I Am the Chosen King

by Helen Hollick

  The months in between had not been wasted for, to Robert Champart’s chagrin, Edith had spent them almost in their entirety with Emma. Now all the dowager waited for was the first son to be born. The role of doting grandmother appealed, suited her admirably. A quiet life spent in leisure and comfort, with the dear child playing at her feet and learning under her instruction. Queen by proxy. Most satisfactory.

  Tossing the clothes draped across her arm on to the bed, Emma curtly ordered the girl to dress. “Since I have had to dismiss the servants, to minimise the gossip that will spread on the tongues of the idle, you must attire yourself—oh, for goodness’ sake, child, stop that ridiculous snivelling! Do you think I took pleasure from my wedding night with Æthelred? Do you think many maids actually enjoy the rutting of the first night with their husband? So it was a painful and unpleasant experience, but you will become used to it. Most of us do.”

  It was too much. Edith’s temper exploded. She propelled herself to her feet, her fists bunching as she spat her hurt and frustration in a torrent of venom. “Do you think that is why I have shed these tears?” she shouted. “Do you think that is why I am ashamed to leave this bed, this room? Because of the discomfort thrust upon my body by my husband? What discomfort, madam? Nothing happened in this bed last night. Your bloody son did nothing!”

  It was rare for Emma to be struck speechless. She stood mute, lips parted, attempting to understand. The celebration after the lengthy religious ceremony had followed usual tradition: the sharing of the bride ale, feasting and drinking with entertainment by acrobats and harpers. Come evening, the couple had been undressed and set together side by side in the marriage bed. What did the girl mean, nothing had happened? Of course something had happened!

  Frowning her puzzlement, Emma spread her hands, at a loss for what to say. “Child, your mother has surely explained all that is required of you as a wife?”

  It was difficult for Edith to appear dignified while standing naked and vulnerable before this austere woman, but she drew herself straight and steadied her quivering breath. Her blue eyes flashed at Emma; she bent, tore the linen undersheet from the bed and wrapped it around her body. “I am not a child, do not call me such. I know the duties that are required of me, but I wonder, madam, does your son know of his?”

  Edith swept away from the bed, went to a side table and opened a casket fashioned from elm and exquisitely inlaid with carved elephant ivory. From within she withdrew the queen’s crown, Emma’s crown—her crown—and swung round to face her mother-in-law, the royal regalia between her hands. “Your son,” she said bitterly, “spent the first two hours of the night kneeling beside the bed, praying. He then fumbled at me a while with his cold hands before breaking into sobs of wretchedness and subsequently fleeing bed and bed-chamber. I am as virgin pure now as when I stood before that witnessing crowd yesterday in all my wedding finery.”

  Briefly, Emma closed her eyes. Was that all this was about? A bumbled wedding-night coupling? It would not be the first marriage that was not consummated until all the festivities had quietened down. In peace and privacy, nature would put itself to rights. She said with a patient smile, “Tonight, my dear, it will be different. You will both be more confident, more at ease with each other. Now come, dress; the court will soon be assembling.” Emma retrieved the clothing that had tumbled to the floor and began again to lay it out on the bed.

  “There will not be a tonight nor any other night, Edward made that plain to me.” Edith made no attempt to move from where she stood. As Emma slowly turned to look at her, Edith lifted her hands, carefully placed the crown upon her own head, setting it there at a slight angle. “I have wept anguished tears at the prospect of wearing this trinket. I so wanted to be Queen, to be the Lady of all England, to be the mother of a king.” The linen wrap slipped to the floor to lie in folds around Edith’s feet. “Do you wish to know where your son spent his wedding night?” she asked, in a tone heat-scored with derision. “I think you ought. After he informed me that he had no desire within him for women, he told me that he was going to declare himself for God and remain chaste.”

  With disgust, Edith removed the crown from her head and flung it across the room. It hit the white-plastered wall, fell dented and spoiled on to the crushed rose petals that were strewn among the rushes. “He told me he intended to spend the night in prayer with Robert Champart.” Her face contorted into nauseated rage. Spittle slurred her speech. “Do you think that is all they did, my Lady? Kneel together and pray!” Added bitterly, “There will not be an heir to the throne, because the bastard you spawned from your womb is incapable of setting a child within mine.”

  ***

  Emma sat on a stool beside the meagre warmth of the brazier, both hands nursing the thick stem of a silver goblet. How many difficulties and dramas had she confronted throughout these long years of her life? Too many to remember, too many to name.

  For her own life, her fear had reached its height when she had been unable to flee London before the imminent arrival of Cnut and his army. She had needed to make a hasty decision that day, a decision that had to be correct or she would live in misery for the rest of her life. To commit London to the horror of prolonged siege and inevitable bloodshed or to sacrifice herself to a usurper king; lose just her sons already born or lose everything. She had chosen herself and Cnut, and the hope that there would be other sons. As she had now hoped for grandsons. She might have realised that Edward would disappoint her here too.

  She drank three-quarters of the goblet, allowing the strength of the red grape to ease the tension in her chest. Her head thumped with a drummer’s beat. This, again, would be a decision difficult to make, for it was not her life alone, her future, that she was about to tamper with.

  One rule had Emma always adhered to, a rule taught her by her own mother. Weigh a decision as best you can, advantage against disadvantage, sense against folly. Once it is made, follow it through to its end with courage and conviction. What were the choices here, for Edith and for herself? Whimper like a whipped pup, curl up and be crushed? Or stand tall and fight? Godwine’s daughter, although she was spoilt and full of jealousy, possessed spirit and determination. Surely something could be salvaged from this midden heap of a mess?

  There was one simple question she need ask. “What is preferable—to be a childless queen, or a common mother?”

  Edith had returned to the bed, hunching the expensive furs around her shoulders. She tilted up her head, her answer as direct as her gaze. “I would be queen.”

  Emma nodded, satisfied. “A good choice, made with the head not the heart. To be childless may well see you survive into middle age; too many women die during childbirth.” She offered the girl a conspiratorial smile. “Do not forget, also, that youth is on your side. Your husband, my dear, has not that advantage. For you, as there was for me, there may be another husband. Other opportunities to bear sons.”

  A pity, after all this planning and expectation, that there would be no grandson—but then Edith might have borne only girl children, or the babes might not have survived birth or childhood. It was, perhaps, better to plan on what was, not on what might be.

  Although Edith had implied it so, Emma was certain there was no indiscretion between Edward and Champart. Champart was too ambitious, Edward too God-fearing, yet it came as no surprise to discover the fool man had no particular passion for a woman’s body. Did that make him a man who preferred intimacy with another man? If it did and others came to hear of it Edward would be finished as king and she would lose everything—everything that she had worked so hard to gain.

  “All must seem as it should be,” Emma said, rising to her feet and setting her goblet on a table. “It is imperative that you retain your dignity and position in the eyes of the household and the court. In public you act as though nothing untoward has happened, that your marriage is consummated.” She swept her eyes around the room. The bed was rumpl
ed, that was all to the good, it would be expected after a wedding night. Edith’s crown lay on its side on the floor. Emma went to pick it up, her finger catching on a bent, sharp edge, an ooze of blood welling immediately from a thin and jagged cut. She made to suck the wound, smiled instead and, pinching it to bleed the more profusely, retrieved the linen sheet that lay on the floor. Finding the centre, she dabbed spots of blood on to it, then flung the sheet on to the heap of bed coverings.

  “No one can deny the giving of your maidenhead, child. Your proof is that you were seen abed with your husband last night and blood stains the linen.”

  “What of Edward?” Edith asked, scornful defiance clenching her jaw. “He can most assuredly deny it!”

  Emma shrugged. “Leave Edward to me. It will be his word against ours and I doubt even he will openly admit that he is incapable of rutting with his wife.” She opened the bed-chamber door. “No thegn, noble or earl—especially an earl such as your father—would remain loyal to a man who preferred to take his chaplain to his bed. If Edward does not take care, he may find his wanting to become a monk a distinct possibility. In certain areas of his body as well as in spirit.”

  Emma smiled, well satisfied with herself as she walked along the draughty corridor of the royal palace at Winchester. Choices. A king, a queen, had always to face difficult choices. Edward’s was perhaps not that hard. Honour Edith as his chosen queen—and herself as a respected dowager—or be gelded by his earls. Aye, the choice was not a difficult one.

  17

  Leominster

  Swegn Godwinesson, resting his arm on the high cantle of his saddle, calmly surveyed the door, firmly closed before him. It was almost midnight and the rain of this cold May month was beginning to fall again with more persistence than the drizzle that had spattered intermittently for most of the day. Already not in the best of moods, Swegn was wet, tired, hungry and in need of a strong drink. He was also wounded, although not so seriously that he desperately required attention. He could probably manage to reach Hereford, but it was further to ride and he had not much inclination to return home. Home? If it was still his home! He would not be surprised to find that the King had decided to give the rest of his border earldom away to that spot-faced, upstart nephew of his, Ralf of Mantes. The damned bastard already had a decent-sized portion of it.

  Stiffly, with pain lancing into his left thigh, Swegn dismounted and walked his stallion up to the door.

  Ralf of sodding Mantes! Just like that, the boy had been awarded as a sixteenth birthing-day gift a quarter portion of Swegn’s land! Land upon which that cock-sure little stripling had immediately built a bloody great Norman defence—a motte castle with stone keep, bailey, rampart and palisade. A castle that as yet neither of the warring princes of Wales, Gryffydd ap Rhydderch of Deheubarth or Gruffydd ap Llewelyn of Gwynedd, had succeeded in penetrating. Most of Herefordshire and the Marches had succumbed, at one month or another, to their raiding parties; slaughter and bloodletting had been common for years along these borders, increasing as the feuding between the two princes, vying for notoriety and superiority, had escalated. Swegn had been powerless to put a stop to it—until this last initiative. A masterpiece of strategic thinking: put an end to hostilities by pitting one prince against the other.

  It had all been so easy! Ride into the northern Welsh lands under a token of truce, gain Gwynedd’s trust and form an alliance with Gruffydd. Ride together into Deheubarth and hit the other Gryffydd hard. It had taken Swegn weeks to set the plan. The irony? It had been damned successful, but he had acted without consulting Edward, therefore Edward condemned the initiative. Swegn was furious. Returning, elated, from Gwynedd, he had been accosted by a group of the King’s men, ordered to accompany them to court and forfeit all rights as earl! He was damned if he would!

  Ralf of Mantes, meanwhile, had driven off another attack on his poxed castle, killed one of Gryffydd’s younger brothers and taken a cousin prisoner. The King was delighted with his designated heir’s loyal and prompt action, Ralf of bloody Mantes, as far as Swegn was concerned, could go boil his swollen head in oil.

  Putting his hand to the bell-cord, Swegn tugged. How long before Edward heard of his refusal to attend court—of his fight and escape from the King’s housecarls? Three, four days? Damn him! Damn Gryffydd and damn Wales also! Swegn kicked the door with his boot, pulled at the cord harder, again setting the bell swinging and clanging. “Open this sodding door,” he bellowed, “before I torch the thing!” A useless threat. It had been tried before; the oak timbers still bore the blackened marks of Gryffydd’s attempt to enter Leominster convent three seasons past.

  A nun slid back the inspection window and peered through. “Who shouts so angrily at God’s door?” she asked tetchily.

  “Earl Swegn! Open up, I am in need of shelter and medical aid.”

  “It is past midnight, my Lord,” the woman answered pedantically.

  “I know it’s past bloody midnight. I also know it is raining and that I am bleeding to death.” That stirred results. The window snapped shut, bolts were withdrawn and the door creaked open wide enough to allow Swegn to lead his horse through.

  The porteress eyed him warily, suspicious that a man claiming to be an earl rode with no escort, but he was wet through and the light of her spluttering torch did indeed show blood staining his hose. The man required hospitality and assistance. At her call, a yawning servant shambled from the stables to take the tired animal. She told Swegn to follow her to the guest quarters.

  “No. I wish to see the Abbess.”

  The Abbess is abed.”

  “Wake her.”

  “That I cannot do.”

  “Then I will.” Swegn snatched the torch from the nun’s hand. If his leg wound was paining him, it made no difference to the way he strode across the courtyard and through a gate to the far left. The woman was already screaming her indignation and tugging frantically at the alarm bell. Nuns and servants were waking, coming at a run, dishevelled, frightened and confused. With the Welsh raiding so frequently and bloodily, their fears were justified.

  This was a convent, however, not a fortified castle like the one that Ralf had built. No one stepped in front of Swegn with drawn sword to bar his way, no one challenged him. He ran along the narrow alleyways between buildings, across a smaller courtyard and through another door. A scantily furnished inner chamber, smelling of must and old books, lay in darkness. Swegn raised the torch, located the flight of wooden steps over to the left, took them three at a time. Shouting voices and running footsteps were following, but they were nuns and servants; had they caught up they would have been no match for Swegn. He remembered exactly where to go, though it had been more than five years since last he had been here. Nunneries changed little: a new roof on the chapel, new novices, occasionally a new abbess—but the woman who presided over the sisters at Leominster was not new. Eadgifu had been here for two months more than five years.

  Swegn did not knock at her door. He opened it, walked through, banged it shut behind him and dropped the bar in place against intruders. She had already stirred from her bed, disturbed by the noise, had relit a small lamp and was standing in her night shift. Her hair hung loose, cascading down her back, hair that was by day braided tight and bound beneath her holy veil. Her eyes and mouth were wide with a mixture of surprise, anger and shock. Fear, however, was the emotion that thumped in her heart, but she dare not let it show, for this man would see and she could not let him know that she was still, after all these years, in love with him, yet so afraid of him.

  Swegn dropped the torch into a sconce, looked around the room to locate drink and goblets, helped himself to the wafers left on a plate and poured a good measure of wine. There was no chair, only one stool. Taking both goblet and jug, Swegn seated himself as he drank thirstily. Stretching out his wounded leg he grimaced, then wiped residue from his mouth. “Well,” he drawled. “Are you not going to we
lcome me as once you did?”

  Eadgifu swung a cloak across her shoulders. “Once,” she answered, “I was a young and impressionable girl. Now I have acquired more sense.”

  “You always did have fire in your tongue as well as your belly. Get rid of them. I wish to talk with you.” The last was directed at the anxious shouting beyond the door.

  “You may talk freely to me come morning. For now, you ought be in the guest chamber, or perhaps the infirmary.” Eadgifu indicated the wound.

  “It is nothing, more blood than anything. You are as capable of cleansing and bandaging it as any of the pox-free virgins locked away in this dungeon.”

  Haughtily Eadgifu answered, “I am Abbess, I do not undertake menial tasks.” The best excuse she could think of.

  The shouts of concern were growing louder, accompanied by a rhythmical hammering on the door, the bar juddering with each impact.

  “You had best call off the pack before they break your door down,” Swegn suggested lightly. He refilled his goblet, drank the contents. “A few words with you, that is all I ask, Eadgifu, then I will go meekly to your little infirmary.”

  Swegn, as Eadgifu well knew, had never done anything meekly.

  A panel of wood splintered. It would be expensive to replace and the nunnery was already so short of funds. Eadgifu crossed to the door. Pulling it wide, she peered at the concerned assembly crowding the narrow stairwell, noting that several carried makeshift weapons of rakes, hoes—one ageing sister was holding a heavy gold candlestick. They would be cut down like hazel saplings to the hedger’s knife were they to dare attack a man like Swegn.

  “Everything is all right,” she reassured them, grateful for their loyalty, yet fearing for their safety. “I am in no danger, this is Swegn Godwinesson who was once a friend of mine. You may leave us and return to your beds.”