Gods' Concubine Page 4

  There were some twenty or twenty-two Normans marching in military formation behind William’s envoy, Guy Martel. Directly behind Martel came Walter Fitz Osbern and Roger Montgomery, two of William’s closest friends. Their presence was a mark of respect by William: See, I hold you in such love I send my greatest friends to honour you.

  Guy Martel led his entourage to within three paces of the dais, then halted, gracefully bending to one knee.

  Behind him, each member of the entourage likewise dropped to a knee, bowing their heads.

  “My greatest lord,” Martel said, his voice ringing through the hall, “I greet you well on behalf of my lord, William of Normandy, and convey to you his heartiest congratulations on the occasion of your marriage.”

  Edward grunted.

  On her chair Swanne shifted slightly, bored with the proceedings. She tried to catch Tostig’s eye for some amusement—he was standing to one side of the hall—but failed. She sighed and rubbed her belly, wishing she were anywhere but here at this moment. Her mind began to drift, as it so often did, to thoughts of Brutus-reborn, and where he might be, and if he was thinking of her.

  “My lord wishes to present you with a token of his love and respect,” Martel continued, “and hopes that you are as blessed in your marriage as he is in his.”

  With that, Martel reached under his cloak, and withdrew a small unadorned wooden box. “My lord, if I may approach…”

  Mildly curious—and yet disappointed that William’s gift was not more proudly packaged—Edward gestured Martel forward, taking the box from him.

  “What is this?” he said, opening the lid and staring incredulously at what lay within.

  It was nothing but a ball of string. Impressively golden string, but a ball of string nonetheless.

  This is what William thought to offer a king as a gift?

  Caught by the offence underlying Edward’s words, Swanne looked over, wondering what the Duke of Normandy had done to so insult Edward.

  “What is this?” Edward repeated, and withdrew the ball of string from the box, holding it up and staring at it.

  Swanne went cold, and her heart began to pound. She was so shocked that she could not for the moment form a coherent thought.

  “A ball of string?” Edward said, the anger in his voice now perfectly apparent.

  “If I may,” said Martel, taking the string from Edward. “This is a treasure of great mystery,” he continued. “May I be permitted to show to you its secret?”

  Edward nodded, slowly, reluctantly. A treasure of great mystery?

  Trembling so badly she could hardly move, Swanne edged forward on her seat. Oh please, gods, let this be what I want it to be! Please, gods, please!

  Martel began to unwind the string, which was indeed made of golden thread. His entourage had now formed a long line behind him, and Martel slowly walked down the line, spinning out the string so that a portion of it lay in the hands of each member of the line. Once the string had been entirely played out—there was perhaps fifteen or twenty feet of string between each man—Martel walked back towards Edward’s dais, holding the end of the string.

  Again he bowed. “Pray let me show you,” he said, “the road to salvation.”

  And with that, still keeping firm hold of the end of the string, he stepped back, and nodded at his men.

  They began to move, and within only a moment or two it became obvious that they moved in a superbly choreographed and well-practised dance of great beauty. They moved this way and that, in circles and arcs, until each watcher held his or her breath, sure the string was about to become horribly and irredeemably tangled. But it never did, and the men continued in their dance, their faces sombre, their movements careful and supple.

  Of all the watchers, only Swanne knew what she was truly watching, and only she knew what that ball of string represented: Ariadne’s Thread. The secret to the Labyrinth.

  Gift to Edward be damned. This was a message for her, and her alone!

  “Brutus,” she whispered, now at the very edge of her seat, her eyes staring wildly at the Normans as they continued in their graceful dance, unwinding the twisted walls of the Labyrinth.

  Brutus…none other than William of Normandy!

  “Thank all the gods in creation,” she said, again in a whisper. Her eyes filled with tears and her heart pounded with such emotion that Swanne was not entirely sure that she would not faint at any moment with the strength of it.

  With a concluding flourish the dancers halted, paused, and then in a final, single movement, each laid his portion of the string on the ground, and then moved away from it, his task completed.

  Soon the flagstone area before Edward’s throne was empty save for the golden thread, now laid out in a perfect representation of the pathways of a unicursal Labyrinth.

  Edward had risen to his feet, and his eyes moved slowly between the golden Labyrinth laid out on the floor and Guy Martel.

  “The road to salvation?” he said in a puzzled tone.

  “My lord duke well knows of your piety,” Martel said, “and of your great disappointment that you have been unable to tread those paths within Jerusalem where once Christ’s feet trod. Behold the Labyrinth. Its entrance lies before you, and when you enter it, you do so as a man born of woman, and thus weighted down with grievous sin. But as you traverse the paths of the Labyrinth, thinking only of Christ and his goodness, you will find when you enter the heart of the Labyrinth that Christ and his redemption await you. When you exit the Labyrinth, retracing your steps through its winding paths, you do so in a state of grace, and you will truly be stepping the pathway towards your own redemption. This Labyrinth, great lord and king, represents the pilgrim’s journey to Jerusalem. He goes there weighted down with sin, but having prayed within that land where Christ once lived, he returns to his own land in a state of grace. He retraces his steps into redemption. This, my great lord of England, is Normandy’s gift to you.”

  No, thought Swanne, the tears running freely down her cheeks, this is Brutus-reborn’s gift to me.

  Edward was clapping his hands, his cheeks pink with joy, and he began to converse animatedly with Martel. But Harold was staring at Swanne, and leaned over to her, concerned. “My dear, what ails you?”

  Clearly overcome with emotion, her eyes locked on to the golden Labyrinth, Swanne had to struggle to speak. When she did, her voice was only a hoarse whisper.

  “The child,” she said, and rested a trembling hand on her belly. “The child has caused me some upset. I will retire to our chamber, I think, and rest.”

  Harold leaned closer, worry now clearly etched on his face. “Should I send for the midwives?”

  “No! No, I need only to rest. The heat and the crowd in this hall have made me feel faint. I will be well enough. Please, Harold, let me be.”

  With that she rose and, a little unsteadily at first, made her way from the hall.

  Harold might have followed her, but as Swanne passed behind Caela’s chair, he saw that his sister was staring at the Labyrinth with almost as much emotion as Swanne had been. Harold sent a final glance Swanne’s way—she was walking much more steadily now, and his worry for her eased—then he rose and went to Caela’s side.

  “Sister, what ails you?”

  She tore her eyes from the Labyrinth, and looked at Harold. “How do we know,” she said, “that there is Christ in the heart of the Labyrinth, instead of some dark monster? Promise me, Harold, that you will never enter that pathway.”

  He attempted a smile for her. “Should you not be warning your husband?”

  “I care not who he meets within the heart of the Labyrinth, brother. Christ, or a monster.”

  And with that she, too, was gone, rising to exit with her ladies.

  Later, as Martel was showing Edward the intricacies of laying out the string into the form of the Labyrinth, a man leaned against the wall of the Great Hall and watched with a cynical half-smile on his face as the King of England tried to learn the pathwa
ys of the Labyrinth.

  He was a man of some influence within Edward’s court, and that influence was growing stronger day by day. He was a man liked and trusted by many, disliked by some others, overlooked by many more, and used by none. He was a man far greater than his outward appearance and station within society would suggest.

  He was Asterion, the Minotaur, lover of Ariadne and victim of Theseus. Many thousands of years ago Asterion had been trapped within the heart of the Great Founding Labyrinth of Crete. There Theseus had come to him and, aided by Ariadne, Asterion’s half-sister, had slain him. But Theseus had abandoned Ariadne and, in revenge, she colluded with Asterion’s shade, promising him rebirth into the world of the living if he passed over to her the Darkcraft, the dark power of evil that the Game had been created to imprison. Asterion had agreed, handing over to Ariadne the ancient Darkcraft for her promise that she would destroy the Game completely.

  But Ariadne had lied, and one of her daughter-heirs, Genvissa, had sought to resurrect the Game with her lover Kingman, Brutus. That attempt had ended in disaster and death—two of the things Asterion was best at manipulating—but the attempt had given Asterion cause for thought.

  What if, instead of completely destroying the Game, he sought to control it?

  Asterion stood within the Great Hall of Westminster, clothed in the guise he wore every day to confuse and deflect, watching Edward in his Labyrinth, his thoughts all on that prize: the Troy Game. To control the Game Asterion needed the six kingship bands of Troy, which were instrumental not only in the Game’s creation, but in its controlling.

  The bands were a pitiful means to an end, considering that Asterion had the power to raise and destroy empires, but the bands continued to elude him as they had from that moment when Asterion, in his rebirth as Amorian the Poiteran, had invaded and razed Brutus’ Troia Nova. He had not been able to find them then. He had continued to fail in their retrieval for two thousand years. Brutus had hidden them well, imbuing their secret places with such protective magic they remained hidden from Asterion.

  And, by all the gods and imps in creation, how Asterion had tried to uncover their location! He had thrown everything he had at that city…

  He knew they were somewhere within London’s walls, just as he knew that the Game Genvissa and Brutus had begun was alive and well.

  Asterion knew it, because every time he destroyed the city, whether in sheer fury or in another attempt to unearth the bands, the city regrew. Under Asterion’s direction the Celts, the Romans, the Scotti, the Picts, the various tribes of the Anglo-Saxons, and finally the Vikings, had invaded the land and razed or otherwise destroyed London in its entirety or by sections. In those lifetimes when invasion had not threatened, Asterion sent mysterious fires that swept through buildings, reducing swathes of the city to smoking cinders, or agonising plagues which left the city’s streets full of rotting corpses.

  Every time the city was struck down, it somehow recovered. Perhaps not overnight, but it did recover. Other cities would have succumbed and vanished beneath the waving grasses of wild meadows. But not London. It refused to stay dead.

  This told Asterion many things. One, that the bands were still here, for otherwise the Troy Game would not be able to function. Two, that the Game begun so long ago remained alive and well and grew more vital with each disaster as it absorbed the evil that attacked it. Three, the Game’s success at absorbing the successive waves of evil that washed over the city told Asterion he could not dare personally to attack, or attempt to control, the Game until he had the kingship bands. Finally, the city’s continued regeneration told Asterion where the Game was—where lay its heart.

  When Asterion, as Amorian, had razed Brutus’ Troia Nova, he had not been able to determine the location of the actual Troy Game itself, where lay the Labyrinth. For decades the area surrounding the Llan River and the Veiled Hills had remained desolate. Then, very gradually, a modest village grew in the small valley between Og’s and Mag’s hills. The villagers traded with communities further upriver, and the village grew and became a small, prosperous town.

  Flushed with their success, which they attributed to the beneficence of the gods, the town’s citizens built a temple of standing stones atop Og’s Hill. The town grew rapidly—and was then torn apart by Asterion’s fury in the guise of the invading Celts. The area surrounding the ancient Veiled Hills remained desolate for almost a century.

  Then the Celtic Britons built there, a larger town this time, in the same spot that Brutus had erected Troia Nova, their streets following the contours of his streets. The town prospered, and the Celtic Druids erected a circle atop Og’s Hill, which they now called Lud Hill after one of their gods. This community Asterion murdered through disease, a horrific plague that wiped out much of the population of southern Britain in the third century before Christ.

  Then came the Romans, who built a magnificent city reflecting their own pride and achievements. It, like the Celtic township, also followed the contours of Brutus’ Troia Nova, and atop Og-now-Lud Hill the Romans built a great temple to Diana.

  Diana, the Roman Goddess of the Hunt, who had been known during the time of the Greeks as Artemis.

  Asterion, who walked through Roman London as one of Rome’s overly-abundant generals, looked at that temple, and knew.

  The Labyrinth was there. It had to be. It attracted to it the veneration, and the temples, of every manner of people who had lived within the city.

  And yet the Game and the Labyrinth it hid would not allow Asterion to uncover it. No matter how many times he caused the temples and churches atop Lud Hill to be razed, Asterion could never discover the Labyrinth.

  No matter how deep he caused his minions to dig.

  Now a Christian cathedral graced the top of the hill. St Paul’s, the third construction on this hill to bear that name after Asterion had caused the first to be consumed with fire and the second to be razed by the Danes.

  To his eye, still yearning for the grace and colour and beauty of the temples and halls of the ancient Aegean world, St Paul’s was a homely, stooped thing. To the English Saxons, Asterion supposed it was a wondrous construction, given that most of the other buildings in London were wattle and daub, wood, or ungracious and poorly-laid stone. Shaped as a long hall, a rounded apse to one end and a squat, ugly tower straddling the nave’s mid-section, the cathedral sat in a cleared space running east–west along the top of Lud Hill. The Londoners certainly adored it enough, and not merely for reasons of worship—most days the nave was almost as filled with market stalls as was Cheapside.

  Suddenly Asterion’s eyes refocused on Edward. The fool had worked his way through the Labyrinth to its heart, and then back out again. Now he was calling for cups of wine to be handed out, so he could raise a toast to William of Normandy.

  A servant handed Asterion a cup, and Asterion put a smile on his face, nodding cheerfully to Edward when the king looked at him, and toasted William of Normandy with wine while in his heart he cursed him.

  Asterion was wary of William. Very wary. As Brutus, his magic had been powerful enough to outwit Asterion in his hunt for the kingship bands. Brutus’ power was the principal reason Asterion, for two thousand years, had kept those blocks in place which prevented William and Genvissa’s rebirth (and thus preventing the rebirth of everyone else who had been caught up in the battle).

  But Asterion had never uncovered the bands, and thus, a few decades ago, frustrated beyond measure, he removed the blocks. One by one, women across western Europe had fallen pregnant and given birth to babies who, as they grew, drew on the remembered experiences and ambitions of a past life to shape their decisions in this life.

  It was a nasty shock that Brutus had managed a rebirth so close to England.

  Very nasty, and even now contemplation of it made Asterion uneasy.

  Still, he kept William busy and distracted with problems within his own duchy. Asterion did not want to meet William until he, Asterion, was well and ready.
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br />   And Asterion did not want to meet William, or to have to cope with the problem of William, until he had both the bands, but…Her. His eyes slid from Edward to the door through which Swanne had vanished.

  “Enjoy what happiness you can find, Swanne,” Asterion said. “It won’t last long.”

  FOUR

  Marriage to Harold had brought Swanne many benefits—her current proximity to London, and so the Troy Game, being prominent among them—but, at this moment, Swanne was grateful only for the fact that their seniority within Edward’s court meant they had a private bedchamber.

  She had brushed aside Harold’s concerns, she had brushed aside the concerns of her attending woman Hawise, and now Swanne stood wonderfully alone, her back against the closed door of the bedchamber.

  “Brutus,” she whispered, the tears flowing again down her cheeks. Then, more loudly, more emphatically: “William!”

  William of Normandy! Oh, what a fine jest that was, that Brutus was reborn within the land where the savage Poiterans had lived so long ago. Yet, how right it seemed. Brutus as the military adventurer, the struggler, the achiever…the foreigner. With her new knowledge, the future became instantly clear to Swanne: once again Brutus would invade, once again he would seize control of the land.

  Once again, he would reign as king over England and London and over her heart. And this time, they would succeed…into immortality.

  “William,” she whispered, rolling the word about her mouth, loving the feel of it, joyous in her new discovery.

  He had sent that ball of string as a message to her! He yearned for her as much as she for him!

  It seemed such a simple thing, discovering what name Brutus went by in this life, but the lack of knowing had been a torture for her. She needed to know who he was to be able to contact him and much of her life to this point had been spent in that search.