I Am the Chosen King (15 page)

Leominster

Swegn Godwinesson, resting his arm on the high cantle of his saddle, calmly surveyed the door, firmly closed before him. It was almost midnight and the rain of this cold May month was beginning to fall again with more persistence than the drizzle that had spattered intermittently for most of the day. Already not in the best of moods, Swegn was wet, tired, hungry and in need of a strong drink. He was also wounded, although not so seriously that he desperately required attention. He could probably manage to reach Hereford, but it was further to ride and he had not much inclination to return home. Home? If it was still his home! He would not be surprised to find that the King had decided to give the rest of his border earldom away to that spot-faced, upstart nephew of his, Ralf of Mantes. The damned bastard already had a decent-sized portion of it.

Stiffly, with pain lancing into his left thigh, Swegn dismounted and walked his stallion up to the door.

Ralf of sodding Mantes! Just like that, the boy had been awarded as a sixteenth birthing-day gift a quarter portion of Swegn’s land! Land upon which that cock-sure little stripling had immediately built a bloody great Norman defence—a motte castle with stone keep, bailey, rampart and palisade. A castle that as yet neither of the warring princes of Wales, Gryffydd ap Rhydderch of Deheubarth or Gruffydd ap Llewelyn of Gwynedd, had succeeded in penetrating. Most of Herefordshire and the Marches had succumbed, at one month or another, to their raiding parties; slaughter and bloodletting had been common for years along these borders, increasing as the feuding between the two princes, vying for notoriety and superiority, had escalated. Swegn had been powerless to put a stop to it—until this last initiative. A masterpiece of strategic thinking: put an end to hostilities by pitting one prince against the other.

It had all been so easy! Ride into the northern Welsh lands under a token of truce, gain Gwynedd’s trust and form an alliance with Gruffydd. Ride together into Deheubarth and hit the other Gryffydd hard. It had taken Swegn weeks to set the plan. The irony? It had been damned successful, but he had acted without consulting Edward, therefore Edward condemned the initiative. Swegn was furious. Returning, elated, from Gwynedd, he had been accosted by a group of the King’s men, ordered to accompany them to court and forfeit all rights as earl! He was damned if he would!

Ralf of Mantes, meanwhile, had driven off another attack on his poxed castle, killed one of Gryffydd’s younger brothers and taken a cousin prisoner. The King was delighted with his designated heir’s loyal and prompt action, Ralf of bloody Mantes, as far as Swegn was concerned, could go boil his swollen head in oil.

Putting his hand to the bell-cord, Swegn tugged. How long before Edward heard of his refusal to attend court—of his fight and escape from the King’s housecarls? Three, four days? Damn him! Damn Gryffydd and damn Wales also! Swegn kicked the door with his boot, pulled at the cord harder, again setting the bell swinging and clanging. “Open this sodding door,” he bellowed, “before I torch the thing!” A useless threat. It had been tried before; the oak timbers still bore the blackened marks of Gryffydd’s attempt to enter Leominster convent three seasons past.

A nun slid back the inspection window and peered through. “Who shouts so angrily at God’s door?” she asked tetchily.

“Earl Swegn! Open up, I am in need of shelter and medical aid.”

“It is past midnight, my Lord,” the woman answered pedantically.

“I know it’s past bloody midnight. I also know it is raining and that I am bleeding to death.” That stirred results. The window snapped shut, bolts were withdrawn and the door creaked open wide enough to allow Swegn to lead his horse through.

The porteress eyed him warily, suspicious that a man claiming to be an earl rode with no escort, but he was wet through and the light of her spluttering torch did indeed show blood staining his hose. The man required hospitality and assistance. At her call, a yawning servant shambled from the stables to take the tired animal. She told Swegn to follow her to the guest quarters.

“No. I wish to see the Abbess.”

The Abbess is abed.”

“Wake her.”

“That I cannot do.”

“Then I will.” Swegn snatched the torch from the nun’s hand. If his leg wound was paining him, it made no difference to the way he strode across the courtyard and through a gate to the far left. The woman was already screaming her indignation and tugging frantically at the alarm bell. Nuns and servants were waking, coming at a run, dishevelled, frightened and confused. With the Welsh raiding so frequently and bloodily, their fears were justified.

This was a convent, however, not a fortified castle like the one that Ralf had built. No one stepped in front of Swegn with drawn sword to bar his way, no one challenged him. He ran along the narrow alleyways between buildings, across a smaller courtyard and through another door. A scantily furnished inner chamber, smelling of must and old books, lay in darkness. Swegn raised the torch, located the flight of wooden steps over to the left, took them three at a time. Shouting voices and running footsteps were following, but they were nuns and servants; had they caught up they would have been no match for Swegn. He remembered exactly where to go, though it had been more than five years since last he had been here. Nunneries changed little: a new roof on the chapel, new novices, occasionally a new abbess—but the woman who presided over the sisters at Leominster was not new. Eadgifu had been here for two months more than five years.

Swegn did not knock at her door. He opened it, walked through, banged it shut behind him and dropped the bar in place against intruders. She had already stirred from her bed, disturbed by the noise, had relit a small lamp and was standing in her night shift. Her hair hung loose, cascading down her back, hair that was by day braided tight and bound beneath her holy veil. Her eyes and mouth were wide with a mixture of surprise, anger and shock. Fear, however, was the emotion that thumped in her heart, but she dare not let it show, for this man would see and she could not let him know that she was still, after all these years, in love with him, yet so afraid of him.

Swegn dropped the torch into a sconce, looked around the room to locate drink and goblets, helped himself to the wafers left on a plate and poured a good measure of wine. There was no chair, only one stool. Taking both goblet and jug, Swegn seated himself as he drank thirstily. Stretching out his wounded leg he grimaced, then wiped residue from his mouth. “Well,” he drawled. “Are you not going to welcome me as once you did?”

Eadgifu swung a cloak across her shoulders. “Once,” she answered, “I was a young and impressionable girl. Now I have acquired more sense.”

“You always did have fire in your tongue as well as your belly. Get rid of them. I wish to talk with you.” The last was directed at the anxious shouting beyond the door.

“You may talk freely to me come morning. For now, you ought be in the guest chamber, or perhaps the infirmary.” Eadgifu indicated the wound.

“It is nothing, more blood than anything. You are as capable of cleansing and bandaging it as any of the pox-free virgins locked away in this dungeon.”

Haughtily Eadgifu answered, “I am Abbess, I do not undertake menial tasks.” The best excuse she could think of.

The shouts of concern were growing louder, accompanied by a rhythmical hammering on the door, the bar juddering with each impact.

“You had best call off the pack before they break your door down,” Swegn suggested lightly. He refilled his goblet, drank the contents. “A few words with you, that is all I ask, Eadgifu, then I will go meekly to your little infirmary.”

Swegn, as Eadgifu well knew, had never done anything meekly.

A panel of wood splintered. It would be expensive to replace and the nunnery was already so short of funds. Eadgifu crossed to the door. Pulling it wide, she peered at the concerned assembly crowding the narrow stairwell, noting that several carried makeshift weapons of rakes, hoes—one ageing sister was holding a heavy gold candlestick. They would be cut down like hazel saplings to the hedger’s knife were they to dare attack a man like Swegn.

“Everything is all right,” she reassured them, grateful for their loyalty, yet fearing for their safety. “I am in no danger, this is Swegn Godwinesson who was once a friend of mine. You may leave us and return to your beds.”

The servants and a few of the younger nuns turned away almost immediately, but the elder sisters remained, the one wielding the candlestick planting her legs wide, brandishing her weapon between both hands. Eadgifu inclined her head in gratitude, but commanded, “You may go. Even you, Hilteburge.”

“It is not seemly to have a man in your chambers at this hour, lady. I will stay.”

Swegn came up behind the Abbess, his sword held loose in his hand, as threatening to these ladies of peace as it would have been had he held it ready for use.

“Like she said, I am a friend. Get you gone, old crone.”

Seeing a look of opposition setting on Hilteburge’s stubborn, wrinkled old face, Eadgifu hastily intervened with a tactful compromise. “I will leave the door open, and you shall wait below.”

The old nun glowered, but realised she had been outmanoeuvred. She descended the steps, frowning darkly as the door shut with a heavy thud behind her, as she had known it would. She grasped hold of one of the servants who had not been so quick about returning to his bed, ordered him to saddle a horse and ride hard for Leominster town.

“Fetch the Reeve, tell him we have a madman threatening our safety—no, tell him we have captured a Welshman, that will bring him all the quicker.”

Swegn re-barred the door and ran a finger across Eadgifu’s cheek. She tilted her head away from his touch. Impulse had brought him to the convent, and the need for aid and hospitality. Now that he was here, though, he remembered just how beautiful Eadgifu was and that he had once had the chance of having her for his own. “You are as beautiful now as you were five years ago. You were a fool to have agreed to this imprisonment. As my wife you could have worn the finest silk, and jewels.”

“As your wife, I would have been treated no differently than when I was your mistress, forgotten about as soon as your eye turned elsewhere. I am content here as Abbess. I have no wish to be anyone’s wife, least of all yours.”

“You were a fool to have allowed yourself to be talked into coming to this wretched place, Eadgifu. You are a woman of the world, you need a man, and children to run around your skirts.”

“I was a fool ever to have loved you,” Eadgifu retorted, but he heard the wistfulness that told him she remembered.

Swegn took hold of her wrist, drawing her nearer so that their bodies almost touched. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the thinness of her linen shift, her lips were moist, slightly parted.

“Do you remember,” he said, his voice low and husky, “when we made love in the woods beside the river? We were one, you and I, Eadgifu. One body, one love. We could be so again, were you only to consent to come with me.”

Oh, Eadgifu remembered! She remembered the fear as she realised, after he had taken her maidenhood and then left her without a word, that he would not be coming back for her. Remembered the shame and anger of her father and mother; the pain inflicted by that peasant woman who had rid her of the child she had conceived.

Imprisoned, Swegn had said. Incarcerated. He had used those words five years ago, when finally he had decided to return for her. It was too late by then, she was already Abbess, a respectable position for the soiled daughter of a lord. And by then she had realised the true nature of a man like Swegn. A man who changed his mind on a whim, who was selfish and had no feeling for the women he took, then discarded.

“You will regret refusing me,” he had shouted at her. “One day, when you are a lonely old woman, you will regret refusing all that you could have had from me!”

She had wept after he had gone that second time, galloping away with not a backward glance. Wept for what might have been, for what was—being shut away from the world in a nunnery. But the tranquillity of Leominster had seeped into her, easing her pain. Monastic life suited her quiet temperament; she found happiness. She would never have been happy with Swegn. Then, he had tried to change her mind by using charm and affection and, when that had failed, bribery and threats. Now, here he was these years later, trying once again to persuade her to go with him.

Swegn had no time for the niceties of subtle persuasion this time round; before long, Edward would learn that he had resisted arrest and send more men after him. Christ in His Heaven, he would not go to the King on bended knee, begging forgiveness! Was it not Edward’s fault that Wales was yet again laughing at England—would he take the blame, though, the responsibility? Like hell he would! At court, Swegn would be reprimanded and ridiculed, verbally flogged; probably threatened with enforced exile now that he had also killed two of the King’s men. Damn the King—and damn Wales. Damn the whole of bloody England!

Swegn tossed back the jug and gulped the wine down his throat. Much of it dribbled down his cheeks and moustache, dripped on to his cloak and tunic. He tossed the emptied jug aside, belched. “I will be plain with you,” he said. “I want a woman to come with me to Denmark, where they appreciate good soldiers; where Svein Estrithson pays handsome reward for men of my ability. I was on the road, decided you would suit me well.”

Eadgifu appeared quite calm, although her heartbeat was pulsing. Before, she had been infatuated by Swegn’s handsome face and rugged manliness. Fascinated, too, by his quick laughter, his boasting and drunken bravado, the wild plans plucked at random from the wind that were, as she later discovered, as quickly tossed aside. Yet she knew also of his temper. He loved her, he had once said. Loved her so much that he had left her to face the torture of aborting her child? Ah no, Swegn loved no one but himself.

He bent to kiss her, but she stepped aside, put several paces between them.

“God’s truth, you are as cold as ice!” Swegn snarled. “Do you now loathe me so much that my touch, the taste of my kiss, means nothing?”