I Am the Chosen King (11 page)

Edward’s expression was turning petulant. Godwine stepped closer and added, so that only he could hear, “You would not want such eminent men to deny your request for a new palace, Sire? I remind you that the public purse is low and we may yet receive another invasion from across the North Sea this summer. There will be ships to provision, men to pay. The Guilds will not accept any rise in taxation…” He let the words falter, locked eyes with Edward. “You may need to fund the building from your own treasury.” He said no more, allowed the words that would have followed to run as a silent but potent:
If you want your palace, leave the old laws be
.

Edward glared with what almost amounted to hatred at the silent men watching him, some with heads ducked, a few brazenly outstaring him as Harold and Godwine were doing. “It is a matter,” Godwine concluded, “of liberal interpretation. We bow our heads to the laws of the church, so long as those laws allow us to follow the laws of our ancestors. And besides, it would be foolish, would it not, to ally with Baldwin of Flanders before we are certain whether he intends to go with, or against, Magnus of Norway?”

Edward scowled.
Damn Godwine
he thought.
Damn the bloody, arrogant, meddling man.
He turned his back and stalked alone to the council chamber with an expression of dark, rumbling thunder.

He had regretted the decision to take Edith Godwine’s daughter as wife within twenty and four hours of announcing it. The arrogance of Godwine! Robert Champart’s idea had been to restrain the insufferable Earl, to bind him neck, ankle and wrist. It had not occurred to either of them that betrothal to Edith might unlock the few chains of subordination that already existed and leave only a redoubled ambition for power. Oh, the plan had worked well at first—when Godwine had ridden into Winchester and so easily broken his alliance with the Queen—damn her meddling eyes. She was already prevailing upon notable men of the church to mount a plea of innocence on her behalf. It was only a matter of time before he would be forced to show public compassion to the manipulative old hag. Well, time wasting could be stretched two ways.

For their defiance this day, Godwine and Harold would be made to feel as much frustration as he did with them. Godwine would be made to wait! While this betrothal stood, Edith could not enter into agreement with anyone else. Godwine could seek no other alliance for her. If he required the help of other noble houses, well, let him force Harold into a Christian marriage.

Edward’s contempt took in every face, every expression as the men of his Witan filed into the council chamber and took their seats.

Godwine and Harold—aye and all those other squirming toads—would pay dearly for this day’s defiance. Edward grunted a bitter, hollow sound.
I do not forget.
Never, do I forget
, he thought.
It is the one acceptable trait that I appear to have inherited, in full, from my mother.

Southwark

But Mother!” Tears of annoyed frustration were beginning to fall down Edith’s cheeks. Irritably she brushed at her right eye; weeping, she knew of old, would not get her mother’s sympathy. “Tears are for the tragedies of life, not the minor incidents,” Gytha had often remarked.

A maidservant entered from the outer Hall carrying a basket containing hanks of spun red-dyed wool. Gytha pointed to the floor beside her loom. “Place it here, Fræda.”

The girl bobbed a curtsey and left the chamber through the same door.

Edith, sitting hunched and dejected on a stool, was trembling with anger and frustration. “I am ashamed before the court, before all England. The King will not allow me to enter into his Hall. Will not allow me through the gates at Thorney…I was turned away, Mother! Not an hour since, turned away!”

Gytha was standing at her loom, threading stone weights upon the ends of the warp threads. This latest family crisis permitting, she intended to begin a new cloth today; the youngest boys were in desperate need of new tunics—how fast they grew! She dropped a weight, bent to retrieve it, inspecting the ring of stone with care to ensure no crack ran through it. With a sigh she answered her daughter. “Edward has been a bachelor for so many years, child. It must be difficult for him to adjust to the prospect of taking a wife into his bed.”

A fresh cry rose from Edith’s lips. “He will never take me to his bed, though, will he? Not now! He detests the sight of me, has set me aside. I am shamed. I may as well retire to a convent or drown myself in the Thames!”

Gytha was losing patience; she had much to do this afternoon. Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring Edith from Wilton? At the nunnery all this delaying on Edward’s part would have passed her by. “Two rather extreme solutions, do you not think, daughter?” she responded with mild derision. “If Edward truly no longer wants you, then your father will simply find you an alternative husband.”

“If there is any man desperate enough. Who would want me now—would take a king’s cast-off as wife?”

Plenty of men
, Gytha mused.
Men who would be only too pleased to ride on the back of Godwine’s position and fortune, regardless of the status of the daughter.
But it was an unkind thought, she kept it to herself.

Edith had always been a capricious child, her moods changing as frequently as the direction of the wind. The Countess supposed that most of it was because she had been the only girl child among so many boys. There was no denying that the girl had been spoilt in compensation for having no sisters, for always being the one left out. The boys had pursued their interests in hunting, sailing, fishing, riding…male occupations. What had there been for Edith? Education, sewing, cooking, weaving. The use and lore of herbs. Just as the boys were expected to follow in their father’s steps, Edith was destined to become a wife and mistress of some grand household. Young ladies did not hunt or sail, did not come home of an evening muddied and bloodied, as so frequently had the boys.

Edith leapt from her stool, toppling it to the rush-covered floor, her fists clenched, fair hair tossing. “This is all Father’s fault! His and Harold’s! Father has been deliberately antagonising Edward for weeks and now Harold has upset him by taking a common-born as his whore. I do not know how you permit it, Mother, he is your son, you ought have more care for his morals!”

“Your brother is a man grown, my dear. His morals are for his own conscience, not mine. Yours neither, for that matter, nor the King’s.”

As her rage grew, Edith missed the brusque note in her mother’s tone. “Edward has denounced Father as contemptuous and defiant, Harold as un-Christian and immoral. Is it a wonder that he now does not want me as wife?”

With the first two statements Gytha had no occasion to disagree. She had heard the same complaints last night from her indignant husband as he prepared for bed. He had stamped around the bed chamber, hurling clothes to the floor as he removed them, cursing Edward’s unreasonable peevishness the louder with each discarded garment. She answered her daughter as she had answered her husband: “Edward is finding his feet in the matter of government. He blows hot and cold, like the weather, because he is insecure. For too long was he left in Normandy. An unwanted boy, a man without home, country or place in society, neither follower nor leader. Suddenly he finds himself a king, with the incompetence of his father hanging over him and the interference of his mother to contend with. He has been released from the cage, but his wings remain stiff. One day soon he will realise that he can fly, independent of the demands of others.”

Gytha was ever reluctant to see evil or weakness in any man or woman. Not everyone, she believed, found their strength, their talent or gift with ease.

“Edward is impulsive and inconstant because he is not yet sure of his own ability to make a correct decision. By next week he will be condemning some other inconsequential matter, my daughter. Leave this latest quarrel to burn itself out.”

“Why has father not apologised to the King for so upsetting him at that first meeting of Council a few days past?” Edith demanded to know. “And would it be so difficult for Harold to appease the King and take a daughter of Baldwin of Flanders—to return his slut, bag and baggage, back to the Nazeing midden hut whence she came? Both of them, Father and Harold, are jeopardising my future for their own swollen-headed pride!”

When the serving girl, Fræda, had left the room she had pulled the door closed behind her, but the latch had not caught. A stray gust of wind trumpeting through the open Hall doors had buffeted against it and nudged it ajar, before running off to ruffle the wall tapestries.

Ordinarily, it would not have mattered; indeed, Gytha often left the door open. On this day, however, while Edith Godwinesdaughter was tormenting herself out of all proportion with the cruelties of fate, Harold’s Edyth was seated not two yards from the chamber door in the public Hall, delightedly beating Gytha’s nephew, Beorn, at a game of
tæfl
, a board game she had played often with her father. She was immensely enjoying this particular match because Harold had bought her the set for her own yesterday. The checkered squares were made from ivory and jet with the playing pieces carved from horses’ teeth, the details on each “soldier” set with gold and minutely cut gems of sapphire and ruby. It was exquisite, while the game against Beorn, which she was winning, demanded all her skill.

Beorn’s move. He sat well forward on his stool, concentration etched into his wrinkled frown. By Thor’s Hammer, the girl had outmanoeuvred him! As far as he could see, he was surrounded on four sides and captured. He lifted his hands in surrender. “I have never lost to a woman before, but as you are so strikingly beautiful, I’ll not hold that against you.”

Edyth laughed and began setting the pieces in place for another game. “If it eases the pain of losing,” she jested, “I have never claimed victory over so handsome a young man before.”

“What?” a voice boomed from behind her shoulder, “do you say this upstart who has monopolised you this past hour is more handsome than me? Shame on you, woman!” Harold, returning from checking his lame stallion, affectionately kissed Edyth’s cheek.

“You, my Lord,” she answered, twisting her head to look at him, her eyes sparkling with merriment, “are over twenty years of age. You cannot claim to be a young man.”

“Agh!” He clutched at his wounded heart. “Not only am I not handsome, I am also in my dotage!” He shooed Edyth off her stool, sat himself and pulled her down on to his knee.

“How is the horse?” Beorn asked, making the first move of another game.

“Oh, ’tis nothing serious, a swollen fetlock. Fool animal must have twisted it on the way home from Thorney yester-eve.” Some of the gaiety left Harold as he remembered the previous day and yet another confrontation with a fault-finding Edward, But who cared about Edward’s petty foibles when he had his dearest Edyth beside him?

The Hall had been full of activity: servants hammering a loose trestle-table plank back into position; a woman singing as she vigorously swept the timber floor of the raised dais on which stood Godwine’s high table. But by a quirk of fate, a jest from the gods, for a moment the building fell quiet. The floor rushes whispered from a rustle of wind and from the private chamber shrilled Harold’s sister’s distressed voice: “And would it be so difficult for Harold to appease the King and take a daughter of Baldwin of Flanders—to return his slut, bag and baggage, back to the Nazeing midden hut whence she came?”

Edyth blanched, her teeth biting hard into her bottom lip to stem a ragged cry. This was too much to bear! She ought to have stayed at home where she belonged. Her coming to London had created nothing but difficulties. Edith disliked her. The King disapproved of her, was furious with Harold and his father. Harold must be feeling a prize fool for bringing her here, but was too kind-hearted to admit it. What was he doing with her, a mere thegn’s daughter?

She would not weep in public, not before Harold’s young cousin or the servants. They had all heard, of course, would be sneering behind her back, as Edith was. Nor would she weep in front of Harold. Edyth stood, brushing aside his hold. “I have a woman’s matter to attend,” she stated. She walked, with all the dignity she could summon, from the Hall, out into the blustering drizzle.

The wind caught at her veil. She tore the thing from her head. Were she at home in Nazeing she would have run to the woods or to the field to bury her head in her pony’s mane. Edyth ran instead up to the walkway that strode along the top of the stronghold’s outer timber walls. Only the watchguards stood up there, and they would mind their own business.

Harold took a few sharp, angry steps after her, then altered course and stormed into his mother’s chamber, slamming the door hard against the timber and plaster wall. His mother and sister looked up, startled. Gytha guessed instantly what had occurred, but her daughter’s ill temper only increased at the sight of her brother.

“You have ruined my prospects for marriage by being so inconsiderate—” but she got no further, for Harold was across the room, his hands gripping her shoulders.

“Since the day of your birth you have been cosseted and indulged. In this, I am as much to blame as my mother, father and brothers, but there will be no more of it from this quarter, my girl! Do you hear, no more!” As he shouted, his hands, none too gently, shook her. “I will tell you this. Listen well. I have no intention of allying with Baldwin of Flanders. I love and admire Edyth, and I intend to hold her as mine until the day of my death—and aye, even beyond. She is my chosen woman, will be the mother of my children, and neither you, the King, nor the damned Pope in Rome will force us apart. Do I make myself clear?” He shook her once more, thrust her down on a stool and turned to his mother. Muscles, jaw and fists clenched, he exhaled several shuddering breaths and, reining in his temper, apologised to the Countess. “Forgive the manner of my entrance and my harsh words, my Lady Mother. My woman heard what was said here this day and it has upset her, as it has upset me also. I think it is time that my sister learnt a lesson in humility.”

Edith was outraged. She flew to her feet and ran to her mother. “Are you going to allow him to speak to me like this? Say something to him, Mother! Order him to apologise at once!”

Gytha had no hesitation. She would not tolerate fools or bullies; less still would she tolerate dishonour. Her hand came out and struck Edith across the cheek. “If anyone has brought shame on this house, then it is you by insulting a newcomer to our family who sleeps with my blessing beneath this roof. Perhaps it is your own arrogance that is turning the King against you, and nothing that my husband or your brother has done.”

Edith, struck dumb, stared at her mother. She drew a breath, then turned on Harold. “You would not speak so were either of my brothers present! If Swegn or Tostig were here, they would have whipped you for your spitefully spoken words.”

“But they are not here,” Harold declared pointedly. “Tostig mislikes my company and has gone to join Swegn. To learn how to be defeated by the Welsh.”

“At least two of my brothers are doing their duty for England, not wasting their days and nights whoring with a commoner!”

Harold folded his arms, his expression patronising, words acerbic. “Swegn,” he answered, “could find a whorehouse with his eyes bound. He must know his way around every brothel in the land. Tostig wouldn’t know what to do with either a whore or a Welshman.”

Edith slapped him, hard, then fled the room.

“That,” Harold reflected ruefully, as he rubbed his stinging jaw, “I did not do well.”

“Which part?” Gytha asked neutrally.

Harold shrugged, then offered her a weak, apologetic grin. “All of it?”

Gytha touched her son’s cheek. “Love is a precious thing. Hold it and guard it well, while you may.” She sighed, closed her eyes briefly. “Marriage is no easy thing for a girl who has not the fortune of your Edyth, Harold. Where there is love a marriage is filled with spring blossom and happiness. Where the man takes with no intention of giving, there is naught but winter-bare branches and dark emptiness. Edward holds nothing for Edith, I suspect for no woman. He is using her in an attempt to control your father. As for love…” Gytha opened her hands, palms upward in a gesture of empty despair. “Edward has never known affection; where will my daughter fit into his insular life?” Gytha shrugged, unable to answer her own question. “Tolerate your sister’s outbursts, Harold. They are wrong-footed, but her anger stems from fear of a lonely future without love or compassion.”

Harold considered his mother’s words. Nodded once. He too shrugged in resignation. “I must find Edyth. She has not, I think, much enjoyed London. I will return to my duties in East Anglia as soon as I can, find for us a house place where we can be independent of court and, with respect to your good heart, Mother, of the jealousies that surround your offspring.” He bent forward, placed a light kiss on Gytha’s cheek and left the room.