Godiva

by Nerys Jones

  ‘That woman – Estrith Gudmanson – is a member of the household of one the king’s most valued counsellors, Robert de Champart, Bishop of Jumie`ges.’

  ‘Is that why she is so beautiful and so well dressed,’ Godiva sniped.

  Lovric ignored her and went on. ‘I learned something important from her. She is taking care of the affairs of a noblewoman from Kent who has annulled her marriage, on the bishop’s advice, because she and her husband are cousins. There are no children in this case and the woman’s dowry lands are now hers to do with as she wishes. The husband is angry and accusing Bishop Robert of ruining his marriage in order to get his hands on the wife’s estates.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Estrith thinks so. The estates are extensive and they are already occupied by the bishop’s soldiers.’

  ‘Why did Estrith tell you this?’

  ‘Because there is talk around the bishop’s table that other rich noblewomen are coming to the same decision as the Kentish woman. Estrith said that if you and I are related, we should start to think up some story to deny it.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t give you up so easily, Lovric,’ Godiva scoffed. ‘And anyway we are no more than second cousins. This is nonsense. That woman was just trying to get your attention.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve heard mention before now that the bishops are showing a lot of interest in the prohibited degrees of marriage.’

  ‘Well, let them. If they ask, tell them that though we have a great-grandfather in common, everyone knows his wife was a king’s mistress, and so it is more likely that one of us has royal blood than that we are related to each other.’

  ‘Very clever,’ Lovric laughed, but not as heartily as Godiva would have liked. She would have preferred it too had that pretty, knowledgeable woman not crossed their paths.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ she said, getting up abruptly.

  Estrith’s connection with the tavern had clearly made it distasteful to Godiva, and Lovric agreed without a word. He took her hand and pushed his way through the crowd into the street, heading for the nearest respectable inn. With hunger mounting, they hurried to cross the threshold and were about to plunge into the dark, comforting interior, when a uniformed herald sprang up before Lovric and barred his way.

  ‘Earl Lovric of Mercia,’ he intoned. ‘The king summons you at once to the cathedral. You are required to witness the signing of the charters this afternoon.’

  ‘This is my dinner time,’ Lovric fumed. ‘Why was I not informed before now? What would you have done if you had found me down at the cockfight and spattered with blood? Is this how you manage the business of the realm?’

  The messenger stood mute and expressionless, waiting for the nobleman’s tirade to subside. They were all like this when they were summoned; they all implied that they would be better rulers than the king; they all ranted at the powerless messenger; then they all bowed low before the throne.

  ‘Eva,’ Lovric sighed, ‘I’m sorry I must leave you. Go back now to the hostelry, and dine there, rest and wait for me.’

  On another day she might have argued. But the heat was oppressive, her appetite poor and the morning had left her feeling that she had seen enough of Winchester. They kissed and parted, and Godiva, with Agatha and Father Godric now on either side of her, started back towards the hostelry.

  Their way took them down the chief market street to where a narrow lane, crammed with people, flowed into the main cathedral road. The scene was one of bustle and business, but nothing that seemed unusual for this time of the week and day. Then, without warning, just as they arrived at the junction of the streets, a huge uproar broke out, and the three found themselves standing directly in the path of a hue and cry. A shopkeeper, flushed with rage, was giving chase to a pilferer and shouting ‘stop, thief ’ and ‘cut-purse’ at the top of his voice, egged on by a band of citizens out to share his vengeance.

  What happened next was unavoidable. Godric stumbled and notwithstanding his priestly garb got trampled, while a burly woman aflame with indignation pushed Agatha aside impatiently, leaving her pinned against a wall by the heaving crowd, unable to move in any direction. Meanwhile Godiva, caught off guard, found herself standing directly in the path of the fleeing man, whose legs were darting off to left and right at the same time, his clothes flying, and his arms, already bleeding from the shopkeeper’s attempt to arrest him, lashing out at anyone who came near him.

  Suddenly he saw her and stopped, like a condemned man who has just seen the astonishing face of his saviour. He lunged towards her and someone hit him on his back with a staff, thinking he was attacking the lady. The blow sent him sprawling at her feet and clutching at the hem of her dress, smearing it at once with mud and blood. He reached up for her hand and covered it with kisses, and in doing so dragged her white silk stole and the new brooch down to the ground where they fell under his thrashing legs.

  ‘Mercy,’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘I am innocent. I repent. Save me, lady. Forgiveness! Sanctuary!’

  Before she could tell him she had no power in this town to protect him, the mob was upon him. The merchant whose money he had taken seized him by the hair and pulled him backwards, his scalp so tight that Godiva thought it would tear away from his face.

  ‘Mercy, lady,’ the thief screamed.

  ‘Wait,’ she shouted at the crowd, in whose hands knives were already gleaming. For a moment they froze, yielding instinctively to the authority of a high-ranking person. Godiva put her hand on the man’s shoulder and addressed the shopkeeper. ‘Find a priest or a law-speaker. Give him justice as a man, not a dog’s death on a street corner.’

  Then the spell broke and the crowd’s wrath flared up again. ‘Take him to the gallows,’ someone shouted. ‘There’s lawmen there, and a priest too, ready for the likes of him.’

  ‘The gallows!’ they all roared, and rushed on like a river just renewed by heavy rain, bearing the thief with them to his death and leaving Godiva alone in the street, her dress filthy and her servants cowering by a door.

  ‘Good lady, forgive me!’ Agatha cried as she ran over and put her own plain hemp wrap round Godiva’s shoulders. ‘The crowd came between us. Let us go to your chamber at once.’

  With Agatha beside her and Father Godric walking ahead, Godiva began to make her way back to the hostelry as quickly as she could, keeping her head down to avoid the curious glances of passers-by and hoping desperately that she would meet no one who might recognize her in her present dishevelled state. But as it happened, the story of the lady and the thief had spread like wildfire through the streets, and those townsfolk who did stare at her did so with admiration rather than derision. At last, realizing that no one was ridiculing her, Godiva cautiously raised her eyes and looked round. The first person she saw was a woman whose small child called out, ‘Good lady, good lady.’

  ‘Well, it seems I have not ruined my name, after all,’ she said to Agatha.

  ‘No. If a thief thinks you can give sanctuary, other folk will think you are holy. Well, a bit holy, mistress.’

  Godric turned round and added vaguely, ‘Praise be!’

  All three were calming down rapidly now. Indeed, the whole episode seemed about to be buried by food and an afternoon of rest, when round the corner came sailing a large band of stout and severe ladies, their sweating bodies swathed in woollen drapes that left not one inch of flesh exposed other than their unadorned hands and red faces. Accompanying and encircling them were armed guards and softly chanting priests, all of whom seemed to be following the unvoiced orders of a young woman whose blonde brows and lashes, sitting on a face as fluffy as a dandelion, gave the appearance of one of the albino rats that sometimes ran out of the barns in Cheylesmore manor. Was this Godwin’s daughter, Godiva wondered? If so, she had grown thinner and prematurely lined since Godiva had glimpsed her at her wedding, and her nose seemed sharper and brows more prominent, as though with time and political pressure she was growing into her father’s
selfsame face. It had to be her: one so young and so imperious could only be Queen Edith. And it was she who now brought the assembly of ladies to a halt immediately before Godiva.

  ‘Madam?’ said Edith, looking Godiva up and down as though she were an old whore who had been brought to the reeve to pay her fines.

  ‘Yes, Edith of Wessex,’ Godiva replied clumsily, unsure how to address this woman who, in the eyes of most of England, was no queen because she was still a virgin and therefore no true wife to the king. Only the slightest quiver on one cheek showed that Edith resented Godiva’s discourtesy.

  ‘I believe,’ she went on icily, ‘that you were accosted by a common criminal. This has never happened to a noble in Winchester. One wonders why it should happen to you.’ Again she looked reprovingly at Godiva’s dirty dress and her bare forearms protruding from beneath Agatha’s hemp stole. ‘And I believe that the thief asked you for sanctuary,’ she went on, dragging out her syllables to make everyone await the completion of her pronouncements. ‘That was impious. Only the king and I may grant sanctuary in this city. I trust you did nothing to encourage anyone to believe that you have the holy powers of sanctuary, either here or in Coventry, or anywhere else, my lady Godiva?’

  ‘No. I did nothing. Of course not,’ Godiva replied at once. It was the wrong answer. Edith raised her pale brows as though expecting a better explanation. ‘It happened so suddenly,’ Godiva said, unable to make up a suitably self-effacing tale to flatter Edith. ‘It was just very strange . . .’

  ‘Strange?’ the queen’s voice was even lower and slower now. ‘In the minds of simple folk what is “strange” is often taken to be miraculous. You had better be careful, madam, lest you give offence while you are with us in royal Winchester.’

  And with that Edith averted her gaze and moved on, followed by her circle of attending ladies, their eyes down and faint smirks tucked into the corners of their mouths.

  Godiva remained where she stood, her face beginning to flame, unable to move or decide what to do next. Around her some of the people who had gathered to watch the scene remained to stare and point at her. Two teenage boys called out ‘Oo, the naughty lady got a spanking! Ha ha ha’, and laughed until a man chased them away. Some little girls started to mimic the queen giving Godiva a dressing down, one wagging her finger and the other crying and rubbing her eyes. They left to go home with their new game, which Godiva realized would be registered at once in the compendium of local children’s lore. A passing whore muttered, ‘Never mind, lady. Mistress Edith do open her mouth more than her legs.’ A wave of laughter rippled through the small crowd. Godiva felt their sympathy deepen her shame.

  Suddenly Father Godric caught hold of her arm and pulled her with him.

  ‘Walk behind me, lady,’ he said and began to lead her quickly towards the hostelry.

  Agatha took up position behind her, to show more deference to her humiliated mistress. Godiva walked in a cloud of misery between them, concentrating so hard on blocking out her surroundings that she barely heard the faint voice behind her chanting childishly, over and over again in a whisper, ‘Needy Eedy, needy Eedy.’

  The words couldn’t wipe out the shame of the afternoon, but they helped Godiva as she struggled back to the privacy of her own chamber. Edith, she remembered, might be queen, but she was also Edward’s victim. While her own shame was transient, Edith’s was an enduring torment, day and night. She braced her shoulders, raised her head and walked on.

  Agatha noticed and silently thanked, not Mary the consoler this time, but God the Father, the Lord God Almighty, the great judge and the avenger of wrongs, He who stands above kings and queens and gives hope to small people such as herself, the One she had never appealed to in person before, keeping Him in reserve for serious peril. Only when they arrived at the safety of the hostelry did Agatha realize what she had done – praying to Him was like ringing the bell in the town square of her mind and shouting, ‘Danger! enemies! flee!’ But there was nowhere to flee to, and no one to protect her but a woman who was not entirely safe herself. She felt her knees buckle as if they belonged to someone else. They seemed to be getting ready to do a lot more praying to the Lord God Almighty before Agatha would see Coventry again.

  Six

  It was late afternoon when Lovric returned to the hostelry. Agatha could tell from the heavy trudge of his ascending footsteps that he was tired and probably irascible. The door flew open and in he came, grunting and glaring, his clenched fist squeezing a scroll of parchment and his hose askew around his knees.

  Agatha had been preparing for this moment. Now she rose and, instead of bowing and effacing herself as she usually did in Lovric’s presence, she stood there before him, her feet planted before Godiva’s door and her hands tightly clasped together. The only customary sign of deference she gave was a deep curtsy, but as soon as she straightened up she gazed at him with a look that was bold and even possibly defiant.

  ‘Well, my girl?’

  Despite her resolve, Agatha quailed. He reminded her of her father, drunk and demanding to confront her mother over some quarrel, and she, Agatha, a mere slip of a thing, standing before him to slow down the progress of his godlike rage and take the first blow herself.

  ‘My lord,’ she began uncertainly. ‘Mistress is unwell.’

  ‘Sick? Was the food bad at midday? We should have lodged at the cathedral guest quarters, after all. You can count on monks to dine well.’

  ‘No lord, the food was not bad here,’ Agatha hesitated, and then she grasped the nettle. ‘No, she was assaulted, sir.’

  The expected blow did not fall. Lovric was not drunk and his command of his own violence was instinctive. Instead he gave her such a look of contempt that her heart froze over. She had failed in her first duty as a servant, which was to protect her mistress against everything. His silent condemnation made it hard for Agatha to find the words with which to relate what had happened. But when she spoke Lovric listened carefully, and only at the end, when Agatha described the encounter with Edith, did he utter one quiet curse.

  ‘Go now and rest,’ he told her, and then he entered the chamber where Godiva was still asleep.

  Agatha did not go at once, but placed her ear firmly against the door and listened. From inside the room there came no sound at all. The master must be standing there, just looking down at Godiva, she thought. Mother Mary! Let him see how pale she is and have the sense to let her go home.

  Inside the shuttered, candle-lit room, Lovric was indeed reflecting on the wisdom of being in Winchester, at Edward’s command, with Godiva. He was ruminating too on the loyalty of the little maid. From the look on her face she had expected at least a slap, but she had risked it to deflect the greater anger that some husbands showed wives who had been dishonoured, albeit by accident and through no fault of their own.

  He was deeply uneasy. Despite the gentle setting of this town – the way it rose unobtrusively out of the open chalk landscape, the way the long, low cathedral did not soar and dominate its surroundings, but nestled between gardens and water meadows beside the temperate River Itchen – there was something subtly awry in the spirit of the place. The insult to his wife intensified the anxiety he had felt all day since Alfgar’s unexpected release. Glad as he was about that, it immediately raised questions about the king’s motives in taking Harry hostage. Lovric had grave misgivings on that score, too grave to share with Godiva. Then there were all the other little jarring incidents that had taken place – unimportant in themselves, and yet cumulatively unsettling: the failure this morning of one of his spies to arrive at an early appointment; meeting Ivar quick-tongue, and him on the run again; encountering Estrith, a clerical courtesan bearing news of cold winds of change; Godiva feeling put out on finding her market to be so much poorer than Winchester’s; and that gaunt monk, devouring the sight of her bare arms – something that she had not noticed, but he had.

  How often it was that she did not see what was going on around her, he thought. Tak
e Prior Edwin: she had let him continue in his ways unchecked for far too long. And take this visit to Winchester: why was she not on her guard, every second, for something to go wrong? Why did she plead for that thief, for instance, when it only drew more attention to her? She knew now that Edward was a strangely cruel man and she had long complained that he had taken an irrational disliking to her. Why was she not supremely cautious, as he was? He doubted that Edith had come upon Godiva just by chance, so soon after the thief fell at her feet. No: her informers had told her at once and she had sought out Godiva to rebuke and shame her. It was even possible that the whole incident of the thief had been staged. He found himself suddenly angry and sweating. He could not be everywhere, and he could not be at her side all the time. She was an adult woman and responsible for herself. That’s all there was to it.

  And yet, and yet. It was he who had brought Edwin to the abbey of St Mary’s and ignored Godiva’s misgivings, as he always did when he thought he knew best. And it was he who had brought her here, knowing full well the nature of Edward’s mind and Edward’s pleasures. He should have insisted on her going back. That is what husbands were supposed to do, he believed – make decisions about difficult things and force family members to comply. He could have done it, even if it was not his usual way with his wife, and even if it angered Edward. He did try, he remembered, but only feebly, and then he had relented and let her have her way about coming to see Alfgar and Harry. God almighty! What guilt he would feel if she suffered for this gamble he was taking to humour the king and stave off further attacks on his own authority. Such sudden attacks they had been. A mere year ago he would not have been able to imagine this rapid decline in his position – Normans at large in Hereford and he, the Earl of Mercia, having to flee; Godwin’s kin nibbling away at the Mercian frontiers; two sons taken into captivity; and the Welsh up in arms again. All this, despite his great service to the king. Why did Edward want to damage him? What had he done to provoke his rage? Lovric, despite all the spies he employed, could see no reason for Edward’s growing antagonism. It was so obvious that Godwin and his children were his real enemies amongst the English. The king was firing in the wrong direction.