Godiva

Dedication

For Maureen and Alan Crumpler

Contents

Historical Note

I
n the year of our Lord 1040, the Dane named Harthacnut became king of England. Although the English were expecting him to have the throne—following in the rocky wake of his father and his brother—he approached their shores with more than threescore warships, and landed as if he meant to conquer the island. This was insult enough, but Harthacnut's impudence went further. To furnish this extravagant army that he did not need, he revived a war tax on his new subjects so harsh that it impoverished all of them. This tax was called the heregeld.

In the year of our Lord 1041, in the stormy depths of autumn, two of Harthacnut's men rode to the town of Worcester, in Mercia, to collect the heregeld there. The people refused to pay it and they murdered the two tax collectors to clearly express their outrage.

In response, Harthacnut harried Worcester, meaning, with advance warning so the people themselves might flee, he sent men to raze the town.

But not just any men.

To demonstrate that his word was law, Harthacnut ordered the three great earls of the kingdom to destroy Worcester in their own persons, with the work of their own men. Had they refused, that fleet of warships would indeed have disgorged its mercenary troops, and England would have tumbled into chaos once again. Sickened by the task, the earls obeyed their new king.

Leofric of Mercia (in whose realm Worcester lay) was one of those three great earls who were ordered to raze the town. To be ordered by one's superior to harm one's own people was a loathsome thing.

S
oon after the Worcester tragedy, this Danish king of England died, a young man whose dark soul had eaten him away from the inside. He left no heir of his body. But after great political intrigue and machinations, Harthacnut's half brother Edward ascended the throne of England. He was placed there by the three great earls (none of whom were fond of him) because they could not find a better choice.

Edward was not the despot his brother had been. He returned power to the Great Council, giving the nobility and the Catholic Church a say in how the kingdom was ruled. But he had spent twenty-five years on the Continent, in Normandy, and it had shaped him deeply. He did not understand their Saxon ways. He did not understand their history. He did not understand their outrage over the heregeld.

He retained those foreign mercenaries, even in their idleness, and did not rescind the heregeld.

At least, not soon enough.

Part 1

CHAPTER 1

Gloucester

I
n the time it took Godiva to wrest a concession from the young man, she could have as easily spun a skein of yarn. She did not much like spinning yarn; wresting concessions from young men, however, was agreeable enough. Gloucester's dank great hall proved especially agreeable for concession-wresting; this was her third today. But Sweyn, who was absurdly handsome and had the intensity of a catamount, was her perennial favorite. At the moment she had him against a wall. The hall was full, bustling with men and women of rank, and he was certain they were all laughing at him.

“I concede that
perhaps,
” Sweyn allowed, at last, “
accidentally,
my herders might have strayed over the border. A bit. In that one valley.”

“Thus accounting for . . . ?” she prompted.

“Thus accounting for Mercian sheep,” he acknowledged, “ending up as mutton on Herefordshire tables.”

Her golden-green eyes, framed by her glittering veil, blinked expectantly. This was about more than poached mutton, and they both knew it, but each hoped to avoid saying so outright.

“And, of course, I shall make amends for that,” he said urgently into the silence.

The countess Godiva relaxed and smiled. “In what manner?”

“If you give me an accounting of the missing flocks, I will replace them.”

“That's an excellent beginning,” she approved. With confiding tone she added, “But he'll want more than that as recompense. Of course.”

“Of course.” Sweyn watched her sparrowlike hand flutter toward the spot on his chest where his leather cloak hung open. She watched him watching her; she could smell the mix of pleasure and dismay her movement elicited in him. It was a scent she was familiar with. “Lady Countess, pray but tell me what he wants.”

She stood up straighter, enough that he could breathe without inhaling her perfume. She clasped her hands together at her heart, her bracelets clinking importantly against her necklaces. “I suspect he shall like to hear that you will express your regret and replace the missing sheep twice over. That would be so very generous of you.”

“Oh, 'tis nothing,” said Sweyn, trying to maintain a shred of dignity.

“And I think perhaps building palisades, or earthworks that are defensible from our side, not yours, just to remind your naughty . . . shepherds . . . not to wander so far into Leofric's land again.”

He stiffened, resisting, as she looked at him with one fine pale eyebrow cocked in warning. He frowned.

“Shall I call him over to ask if he would like that, or shall you trust my judgment on it?” Her fingers probed between the two sides of his cloak, coming to rest delicately beneath them on the decorative seam of his tunic. He pulled away, as if shocked by the touch. “I'll build the palisades,” he offered almost desperately.

“And sign your mark to such a promise? Just so there is no confusion as to what we have discussed?”

“Yes,” he growled.

“And might you show me the progress, if we meet seasonally at the border?”

“Very well,” he said, a chastised child.

“Lovely,” she said. She moved her small hand so that the flat of her palm rested on his chest. He inhaled sharply, at which she smiled apologetically. Then unnecessarily lowering her voice she added, “What a shame Leofric will not be able to join us. Will you mind terribly a rendezvous with me alone?”

“You alone with half a dozen of your husband's armed men, Countess. And no doubt a priest.”

“I shall send them all on an errand for an evening,” she whispered.

“Your methods of persuasion should be outlawed,” Sweyn said. “And I am not the only one to think so.” His handsome head nodded slightly to his right, and she glanced in that direction without quite turning her head.

When she saw whom he referred to, she pulled away from him on reflex, almost guiltily.

The redoubtable Abbess of Leominster was eyeing them from the Holy Corner of the king's drab wattle-and-daub hall, where all the religious congregated between sessions of the Great Council. Godiva could tell it was the abbess by her remarkably erect carriage, and because there was no decoration whatsoever on her garments, hanging shapeless and dark about her. It was too dim to read the Face Superior—what little of it showed—but Godiva, knowing her so well, could guess her thoughts.

To avoid dwelling on them, Godiva turned her head in the other direction and saw her husband's broad, slightly slouching silhouette near the hall door. He too had been eyeing them.

She stepped back from Sweyn abruptly again, as if they had been practicing a dance move and the musician had suddenly been shot. “Thank you, darling Hereford, I shall have His Majesty's cleric take down your mark this evening after whatever tries to pass as supper.” And then, dropping all pretense of playfulness, she asked him firmly, but not unkindly: “Was not this better than Leofric accusing you before the Council of armed incursions?”

Before he could answer, she swirled to her right and walked, graceful and swift, toward the hall door where Leofric of Mercia awaited her.

Sweyn watched after her a moment, and then ruefully rubbed his face with both hands.
Someday she will be old,
he reminded himself.
And will stop having this effect on everyone
.

He glanced guiltily at the abbess, but could not read her expression in the dim light.

A
nd he will himself build the palisades for us,” she said, her cheek resting on Leofric's bare chest. “Under our supervision. Defensible from our side only. He will sign his mark to it tonight.”

“How great a danger do you rate him?”

She grimaced dismissively. “ 'Tis nothing serious. An impulsive youthful escapade in amorality, nothing strategic or even considered. Let it go, love. I've scared him into knowing better.”

They were naked together, wrapped in Leofric's woolen mantle, in the feed room of the king's stables.

“I am too old for this,” he said, regarding the setting of this clandestine tryst during the Great Council's dinner break.

“No you are not, you're merely spoiled from so many nights in feather beds,” she said with breezy affection. “Also,” she continued, fidgeting with the Woden amulet around his neck, “it is only nine men-at-arms that the redheaded thane at the Northumbrian border has to call upon for service, not fifteen as he told you. One from Wessex, if that makes any difference.”

“It doesn't—but he admitted to
fewer
men? I'd think he'd have exaggerated to impress you.”

“Oh, no, he claims he has no
need
of more men than that. He does all the heavy soldiering himself, whatever that is supposed to mean. If I'm ever widowed or deserted, he'd be honored to show me what a
man
he is.”

“Of course he would.” His hand absently, affectionately, closed over hers, his rough thumb caressing her soft knuckles.

“I love the way your skin smells,” she said, “as if you have been out in the moors in the rain when the gorse is blooming.”

“The gorse is always blooming,” Leofric said, now stroking her pale hair. “Save your seductive commentary for the men who cannot have you.”

“And you assume you can have me, just like that?” She grinned up at him. “You do not believe you must needs earn me?”

He harrumphed. “A good thing I do not, as I would fail in the attempt, grey as I am.”

Godiva shifted within the woolen cloak, wishing the boards beneath them were cushioned with some hay. She tugged at his beard. “This is not grey, but silver.” She smiled with a girlish overbite, a private affectionate expression she saved just for him. “Yours is the silver that purchases my heart.”

“Spare me your poetic hogwash,” he said, sounding pleased, and kissed her.

I
n the time it takes to jog a mile, they were clothed again, oat husks swatted briskly off each other, and strolling back into the great hall. Here men and women were still milling and mulling in the lee of what had passed as Lenten dinner. Some of the more devout were praying at portable altars the king had set up around the perimeters of the hall. The trestle tables were being set away, the slops distributed for pigs and servants. Servants lifted and moved the benches and the few stools to create an awkward oblong corral with the king's high-backed painted chair nearest to the fire pit. Lords, ladies, bishops, thanes, and all their retinues were moving like contrasting tides, some inward bound, some outward, some busy, some waiting. The earnest and abashed young Sweyn of Hereford had doffed his leather cape to demonstrate some wrestling moves to an admiring thane. In a few moments the final session of the Great Council would convene. And then eventually, thank God, adjourn.

“There you are.” She heard the abbess's resonant alto. Godiva smiled and turned toward the voice, oddly maternal in one so young and delicate.

“Edey,” she said, kissing Edgiva's cheek.

Abbess Edgiva kissed her back without smiling, then glanced at Leofric, her expression questioning.

“Yes, I saw her with Sweyn,” he assured Edgiva. “In fact, I set her on him. I noticed you watching like an anxious chaperone from a distance. Just as the fellow himself is now watching us anxiously. Do not turn, he's directly behind you, Mother.”

“Perhaps he worries you are cross at him,” Godiva said to her husband.

“About poaching our sheep?” Leofric said drily.

“About Godiva throwing herself at him in view of you,” Edgiva corrected.

“Oh, that,” said Leofric dismissively.

“I will never understand you two,” the abbess said, blue eyes glancing from one to the other. “I believe you are devoted in your marriage, and yet Godiva behaves like a heathen strumpet almost daily.”

“I do
not,
” Godiva rebuked her affectionately. “I simply find flirting an effective way of getting a man's complete attention while conveniently disarming him at the same time.”

“It is remarkable,” Leofric assured the abbess, “what crumbs of information men share with her that never would they share with me.”

“It is because you are not as pretty as I am,” Godiva said.

The abbess pursed her lips to repress both a grudging smile and chastisement. Her fingers—strong fingers, so out of place in a woman of such physical refinement—worried the rosary hanging from her undertunic. Godiva always suspected this was just a nervous habit, and that she would find as much comfort in worrying a river stone or an amulet of polished oak.

“My behavior hardly differs from your own, Edey,” the countess said. Sweyn had dismissed his wrestling partner and was indeed staring at them, apparently fighting off the urge to fidget, inching toward them. She pretended not to notice. “I use my beauty and you use your righteous gift of rhetoric, each to persuade men to behave as we believe they ought.”

“I persuade by winning over their higher faculties,” Edgiva retorted, “You, my daughter, appeal to their basest impulses.”

“We both achieve results, so what does it matter which means we use? We are neither of us abusing anyone.”

Although they had this conversation nearly every time they saw each other, Edgiva plunged into it again: “Are not you abusing your marriage vows with such behavior?”

“On the contrary, I applaud her skill,” said Leofric heartily. “While I exert my might and my right, she exercises subtler influence over the workings of the world.”

“I have nipped in the bud illicit affairs that might have destabilized the kingdom,” Godiva offered as example.

“You have promoted friendly marriages,” Leofric added agreeably.

“I have negotiated the fostering of noble scions.”

“Indeed you have. You,” he concluded, gazing at her with such admiration it almost made the abbess blush, “are a self-appointed matchmaker, not only of marriage but of harmonious relationships of all kinds. It is”—here he turned his attention back to Edgiva—“a talent inborn and unteachable, and rarer than military skill or political savvy. I would be a fool to consider it abuse.”

“Why thank you, husband.” As if noticing the Earl of Hereford for the first time, she called out genially, “Earl Sweyn, how do you? Join us. We have quite concluded complaining of you. I believe we are about to begin complaining of me.”

The young man reddened to his ears, and with leather cape draped over one arm, and a grim smile, he began to walk toward them, as casually as he could manage it, but looking as if he did not really wish to arrive.

“You are not always so enamored of her,” Edgiva was meanwhile insisting to Leofric. “I have heard you groan about her behavior often enough.”

“Yes,” Godiva agreed comfortably. “Occasionally he even wants to divorce me.”

“Occasionally you are very foolish with your . . . talents,” Leofric said. “Remember with King Harold's—”