by Nerys Jones
‘Father Francis,’ Godiva said.
‘Yes. That’s the one. You’d know, of course. You’ve been on close terms with these cross-wavers, haven’t you, Godiva?’
‘What do you mean? I told you everything about that meeting in the cathedral,’ she said, beginning to grow angry herself. ‘Everything! “Close terms” doesn’t describe it at all, and you know that, Lovric.’
‘Well, how do you explain this, then?’ he asked, leaning forward into her face. ‘You, Godiva, are to have special favours. It seems the king thinks you are not to blame for the sins of the Earls of Mercia. It is your own terrible sins that you must answer for.’
‘Explain what you mean. I’ve asked you before – what sins?’
Lovric clenched his jaw angrily and Godiva felt her anxiety deepen to hopelessness. Whatever the king had said about her to Lovric would remain between the two of them.
‘Why is there talk of sins and favours?’ she said again, determined to wring some sense from him. ‘You must tell me the truth, Lovric.’
‘There is nothing to tell,’ he replied bitterly. ‘Nothing you don’t already know. Congratulations. You seem to have gifts of diplomacy I knew nothing about.’
‘What in God’s name are you talking about, Lovric?’
‘Edward called me back to another meeting with him, and told me he had taken stock of all the many ways in which my house has given offence to him as king and to God. As punishment, he said, he will demand payment of the army tax from all my lands.’
‘Heregeld?’
‘Yes.’
‘But this is an outrage. When?’
‘At once, in full.’
‘But he can’t! That tax is immense. It hasn’t been imposed in Mercia for years. Besides, it was raised to pay mercenaries, for defence against the Vikings, so there’s no need now . . .’
‘For God’s sake, Godiva, do you need to tell me such things? Edward may not be in the right, but he is the king, and he can do whatever he wants. He can send in his soldiers and take the tax by force from the farmers on my lands. I can’t stop him because my armed men are not deployed to defend my own estates, but to defend the country in dangerous areas. Most of them are out on the Welsh borders and in the Fens, and some are up with Siward. I did not think I would have to defend my lands against my own king. He has almost declared war on me.’
‘I thought you were about to declare war on him.’
‘Not yet. He’s made the first move, much sooner than I expected. I’ve been caught off balance.’
‘Then what will you do, Lovric?’ she said, taking his hand as her anger at him subsided. He was afraid, she told herself – not angry with her about anything she had done.
‘I will pay the tax myself, out of my treasure,’ he said, pulling away from her and starting to pace about again. ‘It is a huge amount, but I can manage it, at least this year. The alternative would be to let the king’s troops take what they want by force, and they would not be gentle in going about it. I would lose all respect as the lord of the land and I could never count on my people’s loyalty again. Wessex lords would start moving in, offering to help them, and it would not be long before the earldom of Mercia came to an end.’
There was silence as Godiva waited for Lovric to tell her more. But he seemed far away, as though thinking of something even more oppressive than the huge tax he had to pay.
‘Lovric?’ she asked at last. ‘Is Edward going to tax my lands, too?’
‘Oh, Godiva!’ he sighed. ‘He said he might exempt your lands, despite what he calls your terrible sins. But there is a catch. You, as the landlord, must go and plead with him in person for exemption from heregeld.’
‘Is that all? Well then, I’ll go. I’ll go tomorrow.’
‘What? No . . .’
‘I will. We have all slaved here for a week to save Coventry from starvation – something you don’t even know about yet. I’m not going to stand by and let king’s men raid barns that I filled for my people at my own expense. As for paying the heregeld with my own money, I don’t have enough left.’
‘I’ll pay the heregeld on your lands,’ he said quietly.
‘But this is unnecessary, Lovric, and too expensive. We’d have no reserves left to deal with any emergencies. No, there’s no harm in my doing what he asks.’
‘No harm? Do you think he’d give you something for nothing? I’ve just told you he thinks you are the most sinful of us all. If you go to see him he’ll bargain with you, try to force you into something . . .’
‘Oh. Lovric! That’s not how he is. He may be oppressive about taxation, but he is sincere in his love of Christ. Where is Edward now?’
‘He is at Cleley, in Northampton,’ Lovric said, but now his tone had hardened and his anger was returning. ‘Take my advice on this and don’t argue with me, Godiva. You are not going to Cleley. You’ve already had too much to do with the king, on your own, without me, saying things you should not have said. We must stand side by side in this matter and take the same approach in dealing with Edward. I forbid you to go to him. That’s all I have to say.’
‘How dare you, Lovric! This is my concern, and this is my solution for a problem caused by you. Your diplomacy has failed. Your scheming and manoeuvring have come to nothing. I must defend myself. Don’t you dare cross me on this, or . . .’
‘Or what?’ he asked icily. ‘Is it a divorce you have in mind, Godiva? That is what men and women want when they cannot agree. If that is what you want, it could be arranged, quite easily I believe.’
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘No. We shouldn’t be quarrelling like this, Lovric. But you must try to see my point of view and not just bark orders at me as if I were one of your housecarls.’
‘Very well,’ he said wearily, like one who knew he had to go through the motions of cooperation, though his mind was already firmly made up. ‘Go on, Godiva. Have your say.’
‘No. Not with you in this mood. I know you won’t pay attention when I start giving you the details. Actually, you never do. Go and talk to Odo when you are ready to listen to someone, and find out how bad things have been here. Then listen to him tell you how much we had to do to turn things round. As for me, just explain why you forbade me to go to Cleley. It is not far away. The king has said he might lift the taxes off my lands if I go. So why do you want to stop me?’
‘I never thought of you as stupid before,’ he muttered. ‘But recently you don’t seem to see what is important. It’s as though you’ve become so busy with this little town of yours that you can’t think clearly any more.’
‘Stop it! You are patronizing and you are . . .’ But she ran out of angry words. ‘Just tell me why.’
‘All right. Let me make it as plain as day. You know now that Edward has been trying to see you alone, without me, ever since he came here to the investiture, two years ago.’
‘Yes, he told me so himself, in the cathedral. There was no harm in it. It was a matter of religious concern . . .’
‘And he insisted I bring you to Winchester.’
‘Yes, but when I saw him he only wanted to talk about religion. I keep saying that and you won’t listen. What is wrong with talking about religion? Perhaps he is not as bad as you and Godwin say, perhaps he is sincere about loving my soul . . .’
‘Don’t be stupid, woman!’
‘If you think I’m stupid there’s no need to talk to me. Just impose your orders! But maybe it’s you who are stupid, Lovric. Maybe if you understood Edward the way others do, you could work with him, instead of always being at odds with him. Many think he is a genuinely good man, deeply spiritual . . .’
‘Who’s been getting at you, Godiva? Who’s been saying such things to you?’
‘No one. It’s merely a well-known fact that many speak well of the king.’
‘ “Many”?’ he repeated sarcastically. ‘And this vague entity, “many”, carries more weight in your mind than my views and those of Godwin, both of us men who have s
pent much time with Edward and can judge his actions. I think, Godiva, that perhaps you have been too much in the company of one of the “many” who share their views with you, given your great beauty.’
Suddenly, quite unaware of any movement in her shoulder, she found her arm raised and her hand flying out to slap his face. He caught her wrist and pulled it down beside her waist.
‘Never,’ he said softly, ‘never do that again.’ And then he turned to leave the room.
‘Wait,’ she called after him. ‘Tell me, where are our men? And how long are you staying in Coventry this time?’
‘I’m not going to tell you anything, Godiva,’ he said angrily. ‘I don’t trust you any more.’
‘And I don’t trust you,’ she shouted at his back. ‘You’ve always deceived me, and now you can’t even be bothered to do that. It is you who has been thinking about a divorce, Lovric, and pretending to believe it was me. You say Edward plays games with people, but you do, too. Alfgar always said you were not to be trusted, and now I agree with him.’
She stopped as he turned to face her, his expression grim and cold.
‘This is no game, Godiva. I hope you don’t find that out to your cost.’
She listened to his footsteps as he descended the steep stairs, and heard him exchange a few words with Agatha. There was a brief commotion as Milly screamed, ‘No!’ It was followed by a silence in which she could hear only Milly’s muffled sobs and the sound of Lovric’s feet crossing the yard. A horse snorted and another neighed, and then he was gone.
Godiva lay back on her bed – their bed, though it hadn’t been that very often in recent times. She sipped her wine, and then took more. To her surprise she was not crying and shaking. She felt slightly cold, and reached out for a fur cover to pull up over her legs. So, he was gone. What difference did that make? He was hardly ever there to help her anyway. And when he did turn up, it was only to interfere with her decisions, to criticize and belittle, and to make demands on her to satisfy his own needs. He had always asked for complete compliance from her, and when he didn’t get it he stormed off like an angry child. Or a man who is tired of his wife, she thought bitterly. Isn’t that what they all do at his age? Make excuses for their irritability and go raging off into the waiting arms of some young and calculating mistress? It was such a tawdry little story, too commonplace to be worth a second thought. Perhaps, indeed, they had never really loved each other deeply. Perhaps their affection over so many years was simply due to the absence of alternatives for her, in the remote manor houses where she had been compelled to rule servants and manage stores, while Lovric came and went at will. This summer was not yet over, and yet it had changed everything. It had started with their reunion, but it had led inexorably towards the ruin of their marriage. It was finished, she felt sure.
Twelve
Almost unrecognizable in the dull soldier’s clothes of a minor thegn, Lovric entered Coventry unnoticed by the few townspeople who were still abroad on the darkened main street. He dismounted near the priory, tied his horse to the hitching post and told his attendant to wait outside for a few minutes. Then he banged on the door. Prior Edwin, who had already been told that a strange man who looked like Lovric was riding into the market area, came to the door at once to let him in.
‘Will you pray in your chantry, sir?’ Edwin grovelled.
‘Not tonight,’ Lovric replied. ‘Lead me to the chapel of the Virgin, and leave me there to pray alone.’
The prior did as he was told, lit two tapers and left. As he shuffled off towards the back of the church he glanced back and thought he saw his lord’s big shoulders shaking. My, my, he thought, the storm is already breaking. I’d better stay and hear what I can of the thunder.
In the little chapel Lovric gazed at the frescoes. Their bright colours, softened and fluid in the candle light, reminded him of Godiva’s clothes strewn carelessly across their bed, and of her hands, like Mary’s, offering love and tenderness. Ave Maria . . . he prayed in a whisper, and carried on until he reached the point where he always forgot the prayer. ‘Sorry, Mary. That is how I am with prayers. I can’t remember them. But still, I came to pay my respects and to ask for your help. For the love of God, protect my wife and for the sake of your son, Lord Jesus Christ, make my family whole again before the winter comes. I am being pushed into rebellion and I am not ready for it. Stay my hand for the sake of England. Make Godiva love me again. Let me love Godiva again.’
The prior, eavesdropping with all his might, heard these last words clearly and pondered their implications as he crept away through an adjacent corridor. The earl and Godiva no longer loved each other. He rejoiced. Without her husband, Godiva would have half the standing she had before, or less. That would teach her a lesson. On the other hand, Lovric seemed full of regret. He would come looking for reconciliation one day. Then that haughty bitch would be bossing her prior around as much as ever before. Ergo, it followed that his own best interest lay in further discouraging the love between the earl and his wife. That shouldn’t be hard, he thought, now that Godiva was eating out of his hand.
Whispering down the corridors of several Benedictine monasteries the rumours had filtered quickly into the heart of the priory of St Mary’s, Coventry. The king, they said, was angry with the whole House of Lovric and intended to teach the earl a lesson in humility and obedience and God-fearing. He had taken counsel with Father Francis and with other knowledgeable men and recommendations had been made. Soon, praise the Lord, certain men of the sword would feel the whiplash of the men who prayed.
Thus, knowing that trouble was on its way, the prior spent an uneasy night following Lovric’s visit. That visit, he thought, must surely be the warning bell he had expected to toll. His dilemma, and the cause for his insomnia, concerned his own role. Should he give Godiva false hope that she would not feel the king’s anger herself? Or should he begin to drop sympathetic hints that soon she would pay a price for being Lovric’s wife? She would like him the more if he took the first approach, but then later, perhaps, when she came to look back on her troubles, he might seem to have been a little too innocent for plausibility. He had to be careful there, especially if his efforts to blacken her character in the eyes of the king’s senior clerics failed and she kept her grip on his priory. Yes, he mused, no one could count on church reform to sweep away the claims of the lay owners just yet. It would take time. It followed then that he should adopt the second approach – give her some idea of the trouble that might lie ahead of her, but offer himself as a source of advice and comfort, her rock in shifting sands and swirling tides. He could advise her, for example, to adopt an attitude of humility, for she was certainly going to need it. First of all, though, he had to learn exactly what Lovric had said to her before storming out of the manor and coming to the priory. What was that quarrel about? He could hardly wait to hear what Godiva would say, and got up to pray to pass away the time.
He was not long left in suspense. Only an hour after dawn the clapper of the door-knocker clanged against its iron cradle, and Edwin ran down the corridor to open the door with all speed.
‘My beloved sister in Christ . . .’ he started breathlessly.
‘I need your advice,’ Godiva said at once, and the prior smiled. This meeting was starting as he would wish.
‘Advice about what, beloved?’ he asked, as soon as he had settled her comfortably beside the fire in the small room by the refectory.
‘About going to Cleley to see the king.’
Edwin affected concern while struggling with delight. She trusted him so much she was going to tell him everything, all at once, without any suggestive prying on his part.
‘The king,’ she went on, her eyes beginning to redden, ‘is very angry at Lovric, and at all of us. You know about Harry, I think?’
‘Yes, but not much,’ he lied, and then took her hand gently and encouraged her to tell him the whole sad tale of a boy corrupted, and a father’s indifference (in the eyes of the king), and th
e question of the poor youth’s spiritual salvation and his future life on this Earth, where men like him are not treated kindly.
‘Except by the Church, if they renounce sin,’ Edwin managed to say before Godiva told the rest of her story.
He put his head back, closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips together like a church steeple, as though struggling to absorb too large an amount of information. In fact, though, he was trying to detect how much Godiva knew of her husband’s military affairs. From what she said it seemed that the earl had not been very forthcoming at home. Or was Godiva keeping back something? No, he assured himself: she was not clever enough to know what to reveal and what to withhold. No wonder the earl told her so little. It was a pity. There would be fewer grounds to accuse her of treachery than Father Francis expected. He would send a word to Cleley and tell them to stick to accusations of another sort. God knows he’d given them enough information about the black arts for them to think of something else.
‘What it boils down to is this,’ Godiva said, ‘I must plead with the king for mercy. If he takes pity on me, he will remove the charge of heregeld against my lands and my poor starving people. If my plea fails, king’s men will raid the barns and take my remaining money. The people will run away. Some will sell their children to Bristol slave-dealers. I would hang myself.’
‘Go to him in faith,’ Edwin said at once. ‘Trust in the king’s goodness and mercy. Throw yourself at his feet and plead with him. Abandon your pride. This is what Christ demands of us. This is the way to life eternal.’
‘I can’t keep this visit to Cleley a secret,’ she continued. ‘But I don’t know what to say to my people. I can’t explain why the king believes we are a sinful family, deserving such a heavy punishment. I can’t tell them about Harry.’
‘But you will have to give them some reason why the king is angry with the House of Lovric. Say something about Alfgar . . .’