Gods Concubine by Sara Douglass
Table of Contents:
Dedication
Part One
Standing on the banks of the Thames …
London, March 1939
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Part Two
As in days of old, …
London, March 1939
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Part Three
It is an opinion generally received, …
London, March 1939
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Part Four
―Pay me my fare, …
London, March 1939
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Part Five
Don‘t jump on the cracks, …
London, March 1939
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Part Six
With Edward‘s gentle piety was blended …
London, March 1939
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Part Seven
Among the school-boys in my memory …
London, March 1939
One
Two
Three
Four
Fiv
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Glossary
Part One
1050
Standing on the banks of the Thames …
Standing on the banks of the Thames on his arrival into Britain, Brutus said:
“I will here, our kind to enjoy,
A city for the love of Troy,
For Troy was so noble a city,
Troia Nova the name shall be…”
Then came a king, Lud was his name,
And made a gate in the walls of the same,
Caer Lud the name became…
When Saxons came that name was strange,
Their own speech they did prefer,
They called the city Luden or London
And the name soon became
London in the Saxon tongue.
Robert Mannyng of Brunne,
Chronicle, 1303,
translation by Sara Douglass
London, March 1939
Jack Skelton woke just before dawn. He lay in the cold grey light, staring at the just
discernible shape of his uniform hanging on the back of the door. Violet Bentley had put him in
the tiny spare bedroom on the first floor of her and Frank”s cramped terrace house in Highbury.
It was a child”s bedroom, really, kitted out with what was probably either Frank”s or Violet”s
own childhood single bed that was far too short for Skelton”s tall frame, and with a garishly
bright hooked rug on the floor, a plywood closet, a ladderbacked wooden chair, and floral cotton
curtains that were, if the roll of heavy black twill behind the chair was any indication, soon to be replaced with blackout curtains.
Skelton thought he”d never been in a more depressing room, not in any of his lives. Its
melancholy lay not in the cheap hand-me-down furniture, nor in its austerity, but in the sad
attempt to make it homely. If Violet had just managed to resist the rug then the room might have
managed some dignity.
If only.
But then, was not life full of “if onlys”?
If only he”d not corrupted his entire life (lives) with the murder of his father, Silvius.
If only he”d been a better husband to Cornelia in both of the lives she”d been his wife.
If only he”d recognised her for what she truly was.
If only he”d been able to reach her before Asterion”s hate-fuelled fire had…
Jack lay still, barely breathing, dragging his mind away from the fire. He thought about
his walk through London last night, remembered Genvissa—Stella Wentworth now—and her
stunning beauty, and the way she had turned away from him when he had asked after Cornelia.
He remembered Loth, Walter Herne, who had tormented him with questions.
And Asterion, haunting his footsteps as he had haunted them for three thousand years.
“Cornelia?” Skelton whispered into the sorry grey dawn light.
Then, after a long moment: “Eaving?”
ONE
Wessex, England
Winter 1050
The timber hall was fully eighty feet end to end and twenty broad. Doors leading to the
outside pierced both of the long walls midway down their length, allowing people exit to the
latrines, or to the kitchens for more food, while trapdoors in the sixty-foot-high beamed roof
allowed the smoke egress when weather permitted: otherwise, the fumes from the four heating
pits in the floor drifted about the hall until they escaped whenever someone opened an outer
door. Many of the hall‘s upright timbers were painted red and gold in interweaving Celtic
designs; the heights were hung with almost one hundred shields.
Tonight both painted designs and shields were barely visible. The hall was full of smoke,
heat, and raucous, good-humoured noise. Men and women, warriors and monks, earls, thegns,
wives and maidens, sat at the trestle tables which ran the length of the hall while thralls, children
and dogs scampered about, either serving wine, cider or ale, or nosing out the scraps of meat that
had fallen to the rush-covered floor. The wedding feast had been in progress for some three
hours. Most of the boiled and roasted meats had been consumed, the cheeses were all gone, the
sweet, spiced omelettes were little more than congealed yolky fragments on platters, and the
scores of loaves of crusty bread had been reduced to the odd crumb that further marred the food-
and alcohol-stained table linens and fed the mice in the rushes darting among the booted feet of
the revellers.
At the head of the hall stood a dais. Before the dais a juggler sat on a three-legged stool,
so drunk that his occasional attempts to tumble his woollen balls and his sharp-edged knives
achieved little else save than to further bloody his fingers.
A group of musicians—still sober, although they desperately wished otherwise—played
bagpipes and flutes from one side of the dais, their music lost within the shouting and singing of
the revellers, the thumping of tables by those demanding their wine cups be refilled without
delay, and the shrieks and barks of children and dogs writhing hither and thither under the tables
and between the legs of the feasters.
In contrast to the wild enthusiasm of the hundreds of guests within the body of the hall,
most of the fifteen or so people who sat at the table on the dais were noticeably restrained.
At the centre of the table sat a man of some forty or forty-one years, although his long,
almost white-blond hair, his scraggly greying beard, his thin, ascetic face and the almost
perpetually downturned corners of his tight mouth made him appear much older. He wore a long,
red and blue, richly-textured linen tunic, embroidered about its neck, sleeves and hem with silken
threads and semi-precious stones, and girdled with gold and silver. His right hand, idly toying
with his golden, jewelled wine cup, was broad and strong, the hand of a swordsman, although its
begemmed fingers were soft and pale: it had been many years since that hand had held anything
but a pen or a wine cup.
His eyes were of the palest blue: flinty enough to make any miscreant appearing before
him blurt out a confession without thought; cold enough to make any woman think twice before
attempting to use the arts of Eve upon him. Currently, his eyes flitted about the hall marking
every crude remark, every groping hand, every mouth stained red with wine.
And with every movement of his eyes, every sin noted, his mouth crimped just that little
bit more until it appeared that he had eaten something so foul his body would insist on spewing it
forth at any moment.
On his head rested a golden crown, as thickly encrusted with jewels as his fingers.
He was Edward, King of England, and he was sitting in the hall of the man he regarded as
his greatest enemy: Godwine, the Earl of Wessex.
Godwine sat on Edward‘s left hand, booming with cheer and laughter where Edward sat
quiet and still. The earl was a large man, thickly muscled after almost forty-five years spent on
the battlefield, his begemmed hands, where they lifted his wine cup to his mouth, sinewy and
tanned, his eyes as watchful as Edward‘s, but without the judgement.
The reason for Godwine‘s cheer and Edward‘s bilious silence, as for the entire
tumultuous celebration, sat on Edward‘s right, her eyes downcast to her hands folded demurely
in her lap, her food sitting largely untouched on the platter before her.
She was Eadyth, commonly called Caela, Godwine‘s cherished thirteen-year-old
daughter, and now Edward‘s wife and Queen of England.
The marriage had been a compromise, hateful to Edward, triumphant for Godwine. If
Edward married the earl‘s daughter, then Godwine would continue to support his throne. If
not…well then, Godwine would ensure that Edward spend the last half of his life in exile, much
as he had spent the first half (staying as far away from his murderous stepfather, King Cnut, as
possible). If Edward wanted to keep the throne then he needed Godwine‘s support, and
Godwine‘s support came only at the price of wedding his daughter.