Broken and devastated, the pain cramped tighter around Edward’s heart, seared into his chest and shuddered down his left arm.
10
Westminster
Some whispered that if Tostig Godwinesson had elected to go quietly into exile, prepared to wait for the things said about him to fade from memory and for his elder brother’s anger to calm, then perhaps the King might have found a reason to struggle against the illness that struck at his body and mind. Or perhaps if Tostig had not been so cruel or proud.
That he had ridden straight for Bristol and made sail in a flurry of outraged pique for Flanders did not, at first, cause concern to anyone of the Council except Edith and her husband. By November, they all privately thought either that England was well rid of him, or that he would soon see sense, would settle his bruised feathers—or at least his wife’s father would insist he do so—and would humbly return home begging forgiveness. Count Baldwin, however, was in Paris, had not the opportunity or the inclination to waste time on a son-in-law whom he thought a pompous fool. Tostig himself, too easily influenced by his dignity, was determined to regain his earldom, whatever the cost or consequences. He had endured and defeated exile once before, admittedly with the burden shared by his brothers and father—but who needed the support of deceitful kindred out for their own gain? There would be others he could approach for help. Svein of Denmark, Malcolm of Scotland, Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, and even William of Normandy. As short-sighted as Edward when events tumbled out of control, Tostig was blinded by his indignation, never wondering why, and for what advantage, any prospective ally might agree to support his claim.
The seizure that had gripped Edward at Oxford had left him feeble and ailing. As a wind-driven November rattled into the frosted winter month of December, Edith had him taken by litter to Westminster, for her own convenience more than his spiritual comfort. He was soon nothing but skin-covered bone. His mind wandered, his fingers shook and his body could often not control the natural functions of bladder and bowel.
Christmas Eve fell on the Saturday, but there was to be no merriment in the celebrating of Christ’s birth this year, Edward was ill in the evening, retching profusely, his bowels loose and stinking. He groped his way through Christmas Day, the holy service in the chapel and the banquet in his King’s Hall. Not that he ate, or remembered much of what happened around him. By the Monday he was too weak to leave his bed. As the day progressed he slid from awareness to wandering confusion. He was dying.
For himself, he had no fear of death, for the Kingdom of Heaven was a joyful prospect, but the place he had chosen for burial that he had cherished into being from a wattle-built shack to stone-built glory, was not yet consecrated. Lying helpless, empty and defeated, drifting between consciousness and sleep, the worry tottered in and out of his mind. Until his abbey at Westminster was dedicated to God he could not be laid to rest within its walls—and that he must have! He tried to tell them that he wanted the ceremony to be completed, but none of them would listen. None took a moment to sit patiently and wait for him to form those wretched sounds in the slurred mouth that would not obey his will. How could he be at peace before his abbey was dedicated to God and Saint Peter?
Throughout the Monday and Tuesday, they came and stood at his bedside, tutting and shaking their heads or weeping and wringing their hands. The men of his Council, of his court. He recognised their blurred faces, could hear their words as if they spoke from a great distance—but could not, could not, make them understand!
There was his doctor, Abbot Baldwin of Bury St. Edmunds, who came daily to bleed him, to smell his breath and inspect the waste evacuated from his body. Edward endured the purges and tinctures, took comfort from the prayers and blessings muttered over him by the Abbot and the Archbishops Stigand and Ealdred.
They had all come: abbots, bishops, thegns and shire reeves. His Earls Eadwine and Morkere he did not so easily recognise; Leofwine and Gyrth took his hand, kissed the ring that hung too large on his wasted finger, Harold: his Earl of Wessex sat a long while beside the bed through most of one night, although Edward did not know which. Why did Tostig not come? There was a reason, but he could not remember it. Perhaps he was hunting. They had often hunted together. Once Edward thought he heard the pack, the music of their voices as they found a scent. What would happen to his hounds he wondered, when he was gone? To Hawise, that little brindle bitch who could flush a hare from any meadow, to Shadow, the black and tan with that amazing turn of speed? He so hoped Tostig would look after his hounds.
Edith was attempting to spoon some foul-tasting broth into his puckered mouth. Edith was always there, sitting next to his bed. He wished she would go away, or at least cease her weeping. He was dying; there was nothing they could do about it, for it was God’s will. She ought to accept it. If he did not fear its coming, why should she? He tried to bat the spoon away, succeeded in knocking her arm, sending the stuff splashing over the bed furs. Edith thrust the spoon into the bowl, impatiently handed it to a servant.
“God’s breath, Edward,” she chided as the broth spilt. “You are more exasperating than a child. All I ask is that you eat something. You will never regain your strength unless you do. Then where shall I be once I am alone? Answer me that!”
A slurred mumble left Edward’s lips, trying to say that it was not his strength he wanted but his abbey consecrated. Edith did not pause to listen. “What am I to do when you die? How shall I retain respect and dignity? Who will listen to me, seek my opinion? I am not yet an old woman, I do not want to be shut away in a dreary nunnery or a secluded apartment somewhere as a grieving widow. I want my court and courtiers. My position.” A wail of despair cracked her thin voice. “I want to keep my crown!”
Her world was crumbling around her ears and she had no idea of what to do to stop it. A king, once anointed, was always a king, but a queen remained so only while her husband reigned, or her son as successor took his own wife. She knew now why Emma all those years ago had so desperately clung to her crown. She covered her face with her hands and wept.
Edward closed his eyes, shut out the annoying noise of her sobbing and filled his mind with pictures of his completed abbey. Saw angels flanking the gold altar, light streaming from the heavens through the windows…
The door to the fuggy bedchamber opened and the Countess Gytha quietly slipped through, wrinkling her nose at the stench. Nearing the close of her sixtieth year, she felt of a sudden her full age. Rarely did she leave Bosham, for journeying wearied her and court life held no interest, but how could she have not come to Westminster this Christmastide when so much of importance was occurring, and her offspring, one way or another, at the very heart of it?
She pursed her lips. Would this daughter of hers never pull her senses together and cease this futile weeping? Tears would do nothing except blotch her face and give her an aching head. She crossed the room, peered at Edward and said to Edith in a sharper tone than she had intended, “How fares the King? Does your sniffling not upset him?”
Edith glowered. Who cared if it did. His refusal to stand by Tostig had upset her, yet he had not been concerned by that. “He is being awkward, will not eat. When he dies what is to become of me?”
Gytha said nothing, for she had realised Edward was awake, listening. Taking the broth, she sat on the edge of the bed, scooping a little of the stuff on to the spoon and encouraging him to swallow. “You must eat, my Lord King, we are all so afeared for your well-being.”
Again he tried to speak. The Countess leaned forward, her head cocked, and caught one feeble word.
Edith was paying no attention, she was walking to and fro, twisting a linen square between her fingers, bemoaning a dismal future.
“What is it you are trying to say?” Gytha dipped her ear close to Edward’s lips, ignoring the foulness of his breath. “Edith, do be silent, he is trying to speak. I think it is important.”
E
dith’s breath caught in her throat. The succession—was he trying to tell them who should come after him? The Council had asked her several times, had been discussing it discreetly between themselves since Christmas Eve—hah! Before then also! Like scavengers they had descended on Westminster, ghoulish and curious, anxious to curry favour with whomever they were to elect as the next king. Edith closed her eyes. Oh, Tostig ought to be here! He ought to be promoting his cause, demonstrating his worth, his ability, not sitting across the sea somewhere buying ships and planning a war against the very people who could, if persuaded, give her what she wanted.
“Abbey?” Gytha queried, unaware of her daughter’s anguish. “You are concerned about your abbey?”
Edith swore under her breath, a word that her mother would have been shocked to hear had she spoken it aloud. His abbey? Was that all the old dotard could think of?
Tears were beginning to trickle from Edward’s sunken and bruised eyes. His abbey. He had so wanted to be buried in his abbey.
The memories of her own husband dying were all too vivid in Gytha’s mind. How she missed him, even after all these years. It was not loneliness, for she had good-hearted people around her—servants, friends, family. No, it was the little things that she missed: the exchange of a glance that only they understood; the sharing of laughter or tears, of secrets, hopes and fears; the comfort of his strong arms around her; his occasional bursts of flurried temper, and the sheepish appeal for forgiveness.
Edith, poor child, would not miss Edward for any of those things. Without love, what was there to miss? There would be nothing, only the emptiness of what might have been.
“I think, my dear,” she said to her daughter, “that he is concerned for his abbey.”
At first when Gytha had arrived at Westminster, halfway through the month, Edith had been delighted. She so desperately wanted someone to empathise with her bounding fear of the future as a widow. Gytha had sat with her, wept for Tostig’s exile, agreed that Harold ought to have fought harder to help him, but that had only been on the first day and had, Edith soon discovered, been to calm her down. None of those words had been true, not after Gytha had spoken to Harold and heard his power-grubbing version of those disastrous events at Oxford. She might have known that their mother would take his side. Harold had always been Gytha’s favourite. These weeks on, she wished her mother would take her meddling interferences and go home.
“What of the damned place? Is my future not more important?”
Gytha bit back an impatient retort, reminding herself, yet again, that distress did so play tricks upon the common sense. “Of course it is, my dear, but has no one thought to reassure him that the consecration is to take place on the morrow?”
Edith hesitated. Had he been told? She tossed her head, irritable; of course he had. The ceremony had been arranged days ago, before Christmas Eve, it was one of the first things Harold had done on reaching Westminster from his manor at Waltham. She remembered, unbidden, her brother’s scathing words: “Could you not take a moment from your own selfish preoccupations to organise the service of consecration for him?”
She had been too busy sorting out her approaching widowhood. There was so much to do and no one reliable to help her! Documents to be read and signed, letters to be written, plans to be made—part of the royal treasury to be discreetly removed to Winchester. Oh, everything had changed from how she had expected it to be! Edward was to have died gloriously and bravely. Swiftly, with none of this lingering that gave men time to conjecture. And Tostig was to have been by his side, to receive the King’s blessing.
Much had angered Harold that day, she now recalled. He had arrived at Westminster in a temper, had imperiously taken command. By what right had he censured any further removal of gold from the treasury? She was Queen, she had every right to do so.
Edith shut her eyes. How her head drummed. Harold had taken control over almost everything, from what was served by the kitchens to what was written on a royal charter. Acting as if he were king in Edward’s place. He was second-in-command, it was true, but second beneath the sovereign. She was Queen, she was sovereign, yet had he consulted her? Damn him, damn his efficiency, his authority, his ability! Damn the fact that he had been right over the matter of the abbey.
To justify her negligence she said, “Edward will not be well enough to attend the service, so I do not see how it matters.”
Sharply Gytha retorted, “It matters a great much to your husband.” Really, the child was insufferable! Gytha again tempted Edward with a small spoonful of broth. He swallowed, a lopsided smile crimping his lips in a grotesque expression of gratitude. Tomorrow she had said. He could manage until tomorrow.
Countess Gytha patted his hand, realising he was trying to thank her. The pity of old age, she thought. Are the ones who die quickly in battle more fortunate than those of us who must wait and endure?
The abbey of Westminster was far from completed. The two western towers stood at half-height and at that end of the nave the roof needed tiling, the windows glazing. The unfinished work, however, was distant from the sanctuary and altar beyond the transept and could be screened. They would have to carry Edward by litter and ensure the ceremony was as brief as possible.
Edward’s head had drooped. A snore reverberated in his nose. Gytha gave the bowl to the servant and bade him take it away. It was cold, anyway, unappetising.
“Have you heard from Tostig?” she asked Edith, automatically wiping the incessant trickle of spittle from Edward’s chin with a linen cloth. The thing was soiled; she tossed it to the floor, demanding something clean be fetched.
“Why would I have heard from Tostig?” her daughter answered with a false bravado that immediately proved that she lied.
“I wondered merely if Judith was well. It must be hard for her, this worry.”
“What has she got to worry about?” Edith retorted with indignation. “She is not about to be widowed! She isn’t about to lose everything she has worked for, for twenty years!”
The callousness struck Gytha with almost a physical force. Was there no compassion in her daughter? Could she truly not see beyond the effect for her own self? “Judith has as much to lose as you, Edith—in fact, I would say more. The uncertainty of exile can be far worse than anything you will ever encounter.”
“My husband is dying and I shall lose my crown. Judith has a husband and hope for the future. Once Tostig returns to claim what is rightfully his with the ships he is commissioning, Judith will be reinstated as a countess—I can never again be Queen!”
“So, you have received word from Tostig. He plans to invade?”
“Yes!” Edith snapped her confirmation. “Did Father merely shrug and accept his earldom being wrongfully stolen from him? Was he content to accept exile? I think not, Madam! Tostig wants what is his and will fight to his last breath to get it, as our father did.”
Countess Gytha walked swiftly to stand before her daughter, her irritation giving way to quickened anger. “Your father went into exile to avoid bloodshed, came back with the intention of, as far as he was able, securing his earldom peacefully. He did not want to fight against his king, nor, daughter, was he a man of dishonour.” She nodded her head once, curtly, and left the room.
Why had sense, she wondered, been so poorly distributed between the children she had birthed?
11
Westminster
Before the last of the light faded from the wet December day, the twenty-seventh of that month, a tiler had managed to climb up the height of the scaffolding to place a golden weathercock in position upon the roof of Edward’s proud Westminster Abbey. Only from the west, from below the choir and from the outside, did the place resemble a building site. On the morrow, they would enter through the north door, see only the splendoured newness of the eastern end.
Harold stood alone facing the cloth-draped, bare altar. No candlestick, no sa
lver or crucifix, nothing would adorn this holiest of places until the consecration and blessing. There was no sanctity within this wondrous building, nothing save the emptiness of space, height, of soaring walls, pillars and arches. With night beyond the tiers of narrow windows, the darkness crowded close, only the lantern in his hand and the few candles that burnt in wall sconces creating dim islanded pools of cheerful yellow brightness.
Yet there was a presence here. What, who, Harold could not decide. Nothing sinister, not a feeling of being spied upon, no, just a comfortable awareness of not being alone. Something, some faint-echoed shadow of expectancy of waiting. God perhaps? Harold wondered. Was He already here, waiting to be formally welcomed into His house?
The Earl of Wessex walked slowly towards the first in a row of wooden benches placed across the nave in readiness for the morrow. Tomorrow, there would be people here, many people. Tomorrow, too, the articles of Holy Church would be blessed and placed upon the altar, the choir filled with song, prayers offered and accepted by God—and God himself would no longer be a distant tingle of breath, a whispered promise, a sigh upon the wind. Harold’s footsteps echoed on the stone floor. Left. Right. Tap. Tap. The sound reverberated through the chancel arches, down into the nave, through the enclosure of the choir. Bouncing off the walls, flying up to those rafters that soared high, as high as heaven.
Wine and water would be sprinkled over the altar while blessings were intoned and the chanting of the Benedictine monks echoed clear and sweet beneath the high vaulted roof. The perfume of incense would permeate through the odour of new-cut stone, timber, mortar and sawdust. As the Christian is baptised and confirmed by water and oil, so the altar of Saint Peter would, on the morrow, be dedicated to the Lord by anointing.
The hand of God would touch Edward’s abbey, but the King himself would not be there to witness the final glory. Edward was too ill to leave his bed, was, beyond doubt, nearing death. Outside in the darkness, the drizzle of rain beat its tedious rhythm on roof and rutted mud alike, Harold sat, wearily leant his forearms across his knees. The quiet, he had thought, might help to sort out his wild-running thoughts. He chewed his lip, tapped the pads of his thumbs together. His idea was not working.
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