stone circles had come to be, and why they were so important to the worship of Mag herself.
Could it possibly be that they were true?
―You are singing!‖ Ecub exclaimed, her mind still struggling to comprehend what was
happening around her.
Indeed, the stones were singing—a sad, haunting, lilting melody.
Moreover, the stones were now swaying back and forth in liquid, delicious movement, as
if they wanted to dance.
Then, before Ecub‘s astounded eyes, they let go the shape of stones and took on their true
forms.
Although each had individual aspects, all shared similar characteristics. They were tall
with rather long, sinewy arms, their hands broad and long-fingered. Above their thin mobile
mouths and hooked noses, each had dark brown hair, shot through with flecks of iron grey; their
eyes were of the same colour as their hair, also flecked with grey, and despite their bleakness
managed to convey a surprising sense of humour, perhaps even mischievousness.
They were very watchful, these eyes, and Ecub realised that all the creatures‘ eyes moved
at the same time; if one looked slightly to the left, then all eyes looked slightly to the left. It was very unsettling, and gave Ecub the impression that they shared a silent communication.
All wore the same clothes: undistinguished and well-worn leather jerkin and trousers.
All had bare feet, their toes curling into the grass.
All sang, the sound humming through their thin-lipped mouths, and the song was very
sad, and very bleak, and very beautiful. It reminded Ecub of the whispering, sorrowing sound
that the wind made when it hummed through the stones of Mag‘s Dance.
She felt conflicting emotions surge through her. Joy, that she should have been privileged
to see this. Fear, that the stones‘ metamorphosis portended doom. Reverence, before the oldest
and most sacred creatures this land had ever known.
Terror, that she should not prove worthy of…
The Sidlesaghes. The most ancient inhabitants of this land—so ancient they were the
land—who rested within the stones.
By Mag herself, Ecub thought, I had imagined them to be only legend!
She momentarily closed her eyes, blinking away her tears.
Very slowly, inch by inch, hand in hand, the Sidlesaghes closed their circle about Ecub.
When, finally, not a handspan separated Ecub from the circle of Sidlesaghes, the tallest
and most watchful of them leaned forward, touched Ecub on the top of her head, and began to
speak.
Some six miles to the south-west stood Tot Hill, another of the sacred hills of the ancient
and forgotten realm of Llangarlia. While Pen Hill still retained a similar aspect to that of two
thousand years previously, Tot Hill—now Tothill—had changed enormously. In Brutus and
Genvissa‘s time it had housed only a simple rectangular building, the Meeting House, and a platform of stone at its peak. Now Tothill boasted a thriving community, consisting of the
religious community of Westminster itself as well as King Edward‘s vast palace complex—not
merely the Great Hall, but kitchens, dormitories, barracks, chapels, storerooms, infirmaries,
scriptoriums, as well as offices for a score of officials, a dairy, meat-houses, bake-houses, and all
the other buildings, orchards, herberies, vegetable gardens and necessities required for a lively
and growing community. Westminster had now become the site of government within the
kingdom of England, a rival city a mile or so to the south-west of London.
Fifteen years ago Edward had begun the reconstruction of the abbey. Now the
almost-finished abbey reared into the sky, one of the greatest constructions in western Europe,
and a monument not so much to God, but to Edward‘s piety.
Here in Westminster, just to the north of the palace, in an open space on Tothill that
overlooked the grey-green sweep of the Thames to the east and the smudge of London on the
great north-east bend of the river, stood the man who would control not only Westminster, but
London, and all of England, and all of everything else besides.
Asterion. He stood, staring north-east towards London, very still, very watchful.
He could feel the Troy Game moving. A shudder, part apprehension and part excitement,
swept through Asterion‘s body.
The Troy Game was moving, and it was time for Asterion to put into motion the plan that
he had spent this entire lifetime constructing.
He turned slightly so that Edward‘s palace came into view. There she waited. The one
who would deliver to him everything. The bands. The Game. William. Power.
―It is time,‖ Asterion muttered. ―Time to begin my game.‖
A death, a seduction, followed by another death. A plan of beauteous simplicity. That‘s
all it would take, and the kingship bands and the Troy Game would be his.
TWO
CAELA SPEAKS
I wonder how many women know what it is like to endure the hatred of one‘s husband
for fifteen long years. Many, I suppose, for while marriage might be a consecrated thing in the
sight of God, His saints and the Holy Church, it was often a burden to us lesser mortals, the
daughters of Eve who had to bear the torturous punishment for her Great Sin in our marriage and
childbeds.
Not that I had to bear anything but the sharpness of Edward‘s tongue in our marriage bed
and, for total lack of the warmth of his body, I never had to endure agonies in childbed.
Fifteen years a wife, and still a virgin. It was a shameful thing, and not one I had to bear
alone, for Edward made sure that the entire court knew that he‘d never laid a finger on me. I
remembered our marriage night so long ago when, a nervous and excited thirteen year old, I had
allowed my sister-in-law to settle me into my marital bed with my new husband.
I had been so fearful, and yet still excited. Not only had I become a wife, soon to learn
the secrets of my marital bed (or so I had naively thought then), and chatelaine over my own
household, I was also Queen of England. My father, the great Earl Godwine of Wessex, had successfully negotiated my marriage to Edward. I hadn‘t known then that Edward hated and
feared my father, and took me as wife only because he knew that if he refused, my father would
see him tipped off the throne.
Without my father‘s support, Edward would have lost his crown years ago.
Edward hated me, for I was the constant visible reminder of his humiliating dependence
on Godwine and, later, his equally humiliating dependence on my elder brother Harold, who
assumed the earldom of Wessex when our father died. Yet on that night, as I lay trembling and
naked beneath the uncomfortably stiff linens of my new husband‘s bed, I had no idea that my
husband already hated me as much as ever he would. I thought only of my induction into
womanhood, and of the joy and pride I would feel as I bore Edward an heir.
When Edward, sullen and joyless, joined me in bed that first night, he turned to me,
gazed at me with the greatest contempt, and said, ―I find you most displeasing.‖
Then he humped over and went to sleep, and I was left trembling and silently weeping,
wondering what I had done wrong.
I eventually slept that night, and when I did I dreamed. I dreamed of another man, his
face lost in shadows, who regarded me with contempt, and who spat at me words of hatred.
He also had called me ―wife‖.
I had gone to sleep weeping and I woke weeping, and it seemed that the first five or six
years of my marriage were spent weeping.
Everyone at court knew that Edward would not lie with me. Edward variously put it about
that I was a whore (he even sent me into exile for a year over that particular lie); then, when I
protested my virginity and had it proven by midwifely examination, he said that I refused his
attempts to make a true wife of me. Latterly, Edward liked to claim that I was Satan‘s temptation
put into his path to tease him away from salvation.
Edward the Confessor his people had taken to calling my husband, in tribute to his piety.
God‘s Concubine, they called me, for it appeared that in Edward‘s pious disinterest he
had passed over the sexual proprietorship of his wife to God Himself (not that God seemed
interested, either). Some smirked at this appellation, and pitied me, but most seemed to feel that
Edward‘s saintliness had somehow rubbed off on me (how, I have no idea, for most certainly our
flesh had never rubbed enough for the transfer).
God‘s Concubine.
I hated that label. No doubt some wit would soon make the connection and start calling
me the Virgin Mary‘s apprentice.
Latterly, Edward‘s attempts to humiliate me had taken a more disturbing turn. My father
Godwine had died some years previously, and now my eldest brother Harold held sway, not only
as Earl of Wessex, but as the power behind my husband‘s throne. Edward could not command