I Am the Chosen King (30 page)

“As God is my witness.” Godwine declared with sudden impatience, “I am innocent of this lie!” He thumped the table with his palm, lurching upright—and the pain tore through his chest, arms and jaw as if a spear had been thrust direct through him. He doubled over, clutching at the agony, his lips contorting, breath gasping.

Harold and Gytha were immediately on their feet, the woman’s arms going about her husband’s shoulders as he collapsed, dragging the linen cloth with him, bowls of nuts and dried fruits, goblets and tankards of wine and ale tumbling to the floor. A scream left her lips. Edward, his own heart racing with the suddenness of it all, shouted for his physician to be summoned; someone handed wine to Harold who put it to his father’s lips, someone else kicked aside the debris and the dogs who had run in, hoping to scavenge for scraps.

“Does he live?” Edyth took Godwine’s hand in her own, began trying to rub warmth into its creeping coldness. Harold had ripped open the lacings of his father’s tunic. Tearing the cloth, he laid his ear against the scant grey hairs on the white skin, listened, then touched his fingers to the side of his father’s throat, below the jaw. There was nothing—but then he felt a faint, irregular beat. “Yes,” he said, with a quick breath. “Yes, he lives!”

Tears trickled over Gytha’s cheeks as they carried Godwine away to the comfort of his bed, her eldest living son’s strong arms supporting her as she followed. Her only daughter remained with the King; her face was white but she had chosen her path and on it she must remain.

The harper did not resume his tale of Beowulf. There was no place for songs, not now. The Hall was subdued; a few men took leave of their king and withdrew, others sat quiet or talked in hushed voice.

Edward sat erect in his high-backed chair, rigid and still. He felt sick, his head swam, his stomach churned. “As God is my witness, I am innocent,” Godwine had said—and had been struck down no sooner had the words flown from his lips…
My God
, Edward thought,
Godwine lied; all these years, he has lied to me.
He looked at Ælfgar, saw the same thought resting on his face.

Edith caught the brief look of comprehension that passed between them. Had her father lied about the murder of Edward’s younger brother? Had God issued swift punishment, or was it all a coincidence? Whatever, she could not risk losing her new-found stability; she must act, and act now, for her own security. For her own future. Whatever happened to her father, whether he died or lived, he was finished as a trusted earl of the King. Deliberately, she took Edward’s hand within her own and spoke soft, so only he might hear. “Your brother lies in peace at last, my Lord. God has provided us with the truth.”

Edward patted the cool hand that held his. “God will witness the truth. At the end, He will be the judge of all.”

***

For three days Earl Godwine of Wessex lingered, unconscious of his pain, unaware that his wife sat, throughout, at his side without sleep or food or respite from grief. Harold and Edyth, Tostig and Judith, Leofwine and Gyrth watched and waited with her.

His daughter did not come, nor did the King, and only those men who had loved Godwine in life shed tears when, on the fifteenth day of April in the year 1053, the Earl was taken to God.

The Countess Gytha had him buried in the Minster at Winchester, within sight of the tombs of Cnut and his queen, Emma, whom Godwine had served without question. If any had been responsible for the wicked death of that young man Alfred, it had been she, not Godwine.

Unanimous support from the Council gave Godwine’s son Harold responsibility of Wessex, while to balance the scales, Ælfgar, son of Leofric of Mercia, to his great pleasure, had East Anglia restored to him.

The King was indifferent to the decision-making. It had been Godwine he despised. Was it because the man had been so close in friendship with his mother and had shown no glimmer of affection for himself as boy or man grown? Or because of the rumours and implications of Alfred’s death? Edward did not know the reason, did not care to analyse it.

Swegn too he had hated. The man had been a braggart and a liar. They were, both of them, gone to plead their case with God. Who would, most assuredly, judge them.

Harold was a Godwine, but a pleasant enough man, not arrogant or assuming like his father, nor brash and boastful as his brother. Edward had no objection to his promotion. As for Edith…well, it seemed he had to have a wife and it had been Champart who had so disliked her, he told himself.

Edward, always one to lay blame at the feet of another, could see only what he wanted to see.

Waltham Abbey

The chamber slumbered in quiet contentment after the children had been persuaded to their beds. Edyth bent to pick up their scattered toys, decided the servants could tidy away on the morrow, for now, all she wanted was to sit and take the weight off her aching feet, legs and back. Children were delightful, but Goddwin, Algytha, Edmund and even Magnus at nearly two years of age possessed more energy than both she and Harold combined. She put her hand to the seven-month bulge that was to be her sixth-born child, smiled.

“Is he kicking?” Harold asked. He lay full length along the bed, atop the furs and full dressed, save for his boots that were tossed, discarded, to the floor.

“No, but she is fidgeting,” Edyth answered with a bright, homely smile. “Insisting on playing as boisterously as the others, I think.”

Harold laughed, swung himself from the bed. He had joined in heartily with the children’s games this past hour, crawling across the floor on hands and knees, giving them rides on his back or bouncing them on his shoulders. He ached!

“They are excited,” he said. The nativity is always a time of adventure for children.” He cast his eyes around the chamber at the hanging garlands of ivy and evergreens, the bright contrast of the red holly berries. The Hall below this, their private room, was decorated more magnificently still. The yule log was already in the hearth for its ceremonial lighting on the morrow; caskets and barrels of wine and ale brought in from the stores, the cooking pits prepared, the cattle, pigs and fowl slaughtered and butchered. He crossed the room on stockinged feet to circle his arms around Edyth, bring her as close as her bulk would allow. Birthing was a dangerous time for any woman. Harold never failed to worry when her labour came nearer, but as Edyth said, after that first birth, her children had all come out into the world without difficulty. “I have always welcomed the Christmas festival and the birthing of a new year. Putting the old behind, looking forward to new beginnings.” And there was much to set aside from this last year, so many changes to accept in place.

“Christmas?” Edyth queried with a snort of impatience. “Christmas means winter. Short, dark, cold days and bitter winds. Chilled fingers and toes, rain and snow. Bellyache from overeating…and the pleasure of attending court.”

“Aye, well, all that too.” He darted a quick, boyish grin at her, his mouth slightly lopsided, the only residue of the illness that had stricken him so long ago. “I enjoy being with my family, Christmas or no.” He kissed her forehead. “I enjoy being with you. Especially when we are alone,” he added mischievously, kissing her again, more firmly.

She responded as always, her mouth parting. His smell of leather and horse and wine was familiar and comforting, his muscular body reassuring. Protective. Everything was so safe when Harold was nearby. His hands wandered from her enlarged waist to her breasts, caressing her neck and face, pulling her closer, his mouth more insistent.

“They say you must be gentle with a woman who is with child,” Edyth reminded him as he began unlacing her gown.

“I am always gentle. With any woman,” he answered with a hint of indignation.

She pulled back, her palms going to his chest. “Oh, yes? You have made love with many women then, have you?”

Harold bent and lifted her, swinging her up into his arms with ease. His body was lean and strong, his arms and shoulders well muscled, the skin still bearing a light tan from the summer sun and the autumn winds. He carried her to their bed, set her down and methodically began unlacing the remaining ties to her gown and the shift beneath.

“Only one or two women,” he answered her at last, before removing his own clothing, discarding it haphazardly on the floor. “Only one in particular, though.”

***

Waking, with the pleasurable sensation of her naked body nestled warm and close to his own, Harold lay listening to the sounds of a stirring household. Someone was singing a carol, the girl’s pleasing voice ruined by the old mule braying for his breakfast; clatter came from the kitchens as the cooks began preparing for the first meal of the day and the evening ahead of feasting. A robin sang from the oak tree where Harold had built the elder children a lookout platform—from up there, they could see along this whole stretch of the valley. The shining white newness of the rising walls of his abbey at Waltham, the meadows below the purple grey of the ridged hills and the wide, meandering ribbon that was the river. He would miss all this if they were to move into the manor at Bosham. A grander estate but the home of childhood. This manor belonged to his adult life, a testament to his own happiness. He had purchased the land, discussed the design, observed its building. Edyth had furnished it, made it their home. Bosham was for the harvesting of Gytha’s memories, not for his.

Harold brushed his hand tenderly against Edyth’s cheek as she stirred from sleep. “Willow-bud?” He touched her hair, allowing a strand of its sun-gold length to trickle through his fingers. “I am thinking that I do not want to leave here. That I do not welcome the thought of residing at Bosham.”

Clinging to the last fragments of sleep, Edyth snuggled her head into his shoulder. So much had changed for him, for her, since Easter. To take up the mantle of the most powerful man in all England below the King was no easy task. Edyth knew Harold appreciated the honour of being made Earl of Wessex, for he was full of pride in his country and its people. He accepted those responsibilities that fell to him, but still he doubted his ability to mix diplomacy with authority as carefully as had his father. Edward was no easy man to contend with. Although he had mellowed since Godwine’s death, his inattentiveness and distraction from government was markedly increased. Content to leave decisions to his earls and Council, the brunt of the work fell on Harold’s overburdened shoulders.

“Do you not think that you ought be in Wessex?” she asked tactfully, while suppressing the jiggle of delight. The manor was her home, the place of her children’s birth and growing, of her love with Harold. Bosham would be the place for his wife when one day he took one.

“I will need to spend some time there, but I am as much in London these days as I am in Wessex. Here, with you, I can forget the King and his inconsistencies, my sister and her brazen autocracy.”

Edyth gave a non-committal sigh. The Queen’s problem was a simple one to fathom, harder to solve. “She needs a child to care for.”

Harold snorted. “Edith now panders to Edward’s every whim. He behaves more like a child every day. He shows no care of interest in law or government, for matters of court or state. His only interests are how the scent is lying and how high are the walls of his damned abbey!” Harold’s feelings for Edward were ambivalent. As a man—a neighbour perhaps—they could have shared the pleasures of the chase and a farmer’s concern for the turn of the seasons. But as a king Edward was frustratingly simple-minded. He was a follower, not a leader. Had there been anyone else as choice of king, he would never have been crowned. Like it or not, however, he was an anointed king, blessed by the hand of God—outside murder, only God could remove him.

Edyth snuggled herself closer. “Perhaps Edward too needs a child.”

Aye, or another Robert Champart to hold his hand.

The prospect of a pleasing morning withered. On the morrow, Harold would leave for London; this day, Christmas Eve, was to be his last day with his family for several weeks. Edyth would not be coming with him to Westminster for she disliked the clamour and smell of London. Even had she journeyed to Southwark, he would see little of her or the children, for there was a rising mountain of problems to be discussed during the coming days of Council. Gryffydd ap Rhydderch had begun a campaign of raiding across the Severn river—they would need to sort that annoying bastard with more than threats of reprisal before too many months passed—and King Macbeth in Scotland was posing a problem for Siward in Northumbria. Macbeth had been a boil waiting to be lanced since he had first usurped the throne from Duncan, he and Gruoch, his scheming wife. They were a troublesome lot, the Scots and Welsh.

And then there were the boys held in Normandy, Harold’s brother and nephew. Negotiations for their release had ground to a halt. Duke William had no intention of surrendering such useful hostages. Short of declaring war on Normandy, there was little England could do to demand their return.

Above all else, the matter of Edward’s succession must be decided—England could not be left vulnerable. With an empty throne a free-for-all would most certainly develop, whatever the present hindrances tying the hands of ambitious men. Edward was no longer a young man and death could creep in from the shadows with no sound or warning—no one had expected Godwine to be taken so quickly from them.

Who was there to follow Edward? Ralf de Mantes, as much a weakling as Edward. William of Normandy? Harold instantly dismissed that thought as absurd. One of the named earls? In an earlier time, perhaps, in those harsh, uncivilised days when the law was made by the sword and a man held no honour for his pledged word. Now no one person would receive the level of support required to overthrow Edward. If one earl decided to forcibly take a crown, then would the others not want also to try it for size? A bloody civil war would be the only end to that path.

What of other outsiders? Norway? Denmark? No, they were too preoccupied with their own fight for survival to glance elsewhere.

The possibilities drifted into Harold’s mind, dancing there much as the dust particles were shimmering in the widening shaft of sunlight streaking in a narrow spear-shaft through the shutter and across the floor. Edith had ordered Boulogne’s grandson back to Normandy, although Harold had thought to use him in exchange for Wulfnoth. Edith detested the child, and had used the general feeling against Norman blood as an excuse to be rid of him when Godwine had returned from exile. Fearing reprisal from his hand, most of the Normans had fled. What fools and cowards they were, imagining whetted blades drawn against them in every shadow! Champart, by fleeing so suddenly from London, had been responsible for starting the rumour; Edith, sending Boulogne’s grandson hard on his heels, had not calmed the fears. Would his father have taken revenge on Edward’s Norman friends? On Champart, probably, but for the rest, Harold doubted it. Godwine had not been a vindictive man, and Ralf de Mantes, with Norman blood in his veins from his father and maternal grandmother, had not been harmed or threatened, was indeed a trusted friend of Harold’s.

Edyth was tracing a path through Harold’s chest hair with her fingernail. “What of Edmund Ironside, Æthelred’s son by his wife before Emma? Has there not yet been word of his sons’ whereabouts? As grandsons of Æthelred, they are the closest kin to Edward. Is it not time they were found and brought home?”

The two infant sons of King Edmund, exiled from England after his death six and thirty years past. Tentative searches had been made for them when Edward had first claimed his crown, but no word of their whereabouts came back on traders’ lips, despite the offer of generous reward. Hardly surprising, as it had been no secret that Cnut had wanted them dead. What assurance was there, when Edward had first become king, that he did not intend the same fate for them? The situation was different now that Edward had no son or brother. A son of the royal line of Alfred, Ædward the Exile or his brother, both sons of Edmund, grandsons of Æthelred. There would be no disputing that claim.

“Henry of Germany may know of something. Normandy and Flanders are shut to us, now that Edward’s French friends have scuttled like beetles beneath the stones. Nor would it be of use asking Harald Hardrada of Norway or Svein of Denmark—either would as lief find the two for themselves and carry out Cnut’s order of murder.” Harold trickled his fingers across her breast and stomach. “Council though,” he crooned, “will need find the solutions. For the immediate future, the Earl of Wessex has more personal matters to attend.”