Gods Concubine (13 page)

“Madam?”

There, my mind had betrayed me once again!

“Ah, Ecub,” I said, blushing (one would think me still thirteen years old, and not the twenty-eight-year-old woman I was), “you must forgive me this evening. I cannot think what has come over me. I…I…”

Oddly, for she never usually was so bold, Ecub leaned to close the space between us and held my hand briefly.

“You will feel better soon, madam,” she said. “I have it on good authority.”

“Ecub?”

But the prioress was already rising. “I will stay the night within the women’s dormitory, if it pleases you. The way back to St Margaret the Martyr is long and cold for an old woman like myself, and I would rather attempt it on the morrow than tonight.”

“Of course,” I said, rising also (which movement made Edward half start up, as if he suspected I was going to dash for the palace portal like a hind escaping the huntsmen; my bevy of twittering ladies started likewise, their needlework suddenly shuffling to the floor).

“Perhaps, if it please you, madam,” Ecub continued, looking at me with those intense brown eyes of hers, “I might stay a day or two beyond this night? I have need to consult with Master Saeweald, and perhaps also to gossip with the Lady Judith about mutual memories.”

“Of course,” I said again, feeling stupider by the moment.
What “mutual memories”?
I wondered momentarily if Saeweald had a potion against stupidity secreted somewhere. I managed to smile graciously at Ecub, murmur my apologies to my husband stating that my head ached and I must needs to bed, then made my exit accompanied by Judith and the other of my ladies.

Perhaps sleep would untwist my wits.

Sleep brought me no peace. Instead, I swear that as soon as I had closed my eyes I slipped into dream.

I dreamed I walked through the centre of a stone hall so vast there appeared to be no end to it. It stretched east to west—I felt, if not saw, the presence of the rising sun towards the very top of the hall—and above me a golden dome soared into the heavens. Beneath my feet lay a beautifully patterned marbled floor; to my sides soared stone arches protecting shadowy, mysterious spaces. Even though thick walls rose high beyond those arches, I could still somehow see through them to the countryside beyond where a majestic silver river wound its way through gentle verdant hills and fertile pastures. It was an ancient and deeply mysterious land, and it was
my
land, England, although an England such as I could not remember ever seeing.

I turned my eyes back to the hall. Although this was a strange, vast place, I felt no fear, only a sense of homecoming. I also sensed that I had spent many nights dreaming of this hall, although I never remembered such dreams.

Suddenly I realised I was not alone. A small, fey, dark woman walked towards me.

My eyes filled with tears, although I did not know why.

“Peace, lovely lady,” the woman said as she reached me. She half started forward as if she meant to embrace me, but then thought better of it and merely reached up a hand to briefly touch a cheek.

“Are you ready?” she said.

“Ready for what?”

“The battle begins,” she replied. “You must be ready, Cornelia, my dear.”

I frowned, for
this
was the name Saeweald had called me so many years ago. Was this woman as deluded as he?

“Remember,” the woman said, “to meet us in the water cathedral beyond death.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, taking a step back. The woman was mad! A witch, no doubt.

She laughed, as if I had made a jest. “Then follow Long Tom, my darling girl. Listen to him. He will show you—”

“
You! Will I never be rid of you?”

The man’s voice thundered about us, and the small, dark woman gave a sad smile, then vanished with only a word or two reverberating in my mind.
Remember, Cornelia, my dear…remember…remember…

“What do you here?”

I forgot the woman, and looked at the man striding towards me.

I gasped, for although I swear I did not recognise him, nonetheless I felt I knew him intimately. Tall and well built, the man had cropped, almost blue-black hair, a strong, handsome and clean-shaven face, and compelling dark eyes that seemed to have noted my every flaw, for as he neared an expression of distaste seemed to come over his features. He was dressed in the finery of a Norman nobleman: a vivid blue, and beautifully embroidered, knee-length tunic over breeches and boots, and a sword at his hip.

For some reason my eyes kept blurring, and I saw him with short black curls one moment, then with long curls that streamed and snapped in the breeze of his movement the next.

“Cornelia? Is this you?” He looked at me, puzzled, as if I was some half-remembered companion to him.

“I am not Cornelia!” I cried. “I am Caela.
Caela!
”

He had stopped before me now, his black eyes unreadable. “You will always be Cornelia,” he said. “Always ready to betray me to Asterion—”

I do not know why, but at the mention of that name a feeling of such fear came over me I thought I would collapse.

He took another step to me, very close now, and he grasped my chin in his hand. “You are much more beautiful now than you were as Cornelia…” He paused, his black eyes running over my face as if he wanted to consume it. “Far more beautiful…but still as desirable.”

His mouth twisted, cold and malicious. “But if the reports I hear are true, then Edward has more sense than I would have credited him with and has not touched you.
I
should have known better than to lie with you, bitch daughter of Hades.”

At the contempt in his voice I cried out, and tried to wrench my chin from his hand. But he was too strong, and I remained caught in his hateful grip.

“You want me to kiss you? Well, I will not kiss you, Cornelia, or Caela as now you are, Queen of England. I have a wife; I do not need
your
womb. I have a lover who awaits me; I do not need
your
kisses.” He hesitated, and something changed in his face, and his fingers became gentle and caressing, as did his voice. “But oh…oh, how lovely you are.”

His face bent closer, and his breath fanned over my cheek. I shuddered, and he felt it. Then his mouth grazed the skin beneath my ear, then grabbed and held, and I cried out, and would have sagged had he not let go my chin and caught at my shoulders.

Something occurred to me, almost a memory, though I knew I had never met this man before. I said: “Do you hate me still?”

He had raised his head away from me, and I saw his lips form the word “Yes”, but then his expression became puzzled. “I never hated you,” he said. “Not really.”

“But you just called me,”
God help me, I wanted him to hold me close again, and do again with his mouth what he had just done,
“bitch daughter of Hades.”

He laughed, low and soft, and pulled me close enough that he
did
lay his mouth against my cheek again. “I am sorry for that. That was habit. Who knows if you deserve that epithet now?”

“They call me God’s Concubine,” I said, relaxing even more with this strange Norman. “
That
I hate.”

“You should have children,” he said, standing back from me. “You were a good mother.”

Now it was I who laughed. “I? A good mother? And when, pray, did I have a chance for that?”

“Tell me,” he said, “how is Swanne?”

“Swanne?”

“It is so long since I have seen her. Fifteen years. I miss her. I want her. Will you tell her that? Will you tell her how much I want her?”

He was walking away now, his booted stride ringing out through the stone hall.

“Tell Swanne I want her,” he said, throwing the words back over his shoulder, “and that I cannot wait for that happy day when we can be together.”

Then he was gone, and I stood there in that cold, stone hall, and wept, for I felt so alone, and so empty.

Far away, in Normandy, William woke with a hoarse cry, sitting bolt upright in his bed.

At his side, Matilda roused, muttered sleepily, then sat herself, laying a loving hand on his arm.

“William, what ails you?”

He smiled, although it was an effort. “A bad dream only, my love. Let it not concern you.”

Then he took her chin in gentle fingers, and lowered his mouth to hers, and kissed away the memory of that cursed stone hall and the woman who haunted it.

The next afternoon Swanne joined my circle of women as we sat and gossiped over our needlework. I sighed, for I had good enough reason to dislike my brother’s wife, but her presence reminded me abruptly of the strange dream that had gripped me the previous night.

“My Lady Swanne,” I said, putting my needle down, “I dreamed most unusually last night.”

She tipped her head slightly, the movement one of supreme indifference.

“I dreamed of a most handsome man, a Norman, with close-cropped black curls.”

Several of the younger women tittered, and I managed to fight down the urge to blush. No doubt they thought I sought my pleasure in dream where I could not find it in my marriage bed. Suddenly I wished I had not brought up the topic, and would have dismissed it with a laugh had not Swanne leaned forward, her pale face now almost bloodless, her own dark eyes intense.

“Yes?” she said.

I made a deprecatory gesture. “Oh, I am sure it was nothing, save that this dream man asked to be remembered to you.”

“Yes?” The word sounded as though Swanne had forced it through lips of stone.

I almost smiled as I remembered his message. “He told me to say, ‘I want her and I cannot wait for that happy day when we can be together.’ He said it had been fifteen years since you had been together, and that he missed you. Why, sister, who can this be that is not your husband?”

Swanne sat upright, rigid with emotion. Her eyes glistened, and she seemed unaware that everyone in our circle now stared at her.

“Who is this man?” I asked again, softly.

“A lord such as shall never love
you
,” she said, then rose and made her exit.

T
HREE

S
aeweald sat with Ecub by the dying fire in the pit in the centre of the Lesser Hall where Edward held his evening court. Edward and Caela had long retired, and the only other people still in the chamber were two servants sweeping away the detritus of the night’s activities.

They were silent, uncomfortably so on Saeweald’s part, for he wanted to grip Ecub by the shoulders and shake out of her whatever it was that she had to say to him; more comfortably so on Ecub’s part, for she still basked in the glow of what the Sidlesaghes had said to her.

They awaited Judith, who had to complete her evening attendance on the queen before she could join them.

They sat, eyes set to the floor, until even the servants had gone for the night.

The moment the door had closed behind the last of them, Saeweald turned to Ecub and opened his mouth.

“Wait,” she said, forestalling whatever it was he’d been about to say.

He mumbled something inaudible, then turned back to resume his silent vigil.

Eventually, Judith joined them, looking both weary and worried, a reflection of Saeweald’s own expression. She drew a stool up to Ecub and Saeweald, glanced at the physician, then looked at Ecub.

“What has happened?” she said.

Ecub took a very long, deep breath, then beamed, her entire face almost splitting in two with the width of her smile. “Today I sat amid the stones atop Pen Hill,” she said.

“Yes?” said Saeweald.

“They spoke to me.”

There was a long moment of complete silence, during which time Saeweald and Judith stared at Ecub, their minds trying to make sense of what she’d just said.

“They ‘spoke’ to you?” Saeweald finally said, enunciating very carefully.

“Aye, they did. Saeweald, what do you know of the ancient tales of the Stone Dances?”

“Only that they were raised by hands unknown, long ago, before even the Llangarlians came to step on this land.”

“Aye, that is what you would have heard. But I think that Judith may have heard something else. Judith?”

Judith looked at Saeweald, but he was still staring at Ecub. She looked back to the prioress, who was studying her with a maddening calm, and licked her lips, trying to remember.

“They were raised in monument to Mag, to the mother and the land,” she said. “They are more Magmonument than Og, although by association—”

“Yes, yes,” said Ecub, “but tell me what you know of their raising.”

Judith made a disparaging gesture, unsettled by Ecub’s questioning. “Oh, Ecub, there were only the tales that children told each other.”

“Often the greatest mysteries are hidden within children’s tales,” Ecub said. “What safer place for them? Where every adult will discount them?”

Again Judith looked at Saeweald, and this time he met her eyes.

“Judith,” he said. “
What tales?
”

Judith shrugged her shoulders, not ready to believe that the stories she’d heard as a child in her previous life were fact, rather than sheer childish imagination. “I heard…it was told—”

“Judith,” Ecub said, “just spit the words out!”

“The Stone Dances, or, rather, the stones themselves, are the surviving memory of the ancient creatures who walked this land long before mankind set foot here.”

“Very good,” said Ecub. “And their names?”

“Sidlesaghes,” said Judith. “The Sad Songsters.” Then, surprisingly, her mouth quirked in amusement. “Long Toms, we used to call them, for the height of the stones. Children’s tales though. Surely.”

“Yet all this,” Ecub said, soft but clear, “is true, my dears. Come now, Judith, tell me more of your ‘children’s tales’. Why do the Sidlesaghes stand as stones and not trail their melancholy amid the meadows?”

Judith’s mouth fell open, and she stared wide-eyed and unbelieving at Ecub as her mind suddenly made the leap to what Ecub was trying to draw from her.