booted footsteps ringing most satisfactorily.
It was time, finally, to make the opening move in this most exquisite, if deadly, of dances.
Asterion laughed aloud—and to think only he knew the tune.
Then he sobered and slowed his pace as he walked, his head swinging this way and that as he tried to spy out where she’d put herself.
She wouldn’t have hidden herself too well, that he knew. After all, Mag was the one who wanted herself murdered.
Wasn’t that all a part of her Grand Plan?
Asterion almost laughed again, remembering how, in their former life, Mag and Hera had plotted to outwit Asterion. Hera, the dying Greek goddess, had called to the Llangarlian goddess Mag, telling her that they could use Cornelia to trick Asterion into an alliance with Mag.
Then Mag, using Cornelia, could turn against Asterion.
Neither Hera nor Mag realised that Asterion knew of their entire, inept plan.
Gods thought to outwit him, Mistresses of the Labyrinth thought to deceive him, but Asterion was a step ahead of all of them. They would dance to his tune, not he to theirs.
“Come on, Mag,” Asterion whispered, “show thyself. It is, after all, your execution day, and you wouldn’t want to be tardy for such an important appointment, would you?”
There was a slight movement within one of the shadowy recesses of the arched side aisles.
Nothing. A trickery only. Something designed to make him feel as though what he did now was real. Worthwhile, even.
“Oh, come on, you silly bitch,” Asterion muttered. “I haven’t got all day.”
Ah! There she is. About time…
Asterion’s gait increased in pace and, as it did, so his entire form became huge and black, a great amorphous mass of murderous intent.
Mag had appeared at the far end of the stone hall. She looked tiny and wizened from her long period of inactivity, and darted, terrified, from the shadow of one great column to the next. She wailed, the sound thin and frightened, and she clasped her hands about her shoulders as if that single, futile gesture might save her.
Oh, for goodness’ sake, thought Asterion, that act wouldn’t fool a toddling child.
“Did you think that you had outwitted me?” he snarled (one had to play out the absurdity, after all).
“No!” Mag cried. “No! Let me be, Asterion. I can help you! I can—”
Something dark and horrible, a bear’s claw although magnified ten times over, roared through the air, and Mag threw herself to one side.
The claw buried itself in one of the great columns of the stone hall, and blood gushed forth from the stone.
Asterion began to giggle.
“I beg you!” screamed Mag. “I beg—”
The claw flashed through the air once more, but halfway through its arc the claw became the head of a great cat, and its fangs snapped, barely missing the goddess, who rolled desperately across the floor.
“Bitch!” seethed Asterion, and he leaped high into the air. His form turned into a murderous cloud, its entire bulk shrouding Mag completely; the cloud chang
ed into a bubbling mass of plague, sorrow and death, and it poured itself over Mag, it flowed over her, and in that one movement, that one moment, Asterion did what Genvissa had always wanted to do.
He destroyed the goddess. He annihilated her.
Just as she wanted.
Blood flowed.
Asterion laughed.
So many things happened at once that all Harold could do was leap from his chair, and then just stand, helpless and appalled.
Caela staggered from her seat, her face so pale all the life appeared to have drained from her, her eyes wide, her mouth in a surprised “O”, her hands clutching to her belly. Blood—a flood of it!—stained her clothing around her lower belly and then thickened and soaked her lower skirts until her feet slipped in its wetness and she fell to the timber flooring.
Edward, his own face stunned, stumbled from his throne, staring at his wife as she writhed in agony on the floor.
Caela’s ladies stood in one amorphous mass, hands to mouths, eyes wide in shock. What queen ever acted this way?
Swanne turned from the three men she’d been seducing with her grace and wit and loveliness and regarded Caela’s sudden, unexplained agony with something akin to speculation.
Judith was the first to make any attempt to aid Caela, bending down to her and gathering the stricken woman in her arms. The next instant Saeweald had joined her, almost falling to the floor as he tossed aside his crutch.
Harold went forward, his eyes glancing back to where the strange, pale figure had stood—it was gone, now—and bent down beside Saeweald and Judith. Appalled at his sister’s distress, Harold lifted his head to say something to Edward, who was standing close by with an expression of revulsion on his face, when he was forestalled by Aldred, the Archbishop of York.
“See,” the archbishop said, his voice roiling with contempt, “your queen miscarries of a child. I had not known, majesty, that you had put one in her. You should have been more forthcoming in boasting of your achievement.”
Edward gasped, his rosy cheeks turning almost as wan as Caela’s now bloodless ones. “The whore!” he said. “I have remained celibate. I have put no child within her!”
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