He made a face, as if uninterested. “You don’t think that might ruin whatever you hope for with William?”
“William and I have an alliance that goes back much further than you can guess at, my lord. He will not think any the worse of me for begging shelter from you.”
Aldred shrugged. “Very well, then, my lady. You may ‘shelter’ within my palace.”
TWELVE
Swanne waited a full day and more for a time when she had an hour or two undisturbed in the chamber Aldred had given her before she succumbed to her sense of panic.
Who had moved the band?
How?
Had William told Harold about her? Had William really shared her messages with Matilda? No, surely not. That was just Harold’s lies. Surely. And if William had…then why? Why? Why?
She needed answers, she needed reassurance, and she needed both so badly she knew she could not wait for the slow passage of written communication between herself and William.
Besides, she no longer trusted Aldred completely. The man had been too sure of himself recently. What did he plan behind her back?
No, she needed to see William. To meet him again, face to face, as much to satisfy her emotional needs as to answer her questions.
Since her first meeting with William, Swanne had always been supremely careful with the use of her power. She had never known where Asterion was, or if he would be able to scry out her use of power, and, most importantly, what he might do if he felt her use such power.
But the past day or so had witnessed the loss of most of Swanne’s confidence.
She needed William again, if only for a moment or two, just to see him, to reach out and touch him. To hear him reassure her that Harold had lied.
And so she did what she had not yet dared to do for the past fifteen years.
She used her power as Mistress of the Labyrinth to visit William.
Once Harold departed, William had taken his horse and a few companions and travelled to the coast, to a small estate he had near Fécamp. There he spent two days staring north-west from the tower of the small castle that dominated the estate.
Then, on this morning, he had ridden from the castle, curtly telling his companions to give him time and space alone for a few hours, and galloped to the beach some three miles distant.
He pulled his horse to a halt on a small hill. Above his head wheeled scores of seabirds, filling the air with their harsh voices; about him there was nothing but the rolling turf of untilled meadows; before him there was nothing but the wild grey sea, whipped into a frenzy by a bitter northerly wind.
The distant view was hazy, the nearer view distorted from the spray sent skyward by the crashing waves, but William could feel England just beyond his eyesight. There it lay, so close, so close…
Something within him tugged. Almost as if an invisible hand had laid hold to his gut and pulled.
He groaned, bending forward a little in the saddle, and his horse shifted uneasily beneath him.
Again, the strange, painful tug, and this time William realised what it was.
“No!” he cried. Damn, it was Swanne! “No! Stop!”
But it was too late. Some twenty paces away, where the hill started to dip towards the rocky beach, the haze consolidated into a misty pillar, and then into a discernible female form.
“Swanne! No,” William cried again, almost beside himself with a crazed mixture of fear and anger. She dared not do this! She dared not! Not now, when it was so dangerous. He swung down from his horse and ran towards the figure just as it consolidated into its final form.
Swanne, running to meet him.
She looked older, but just as beautiful: the black, curling hair snapping free in the wind; the sensuous figure; the round white arms held out to him; the face, more beautiful than he could ever have imagined.
The red mouth silently framing his name. William! William!
“Swanne,” he grunted in that instant before she hurled herself into his arms. She pulled his head down and kissed him, but within a moment he pushed her back, his hands on her shoulders, staring at her.
“God, Swanne! What do you here?”
“William,” she cried, and buried her face against his chest, her arms tight about him. “William.”
Again he pushed her back, harder this time. “What do you here? What is wrong?”
“You know what! Someone has moved a—”
“It was not you?” William’s hands tightened about Swanne’s shoulders.
“No! No! I thought that perhaps you…somehow…”
“No.” William looked away from her, looked over the wild sea.
“Who? No one could touch those bands but you and I. William…William, was it Asterion?”
“No. Asterion was as surprised as I. As you, now, I find. Gods, Swanne, I was sure that you had moved the band.” Had prayed that it was you who had moved the band.
Swanne’s hands had lessened their grip about William a little, and now she moved them to his chest, and she leaned in closer, and pressed her hands against him. She could feel the heat of his body radiating out through the layers of his tunic and undershirt, and Swanne closed her eyes momentarily, and breathed in deeply. “Then who?” she said.
“Caela,” William said in a voice almost a whisper. He was still staring out to sea.
“No.”
“No?” William remembered what Matilda and Harold had said about her. “Are you sure? She has surprised us before.”
“She has no power, William. Not like us.” Again her hands pressed against him. “Asterion destroyed Mag within her. She has nothing left.”
“What?” Swanne had finally said something that pulled William’s eyes back to her. “What in Hades’ name do you mean?”
“Mag,” Swanne said, “within Caela’s womb. She lived within Cornelia’s womb. Did you not…?”
Swanne suddenly stopped. Had Brutus ever known of this? She had not mentioned it to him, not in those few brief months between when she had discovered it herself and when Cornelia, the bitch, had murdered her. And then Cornelia would never, surely, have mentioned it.
Besides, Cornelia would have had no chance to tell him, for Brutus would have killed her the instant that Cornelia had stepped back from Genvissa’s dead body.
Wouldn’t he? Caela was speaking only lies when she’d said she’d lived with Brutus for decades after Genvissa’s death, and borne him more children.
Wasn’t she?
“How long did Cornelia live after she killed me?” Swanne asked. “An hour? A day, at most?”
“As long as I did, at least,” said William vaguely, not thinking through why Swanne might have been asking this. “And that was, what? Some thirty years or so.”
“What? You did not kill her?”
William dropped his hands and took a step backwards, breaking the contact between Swanne and himself. “No. Eventually I took her back as my wife, but I—”
“You kept her as your wife for some thirty years after she had killed me?” There was a terrible pain in her chest, and Swanne could hardly breathe for its fire.
Betrayal, she realised dimly. That’s what that pain was. Betrayal.
“I did it to punish her, Swanne. I never spoke to her again.”
Swanne gave a bitter laugh. “But you lay with her.” A pause. “Yes?”
He did not speak, and that was all the answer Swanne needed.
Above them the circling seabirds cried out in their harsh tones, as if barking in laughter at Swanne’s anguish.
She lifted a hand, as though to strike William, but he seized it before she could act.
“And you told Harold of our correspondence,” she said, her voice flinty, trying, but not succeeding, to wrench her wrist from William’s grasp. “And, I discover, shared it with Matilda. How could you betray me like that? Ah!” She gave a hard laugh. “How stupid of me. If you could lie with Cornelia after she’d murdered me, then what would such a small betrayal as telling Harold of
our communication and sharing it with your wife cost you? Eh? I swear before all gods, William, that I believe you collect wives only so you can betray me with them.”
William remained silent a long moment, staring at her with a face as tight and as angry as hers. “How can you speak of betrayal, my love, when you have been sleeping side by side with Coel all these years?”
There was a flash of panic in Swanne’s eyes, then she collected herself and pouted. “It was of no importance.”
“It was of no importance,” William repeated, then laughed hollowly. “No importance…ha!”
Swanne’s face hardened. “You took your Matilda, did you not? I took Harold. There is no difference.”
“Matilda has no part in this deadly game we play! But Coel! That was something you held back deliberately. I asked you about him,” William’s voice hardened to granite, “and you lied to me. You lied. Deliberately.”
“I was afraid. I did not want you jealous.”
William’s jaw tightened, and he looked away from her.
“Is that why you told him about you and me?” she said, watching William’s expression carefully. “You were upset when you realised Harold was Coel, and that I’d kept that information from you. Is that why—?”
“I did not tell Harold,” William said. “He knew before he came to my court.”
“He knew?” Swanne frowned, then her brow cleared. “Ah, well then, it must have been Aldred, no doubt hedging his bets against a Harold victory rather than a William victory.”
“You were speaking of Mag,” William said, finally looking back at Swanne. “Living within Cornelia’s womb, you said?”
Swanne’s mouth twisted, but she managed to bring her emotions under control. “Mag hid herself within Cornelia’s womb. If Cornelia allied with Asterion, then that alliance was as much an alliance between Mag and Asterion as between Cornelia and Asterion.”
Now William’s face was wearing a strange, unreadable expression. “Cornelia carried Mag within her womb? Truly?”
Whatever that expression was, Swanne did not like it. “Aye. Both the bitches conspired against you. And me. But we need not worry now. Whatever assurances and promises Asterion made to Mag, whatever reward he offered for her aid, he meant none of it. He destroyed Mag, murdered her completely, a few months ago.”
“And Caela?”
“What of Caela? Why speak of her when—”
“Because I need to know if she had the power to move that band!” William all but shouted. “I need to know who it was!”
Swanne’s face set sulkily. “Caela has no power. Believe me, William, she does not have the ability to find and move any of those kingship bands. She barely has the capability to dress in the morning. It must have been someone else. Who?”
“Very well, then,” William finally said, although his mind still rankled over what Matilda and Harold had said about Caela; they had not described a woman who didn’t even have the power to “dress in the morning”. “Not Caela, then.” He paused, thinking. Who?
Swanne gave a small shrug. “I cannot tell. The puzzle has kept me awake at nights.”
“Silvius,” he said. “Perhaps it is Silvius.”
“Your father? How?”
William remembered how he’d met his father in the heart of the Labyrinth during the Dance of the Torches; how he’d slain Silvius then as he had that day so long ago when he’d been fifteen years old. And he remembered what his father had said to him as he’d faced Silvius yet one more time that day Loth had challenged Brutus: I am your conscience, I am this land, and I am the Game.
“I am the Game,” William whispered. Then he refocused his eyes on Swanne. “Silvius lives within the Game,” he said, “and Silvius once wore those bands. He knows those bands, and they him. He could have moved them.”
He must have. Who else?
“Why?” said Swanne.
“To foil me,” William said, a sad smile hovering about his face. “To murder my ambitions.”
Swanne cursed, foully enough to make William stare at her with barely disguised distaste.
“What can we do to stop him?” she said.
“At the moment, not much.” If only it was Silvius. William wanted to believe that very much; it made everything so simple. Still, he was glad Matilda had her agent within Westminster. Just in case…someone…was lying to him.
“If Silvius moved them then I can find them,” William said, trying to settle the matter in his own mind. “We are of the same blood, the same training. If he moved them, then I can find them.”
William forced himself to smile slightly. “It is not as desperate as I’d thought. It will not be long before I can come,” he said. “Do not worry.”
Above them one of the seabirds, now circling much lower, gave a harsh cry as if of laughter.
Swanne smiled, and lifted her face to William’s. “Kiss me,” she said.
He did so, but not as deeply as Swanne would have liked. She drew him close, meaning to kiss him again, but William pushed her back. “Go now,” he said. “Go. And don’t ever dare this again. It is too dangerous. It won’t be long until I can be with you in truth. It won’t be.”
“You said that fifteen years ago.”
“Fifteen years ago I was a fool.” Two thousand years ago I was a fool, too. “It won’t be long now, we can both feel it.”
“William…”
“Go!” he said, and gave her shoulders a push. “Go.”
When she finally disappeared, William was not so very surprised to feel a profound sense of relief sweep through him.
Deep within the Game, Og’s heart beat infinitesimally stronger.
Asterion slowly recomposed his awareness from the seabird—after all, he was the master of glamours—back to his own body, sprawled in a great chair before the fire in his hall.
The silly witch, thinking he would not have known she would do something like that.
In truth, Asterion had been expecting it ever since Swanne had forced herself on Aldred, the obese buffoon, and had been mildly surprised she’d waited as long as she had.
He thrust thoughts of Swanne aside, and concentrated on the matter to hand. Silvius? They had decided Silvius was moving the bands.
Asterion grinned, staring into the flames. Silvius…
Damson was down at the river’s edge, carefully folding wet linens and placing them within her basket, when the waterman poled his craft close to her.
“Damson!” he called softly, and she set her washing aside, lifted her skirts, and walked over to him.
“A new challenge,” he said. “Our mistress requires you to watch the queen as well as the Wessex witch. What company do they keep? Do they slip into the night unattended?”
Damson rolled her eyes. “A fine request indeed, and to come at such a time! The Lady Swanne has been bundled out of Westminster and has found solace within the Archbishop of York’s house within London’s walls. What does our mistress expect me to do? Scurry back and forth, back and forth, and expect no one to notice?”
The waterman leaned on his pole and regarded Damson speculatively. “In the past weeks I have seen you scurrying often between Westminster and London. What is one or two more scurries among those you already accomplish?”
“I have not left Westminster in months!”
The waterman chuckled. “So you have a lover, then, and seek to deny it. I hope you do not confess our mistress’ secrets to him.”
Damson glared at him. “I have not left Westminster.”
He shrugged. “As you will, then. But, listen, there is more. Pray watch carefully, if you can, among the queen’s and Lady Swanne’s possessions for a golden band or two, with a spinning crown over a Labyrinth set into them.”
“She wishes me to steal it?”
The waterman shook his head. “Just to observe its presence.”
“I can do that.”
“Give my best to your lover,” the waterman said, standing up straight and hefting th
e pole. “He must be good if you seek to deny him so mightily.”
Damson scowled, marched back to her basket, then stalked off, leaving the sound of the waterman’s laughter ringing over the river.
THIRTEEN
It was the night of the winter solstice, the death of the year. The night which marked the nadir of the sun’s journey through the heavens; the shortest day and the longest night. That moment when the sun would either triumph against the darkness and rise the next morning towards an eventual spring, or it would fail and plunge the world and all creation into never-ending gloom and death.
It was the night when the land held its breath. If the sun failed, then the land failed, and spring would never grace its body again. If the sun failed, then the land would wither and die, and all who lived on her would wither also.
It was the night when the land strived for the dawn, for the light, for its resurgent fertility.
It was the night Caela could act, where she could do for the land.
“My lord?”
Edward, who had been contemplating something unfathomable in the middle distance of the Great Hall in the palace of Westminster, turned to study his wife. They sat on the dais, digesting their evening meal, listening to some minstrels play.
The hall was all but deserted, and this emptiness had put Edward in a foul mood.
He knew that celebrations were planned tonight for the fields and hills beyond the northern walls of London to mark the solstice. Fire dances and games were to be enacted by all and sundry. The fire festivities were aeons old, meant to encourage the sun’s rise the following morning and to frighten away all evil spirits who hoped for the sun’s death and for never-ending gloom. Most of London’s population, and that of the surrounding villages and hamlets, were gathering at Pen Hill awaiting the first strike of the flint and the first spark that would signal the commencement of the festivities.
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