At that Caela blinked, flushing in humiliation.
Swanne sighed extravagantly and the other ladies present smiled, preferring to ally with
Swanne rather than this girl who, even now, wedded to the king, promised less prospect of
benefaction than did the powerful Lady Swanne.
―But we must do what we can,‖ said Swanne, and clapped her hands, making Caela start.
―The wool, I think, and the posset I prepared earlier.‖
One of the ladies handed to Swanne a small pouch of linen and a length of red wool, and
Swanne stepped close to Caela once more.
―Now,‖ Swanne said, both eyes and voice cold with contempt, ―do not flinch. This will
get you an heir better than anything…save that wild thrusting of a man‘s thickened member.‖
She put a hand on her own belly as she spoke, rolling her eyes prettily, and the ladies
burst into shrieks of laughter, their hands to their cheeks.
Caela flushed an even darker red.
Swanne bent gracefully to her knees before Caela and, first tying the length of wool about
the small linen pouch, then tied the pouch to Caela‘s inner thigh. ―This contains the seeds of
henbane and coriander, my dear. So long as it doesn‘t confuse Edward‘s member too greatly, it
will surely drive him to those exertions needed to put a child in that…‖ she paused, her eyes
running over Caela‘s flat abdomen, ― child”s belly of yours.‖
Again the ladies standing about giggled, but then came the sound of footsteps
approaching up the stairs, and the rumble of men‘s voices and laughter.
―In the bed, I suppose,‖ said Swanne. ―He‘s bound to remember why she‘s there once he
climbs in.‖
With that the women bustled Caela to the bed, drew back the coverlets over the rich,
snowy whiteness of the bridal linens, and bade Caela slide in.
―We hope to see the red and cream flowers of love spread all over that linen in the
morning, my love,‖ said Swanne, pulling the coverlets up to hide Caela‘s nakedness just as the
group of men accompanying Edward entered the chamber.
As Swanne and her ladies had done, so now these men, numbering among them Godwine
and his sons Harold and Tostig, attended to Edward, divesting him of his jewels and apparel, and
stripping him as naked as Caela.
Then Godwine drew back the coverlets on Edward‘s side of the bed, and the king, his
genitals pitifully white and shrivelled in the coldness of the room, clambered into the bed and sat
stiffly alongside Caela.
Once he was in bed, one of the men handed him a goblet filled with spiced wine and the
raw, sliced genitals of a hare.
―Drink,‖ said Godwine, ―and my daughter will soon breed you a fine son.‖
Edward looked at the goblet, very slowly and reluctantly raised it to his mouth, made a
show of sipping it, then placed the goblet on a chest at the side of the bed.
Harold looked at Caela, caught her eyes, and tried to smile for her.
Across the room Swanne laughed, rich and throaty. She pulled her shoulders back, aware
that the eyes of most were on her, and splayed her hands over the rich roundness of her belly. ―I
wish you well, my lord,‖ she said to Edward. ―I hope your screams of pleasure, as those of your
bride, keep us awake throughout the long hours of this wedding night.‖
Tostig giggled, and Swanne shot her young brother-in-law an amused glance even as
Harold hissed at him to be silent.
As Tostig subsided Aldred stepped forward, staggering a little drunkenly on his feet, and
raised his hand for a mumbled blessing. Then Godwine said something coarse, everyone laughed
(save Harold, who watched Caela with eyes filled with sorrow), and Swanne began to direct
people out of the room.
―Our king‘s member can never rise with this many witnesses,‖ she murmured, to more
good-humoured laughter.
Swanne was the final person to leave. She stood in the doorway to the chamber, her hand
on the latch, and regarded the two stiff people in the bed with a gleam in her wondrous dark
eyes.
―Queen at last, Caela,‖ she said. ―You must be so pleased.‖
And then she was gone.
They sat, stiff, silent, cold, staring at the closed door.
Finally, Caela, summoning every piece of courage she could, took her husband‘s chilled
hand and placed it on her breast.
He snatched it away.
―I find you most displeasing,‖ he said, then slid down the bed, rolled over so his back
faced Caela, and stayed like that the entire night.
In the morning, when Swanne and the rest of the (largely still drunken) attendants pulled
back the covers from the naked pair, there was a moment‘s silence as their eyes took in the
unsullied bleached linens.
Swanne‘s eyes slowly travelled to Caela‘s white face, and then she smiled in slow,
malicious triumph before she turned her back and left the chamber.
TWO
Rouen, Normandy
On the same night that Caela, Queen of England, lay sleepless beside her new husband,
Edward, so also the Duke of Normandy, William, lay sleepless beside his new wife.
But where Edward and Caela‘s wedding night remained coldly chaste, William and
Matilda‘s night had been filled with loving and laughter. Theirs was a marriage that they had
made, and they‘d had to combat the combined disapproval of most of the princes of Europe, as
well as the Holy Father in Rome, to achieve it.
William lay on his side, his head resting on his hand, his black eyes gentle as he regarded
the sleeping Matilda. Gods, he”d had to fight so hard for her! They had first met just over three years ago at the court of Matilda‘s father, Baldwin, the Count of Flanders. Matilda had been
fourteen, small and dark and vivacious, and half the princes and dukes of Europe had sought her
hand—and the considerable dowry and alliances that would come with it. William had gone to Baldwin‘s court, not to woo Matilda, but to woo her father, from whom William hoped to gain
much-needed financial and military aid in his constant struggle to repel rival claimants to his
dukedom.
William had been fighting to retain Normandy ever since he‘d assumed the dukedom at
the age of seven. Not only was his age against him, but also the fact that William was the bastard
get of the duke, his father, on a tannery wench. In the thirteen years since his ascension and his
first sight of Matilda of Flanders, William had spent the greater part of each year on the
battlefield. No one had expected a bastard son, let along one of such tender age, to hold out
thirteen years, but during his early vulnerable times William had enjoyed the support of a
number of powerful allies, notable among them the King of France. By the time William was
fifteen he both led his armies and devised his strategies himself—almost as if he had been a great
leader of men and armies before.
As if, it was rumoured, he somehow managed to draw on the experience of a past life as a
victorious king instead of a few meagre years as the son of a tannery wench.
Thirteen years he‘d struggled, and then William had met Matilda. On that fateful day,
William‘s only thought as he strode towards the count‘s dais had been of Baldwin and what the
count could do for him, but then his eyes had fallen on the tiny form of Baldwin‘s daughter
standing by her father‘s throne. William had muttered a cursory greeting to Baldwin, and had
then turned to Matilda, took her hand, smiled down into her eyes, and said, ―You were made for
me.‖
At that remark there were several audible gasps and one hastily swallowed giggle from
among the members of Baldwin‘s court. Their shocked humour was not simply at William‘s
audacity. At fourteen, Matilda was a mere four feet tall and would grow only another inch
throughout the rest of her life.
William was six and a half feet—an amazing height in an age when most men were
grateful to achieve five and a half—with broad shoulders and heavy, tight muscles. Combined
with his dark, exotic looks (some questioned the tannery wench maternity, and opined that the
previous duke had got his son on some lost Greek princess) and bold demeanour and bearing,
William cut an imposing figure.
He certainly looked too large to wed the dainty Matilda without causing her serious
bodily damage.
Matilda had not cared about William‘s bastardy, nor worried about his larger-than-life
physicality. She wanted him the instant his mouth grazed her hand and he spoke those words:
You were made for me.
Europe objected. Frustrated princely suitors petitioned the pope, who refused to permit
the couple to wed on the grounds such a marriage would violate the Church‘s laws on
consanguinity. William and Matilda shared a distant ancestor, Rollo the Viking, who had
founded Normandy, and (as he sat counting out the enormous bribes he‘d accepted from a