“You will be king,” she said.
He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “Aye. After all this time—”
“William,” she said, “I have had news from my agent as well.”
“Yes?”
“Swanne has moved into the Archbishop of York’s palace.”
“What?”
“Harold put her aside. This cannot be surprising news, surely.”
“That Harold should set Swanne aside? No. In truth, I expected it. But why would Swanne move into the archbishop’s household? In what capacity? Has your agent discovered that?”
Matilda watched her husband closely as she picked her next words with some care. “It is rumoured that Swanne has become Aldred’s lover.”
William’s mouth fell open.
“My love,” Matilda said. “After what Harold has told us of her, you cannot be surprised that—”
“That Swanne has chosen a lover? No, I am not surprised at that. I am sure she did it so that she retained a place at court. Unless she became a laundress—”
Matilda’s eyes widened very slightly, but otherwise her face remained remarkably expressionless.
“—there could be little else Swanne could do to keep a place within court. Sweet Christ, Harold would not want her there. But Aldred…Aldred! Matilda, you have met him and seen him for what he is. An obese flatterer with few qualities. He is useful, yes…but as a lover…”
“Perhaps he is a good lover.”
William laughed briefly, incredulously. “There are many other men within court who could have served as well as Aldred. Swanne is a beautiful woman—”
“I wouldn’t know,” murmured Matilda.
“—and she could have any man she—” He stopped abruptly. He stepped to Matilda, and cradled her face in his hands. “Matilda, you will be queen beside me. I swear it to you.”
“I expect to be, William. And Swanne?”
“I don’t know.” And he didn’t. William didn’t like to consider what Swanne would say once she learned Matilda was not to be pensioned off to some nunnery in Flanders. He remembered what she had done to Cornelia, how she had brutalised her, come near to murdering her, taken her child from her…
“I will protect you,” William said to Matilda.
She frowned. What an odd thing to say. Before she could question him on the matter, William had let her go, walking to a chest beneath the window where lay several sheets of parchment and vellum. He picked them up, shuffling them in his hands, signalling through the action that he wanted the subject changed.
“The documents are all prepared,” he said, “and the riders are waiting. They will be dispatched by this evening.”
Matilda came to stand by him, leaning in close as she stared at the letters before her.
They were addressed to the leaders of Europe: Alexander II, the Pope, leader of all Christendom; Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, controller of the largest territory within Europe; Count Baldwin V of Flanders, Matilda’s kinsman, who was not only an important prince in his own right but was also the guardian to the young French king, Philip I; as well, scores of other lesser nobles and prelates. William was going to invade England come what may, but he was going to make damned sure that he had the political and armed support of Europe behind him.
“I have also sent out word to my magnates,” William said. “I will hold a great council in Lillebonne in a few weeks. When they agree, I will have an undivided Normandy behind me.”
“They will agree?” she asked.
“Yes. The rewards will be too good to ignore.”
“And the ships?” She almost whispered the question.
“I sent word yesterday once the rumours grew strong.” William had actually known the instant Edward had died, but had been forced to stay his hand until he heard the news by more conventional means. He didn’t want whispers of murder by poisoning circulating. “The wharves of Dives River are already ringing with the sound of carpenters’ hammers and adzes.”
“When?” she said, and she had to say no other word for William to know of what she spoke.
“Late summer,” he said. “Harold has until summer to enjoy his kingdom.”
His stomach clenched. Only another few months, a few months!
ELEVEN
While, intellectually, Swanne should have known that Aldred and Asterion were one and the same man, one and the same beast, Asterion’s subtle sorcery worked so well that emotionally they were entirely separate in her conscious mind. Once the coronation was past (and how she had hated seeing Harold enthroned, and that pale-faced bitch beside him), Aldred had settled her back into his London palace. Here, at least once a day, he brutalised her both physically and emotionally until she cringed whenever she heard his voice, or caught a whiff of his scent on bed linens or a discarded robe.
Asterion usually came to her once Aldred had departed. He would hold her, and soothe away her hurts, and tell her how beautiful and powerful she was, and whisper how good it would be when they ruled the Game together. Swanne never made the connection: that Asterion appeared to her immediately after Aldred brutalised her so that Swanne would grow so dependent on Asterion, and so grateful to him, that she would do anything he wanted. Aldred unhinged Swanne’s mind and made her cruelly vulnerable to Asterion’s sweetness. Aldred was danger and pain; Asterion was relief from that pain.
Swanne was so grateful to Asterion, and now so desperately dependent on him, that it was difficult for her to disagree with anything Asterion said to her, or asked of her. Moreover, she found herself longing for those times when Asterion appeared. In a strange, bizarre fashion, she almost enjoyed the worst of Aldred’s beatings and rapes because it meant that Asterion was likely to come to her within an hour or so of Aldred leaving her writhing in agony.
Swanne was not sure what she wanted most: Asterion; the relief he represented; or the power he represented.
Strange, that previously she had never thought of Asterion as a possible partner in the Game. She’d only ever considered Brutus, or William as he was now, as her Kingman. But she didn’t have to use William, did she? Asterion was right. All she needed as Mistress of the Labyrinth was a Kingman.
It didn’t matter which Kingman.
The realisation had hit with an almost physical thud one day after Aldred had left her bruised and bleeding.
All she really needed was a Kingman.
Brutus she had selected because she’d thought he was the only one left. Indeed, there was no selection about it at all. It was him, or no one. She’d come to love him because of his power and attraction and vitality and because he was what she needed to fulfil her ambitions.
But there had been another choice apart from Brutus, hadn’t there? Why hadn’t she ever thought of Asterion? This puzzled Swanne in those long silent afternoons she spent sewing with her ladies, their heads bent over their embroideries, unspeaking at their mistress’ demand.
Why hadn’t she ever thought of Asterion beyond considering him as a threat?
Asterion did not want to destroy the Game. He wanted to control it—a perfectly understandable ambition, had Swanne thought clearly enough about it before now.
To control the Game, all Asterion needed were the bands. And Swanne, the Mistress of the Labyrinth.
Imagine the Game she and he could build together!
The power…
The darkcraft in full flower…
Swanne could feel her ancient darkcraft re-emerging. Every time Asterion lay with her it became that little bit stronger. Asterion had put the darkcraft into Ariadne, and now he was putting it back into her.
She almost loved him for it.
No…she did love him for it.
As the weeks passed, Swanne found herself hardly thinking about William at all. All she wanted was to be free again, to be Mistress of a resurgent Game.
And all she needed to do was to ensure that Asterion found the bands.
All she wanted was power, and Asterion seemed mor
e to represent the quicker, surer pathway to it, than did William.
TWELVE
Hawise had served as Swanne’s maid and then senior attending woman for over twenty-five years. She’d known Swanne as a child in her father’s manor, as the young woman who had seduced Harold to her bed, as the mother who had borne him six children, and, by virtue of Swanne’s connection with Harold, as one of the most senior women at Edward’s court.
Swanne had never been an easy woman, even when Hawise had first known her. She had been reclusive, demanding, cunning, charming. She had never been friendly, or confiding. She had always seemed sure…of something, as if even from childhood she entertained a distant vision that only she could discern.
Even if she was never Hawise’s friend, Hawise was as close to a friend as Swanne was ever likely to achieve. Thus, it was as a friend that Hawise asked Edward’s physician Saeweald to attend her mistress. (After all, it was not as if Edward needed the constant attendance of the man now, was it?)
Swanne had shocked Hawise (as she had all the other ladies, and all those they gossiped to) when she had not only moved herself to Aldred’s palace in London, but accepted the corpulent cleric into her bed. If Hawise had been shocked by that action, then she had been stunned by the manner in which Aldred appeared to treat Swanne. Bruises. Bite marks. Bleeding.
Her mistress’s face gaunt and haunted, her eyes brimming with agony every morning.
Matters had improved vastly in the time since Edward’s death. On those nights Aldred spent with Swanne (and that was most of them) there still came the sounds of muffled sobbing from behind the locked door of the bedchamber, and often in the morning there would be rusty streaks of dried blood staining the bed linens, but Swanne seemed to be improved within herself, and her bruises and wounds were far less, even non-existent for days on end.
And yet…
Swanne was changed somehow, and most definitely not for the better. Her loveliness had become brittle. Her eyes, if possible, were darker, more unknowable, and often Hawise found Swanne watching her with a calculation and bleakness she found deeply disturbing. And despite her almost incessant bleeding, Swanne also appeared to be with child again (Hawise spent much time on her knees before whatever altar she could find praying that this child was Harold’s final gift, and not Aldred’s loathsome welcome) although Swanne denied it with vicious, hard words the one time Hawise dared to venture the question.
And Swanne was growing thinner, as if the child (or whatever it was, if Swanne had been telling truth) was eating her from within. In Swanne’s previous pregnancies she had never grown thin, but had blossomed and bloomed.
In essence, Swanne was growing thinner, harder and darker—and more sharp-tongued as each day passed.
Hawise feared her mistress had a fatal, malignant growth within her and, though she knew Swanne would not thank her for it, took it upon herself to send for Saeweald. It was all she could do, and that Hawise did that much for a woman who had never given her much beyond harsh words said a great deal about Hawise’s generosity of spirit.
“I did not send for you,” Swanne said as Saeweald stood before her, one hand gently fingering the copper box of herbs at his waist. In his other he grasped firmly a large leather satchel that Swanne presumed contained all the tricks of his trade.
Swanne’s mouth curled. All Loth’s “tricks of his trade” vanished that night he’d murdered Og along with Blangan in Mag’s Dance two thousand years before.
“A friend sent for me,” Saeweald said, and Swanne’s eyes slid towards Hawise, standing calmly a few paces away.
“No friend to me,” Swanne said, and Saeweald had to refrain from hitting the woman. Gods, as Genvissa she’d at least managed to maintain a semblance of respect towards the women and mothers in her circle. Even as Swanne she had managed a fragile veneer of sisterly communion with the women about her.
But this naked contempt? Swanne must be sure of herself indeed, and that worried Saeweald.
He’d been glad when Hawise had approached him, handing to him on a platter the perfect excuse to visit—and examine, by all the luck of the gods!—Swanne. He’d heard from Caela how Swanne had accused her, and then how the Sidlesaghes were concerned there was something wrong with the Game and the land, some dark shift, and that it was possibly connected to Swanne.
Well, and that was no surprise. Every “dark shift” somehow connected to Swanne-Genvissa. If there was one lesson he’d learned in his lives, then that was it.
“Do not discard friendship when it is offered to you,” Saeweald said as he set his leather satchel down by his feet. He expected Swanne to sneer again, but she smiled, almost as if genuinely cheered by some thought which had come into her head, and then laughed, and gestured for one of her women to bring a chair forward for Saeweald.
To Saeweald’s surprise, he saw that it was Damson, and he asked after her as he took the chair.
“Damson is well enough,” said Swanne before the woman had a chance to answer for herself, and waved her a dismissal.
“I’m surprised to see Damson in the archbishop’s household,” Saeweald said as he sat down.
Swanne raised her brows. “I’m surprised you even know her.”
“I attended her once for a fever.”
“Well, she is of no matter, her health of even less. Damson asked if she might join my household here, and I saw no harm in it. I suppose she thought it preferable to serving that mealy-mouthed jade Harold took to wife.”
They were sitting in the chamber Aldred had put at Swanne’s disposal. Saeweald had never been to the archbishop’s London palace previously, and he had to admire the comforts with which the good archbishop surrounded himself.
Swanne being one of them, of course.
Like everyone else, Saeweald had wondered about this liaison, particularly as he knew Swanne better than most. Swanne could have had the pick of any noble male within the court—but Aldred? It was not like Swanne to select a physically unattractive man when, as Saeweald well knew from her previous existence, she preferred something more delectable.
“You look amused,” Swanne said, disdainfully raising one carefully plucked black eyebrow.
“I was imagining you with Aldred,” Saeweald said, not inclined to play polite word games with her. “I was wondering why.”
“It is none of your concern,” Swanne snapped.
“Everything you do is my concern,” Saeweald said. “You have a terrible penchant for destroying my entire world.”
She smiled again, but this time it was so icy and so calculating it made Saeweald’s blood run cold.
He reached out a hand and took Swanne’s wrist.
She drew back slightly, then relaxed and allowed Saeweald to feel her pulse.
Unable to bear her black-eyed, shrewd scrutiny, Saeweald looked down at her wrist. Her skin was so pale he could see the blue-veined blood vessels beneath, and he could feel the delicate bones shifting beneath his fingers. Her pulse beat strong and full, however.
Whatever had affected Swanne, whatever had caused this pallor and thinness and strange light in her eyes, it had not lessened her strength or, Saeweald suspected, her ambition and purpose.
“You must have heard from William recently,” he murmured, making much fuss over feeling her pulse at several points on her wrist and lower forearm.
Swanne gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders.
“And you must be excited that—perhaps—he will shortly be here. I have no doubt that you cannot wait to see him again.”
Swanne gave a small sigh, as if the matter was of supreme disinterest to her.
Saeweald’s eyes flew to her face. That disinterested sigh had sounded genuine. Swanne? Didn’t care if she saw William? It could not be!
“You do not spend every moment lusting for him?” Saeweald said.
Again that secretive smile. “I have a better lover,” Swanne said.
Saeweald gave up any pretence of feeling Swanne’s heartbeat. “Aldred?�
�
Something flashed over Swanne’s face, and for an instant Saeweald thought it terror, but then an expression of the most supreme contentment took its place. “No,” she said. “Not Aldred.”
“I had thought the Mistress of the Labyrinth would spend her time lusting only for her Kingman.”
Yet again Swanne said nothing, but held Saeweald’s eyes with a disdain that told him she was hiding something momentous.
What?
And who? Swanne would not just discard William for an athletic lover, however skilled he might be in her bed. She would not just discard her Kingman.
Saeweald felt the germ of hope within him. Perhaps Swanne had changed. Perhaps she was prepared to abandon her ambitions as Mistress of the—
“Never think that,” Swanne said, her voice a low hiss, and Saeweald screened his mind in sudden fright. “I will be the most powerful Mistress of the Labyrinth that ever was. The Game will be mine.”
“But for that you will need William,” Saeweald said, pushing the point.
Again that shrug, the slight, disdainful lifting of an eyebrow.
Saeweald sighed, hiding his confusion and concern with rummaging in his satchel.
“I need none of your potions,” Swanne said, irritated by Saeweald’s fidgeting. “I am not ill.”
Now it was Saeweald’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You do not look particularly well,” he said. “You have lost much weight. There is a fever burning in your eyes. Hawise says that you may be pregnant—”
“Hawise is a fool!”
“Perhaps this lover of yours is potent.”
Swanne smiled. “Oh, aye, that he is. But he fills me with…ah, this is not your concern, Saeweald. It is far and away not your concern.”
He fills me with power. Saeweald could almost hear the words she had stopped.
“But enough of me,” Swanne said, her tone almost girlish now. “I admit myself surprised, Saeweald, that you have not sunk into a blackness of spirit now that Mag has finally been disposed of. Caela, poor lost soul, must have been your final hope for some kind of…oh, some kind of purpose, I suppose.”
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