Gods Concubine (4 page)

When he had lived as Brutus, two thousand years previously in a world racked by war and catastrophe, he had been a supremely ambitious man. Brutus had allowed nothing to stand in his way. At fifteen Brutus had murdered his father, Silvius, and had taken from his dead father’s limbs the six golden kingship bands of Troy. In his early thirties, Brutus snatched at the chance to lead the lost Trojan people to a new land and rebuild Troy itself, using the ancient power of the Troy Game which he, as a Kingman, controlled. In this new land, Llangarlia, now known as England, Brutus had met Genvissa, the Mistress of the Labyrinth, and his partner in the intricate dances of the Troy Game. He and Genvissa had almost succeeded in their ambition to build the Game on the banks of the Llan, or Thames, when disaster struck in the form of Brutus’ unwilling and unloved wife, Cornelia. Overcome with jealousy, Cornelia had become the pawn of Asterion, the ancient Minotaur and arch-enemy of the Game, and had murdered Genvissa just as she and Brutus were about to complete the Game.

Even more uncomfortable now that he was thinking of Cornelia, William glanced over his shoulder at Matilda. Gods, there was nothing to compare them! Cornelia wept and sulked and plotted murder. Matilda used reason and wit, and she accepted where Cornelia would have argued. Cornelia had fought with everything she had against Brutus’ love for Genvissa. Matilda had shrugged and accepted it as of little consequence to their marriage.

William closed his eyes, feeling the heat of the embers on his face, and finally allowed thoughts of Genvissa to fill his mind. Ah, she had been so beautiful, so powerful! She’d been his Mistress of the Labyrinth, his partner in the Troy Game.

And then, she had been cruelly murdered by Cornelia.

Had
he truly loved Genvissa? William contemplated the issue. After this night with Matilda, and most particularly after their conversation, William wondered if what he’d felt for Genvissa had been an astounding excitement generated by their mutual meeting of ambition and power rather than love. Oh, there had been lust aplenty, but there had been no tenderness, and little sweetness. Instead, William believed, he and Genvissa had been swept away by the realisation that united they could achieve immortality through the construction, and their manipulation, of the Troy Game. They could make both themselves and the Game they controlled immortal.

William smiled wryly. That realisation and that ambition had been far, far headier than love.

But their ambitions ended in disaster as Asterion had manoeuvred Cornelia into murdering Genvissa, thus halting the Game that would have once again trapped the Minotaur in its dark heart.

Disaster, and death. A death that had lasted two thousand years. Why such a delay? William would have thought that his and Genvissa’s ambition, as well as the Troy Game’s need to be completed, would have brought them back centuries before this. Instead, they’d languished in death, frustrated at every attempt for rebirth, kept back from life by a power that they’d both taken a long time to accept: Asterion.

Over two thousand years ago the Minotaur Asterion had spent his life trapped in the Great Founding Labyrinth on the island of Crete, but he had been released when Ariadne, the then Mistress of the Labyrinth and foremother of Genvissa, had destroyed the Game within the Aegean world. Now Asterion was the Game’s arch-enemy. He would do anything to ensure its complete destruction, for the Troy Game was the only thing in this world that could control him. Knowing this, after Genvissa’s death Brutus had secreted the ancient kingship bands of Troy about London; Asterion could not destroy the Game if he did not have the bands which had helped create it.

William believed that it had been Asterion who had kept Brutus and Genvissa locked within death for so long, and Asterion who had finally removed the barriers to their rebirth. Both Brutus and Genvissa had constantly fought for rebirth, and had as constantly been rebuffed by Asterion’s bleak power. He’d been stronger than either had ever expected, and William thanked whatever ancient gods still existed in this strange world into which he’d been reborn that, as Brutus, he had hidden the kingship bands of Troy within such powerful magic.

Why had Asterion kept William and Genvissa-reborn at bay for so long? Had Asterion wanted to find the bands and destroy the Game without risking their rebirth? Well, Asterion had
not
found the bands—William could still sense them, safe in their hiding places, buried under the city now called London—and so he’d allowed Brutus and Genvissa to be reborn, hoping, perhaps, that he could use one or the other to locate the bands.

William had no doubt Asterion would have preferred Brutus to be reborn in Cathay rather than in Normandy. But if William had not managed to influence the timing of his rebirth, he
had
managed to ensure his rebirth relatively close to England. Close, but still frustratingly unreachable: Asterion kept William bound to Normandy by creating conditions of such uncertainty that William had no chance to think of England at all.

Asterion was keeping William at bay for reasons of his own choosing.

William crouched down before the hearth, stretching out his hands to what little warmth the embers contained.
Oh, but England would be his, it would. England, and London, and the bands, and the Troy Game. All of it.

And Genvissa.

Genvissa had been reborn. William knew it, but he didn’t know who or where she was. Genvissa-reborn undoubtedly faced the same obstacle. That was their great dilemma. They needed each other desperately so they could reunite and complete the Game, but they did not know who the other was. But wherever or whoever, William knew one thing: Genvissa-reborn would not rest until she had achieved a place within London where the Troy Game was physically located. It was the lodestone for both of them, and unless Asterion had also managed to keep Genvissa-reborn away from the city, William knew she would be there somewhere.

But who was she?
Who?

William pondered the fact that as this night was his own wedding night, so also it was Edward of England’s wedding night. He knew Edward well, the Saxon king having spent a number of his youthful years at William’s court while he was exiled from England by the murderous intentions of his stepfather, Cnut, and he wondered at this new bride of the man’s. Caela, daughter of Godwine, Earl of Wessex. William knew the marriage had been forced on Edward by Godwine, but Caela caught at William’s attention; he was aware that Genvissa, if not actually reborn within the region of London (the Veiled Hills, they’d once called it), would do everything in her power to return to London
and
to a position of power. What better position than queen?

Genvissa would loathe the necessity of becoming a wife, as she would loathe the subjection to a man inherent in marriage in this Christian world. It went against her very nature as Mistress of the Labyrinth, an office of such feminine power and mystery that its incumbents refused to bind themselves to any man. Well might a Mistress form a partnership of power and lust and ambition with a Kingman, but never would she subject herself to him.

William also knew that Genvissa-reborn would do whatever she had to in order to achieve her ambitions in a world where women had little power. No longer did Mothers rule over households and over their people; the idea of an Assembly of women setting the course of a society was unthinkable now. Unpalatable as it might be to her, Genvissa
would
bind herself in marriage if it meant gain.

Marriage to Edward would give her most gain of all: Queen of England. The highest power a woman could hope for if she held the kind of ambitions William knew Genvissa harboured.

The moment William heard of Edward’s betrothal to Godwine’s daughter Caela, William had been almost certain
she
was Genvissa-reborn. True, Caela was by all reports very young, and as timid as a mouse, but maybe that was merely Genvissa’s way of disguising her true nature.

William wondered idly what was happening in Edward’s bed this night. Had he enjoyed his bedding with the Mistress of the Labyrinth as much as William had enjoyed his with Matilda?

William’s face sobered, and he flexed his fingers back and forth before the fading heat, slowly stretching out some of the tension in his body. He needed desperately to contact Genvissa-reborn. He wondered if Caela had any idea who
he
was. Did she suspect William was more than just a struggling Duke of Normandy, or did she merely think of him as some bastard upstart who brazened his way about the courts of counts and princes, of little consequence to her own life and ambitions.

William stared into the fire, then grinned as a means of contacting Genvissa-reborn occurred to him. He would
announce
himself in no uncertain manner. She would know him by his actions, and by his message, and then she would make herself known to him.

“Soon, my love, soon,” he whispered.

“William?”

His mind still caught in thoughts of Genvissa-reborn, William jerked to his feet, turning around.

Matilda was sitting up in bed, the coverlets sliding down to her waist and exposing her small breasts. “What are you doing?”

After a moment’s hesitation William walked to the bed, studying Matilda before he slid beneath the coverlet. “Wondering if I dared wake you again,” he said, “but look, now I find you have answered my dreams.”

And with that he seized her shoulders, and drew her to him.

“Matilda,” he said, “Matilda, Matilda, Matilda,” using the sound of her name in his mouth to suffocate his thoughts of Genvissa.

T
HREE

Westminster
Two months later

S
wanne moved through King Edward’s crowded Great Hall at Westminster, smiling at those she favoured, ignoring those she did not. Rather than hold his court in the city, Edward, like many of England’s previous kings, preferred to keep his court in the community of Westminster on Thorney Isle, which lay at the junction of the Tyburn and the Thames a mile or so to the south-west of London. Westminster was independent of London, and of its noisy and troublesome crowds and its equally troublesome civil authority. Better, Westminster was the site of a longestablished community of monks—the name literally meant the minster, or church, west of London—and the pious Edward found them more pleasing company than the secular profanity of the Londoners. Indeed, Edward was so well disposed towards Westminster’s monks that he had summoned court this very day to announce that he would sponsor the rebuilding of the Westminster Abbey cathedral into the grandest in all of Europe.

The monks were ecstatic, sundry other clerics present were grudging (why Westminster when Edward could have rebuilt
their
church or abbey?), Edward’s earls and thegns were resigned and, frankly, Swanne cared not a whit one way or the other whether Edward rebuilt the damned cathedral or not. She was happy to be back on Thorney Isle, happy to be within the heart of the sacred Veiled Hills of England, happy to be here, now, sliding sinuously through the press of bodies, watching men’s eyes light up with desire at the sight of her and women’s eyes slide away in disapproval.

Happy to be
alive
and breathing after so long locked in death.

She saw Tostig’s eyes on her, saw the darkness in them, and she widened her smile and closed the short distance to his side. “Brother,” she said, “you do look well this morn.”

His eyes darkened even further. “I am your husband’s brother, lady, not yours.”

“As my husband’s, so also mine.” She leaned close, allowing her breast and rounded belly to brush against him, and kissed him softly on the mouth in a courtly greeting.

As she drew back, Swanne heard his swift intake of breath and decided to deepen the tease. “How
else
should I think of you but as my brother?”

Now Tostig flushed, and Swanne laughed and laid the palm of her hand gently against his cheek, pleased at his obvious desire. At fifteen Tostig still had not learned to conceal his thoughts and needs, nor to discern, or even to realise, that the carefully chosen expressions of others so often concealed contradictory thoughts.

Tostig began to speak, struggling over some meaningless words, and Swanne studied him indulgently. He was not, nor would ever be, as handsome as Harold, but he had a certain charm about him, a darkness of both visage and spirit that Swanne found immensely appealing.

He could be so useful.

“Tostig,” she said, and slipped one arm through his, “I am finding this crush quite discomforting. Will you escort me through the hall to my husband’s side?” She leaned against him. “I feel quite faint amid this airlessness.”

“Of course, my lady,” Tostig said, relieved to have been given something to do, yet flustered all the more by Swanne’s attention and the press of her flesh against his. He suddenly found himself wishing that he’d laid eyes on her before Harold, and that he had been the one to demand her hand and her virginity.

Flushing all the deeper with the direction of his thoughts, Tostig began to roughly shove his way through the crowd, Swanne keeping close to his side.

“Aside! Aside for the Lady Swanne!” he cried, paying no attention to the irritated glances of thegns and their wives. No one said anything, not to a son of the powerful Earl of Wessex, but there were more than a few muttered words spoken as soon as Tostig and Swanne had passed on their way.

Within moments Tostig had led Swanne into the clearer space before Edward’s dais. The Great Hall, only recently completed, formed the focus of Edward’s entire palace complex at Westminster. It was massive, far vaster than the one Tostig’s father had built in Wessex: twice as large again, its walls great stone blocks for the first twenty feet, then rising another eighty in thick timber planks. Above the ceiling of the hall, reached by a great curving staircase behind the dais at the southern end, was a warren of timber-walled chambers that Edward used for his private apartments, as well as those of his closest retainers.