Gods' Concubine Read online

  I had not been asleep, but the soft footfalls approaching my tiny chamber nevertheless disturbed me. At first I had thought they might be William, and I was terrified, for I did not know what to say to him, but then I realised that whoever it might be was far too light for his tall frame.

  In the end, I wished it had been William, for Swanne was far more terrifying than anything he could have been.

  I had not seen Swanne since that terrible night when I had gone to her as Damson. There had been no reason for us to meet, and I, most certainly, had not tried to instigate a meeting.

  So it was that, as I raised myself to my elbow and studied the dark figure that slipped in my door, I had a

  sudden, terrifying moment of sheer panic when I realised who my visitor was.

  Could she harm me?

  Could she see who and what I had become?

  And then I felt a moment of self-loathing for my cowardice. I would need to deal with Swanne eventually and, moreover, I needed Swanne. Nothing in my future could be achieved without her aid.

  Somehow.

  But still, knowing her alliance with Asterion, I simply could not help that tremor of fright as she came to my bed, saw me looking up at her, and then sat down on the edge of the mattress.

  “Well, well, Caela. Come to your man, have you?”

  “He is not ‘mine’,” I said, grateful my voice remained steady, “nor shall ever be.”

  “Good girl,” Swanne said patronisingly, and reached out and patted my cheek. “What do you here then?”

  “I come to surrender London into William’s hands.”

  “And then run back to your convent, I hope.”

  I said nothing. It was difficult to see any details of Swanne’s features, or her expression, in the dark, but, silhouetted against the faint light coming through the doorway, I could make out an ever-changing landscape of lines and angles in the outline of her face. “Snake”, Matilda had called her, and I thought that an apt name for her.

  “I am amazed that you lie here so quietly,” Swanne said after a moment’s silence, “when William undoubtedly heaves and grunts over Matilda in their chamber.”

  “I am unsurprised to find you here so unquietly,” I responded, “when William undoubtedly makes love to Matilda in their chamber.”

  I saw her stiffen.

  “She is nothing,” Swanne said.

  “I do not think so,” I said.

  “She is not the Mistress of the Labyrinth,” Swanne hissed.

  “She is far more to him.”

  “You simpleton! You have no idea—”

  “To everything a purpose,” I said, edging myself up in the bed so that I sat upright. “Is that not what the Bible says?”

  “The Bible is nothing but worthless—”

  “Matilda is your penance,” I said, very softly, “for what you did to me in our former life.”

  I think I struck her dumb. I know she sat there, rigid with emotion, staring at me for a long time. Finally, she broke the silence.

  “And where have you found your backbone, my lady?” she asked.

  “From life, and experience, and tragedy. Through loss of innocence, Swanne. For that loss, I think, I have you to thank.”

  Again, a silence. I considered her, and I remembered how powerful she had been as Genvissa, both as MagaLlan and as Mistress of the Labyrinth. I remembered also her years as Harold’s wife, when she had been so influential within the court. Yet, as Swanne, Asterion’s creature, she had lost all power, whatever she may have thought. Oh, she was still dangerous, and could command magic, but she had lost completely that aura of extraordinariness that had once so set her apart from everyone else.

  I realised that now Swanne, even as menacing as she remained, had become little more than a shadow flitting like a forgotten ghost through the unlit hallways of whatever court she thought to seek power within. Few people paid any attention to her. Most people had likely forgotten her existence, or ceased to care about it.

  For the first time since I had known her, either as Swanne or as Genvissa, I felt sorry for her.

  At that thought, my mouth opened and words tumbled forth from some dark, intuitive place.

  “Swanne, if ever you need shelter, I will give it to you.”

  “What?”

  “If ever you need harbour, I am it.” This is what I should have said and done when I went to her as Damson. Suddenly I knew what I was doing. It had become clear to me, as I had trusted it would. In offering Swanne shelter, in offering to be her friend, I was opening the way for the day when Swanne would hand to me the powers of Mistress of the Labyrinth. Willingly. As Damson I had tried to bargain with Swanne, tried to extract the powers of Mistress of the Labyrinth from her as payment for services rendered. That had been a foul thing to do. Instead, I should have offered her friendship.

  Freely. No conditions.

  Swanne started to draw back, but I reached out a hand and grabbed her wrist. “Swanne, if ever you need harbour, then I am it!”

  “Let me go!” She wrenched her wrist from my grip and rose, almost stumbling in her haste. “Your wits have gone, Caela.”

  “If ever you need a friend, Swanne, then I am it.” Suddenly, as I said that, I no longer hated her, nor even feared her very much. Poor Swanne…

  She took a step backwards, stumbling momentarily as her heel caught in her skirts.

  “If ever you need a friend, Swanne…” then I am it.

  Then she was gone, and I found that as I lay back down to my pillow sleep came easily to me, and I slept dreamlessly until the following morning, when the sound of Normans clattering down to their breakfast awakened me.

  Matilda and I sat chatting, passing the day in idleness, while men and horses bustled through the courtyard. William prepared to march on London.

  London had been given; he wasted no time taking.

  It seemed to me that I had wasted a lifetime in idle chatter over needlework. I had certainly wasted most of my marriage to Edward bent submissively over wools and silks. And here I was, a former queen with the queen yet to be crowned, talking of children and babies and childbirth and, of course, wools and silks.

  Thus it was that when Matilda sighed, placed her needlework to one side, and said, “I am curious as to how it can be that William loves you so deeply,” that I was somewhat dumbfounded.

  Then, as I stared at her with, I am afraid, my mouth hanging very slightly open, wondering how on earth to respond, she smiled with what seemed like genuine amusement.

  “I have misphrased that question,” Matilda said, “for I did not mean to suggest that it could not be possible for William, or any other man, to love you, for you are a desirable woman, but only how it is that William can have come to love you. Has he fallen in love only with rumour? Or did he somehow hold you as an infant, and he but a small boy, and conceive then his great passion for you?”

  There was absolutely nothing in her voice but intense curiosity, and I think that surprised me as much as…as the idea that William loved me.

  He hated me. He’d always hated me.

  “I…he can’t love me,” I said.

  In response Matilda simply nodded to my lap. “You’re bleeding,” she said.

  I looked down. At some point in the last few moments I’d stuck my needle into my left index finger. I pulled it out hastily, wincing, and sucked at the pinprick of a wound, feeling like a child.

  “On our marriage night,” Matilda said, “William paid me the courtesy of being honest. He said that I would never be the great love of his life. Ah, do not fret, Caela. I accepted that then, and I accept it now. But for these past sixteen or so years I have thought my rival to be Swanne. Now I realise that it is you that William loves beyond all others—and you him. Caela, I ask again, and in simple curiosity and not in judgement, how can this be so?”

  My left hand was back in my lap, and now I looked down at it, and wondered what to say.

  “All my marriage,” Matilda continued in a
soft voice, “I have known that William was somehow very, very much more than ‘just’ the Duke of Normandy. That there is another level, another purpose to his life that he has kept from me. Is it you, or are you just a part of it?”

  “A mere part of it,” I said.

  She was silent, waiting.

  “Matilda, to tell you would be to involve you in such dark witchery that—”

  “Swanne is dark witchery,” Matilda said. “You are not. Swanne had the power to ruin my life. You have the power to enrich it. I am not afraid, nor threatened by you, Caela. Please—”

  “Matilda.”

  We both jumped slightly, and looked to the door.

  William stood there, leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded, his eyes unreadable.

  I had no idea how long he had been standing there.

  “Matilda, my love,” he said, unfolding his arms and walking into the room, “I would speak privately with Caela for a time. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not,” Matilda said. She rose, kissed first me and then William on the cheek, almost as if she were blessing us, and left.

  Finally, my heart pounding, I raised my eyes and looked into William’s face.

  SIXTEEN

  “You are well served in your wife,” Caela said after a long, uncomfortable pause.

  “She is a better wife to me than you were,” William said, taking Matilda’s chair.

  “She has made you into a better husband than I managed,” Caela said.

  The skin about William’s eyes crinkled in humour. “So Cornelia is still buried in there somewhere.”

  “We are all who once we were, only—”

  “Changed,” he said. “You are far lovelier than you were as Cornelia, and that loveliness is not just reflected in your features. You are calmer, more at peace with yourself. Stronger. Wiser.” And more still, he thought, but could not put words to that difference.

  “And you?”

  “As you said, I am a better husband.”

  Silence, as both looked away from each other.

  “Why did you lie with my father?” William said eventually.

  “You saw?”

  “Yes. My father, Caela?”

  “What care is it of yours?” she said.

  “Why?” His voice was very soft now.

  She lowered her gaze, her wounded hand making a helpless gesture. “He reminded me of you. He had your look, save gentler, and kinder. More weary. I was lonely and in need, William. I was in no mood to reject what

  he offered. He was a mistake. I lay with him only that once.”

  “Did he please you?” His black eyes were steady on her face.

  “No.” She paused. “Not as once you did. He was your father, but he was not you.”

  “You should not have lain with him, Caela.”

  “What concern is it of yours? What?”

  Now it was William who spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “None. I know that. I just…I just wish you had not. Not with my father.”

  “I’d wished it was you,” she said, “but I could not have you. I thought Silvius could fill the void. I was wrong.”

  “I heard what Matilda said to you, Caela. But I do not love you. There is too much shared hatred for us to

  “I know. You do not have to explain.”

  “Damn it,” he muttered, looking away.

  “William—”

  “I did not come here to talk to you of love,” William said. “There are more urgent matters, as I am sure you realise.”

  “Yes.”

  “Caela, do you remember those bands I wore about my limbs?”

  Her shoulders tensed at this change in subject, and he did not miss it. “Yes.”

  “Someone has been moving them.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long, heavy pause. “Do you know who?”

  “Yes.” Another pause, and Caela kept her eyes directly on him. “I have.”

  William’s mouth dropped open, and he stared at her for so long and so incredulously that Caela eventually had to look away.

  “You shifted the bands?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? How? Only I or the Mistress of the Labyrinth could have touched those bands! And possibly Silvius, as he was once their Kingman also.” William’s voice was rising, and Caela flinched as he slid forward on the chair, then stood up. “How could you have moved them, Caela?”

  She studied her hands clenched in her lap a long moment, then looked up. “The Troy Game has changed, William.”

  “What do you know of the Game?”

  Caela visibly steeled herself. “The Game was left alone a long time, William. Uncompleted. It changed.” She gave a small, helpless shrug. “It became attuned to the land, and the land to it. William, the Troy Game is no longer the passive thing I think you believe it to be. Something that waits for your touch. Yes, it wants completion. Yes, it wants the strength that will come with that. But it also wants that completion and strength on its terms.” She paused. “And this land wants the Game completed on its terms as well. Land and Game are agreed on how this should be done.”

  William stared at her for a long moment in silence. How was it that she spoke on behalf of the Game and the land? He spoke, one single, expressionless word: “Yes?”

  “The Game wants the male and female elements of this land to complete it, William. It means it will become one with the land. Completely melded with it.”

  “Explain that to me,” William said, his voice now dangerously quiet.

  “In simple terms—”

  “How good of you.”

  Caela winced. “The Game wants the female and male elements of this land, the reincarnations of the ancient gods Mag and Og, to complete the Game as the

  Mistress of the Labyrinth and the Kingman. It does not want you or Swanne to—”

  “ What have you done?”

  “I have done nothing! William, the Game has—”

  “Are you still Asterion’s pawn?”

  “No! William, I beg you, listen to—”

  “This Game is mine, and Swanne’s.”

  She took a moment to respond, steadying her nerves and her voice. “The Game is its own being, in partnership with the Mistress of the Labyrinth and the Kingman.”

  “Who you say are to be the reincarnated Mag and Og.”

  She nodded.

  William abruptly stood and walked over to a window. He stood for long minutes, staring outside. “I have not come all this way to be told that,” he said finally, turning about. “I have no reason to believe you.”

  Caela stood, and approached William. He tensed slightly as she neared, but made no move to stop her when she lifted his hand and placed it flat against her breastbone. “See who I am,” she whispered, holding his eyes with her own.

  He found himself standing within the circle of stones he had once known as Mag’s Dance.

  Save that the stones were no longer solid, nor even stationary, but instead appeared to have become creatures of wraith and movement and song.

  He spun about, both scared and disorientated, and saw that a woman approached him through the spinning circle of dancers.

  It was Caela, clothed only in mist and her loose, blowing hair, and with such power in her eyes as William could never have imagined her—or any woman—possessing.

  “See,” she said, and looked to one side of the circle.

  A white stag lay there, its head crowned by blood-red antlers.

  “He is my lover,” she whispered.

  William snatched his hand back from Caela. “By all the gods,” he whispered, “you are Mag?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “I am what she once was, yes.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Now I understand you. And to think that once all I thought you wanted was my attention and my babies. No. You wanted power. You wanted revenge, against both me and Swanne. And this is it. You have now taken Swanne’s place in the Game, or at least fooled the Game into thinkin
g you were what it wanted, which is why it allowed you to touch the bands, and—”

  “I am to this land what Mag once was. And yes, I am what the Troy Game now wants—one half of it, at least. That is why I could move the bands. I did not ‘fool’ it, William. I only accepted the decision of both the Troy Game and the land.”

  “I cannot believe that you would do this to me! And yet…how could I not expect it? You always were ready with the dagger to plunge into my back. You were always ready to—”

  “Stop! No, William. No. None of this is my plan, but that of the Game itself, and of the land.”

  “And who do you—oh, I offer my apologies—the Game and the land, think to replace me with, then? Loth-reborn, whoever he is?”

  “His name is now Saeweald, William. He is a physician, tending the wounded as he tends this land.”

  “Saeweald? Well, Saeweald then. Oh, how it would please him to have me crawl to him and offer him my powers. Or Harold? Is Harold the one who you mean to take as your mate and partner? Yes, I can see that.

  Harold. I imagine you have a plan to raise him from the dead.”

  “Don’t do this, William,” Caela whispered. “Don’t become that man of hate again.”

  “Did you think that you could walk in here and seduce me with face and body and tender voice into betraying everything I have fought for…through two lives?”

  He stopped, swore, and stalked away.

  “William—”

  “You are not the Mistress of the Labyrinth,” William said, turning back to face her. “I don’t care what else you are, but you are not the Mistress of the Labyrinth. You do not have the power, and you do not know the steps to complete the Game. It cannot teach you. Silvius cannot teach you.”

  “One day, eventually, Swanne will hand to me her powers as Mistress of the Labyrinth.”

  “What? You have lost your mind. She will never willingly hand over her powers! I will never willingly hand over…I cannot believe I am having this conversation with you!”

  “Will Swanne willingly hand her responsibilities as Mistress of the Labyrinth to me one day? Yes, she will.” Caela’s voice was very certain.

  “You are a fool, and out of your mind.”

  “Swanne has betrayed you to Asterion.”