Godiva (7 page)

“Wait a moment,” Sweyn said, and taking a step, grabbed her arm and pulled her back to him.

If ever in her life she felt the impulse to throw away her virtue, it was that moment. Both of them were looking at his hand on her arm; both of them knew how easily he could have overpowered her. She gave him an inviting smile.

“That's more like it,” she said. She was trembling slightly, only in part from the night air. He took the trembling to mean sincerity.

“You would do this?” he whispered.

“You would not?” she whispered back. “How many times have you imagined taking me, since you first came to your earldom?”

“As many times as you
wished
me to imagine it,” he said.

“Do you always do as I wish?”

“I am learning not to,” he said, and released her arm.

“All right then,” she said, releasing the mantle. It slid to the ground sinuously in a pool around her ankle boots, and at once the cold crept up her fluted sleeves. She took his hand. “Do as
you
wish.” She pressed his palm against her rib cage. It was deliciously alarming; no man but Leofric had ever been so near to her before by her will.

But he pulled his hand away, as if she had scalded it. “My lady, stop that,” he said. “I see what you are doing now. It is unkind.”

“What is unkind?”

Although they were alone in the darkness, he lowered his voice to less than a whisper; the air hardly moved as his lips shaped the words: “You are mocking my . . . impotence. Or perhaps”—and here his voice returned to normal—“you are testing me. Which is commendable of you, however oddly you are going about it.”

“I am not mocking you,” she said quickly. “I would never do that. I am offering you an alternative, because I'm fond of you. If you want to have me for an hour and call me Edgiva, I will not judge you for it.”

He did not bother to deny the name.

“That would make it worse.”

“Then use me to forget about her for an hour.”

“It would not work.”

“You insult me.”

“I do not mean to. But I know my heart in this.”

“I do not require your heart,” she said. “You may save your heart for Edey.”

There was a silence, and it was too dim for her to read his face. She wished she had not said that, for it would be a terribly awkward matter getting away from him if he took her offer. And she wished she had not doffed her mantle—the chill was moving through her clothes.

“I think you are testing me. If not, then I am testing myself. So I say no. All my capacity for passion is invested in her. The world's most cunning prostitute would not stir me.”

“You sound like a moon-drunk girl!” Godiva said. Approvingly. But then, sternly: “Does that mean her virtue is at risk if she is near you? You resist the temptation I offer because you want her, and I approve of that, but tempted by the chance to take her . . . ?” She let it hang in the air.

“What a ridiculous thing to ask me; of course I am going to tell her dearest friend that I would guard her virtue with my life.” He chuckled.

“I can arrange an assignation,” Godiva whispered impulsively.

He gasped slightly; she could not see him clearly but could nearly feel the heat rise to his face. “You
are
testing me,” he replied.

“I can arrange an assignation,” she repeated slowly.

He took in a slow, pained breath and let it out with a slow, pained sigh. “What a little tormentor you are!”

“Will you meet with her alone?”

“I . . . of course not!” he said. “By Olaf's bones, that would be disastrous. I can hardly
speak
in her presence.”

“You would not need to speak,” Godiva said.

“Now I know you're testing me, and this is nonsense,” he said. “Edgiva would not do that, even if she wished to, so you are offering me something I'd have to take by force, and I would not do that to a woman I find so excellent in all regards. This is an unfortunate flaring of desire that has no future and I must simply ride it out—”

“So to speak.”

“The abbess does not deserve to be spoken of in such a manner,” Sweyn said, very cross.

That convinced her. She stood on tiptoe, kissed his cheek, and then gave it a mothering pat. He was worthy of Edey.

“And there she is, at it
again,
” said Edward's tenor nasality from behind her. “Mind your wench, Mercia. If you so readily cede that which the Holy Church has given you, you should not be surprised if other possessions slip out of your grasp as well.”

She turned quickly to see her husband, illuminated by a torch at the doorjamb, standing in the door, wearing only his shirt with his mantle wrapped around him, looking something between amused and embarrassed; the king, in bed-robes, was disappearing back into the darkened hall.

Godiva immediately knelt, grabbed her mantle, and with the awkwardness of chilled limbs, began to wrap it around herself. Sweyn took one very large step sideways.

“By Odin's wounds, your wife's intentions toward me were entirely decorous,” Sweyn said. Godiva had never seen him nearly so demure. “She was only testing my devotion to another.”

“I know what she was doing,” Leofric said drily. “The problem, wife, is that
you
do not know what you have done.”

Part 2

CHAPTER 7

Hereford

S
weyn had planned to hunt with the king the next morning, as many of the earls were doing—Great Councils always met near the best hunting grounds. But upon hearing the abbess required an escort, he gave regrets to the king and his huntsman and ordered his housecarls to prepare for departure at dawn, when the stone cathedral's bells tolled Prime. So Edgiva rode pillion behind a lay brother, in a convoy with Sweyn and his housecarls, as far as Hereford.

It was a rough day's ride, over hilly terrain, in raw weather, with no spring flowers worth the notice to liven the road. Truly, Edgiva was glad of the hard pace they kept because it would make casual conversation impossible. She spent the morning with gloved hands clenching the grips, head bowed, praying to St. Pelagia for protection from sexual defilement. Sweyn gave her no reason for it; it was her own heart's pounding that alarmed her.

She had assumed—as Godiva teased her often—that she had been born without the urge to mate, or even to crave that manner of attention. It was such joy and yet such agony to spot him out of the corner of her eye as they rode. He looked so maddeningly handsome in his fawn-colored leather gear and cloak, on his mare—even that he rode a mare, she could hear Godiva japing filthily and gleefully about this, and her cheeks reddened and she had to consciously control her breathing.

He made it worse—although he did not mean to—when after the brief break for a midday meal near a flowering pussy willow, as they were walking the horses for a stretch, he reined his mount up alongside the one she rode on and struck up a conversation with her. He was so obviously eager to entertain her; she became embarrassed for him, that everyone in the riding party could surely read his interest. He was an overeager pup, with more energy than the rest of the travelers combined. Had his horse gone lame, she thought, he could easily have carried the creature home and arrived undiminished in his vigor.

He invited her to stay on an extra day in Hereford to make pilgrimage to St. Ethelbert's tomb at the cathedral. She said she would consider it gladly, as she had desired anyhow to visit with the brothers of St. Guthlac's.

“You will be amazed how holy our Hereford is,” Sweyn promised, wide-eyed with desire to impress. “We have an
enormous
number of relics.”

“I know your roster,” said Edgiva with a maternal smile. “I hope it will not crush your pride to learn that little Leominster boasts far more. We have Earl Leofric chiefly to thank for that.”

They spoke of the arranged and so far fruitless marriage that had made them legal kin: Sweyn's sister Edith to Edgiva's uncle Edward.

“I was never fond of Edith,” Sweyn confessed. “And she was never fond of me. I am the most expansive sibling, and she the most implosive. I am Jupiter to her Saturn.” He grinned at her. “Do you prefer I not make pagan references, Mother?”

“Of course not. The stars and planets were here, and worshiped and studied, long before Our Lord was born. A newer wisdom need not defame an older one.”

“Sounds like the sort of thing Bishop Lyfing would say,” Sweyn said, approvingly.

Edgiva smiled. “I take that as a compliment.”

Sweyn then began to boast to her of his excellent treatment of Hereford's serfs and slaves. This had been her fervent cause at the Great Council some eighteen months earlier; she was surprised he remembered, as he had not seemed so very interested himself back then. He was only telling her now because he wanted her approval, surely.

He had it. Merely by existing, by having that smile, that voice, those eyes. She was appalled at herself for this. With the exception of her dearest childhood friend—whose behavior she forgave in her heart over and over and over again—Edgiva was exacting in her appraisal of people. Especially of men. Let a man prove his character through actions, not words, and he earned her regard. It should not be the case that he win it with a grin. Grins did not deserve regard. Grins were just grins.

She adored his grin.

She abruptly turned the talk to the heregeld, and whether Godiva was likely to convince enough lords to actually sign their mark to a petition.

“Godiva, I believe, can convince near anyone of near anything,” said Sweyn. “I speak as one of her perennial victims.”

“You have a weakness for a pretty face,” said Edgiva, not daring to look at him. She supposed her face was not unattractive, but she had never, until this week, cared much about that. Nor about her undelicate hands or unmusical voice.

“It is not just her pretty face,” Sweyn said. “She is the most disarming person I have ever met. Even when she approaches me with that look of purpose in her eye, and I steel myself for it, determined to ignore her charm, somehow within two birdsongs she has wrested something from me I was not prepared to give—and I do not begrudge her for it. In fact, I feel pleased with myself for having pleased her. I do not understand how she does that, but she does it very well. She is Leofric's most potent weapon.”

Edgiva felt a strange tightness in her gut, an alien sensation she supposed must be jealousy, although she would much sooner have attributed it to riding in this chill. To be jealous of anyone was a sin; of one's dearest friend, a worse one. She clutched the support bar of the pillion harder and wished as she bobbed along that she could will the feeling in her gut away.

“I enjoy Godiva's cheerful subverting of men's scheming,” she said. “I do not admit that to her, but I see the games of intrigue the lords and bishops do play, and I do not like them. I do not like the duplicity. What she does is no worse, and ofttimes, much better. There is generally beneficence to her scheming. She would never plot to hurt anyone or undermine them. However much she meddles, it is always with a happy intention.”

“Excellently put, Mother.”

“But sometimes I do fret for her,” Edgiva continued. “Sometimes Godiva believes she is merely lighting a little candle somewhere when really she is heaving oil upon a bonfire. I am so grateful for her taking up my cause against the heregeld, but I am aware it is a complex matter, and Godiva is not at her best with complexity of any kind.”

Sweyn laughed. “True enough, that. And Edward seems not to like her. Were she any woman but Leofric's, I hate to think what he would scheme to do to her.”

Edgiva winced then. “Edward troubles me,” she admitted quietly. “Kinsman though he be.”

“He is better than Harthacnut,” said Sweyn.

“That saying has sustained Edward on the throne for three years now,” said Edgiva. “Soon he will need more praise than simply being better than Harthacnut.”

T
hey changed to fresh horses at a posting station and set off at a hard trot; the ceasing of conversation made Edgiva no less aware of what a beautiful color of light brown Sweyn's hair was, or how well his short cloak sat pushed back over his shoulders, or how dashingly his eyebrows swept up at the edges, or how obedient his mare was under him. Sometimes she was dizzy.

T
hey had left very early, and reached Hereford by nightfall, as it began to drizzle. An outrider had been sent ahead, and food—not quite a supper—was waiting in the hall. Sweyn's bower contained a small guest chamber adjacent to his own sleeping quarters. Most visitors were quartered in the hall, but when Godwin or the king came through, Sweyn took this smaller room and yielded his own to his superior. His chamberlain offered Edgiva the smaller room and she accepted it, both gratefully and warily. Alone for a few moments, she offered God a psalm and St. Christopher a prayer of thanks for safe arrival. Then, as a reassuring ritual more than an act of faith, she rapidly recited nine Pater Nostrums. She finished with a plea to the Great Mother for inner calm, as the women of the forests had taught her in her herbal foragings. It was no skin off St. Christopher's nose to share the gratitude; was Gaia not also Terra Mater to St. Christopher?

A serving girl called Aisly brought her a basin of water and a stiff, dry towel. With weary gratitude, she washed herself before dressing again for dinner. Over her tunic she refastened her still-dusty scapular, belt, wimple, and veil. All of it was dark and drab; for the first time in her life, Edgiva wished she had something pretty to draw attention to her face. How Godiva would cackle to know that! . . . And how she would then have lovingly helped Edgiva to indulge the vanity.

“I will confess this all when I am home,” she promised herself softly. From the packet of medicinal herbs she always carried with her she pulled out a small leather-bound codex, her only private possession, and looked around the room for a quill and ink. She could not find one, so she spoke to the book instead of writing in it. “I will do penance and I will cleanse it from my soul. And I promise,” she added with a wince, “to be more compassionate when others come to me bewailing this condition of the liver. I have never understood their complaints as I do now. Thank you, Mother Mary, for visiting upon me this atrocious experience. I understand now why I have been subjected to it.”

B
ecause Earl Sweyn had been gone for days—and because he returned with an esteemed religious lady as his guest—there was a festive air to supper, however drab the oysters were that had been carted in barrels up from Gloucester. The vegetables and bread were mushy from being reheated several times whenever the porter thought the earl was arriving. But the seasonings were splendid compared to the dull fare of the abbey, or even of the king's kitchen. The table was decorated with primrose and sweet violet blossoms and painted eggs taken from a growing pile resting in straw near the entrance to the kitchens.

She was seated beside him, as the honored guest. Throughout the meal, she was distracted by his presence. She wished that he were not so handsome, that his voice were not so resonant, that his shoulders were not quite so broad. She began to resent him for it. Halfway through the meal, he rose to circulate among his reeves and servants, to greet them after his absence. Her whole right side felt colder and somehow lonely when he was no longer near her, and she felt far too happy when he returned, even though he did not acknowledge her. She tried to turn her mind from noticing him at all and recited the
Pater Nostrum
in silence to regain her composure. Over and over again she did it, until she was successful; Sweyn moved away again at one point and she did not even notice.
There, you see?
she told herself.
'Tis nothing. I am well.

On the Road

T
he earl and lady of Mercia, and the earl's son Alfgar, reached holy Evesham that evening as a light rain began. The abbot of St. Mary's graciously received them after Compline services were done.

They had ridden on good horses at a moderate pace that was too hard for idle chatter. But still Leofric seemed more taciturn than usual. In the small, low-ceilinged room where the couple would sleep that night, as they were rinsing the road dust off their faces, Leofric did not look at her, and responded to attempts at conversation with indistinct, disinterested grunts. She stretched her limbs gracefully but broadly, directly in his line of sight, lunging from one knee to the other to relieve the tension of a day in the saddle. Leofric always,
always,
watched her when she did this, enjoying the flash of ankle she revealed. This time he ignored her. Was he upset with her for testing Sweyn? For prompting those other lords to support Edgiva's charter?

“What have you done with my husband?” Godiva asked him finally, standing straight and removing her travel veil.

He was taken aback. “What?”

“I am in possession of one husband, who, while not known for expansive lightheartedness, is still a commendable partner for conversation and even the odd bit of banter. Whoever you are, you have taken possession of his body and I demand to know where you have put the rest of him.”

Leofric attempted, wanly, to smile. “He is off worrying about things,” he said. “And he did not want you to worry with him.”

“But I always worry with him. I am extremely good at lightening his load.”

“Perhaps this time you
are
his load.”

She frowned as she unpinned her wimple. “Oh, I see what this is about, then. Too much flirtation, is it? Even though it was to advance a good cause that surely you support?”

“Not too much by my estimation. Too much by the king's.”

“Yes, he had quite the chance of encountering me at moments that looked much naughtier than they were. Poor frightened Aldred—”

“God's wounds, it was not
chance,
Godiva,” Leofric said. “Last evening he assigned two servants to tail you and to report back to him whenever you were in a conversation with any man, even in a public place. I almost believe he wanted me to notice.” He gave her a tight-lipped grimace. “He knows you worked your charms on all the thanes you wrested vows from for the petition. You are quite out of the favor of His Majesty. Which means I might be also. At a time when he is looking for excuses to bare his claws. So as good a cause as it may be, in the name of Woden, leave the heregeld problem to Edgiva.”