Gods Concubine by Sara Douglass

beautiful and wrathful and consumed with power all at once. As Tostig stared, Harold very

slowly raised his hands, palms upwards, and light shone forth from them, as if they carried

living, breathing gold within them.

―By the gods!‖ Saeweald muttered, and he suddenly dropped the dish, spattering oil over

both robes and legs.

―I need to see more,‖ cried Tostig, but Saeweald shook his head.

―You have seen enough,‖ he said. ―Edward has not long, and Harold will be a king such

as England has never seen. What more can you want to know? What more can you desire for

your blood kin?‖

Tostig stared through the gloom towards Saeweald, but he could not make out the man‘s

face. Wordlessly, he turned on his heel and left.

Saeweald stood very still for a long time, the remnants of the oil dripping down his robe.

Eventually he turned, went back to the bedchamber, disrobed, and crawled in beside

Judith.

―I think I know why Coel is back,‖ he said.

SEVEN

He stood on the hill, the westerly wind ruffling the short dark curls of his head, the sun

making him narrow his almost-black eyes. Behind him a group of his men-at-arms chattered

quietly where they stood by the horses, and his close friend Walter Fitz Osbern sat in the grass,

watching him carefully.

To his side stood Matilda. She was heavily pregnant, only weeks away from giving birth,

and she and William were engaged in what had become one of the rituals of their marriage. In

each of her pregnancies, a few weeks before she gave birth, Matilda asked William to bring her

to the coast where she could stand and feel the sea wind in her hair and riffling through her

clothes. It was this, and its memory, which enabled her to endure the weeks of confinement just before and after the birth of a child. Matilda hated the sense of detainment, almost of capture,

that surrounded the rituals of childbirth; this single day of freedom, feeling the wind in her hair

and her husband standing beside her, gave Matilda enough strength to endure it. Despite her

diminutive stature, Matilda gave birth easily, although she found it desperately painful: this child

would be their seventh.

Matilda also liked to stand here, her belly swelling towards the sea, because it gave her a

sense of superiority over this witch that William still dreamed of. Well might Swanne be the first

love of William‘s life, but it was not she who bore his children, and it was not she who stood

here now, William‘s companion and mate.

She looked at William, and saw that he had his eyes fixed on the wild tossing grey seas

and the faint smudge in the far distance, that line of white cliffs.

England.

―How you lust for that land,‖ she murmured, and William flickered his eyes her way.

―Aye. And it will be mine soon enough.‖

She nodded. In the past two years William had finally managed to bring Normandy under

his control. Rival claimants had been quashed, dissent had evaporated, and William enjoyed

power such as he‘d never had previously. Normandy was his, and would stand behind him

whatever he ventured. Matilda only hoped that when William did venture, she wouldn‘t be so

heavy with child that she could not accompany him.

Their marriage was strong, stronger than Matilda had ever envisaged in their early

months together. They had both agreed that truth was the only possible foundation on which they

could build their partnership, and the truth had served them well.

Of course, there were always a few small secrets and, on William‘s part, the occasional

infidelity, but neither small secrets nor infidelities rocked the essential core of their marriage:

Matilda and William were good for each other. Together, they managed far more than either of

them could have managed individually.

―When?‖ said Matilda, although she knew the answer.

―When Edward dies,‖ he said. William was strong enough to venture an invasion now,

but William also wanted to coat his claim with legitimacy, and he could not do that if he tried to

wrest a throne from the incumbent king.

Once Edward was dead, however, then the path would be open for him.

William shifted slightly, as if uncomfortable, and he frowned as he gazed across the grey

waters of the channel that separated Normandy and England.

―What is it?‖ said Matilda.

―There is something about to happen…matters are moving,‖ he said. He lifted his closed

fist and beat it softly against his chest, underscoring his words. ―I feel it in here. ‖

Matilda felt a thrill of superstitious awe run up and down her spine. Fifteen years had

been long enough for her to realise that there were depths to her husband that she had not yet

plumbed.

If the witch Swanne loved him, then why was that so? Was it because some power in

William called to Swanne?

―It is not Edward,‖ she said, and William looked at her.

―How so? What do you know?‖

Matilda managed to suppress the small smile that threatened to break through. One of the

―small‖ secrets she had kept from William was that Matilda had her own agent in place within

Edward‘s court.

―I think you will find,‖ Matilda said, ―that Edward‘s queen shall be at the heart of it.‖

―Caela? Why?‖

Now Matilda allowed that secretive smile to break through. ―A woman‘s intuition, my

dear. Nothing else.‖

Caela intrigued Matilda. Initially, Matilda had set her agent to watching Swanne, but that

watchfulness had, over the years, grown to include the queen as well. At first this had been

because Swanne so clearly and evidently hated Caela, and that made Matilda wonder if Swanne

feared the queen as well, and wonder further why this might be so. But then, as the years passed,

Matilda came to understand via her agent that there was a small but dedicated coterie that

surrounded the queen, and that Caela herself sometimes exuded an air of strangeness that

Matilda‘s agent found difficult to express.

―Caela is nothing,‖ William said, and the harsh tone of his voice made Matilda look

sharply at him.

I wonder, she thought.

As William lifted Matilda on to her horse his mind drifted to the dream he‘d had some

nights previously. Cornelia, or Caela as she was now, in her stone hall. That dream had been so

real. The stone had felt hard beneath his feet, Caela‘s flesh so warm beneath his fingers; the plea

in her eyes as vivid as if he‘d stood there in reality.

William had dreamed of her at other times—would this woman not cease tormenting

him?—but never had the dream seemed so real.

Nor Caela so close. She was older than she had been as Cornelia, and lovelier. Her hair

was darker, her skin paler, but her eyes still that strange depth of blue that they had been two

thousand years ago.

She‘d still held her face up to his, and yearned for him to kiss her.

And he had wanted to kiss her, whatever he might have said to her. He had wanted to kiss

her more than he had ever wanted anything else in his life. More than the Game? Aye, at that

moment, when Caela‘s face had been so close, William thought he might have squandered even

the Game itself in order to feel her mouth yield under his, to taste her sweetness…

Yet he‘d stopped himself, just in time.

Was she the trap Asterion had laid?

Again?

William turned from Matilda—watching him curiously—and stared back across the wild

tossing seas.

Soon. It was starting today—he could feel it surging through his blood—and within a

year all would be won or lost.

EIGHT

The Great Hall, Westminster

Harold Godwineson, Earl of Wessex, slouched in his great chair in its habitual place to

the left of King Edward‘s dais. His dark eyes were hooded, his right hand rubbed through the

short dark hairs of his moustache and beard, his left arm lay draped, apparently relaxed, over the

carved armrest of the great chair, and his legs stretched out before him, one foot idly tapping out

a rhythm only Harold could hear.

He looked almost half asleep, but in reality Harold was coiled, tense and waiting. Harold

had spent his life either at court or on the battlefield, and over the years he‘d developed a sense

of danger so acute he could almost smell its approach.

His nose has been full of the stink of danger ever since last night.

Ever since Swanne had dropped her robe and straddled him with her naked, tight body.

Ever since he‘d lain awake all night, observing her sitting before the brazier through

heavy-lidded eyes.

Ever since he‘d seen her scratch out that secret communication and hide it within the

folds of her clothes.

Now he watched and waited, more certain of this than anything else he‘d known in this

life. There was danger afoot, and Swanne was somehow connected with it. Harold knew he