I Am the Chosen King (7 page)

The three earls turned silently to follow him, but Emma halted Godwine, her voice scathing: “So this is how you treat me? How short-lived is your loyalty, sir.”

“My loyalty must lie with my family, madam, with the future of my seed.” He spread his hands. “I am sorry, but that is how it is.”

“You put yourself first, then, above the love of your queen?”

Godwine was a proud man, he would not lie to one who had offered, and he hoped would continue to offer, patronage and friendship. “No, madam. My love for the queen comes above all else, but alas, you will soon no longer be the one to bear that title. My Lord Edward is to take a wife.”

Emma’s eyebrows shot upwards with startled surprise. Edward had actually agreed to take a woman to his bed? Gods! Would he know what to do with her? “So, with such ease you transfer your loyalty?” she mocked. “Did you then love me so poorly?”

Godwine, Earl of Wessex, faced Emma, Dowager Queen of England. “I love you as no man, who has already a Christian-blessed wife, ought love another woman. But there is to be one I must love the more. My future grandson. The next king.”

For a long moment Emma stood, speechless, uncomprehending. Then threw back her head and laughed, great, breath-filled gasps—the laughter of finally accepting, outwitted, defeat.

Nazeing

Harold lay dazed and confused, aware he was abed. With so much that he ought to be doing he could not understand why. Nor could he understand why he could not move his arm to toss aside the covers that laid heavy over his aching body, as if he were being buried alive. Surely he was asleep? He would wake soon—but he could not open his eyes, could not surface from this threatening redness that engulfed his mind.

Voices—there were several—unclear and distant. He tried to tell them, whoever they were, to cease their mumbling, to speak up. No one listened; they just tucked those damned heavy covers tighter around his painful limbs. Sweat scrambled off his brow, down his face, yet there was no life in the iced blocks that were his feet and hands.

Once, when he did manage to open his eyes in this bizarre dream, he saw a man standing at the end of the bed, a man he knew not, with a black, cowled gown and a solemn, pale face. This man lifted his hand and made the sign of the cross, then shook his head and muttered something. A prayer? He had come, Harold was certain, to take him up to God’s paradise. He must wake! Must make this man realise that he was only sleeping, that he was not ready to die, for there was so much to be done! He had been summoned to the King to meet him in Winchester.

A young woman spoke. “Rest, my Lord,” she said. She held a drink to his lips. He swallowed, tasted the sweet sensation of honey and some other bitter substance. He saw her face bending close over him, saw the white skin of her neck, the haloed gold of her hair. So, it was too late, then, he was already with God. Harold closed his eyes, drifted into sleep.

Edyth, with her mass of fair hair and the lamplight glowing behind her, did indeed resemble one of God’s angels. She looked up at her mother with wide anxious eyes, the red rims betraying that tears had been falling. “Is there nothing more we can do for him?” she pleaded. Her mother was so skilled with herbs and potions, yet this young man was suffering. “Surely there must be something more, Mama?”

Ælfthryth dipped a cloth into the bowl of cold water, soaked it and wrung the excess from its folds. She passed it to her daughter, shaking her head. What more could they do? She had tried everything she knew. “He is beyond our mortal care, child. If his own chaplain and our Father from the church at Waltham cannot between them bring healing with their prayers, what chance have we earth-bound women?”

It was a great pity that one as young and handsome should depart this life so soon. He had seemed to have the making of a fine earl, too. Why was it that the good were taken to God while the evil were left to pursue their wickedness in the world of men? Ælfthryth sighed. Of course, it was not for her to question God’s will but was it not a cruel jest of His to send the Earl Harold here? How would she explain to his mother, when she arrived, that they had failed him? How would her husband be able to face Earl Godwine again, knowing that his son had died beneath this roof? And Edyth was troubled by the Earl’s foundering, poor lass. She had barely recovered from the senseless death of that wretched dog; and now, here she was nursing the Earl, all the hours of the night and day, with a passion for him stirring within her.

With quick efficiency Ælfthryth straightened the crumpled bed-linen and tucked the bed fur tighter. With good fortune, Countess Gytha should arrive on the morrow. They had sent a messenger south to Bosham, asking her to come to Essex. Once she was here Earl Harold’s illness would be out of their hands and Edyth’s attention could be directed towards a more promising suitor. The Earl, should he survive this illness, might look at a thegn’s daughter for a temporary companion to warm his bed, but he would most certainly be seeking a girl of higher breeding to become his wife.

“We have done our best for him,” Ælfthryth declared aloud. That is all the God and Lady Gytha can ask of us.”

Refolding the damp cloth, Edyth sponged the sweat from Harold’s face. He had been mumbling again a moment or so ago, some deep trouble that must bother him greatly. He muttered often of the necessity to reach Winchester, where, so his companions said, they had been riding, Winchester! How she would enjoy seeing that city—or London, She had never travelled further than the village of Waltham, down in the valley. Her father, who had journeyed far as a young man, entertained them through the long and dark winters’ evenings with the mysteries of distant places. Of Winchester, and London, and York, The empty north lands of Northumbria; the terrors of the Welsh borders; the soft-coloured rolling Downs of Wessex; the wild grandeur and splendour of the sea. The sea! Oh, how Edyth longed to smell the sea! “The sea, like the canopy of the sky, goes on, seemingly, for ever,” her father had said. “It is wider than the broadest river or the largest lake.”

Edyth found that hard to comprehend, for she could see with her own eyes where the sky met the earth not a few miles distant, but her father was a wise man who knew many things that she did not even begin to understand. Would she, one day, see the sea? Touch its restless tide with her fingers, delight in the spindrift of its surf, the swell of its life-beat? Perhaps, One day. Yet she was more likely to marry some near-by thegn, and settle in the next valley.

Harold had lost much weight; his cheeks were hollow and drawn, his hair matted and his eyes, when he had them open, burnt with the same fire that scorched his skin. She remembered his sparkling, laughter-filled eyes from that day when he had first come. It had been spring, soon after Easter. How she remembered his strength. His gentle, concerned sorrow.

The memory of that day, that awful day, lingered in her mind. The repulsive touch of Earl Swegn, his rough hands, his wet, dribbling lips. The brutal murder of her dog. Even now, at the thought of that vile man, her breath caught and bile would rise to her throat—but Earl Harold had been there also. Had been so kind. She ought to have thanked him for what he had done, to have been more concerned for the wound in his shoulder, the scar of which remained white and vivid against his skin. At least tending him now was a way of making amends for her neglect.

She touched her hand to his cheek, winced at the laboured breath that rattled in his chest. Her mother was certain that Harold would not remain overlong in this world, but she, Edyth, a mere maid, knew better. Harold was not going to die because she was not going to let him.

Rouen—January 1044

The cramp in William’s knees and lower back was becoming unbearable. If he could only move slightly, stretch his shoulders…He squinted to his left. Difficult to see clearly without moving his head…Henry, King of France, knelt there, his eyes fixed firm on the crucifix upon the high altar of St. Ouen Abbey, its ornate, golden beauty bathed by the glow of candlelight. The King knelt with his back spear-straight, his chin high, palms flat together, lips moving in silent prayer; he, William thought, would not shuffle about because his knees were hurting him. Henry was a gaunt, serious-looking man with hair already brindled at his temples, although he was not far past his early years of manhood. During these cold January days the Frenchman wore an extravagantly cut ermine cloak, the black markings in startling contrast to the pure, bright white of the fur. Looking at that cloak as it draped in magnificent swathes about Henry’s shoulders, William was reminded of a gyrfalcon that his father had once shown him, a gift from the King of Norway. It had been a splendid bird, pure white with flecks of black on its breast and wings. He remembered putting out his hand to touch the dazzling feathers, remembered marvelling at the softness beneath his fingers. Remembered also his father’s laugh and rich, melodic voice. “You’d not have done that, lad, were she not safely hooded. Shed have had those fat, pink fingers of yours for her supper!”

Where had he been on that occasion? Surely, at Conteville with his mother’s husband, the Vicomte Herluin? Yet he could not picture his two half-brothers with him, Odo and Robert, and it was rare that his father had visited Herleve there.

That his father had loved his mother, Herleve, was certain, but as the daughter of a tanner of Falaise, albeit a wealthy one, she could never have become Duke Robert’s duchess. He had found for her instead Herluin, a vicomte, a man who desired sons of his own bred from a pretty wife, no matter whose mistress she had once been.

Ah, no, it was at Falaise where he saw his father, while he was staying with his maternal grandfather! When he eventually returned home to Conteville, his second half-brother had been born, so he would have been—William paused in his thoughts, clumsily worked out his age, stealthily using his fingers to count forward from the date of his birth, 1028—yes, five years old! And it was summer, for he remembered the heat of the day, the sun sparkling on the bells attached to the bird’s legs and how, when he had looked up, his father’s face had been hidden in dark shadow. It had frightened him, seeing the tall man without a face, and he had cried. Robert had given the bird to a servant and swung the distraught boy up into his arms, assuming it had been the jest about the bird pecking his fingers that had brought the tears. William frowned. As if he would cry at that!

They had not minded William then, the men of Robert’s court, when the Duke had been alive. Robert had been seventeen years of age when he had sired William, Herleve also seventeen. They had expected Robert to enjoy his youth with pretty maids but, when the time came to take a nobleman’s daughter as wife, produce legitimate sons. But he had died on pilgrimage, leaving a bastard-born seven-year-old as his only heir. There had been no wife, no other sons; only Herleve, a daughter, and William.

Tiring of surreptitiously studying Henry, the young Duke William rolled his eyes in the opposite direction, to observe his paternal uncle, Archbishop Maugar. He had his head bent, double chin resting on his clasped knuckles, eyes closed. He, William thought, would not mind this vigil, for he was well used to long nights of prayer. Even so, William could easily have assumed the Archbishop to be asleep.

Again, the boy focused his mind on the altar. He ought to be concentrating on inward reflection, on the glory that was God…on the significance of this night’s event. Not dwelling on memories of the past or on the eddying draught that was slinking under the abbey door to find its way under his thin cloak. He was cold and he was stiff but in two more hours it would be dawn and he would no longer be a boy. For it would be his birthing day and he would be, at last, sixteen years of age. No longer would he be an unknighted child, the vulnerable only son of Robert, Duke of Normandy. William lifted his chin a little, straightened his back, contracted his eyes. No longer would they dare call him bastard to his face. And soon, very soon, neither would they dare insult him so behind his back!

William was to become a man this day. His overlord, the King of France himself, was to invest him with the regalia of the knight—armour, the emblem of virtue, a shield of faith, helmet of hope and a sword, the symbol of the word of God. William explored their meanings in his mind. Armour for excellence, quality and worth. Worthiness. Fine words that dispelled the slur—bastard born. Faith?
Oui
, faith that God intended him, and him alone, to rule this duchy with all the vigour of hope, while wielding a sword that carried the truth and might of God’s power and his.
His
power. Once he was a knight, a man, just let them try to defy him…just let them!

Some had already suffered punishment for trying. Justifiable revenge, taken with swift finality by those few faithful followers of the boy Duke of Normandy, men who had been loyal to his father. Brutal punishment, meted out for the brutal murder of his various guardians. Comte Alan de Bretagne, the third of that title, who had set William upon the back of his first pony; Comte Gilbert de Brionne, swift to chide, but quick to laugh, who had taught William how to hurl a javelin; gentle, quiet-voiced Turchetil; and Osbern. Dear, loyal Osbern…he could not think of that night and Osbern.

William repressed a shudder, lest his two companions sharing this vigil assumed him to be shivering with the cold; he thought instead of his uncle, Walter, his mother’s brother. Walter had saved his life when, not more than a few weeks after Robert’s death, men had come to murder the boy. Snatching him from his bed, Walter had carried him through the night to a place of safety—had slept in the boy’s bed after that, journeying with him from safe house to safe house, dressed him as if he were an ordinary man’s son, not the child of a duke. They did not risk riding expensive horses, but used Walter’s shaggy old pony instead; took shelter in poor men’s bothies, sleeping on the floor beside a hearth fire or in a barn or cow byre. Men did not think of searching for a young duke among the swine. On fine nights they had slept beneath the stars, curled close together under Walter’s cloak. Thinking of those days, full of fear yet tinged with excitement, William could hear distinctly the breath of a summer night, the call of an owl and the sound of the pony, grazing. The threat of death had been a constant companion through his childhood, walking always behind like a menacing shadow.

What had it served his enemies, that lust for murder? They had failed! He was alive, and he had reached manhood. Yet they had come close to achieving their goal a week past. A few miles south from here, at La Vaudreuil.

William stared fixedly at the ruby in the centre of the crucifix. Attempting to focus his mind on prayer, he closed his eyes, saw in the dancing patterns of light behind his eyelids Osbern’s Viking-length flaxen hair, his vivid blue eyes, firm, determined jaw and heavily moustached mouth. Could almost hear his deep, powerful voice, smell the scent of horse and leather that always clung to his clothes. Osbern had been with him for so long. Had taught him how to handle a sword and to use a shield, how to ride a horse larger and stronger than the first little black mount given him by Comte Alan on his eighth birthday. Osbern ought to be here at William’s knighting…

He swallowed hard. Blinked his eyes several times. Osbern could not be here, for a dagger had been thrust into his heart. A blade meant for William.

He had been abed, huddled beneath the furs, his feet and legs curled close against his belly to find what little warmth there was. It was cold, frost lay white outside, the water in the hand basin was frozen—even his piddle in the unemptied chamber pot had a rim of ice around it. His breath had come in great puffs of cloud from his mouth as he had removed his outer garments before scuttling into the bed. The brazier in that austere chamber had given off barely enough heat to warm the hands, let alone the entire room. Osbern was sitting at the edge of the hard, unyielding bed, removing leather over-tunic, cussing that his fingers were too ice-frozen to unlace the ties. The door had crashed open, William had shot upright, Osbern had shouted alarm, grabbed for his sword that lay sheathed on the bed. Two men were running into the chamber, weapons drawn, intent on spilling blood, William’s blood, but Osbern got to one of them first. William had screamed, shrieked for help. He blushed at that thought now, as he knelt before the altar, blushed that he should have been so frightened at the hideous look of murder on the faces of those two men.

He released a sigh. It had not been the first attempt on his life, but it would be the last. At the age of seven, William had learnt that grown men rarely behave with honour. They harbour jealousies and greed for that which is not theirs. With the boy William gone, the door would be open for someone else to inherit Normandy, someone such as Grimoald de Plessis, Rannulf, Vicomte de la Bessin or Guy, Comte de Brionne, successor to Gilbert and that respected title, yet his very opposite in nature. All of them men who wanted the title of duke for their own; men who were prepared to risk much in order to get it. Including the attempted murder of a child.

William smiled, a slow, wide-spread smile of satisfaction. They had not succeeded. He was sixteen and he was still here, still very much alive. From now, he would rule as
he
wanted, as
he
wished. No more guardians or good-intentioned abbots, no more regents. And no more attempts at murder. The smile faded into an expression that bordered on the sinister. Those words,
no more attempts at murder
, rolled around his mind, as a good wine trickles around the palate. Come tomorrow—daybreak—those same men who were plotting to be rid of him would kneel and kiss his hand, would swear their homage and allegiance. The ritual would all be pretence, of course, on both sides. From them, a public display of fealty; from him, a genial smile, a nod of greeting.

The capitulation of two in particular he was eager to witness, eager to watch the expression on their faces as they came to bend the knee before him. They would have received their gifts by then, Guy de Brionne and Rannulf de la Bessin. Osbern’s son Will would have quietly and efficiently arranged it. Would they show fear and anxiety—or puzzlement and doubt? They would not be wholly certain that the gifts were from him, from their duke, from William, but they would wonder and tread with extreme care.

The pain in his knees and back had eased. Or had he found the way to ignore it? Soon light would come to the sky, dawn would stream through the three circular windows in the eastern wall of the abbey, illuminating the vibrant-coloured plastering and the gold-embroidered tapestries. King Henry would dress William in his armour and present him with arms, and then they would move to the abbey steps where the men who were to swear allegiance would submit in homage.

Kneeling there in the silence of the abbey of St. Ouen, a thought came to William, a passing, almost flippant thought, but one that would swell in its appeal throughout the years that were to follow. He, Duke William the bastard born, need kneel to none save God and Henry, King of France. And one day, perhaps one day, he need not even kneel to Henry.

***

Guy, Comte de Brionne, grandson of Duke Richard II of Normandy, lay naked in bed, his arm tossed across the breast of his companion, the tavern keeper’s nubile young daughter. She was pretty enough for his taste, but then his taste ran to any woman with red lips and a lingering smile. The tavern, the Rutting Boar, was a passable hostelry; Guy had spent one or two nights in this chamber before now, but not with the same girl. She had been a child on his last visit here to Rouen, what, three years before. On this occasion, as then, Guy had shared the jest of the tavern’s name with his friends. “An appropriate place for us to spend this tedious night!” they had carolled as they stepped from the street into the noisy bustle of the inn, arms round each other’s shoulders, eyes swiftly assessing the suitability of the serving girls. A few jars of wine and a belly full of stew confirmed their opinion that it was an agreeable place; it was not until late that Guy lurched up the staircase with the virgin girl to find a bed and sport for the night.

He had no especial desire to be here in Rouen, but the order to attend had come from King Henry himself and could not, without serious repercussions, be ignored. Would he have ignored the summons had it come from that poxed little boy who thought himself worthy of becoming a duke? From William the Bastard? They had laughed over that as they drank, he and Rannulf, each capping the other’s lewd remarks about the boy’s whore of a mother, eventually deciding that an invitation from Herleve would be readily accepted…but that a lengthy bowel-emptying session in the midden hut would be preferable to any from William.

They did not worry unduly about being overheard; few in Rouen held much fondness for William. Guy knew most would prefer to follow his own banner, should the time ever arise.

He was dreaming. His arm and leg twitched; his shoulder jerked. The girl slept, drunk from her father’s wine, content with the handsome payment that the Comte had offered her. Guy was twenty-five years of age, held sway over a large rich domain, and his grandfather was the same man as the Bastard’s grandfather. The difference was that Guy had been born to a daughter, William to a son. He regarded the issue of gender as irrelevant, for he was legitimate, not a by-blow of a whore. Normandy was his by blood, not William’s…and he was damned if he was going to kneel in homage to that upstart come the morrow! New knighted or not. He grunted, angered, even in his sleep.

Outside the chamber a knuckle rapped on the closed door. Guy mumbled and turned over in his sleep. Again knocking, more urgent. The latch clicked downwards, the door opened. A young man, dressed only in hose and under-tunic, tripped across the doorstep and groped his way into the dimly lit chamber, his left hand holding a wildly flickering candle. Rannulf, Vicomte de la Bessin was four years Guy’s junior and much influenced by the older man. He stumbled over to the bed and began to shake Guy’s shoulder.