Gods Concubine by Sara Douglass

to establish those circumstances in which Og can be reborn. Yes, I can understand why the Game

wants the bands moved.‖

The Sidlesaghe gave a nod, his eyes still watchful.

―And it will not be difficult.‖ Caela had not said that as a question, but the instant the

words had left her mouth the Sidlesaghe‘s eyes narrowed, and his very being stilled.

―Will it?‖ Caela said.

The Sidlesaghe hesitated. ―Not inherently.‖

―Not „inherently”?”

The Sidlesaghe sighed. ―The instant you touch the bands, Caela, Asterion will know. And

William and Swanne will know. And the instant they know the bands have been found, and are

being moved, they will panic…and then they will hit out.‖

TWELVE

Rouen, Normandy

William‘s body moved easily with that of his horse, a strong bay stallion he‘d bred and

trained himself. His face was relaxed and his eyes dreamy as he let his mind wander in the late

autumn sunshine. He wore no armour, merely a heavy tunic against the cool wind, and a cloak

thrown back over his shoulders and left to drape as it would across the stallion‘s rump. A sword

hung at his left hip, a bow and quiver of arrows were slung across his back.

With him rode his companions, nobles and retainers. No one spoke, easy in their

companionship and the delight of the day. All were in more or less the same state as the duke:

easy, dreamy, relaxed, waiting.

Some fifty paces ahead of the band of riders spread a semicircle of twelve or thirteen men

on foot. In counterpoint to the men on horseback, they were taut and watchful, their eyes

constantly sliding this way and that in the sparse forest through which they walked.

In their hands they held either crossbows or short hand bows; quivers of arrows jounced

across their backs. At their heels stalked huge, well-trained, tense and silent pale hounds.

It was a good morning for the hunt. The sun was two hours risen, and the dawn mist had

cleared from the ground. The quarry—deer and boar, and perhaps even a wolf—would be

moving from the open grass and meadowlands back into the comparative safety of the forest.

This was the part of the hunt that William enjoyed the most. Oh, the heat and excitement

of both chase and kill were fine enough, and the back-slapping, jesting camaraderie that came

after, but nothing surpassed this gentle dream time as they stalked the prey.

Did the stag and the boar know what came? wondered William. Did some primeval part

of them, some forestal part of them, understand that today men would come stalking, and that

only strength and courage and daring might save them from the arrows that pierced the air? Were

they even now standing still, quivering, heads raised, ears and nostrils twitching, striving to catch

that first noise, that initial scent, which would give them leave to leap into flight?

He drew in a deep breath—part suppressed excitement, part sublime happiness—and

exchanged a glance and a smile with Walter Fitz Osbern who rode several paces away to his

right. How many hunts had they participated in together? How many times had Walter stood to

one side, sounding the horn, as William bent down with his short, broad knife to finish off the

stag at his feet?

William relaxed further, his every movement part of those of the horse beneath him. A

small smile played over his face as he remembered the previous night‘s loving with Matilda.

Gods, but he and Matilda were well matched. He hadn‘t thought to find one like her. William

had known from an early age who he was, and what lay both behind him and before him. Who

lay behind and before him.

When William was a young man he‘d hungered for Genvissa—for Swanne—and he‘d

remembered Cornelia with bitterness and anger. He‘d known he would take a wife, but he‘d

thought she would simply be a bedmate, a mother to the heirs he needed, a chatelaine for his

estates and castles and manors, and someone to be easily and quietly set aside when William had

achieved what, and who, he needed.

But Matilda! Ah! He had not realised she would make such a difference to him and to his

life. Strong, loyal, passionate; a match and counterpoint to his every mood and want.

If he‘d had her in his earlier life…William grinned to himself. If it had been Matilda

instead of Cornelia who had plotted his ruin in Mesopotama, then William had no doubt that he

would have been murdered and cast into the bay beside the city. Matilda would have succeeded

with flair and triumph (and more than a few scorching words), where Cornelia had only failed

miserably.

William remembered what he‘d said to Matilda that night a few weeks past: You have

taught me strength, and tolerance, and you have given me maturity. What I thought, and felt,

fifteen years ago, are no longer so clear to me.

He‘d thought about those words a great deal since. William had initially spoken them as a

comfort to Matilda, but even as they slid smoothly from his lips William had realised their truth—and the greater truth that lay beneath them. Matilda had been god-sent, he was sure of it.

He had learned from her strength and tolerance and maturity, and it was not simply that what he had felt fifteen years ago was not now so clear to him.

What he had felt two thousand years ago was not now so clear to him. The great peaks of

love and hate he‘d felt then had been smoothed out by his marriage to Matilda. Bitterness and

hatred and love; all had been…modified.

Gentled. He did not yearn for Swanne with the passion he once had, and when he thought

on Caela then his thoughts were strangely tolerant, given his once all-consuming hatred of her

when she had been Cornelia. Above all, Matilda had taught him what it was to be a good

husband, and William was aware that he had once been a very bad husband indeed.

He shifted a little on his horse, newly uncomfortable. How might his life have been

different two thousand years earlier if he had been a tolerant husband, rather than a hateful one?

How might his life have been altered if he had studied Cornelia with the understanding Matilda

had given him, rather than with Brutus‘ indifferent callousness?

Suddenly one of the hounds bayed, and the huntsmen shouted, and William jerked out of

his reverie.

―There!‖ cried Walter, and William followed his friend‘s pointing finger and, indeed,

there it ran—a huge red stag bounded through the dappled shadows of the forest.

William swept the bow from his back and fitted an arrow, digging his heels into the

flanks of his stallion and guiding him only with voice and knees.

The horse bounded forwards, his hooves pounding through the grassland, then crashing

through the first line of shrubs in the forest.

The stag careered before William, leaping first this way, now that, his head raised, his

eyes panicked, his nostrils flaring.

Behind William crashed the horses of his companions, but they raced a full six or seven

paces behind him, and it was William who had the first clear shot.

The stag bounded behind a dense thicket, and William let his arrow fly.

It struck, he heard it, as he heard the cry of the stag and the sound of its heavy body

plunging to the forest floor.

―I have him!‖ William cried as he seized the reins of his stallion and pulled the beast to a

plunging, snorting halt. He lifted his right leg over the horse‘s wither, jumping to the ground, and

ran behind the thicket, his knife drawn.

The stag lay convulsing in a carpet of fallen leaves and dried summer grasses, the arrow

through his left eye.

William‘s strides slowed, and he drifted to a halt, staring at the stag.

Except it was no longer a stag lying there at all, but his father, Silvius, his hands to the

arrow, his voice screaming to his son for aid.

Sick to his stomach, William took a step forward, then stopped, the knife suddenly loose

in his sweatdampened hand.

Silvius was no longer screaming. Instead he stared at his son, his hands still about the

arrow, blood and gore dripping down his cheek. You shall not have her! he whispered within

William‘s mind. Never have her! You had your chance. She”s mine now.

―No!‖ William said, very low. His gaze was fixed on his father.

Never have her…

Something flowed forth from Silvius, and William took an intuitive step back. It was evil.

Malignant evil, seeping from every pore of his father‘s body.

You shall never have her…she”s lost to you now…

―No!‖ William said again.

And took another step back.

―My lord?‖ Walter Fitz Osbern walked up beside William, his eyes drifting between

William and the downed stag, now screaming with a harsh, guttural cry. ―My lord? Should I…?‖