should worry about Tostig as well, but for the moment the sense of danger that seemed to
surround Swanne was so immediate that he pushed all thought of his brother to the side.
His eyes moved slowly over the crowds gathered for King Edward‘s harvest court in the
Great Hall of Westminster Palace, seeking Swanne out. Ah, there she was, chatting with several
members of the witan.
Harold‘s expression remained studiously neutral as he watched his wife. This morning
she looked lovelier than ever, her ivory gown clinging to the swell of her breasts and hips,
pinching in about the narrowness of her waist, both swell and slenderness emphasised every time
she moved.
He no longer loved her, nor even respected her. Oh, once he had adored her, patterned his
life about her every movement and want. That lovelorn man had been left behind years ago,
murdered through years of cohabitation with the lady he‘d taken as his common-law wife. Now
that the delusion of love had been stripped from his eyes, Harold could see that there was a
coldness about Swanne that even she, most expert of deceivers, could not entirely hide. There
was a sense of waiting about her that made him think of the deadliness of a coiled snake about to strike.
Harold had absolutely no doubt that, were it to suit her purposes, Swanne would not
hesitate to murder him.
A great wave of blackness washed over him, and Harold had to close his eyes
momentarily, trying to recover his equilibrium. All his life he‘d been plagued with terrible
dreams of a love and a land lost; of Swanne standing over his murdered body, laughing; of a man
with raging, snapping black hair reaching out over his corpse to a woman whose face was that
of…that of…
Harold opened his eyes, staring at Swanne, forcing his mind away from his dreams. In his
youth they‘d been the province of the night only, nightmares he could laugh away in the sanity of
wakefulness. But over the past few months they‘d been taking over his waking hours as well.
And whenever he looked at his sister, his mind was filled with such carnal thoughts that
Harold was sure the devil himself must have ensnared him.
Last night, when Swanne had lowered herself to him, he‘d closed his eyes and imagined
that it was not Swanne atop him, but…
No! He must stop this. God, what was happening to him? Was this some sickness of the
mind? Some devilish possession? Desperate for distraction, Harold looked slowly about the
Great Hall, seeking whatever it was that was causing chills to run up and down his spine, and
nerves to flutter in his belly.
The hall was filled with Normans…who would imagine that this was a Saxon kingdom,
and at its head a Saxon king? No wonder his nerves were afire when his king preferred the
Normans to his own countrymen.
Currently Edward sat on his carved wooden throne on the dais, his snowy hair and beard
flowing over shoulders and chest, robed in the Norman manner as though he was a woman rather
than a warrior, a crucifix in his hand, an expression of wisdom and dignity fixed on his aged
face. Harold‘s eyes narrowed. Edward cultivated the demeanour of a scholarly yet shrewd king,
but Harold doubted that any honest appraisal of the man would value him at anything more than
the mediocre. Edward had begun his reign twenty-five years ago in a burst of bright hope, and
looked like ending it in an agony of indecision.
Edward‘s advisers—sycophants all—were gathered about him nodding and smiling and
agreeing and sympathising as the occasion demanded. A Norman nobleman, no doubt from Duke
William‘s court, was smiling and laughing and presenting the duke‘s compliments. Several
churchmen, never slow to flatter such a powerful benefactor, bowed their heads in assumed
wisdom and piety. Within the cluster Harold recognised Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester and the
much-travelled Norman sympathiser Aldred, Archbishop of York (now much fatter than he‘d
been when he‘d officiated at Edward‘s wedding so many years past). There also was Eadwine,
the Abbot of Westminster Abbey, also nodding and smiling whenever Edward so much as
looked his way.
Fools, all.
Saeweald stood slightly behind and to one side of the adoring cluster, his copper vials of
herbs and potions dangling from his belt and catching the light, leaning on a crutch which Harold
knew that he only used on days of supreme discomfort. The physician‘s face was masked in
blandness, but Harold knew him well enough to recognise the irony which lay behind his
expression. Saeweald hated the Normans as much as Harold did.
Saeweald caught Harold‘s appraisal and, very slowly, lowered one eyelid in a wink.
Despite his continuing sense of imminent danger, Harold‘s mouth twitched beneath his
hand. It was Tostig who had first introduced him to the physician many years ago, but despite the
current tension between Harold and his brother, his friendship with Saeweald remained strong. It
was not simple liking that bound the two men (although sometimes Harold wondered at the
rapidity with which they had established such a deep friendship, almost as if they‘d been
renewing it, not forming it) but also their common preference for the ancient pagan ways of the
country. They shared a mutual love and reverence for the land itself, for the turf and the stones
and the meanderings of the streams and rivulets. A love and reverence that meant far more to
them than did the petty mouthings of Christian priests. Sometimes, in the depths of winter,
Saeweald would take Harold to the top of one of the hills that surrounded London, and there he
would shuck off his robe and, clothed only with the tattoo that marked him as a priest of the
ancient paths, would take Harold on journeys of such mystery and power that the earl was left
shaking for hours afterwards.
Always, after these mysteries, Saeweald would half smile at Harold and say. One
day…one day…
Harold did not know what he meant, and never dared ask.
Saeweald also took Harold to some less private, although still very exclusive,
celebrations. At the times of solstice and equinox, and the festivals of Beltane, May-tide and the
Green Man, Saeweald took Harold to the very top of Pen Hill to meet with (Harold had laughed
in disbelief the first night he had attended such a celebration) Mother Ecub and her very
un-virginal nuns, as well as a host of men and women he had recognised from the councils and
markets of London. There he‘d partaken in the dances and meanderings, the fires and the
spirit-soarings, the choruses and (Harold shivered with remembered longing) the strange matings
within the circles of stone about the hills of London.
Harold‘s mouth curled behind his hand: if only Edward knew what went on in his realm
while he knelt before his altar…
A snippet of conversation from the group around the king reached Harold‘s ears. Abbot
Eadwine had begun a long and loud boast about the beauty of the almost-completed abbey.
Edward was hanging on every word, almost drooling in his excitement. Harold‘s lips
thinned in disgust. Eadwine was Edward‘s special creature. It had been many years since the
king selected Eadwine from among the gaggle of black-robed monks who lived within the abbey
precincts to be the new abbot, and had then glorified both abbey and abbot by financing one of
the most spectacular building programmes ever seen in England—or Europe, come to that.
Westminster Abbey had gone from being a damp, dark, sullen stone church with too many
draughts for any but the most desperately pious to enjoy to the almost-completed, imposing
church and abbey buildings that now rose up from Tothill. The new abbey, due to be completed
within the next few months, was one of the most beautiful and impressive churches within all of
Christendom.
Edward meant it as a fitting burial chamber and memorial to his reign. Harold thought the
entire matter beyond contempt. Other men, other kings, would have preferred that their deeds
and victories remain as their memorials.
Not Edward. Childless, victory-less, and increasingly meaningless in his impotence and
powerlessness, even within his own kingdom, Edward had chosen to erect a monument of stone
to his glory.
Harold had no doubt that the Church would eventually canonise the king for it.
Spectacular donations were ever the easy road to sainthood.
Saeweald was still watching Harold, and seemed to understand some of the earl‘s
thoughts, for his own mouth curled in amusement. Soon the damned physician would have him
smile openly, and in this court that would never do.
His gaze drifted, as it so often did, to Caela. She looked particularly beautiful—and
particularly sad within that beauty—on this morning. She was robed in soft blue silk over a crisp
white under-tunic, a mantle of snowy linen about her shoulders and draped demurely over her
dark hair. The colours suited her, and Harold found himself thinking on how beautiful she would