Gods Concubine (78 page)

Caela took the other woman’s hands. “Matilda, listen to me carefully. Do not become involved in this any more than you are now. I could not bear that you should be injured in a battle which has nothing to do with you. I have hurt and murdered too many innocent people, sometimes wilfully, sometimes unintentionally. I could not bear to have your hurt or death on my conscience as well.”

“‘Murdered’ is a strong word, Caela.”

“What else can I call the death of my father, Pandrasus? And my nurse, Tavia? All the people of Mesopotama? Damson! Oh, Damson…”

“Damson? How can you blame yourself for Damson’s death? Caela—”

“I used her unwittingly, and sent her into danger. She was a sweet and simple woman who—”

“A
sweet and simple woman?
Ah, Caela! Enough. I cannot have you carry this burden. Listen to me…Damson knew precisely what she was doing. And her greatest ‘talent’ in life was that she fooled most people into thinking she was ‘sweet and simple’.”

“It is good of you to try and make me feel better, Matilda, but—”

“For sixteen years, Caela, Damson was my agent within Edward’s court.”

Caela’s mouth dropped open.

“Damson was a cunning and knowing woman,” Matilda continued, “not sweet and simple at all. I met her several times in the days before I sent her to Edward’s court, and I am very well aware of precisely who and what she was. Do not berate yourself on Damson’s account. She had long accepted the risks of the life she led, and if you want someone to blame for putting her in Swanne’s way, then blame
me.
I was the one who sent her to Swanne when she moved to Aldred’s palace.”

“You sent her to spy on Swanne?”

“When I discovered that William and Swanne were lovers, in the first month or so of my marriage, I sent Damson to be my own personal agent at Edward’s court. She was to report on Swanne to me…if Swanne moved to destroy my marriage and my life, then I wanted to be warned of it. Later, my dear, I set Damson to watch you. After Harold came to visit, I became increasingly curious about you.”

“But…” Caela still could not believe what she was hearing.

“Do not fret.” Matilda smiled. “Damson discovered nothing about you that she could report to me, apart from a sense that you were far more than you appeared to be.” Matilda shrugged. “You thought you were using

her. She was spying on you. You thought you had sent Damson to her death. I already had. Caela, Damson is not your guilt to bear. Nor mine either. Damson had responsibility for her own life.”

Caela was silent.

“And your father, Pandrasus, and Tavia?
Your
fault? No. They were victims not of any single act of ill will, but of circumstance. Mesopotama was destroyed by the miasma of hate, Caela, not by any single person or action. Everyone hated: you, Brutus, Membricus, Pandrasus, the Mesopotamans, the Trojans. A small boy walking down the streets of Mesopotama could have sparked the disaster that ate it as much as anything you did, or anything Brutus did. Forgive yourself, Caela. Don’t carry around a burden of useless and unearned guilt.”

Caela gave a small smile. “I wish you had been with me in my previous life, Matilda. I think somehow it would have been a happier time for me.”

“I can make it a happier time for you in the future,” Matilda said, and squeezed Caela’s hand where it lay in her lap.

N
INETEEN

C
aela and Mother Ecub stood on Pen Hill, the stones humming gently, and watched as William the Conqueror took London.

His army had been split into four and so it approached the city from four directions, entering from the south via London Bridge, from the north-east via Aldgate, from the west via Ludgate, and the largest column from the north via Cripplegate.

This last column approached Cripplegate from the northern road, which took them past Pen Hill, and it was with this column that William and Matilda rode.

Caela and Ecub could just make him out: William was unmistakable in his brilliant, jewelled armour.

“Did you tell him?” Ecub asked.

Caela shook her head, her eyes not leaving the distant figure. “He is not ready. He did not want to hear.”

Ecub sighed.

“His wife, however,” Caela continued, “did.”

Ecub turned to Caela, an eyebrow raised.

“Matilda will be coming to visit you,” Caela said. “Eventually.”

Ecub laughed delightedly. “Asterion has his own Gathering,” she said, “and I shall have mine.”

William saw Matilda glancing at the crest of the hill, and his mouth tightened.

“They are watching,” Matilda said. “Caela, and a woman I think must be Mother Ecub.”

William said nothing, his eyes now back on the road before him. He was still furious that Caela had told Matilda.

Unbelieving
that Caela had told Matilda.

It was not so much anger that Matilda now knew—in a sense William was relieved that he no longer had to deceive her, or hold anything back from her—but anger because William was terrified Caela had trapped Matilda within the same maelstrom of rebirth and disaster that caught so many others. Matilda did not deserve that; she deserved to live out this life with as much blessing and peace as he could manage to give her, and then to die without lying on her deathbed wondering how and when she’d be drawn back.

William was also angry because, of all things, Matilda’s sympathies seemed to be leaning more towards Caela in this mess than to him.
Women!

Is it so bad that Caela might be Mistress of the Labyrinth?
Matilda had asked him the previous night.

He had not answered her, and, after a silence, Matilda had said softly:
You do not mind that at all, do you? You are truly only angry because you think she has not chosen to dance the final enchantment with you. You are riven with jealousy. You love her, you want her, you cannot bear her choosing another over you.

At that William had been so infuriated he had not picked up on Matilda’s carefully chosen words.
I do not love her,
he’d shouted.

Matilda had only smiled at him.

“Keep away from them,” William said now, as the hill slid past.

Matilda only smiled.

“I command it.”

She tipped her head in a gesture that might have been acquiescence.

Not wanting to fight with her any longer, William nodded. “Good.”

Tonight,
he thought,
the bands. Tonight I shall retrieve the bands.

T
WENTY

L
ondon. It lay spread out before him, windows and torches glittering in the midnight cold.
His!

Finally.

Few Londoners had taken to the streets to witness the conqueror take his city. Most had stayed indoors, windows shuttered, anticipating, perhaps, riot and pillage.

But William had his Normans under tight command. He established control of the city within hours, securing it both within and without, then sent the majority of his army to establish encampments a good distance outside the walls, so that the Londoners might not feel too severely the humiliation of Norman victory.

William took for himself and Matilda the Bishop of London’s large house, preferring for the moment not to remove himself to Westminster. To his captains he said that he wanted to ensure that the Londoners felt the full power of his domination, but privately William could not have borne to remove himself from that for which he had lusted for so long.

He had entered London. He was not going to willingly remove himself from it until he had what he wanted.

The Trojan kingship bands. His limbs burned for their touch.

At dusk William had come to St Paul’s atop Ludgate Hill. There he had brushed aside the murmured concerns of the deacons and monks and strode down the nave towards the small door that gave access to the eastern tower. Waving away his soldiers, saying only

that he wanted some solitude in which to gaze upon his new conquest, William climbed the tower’s rickety wooden stairs three at a time, emerging on the flat-topped tower just as full night set in.

Here he’d stood for hours,
feeling,
sensing out the bands. Oh, William remembered where he’d buried them two thousand years before, but over two thousand years the landscape had changed remarkably. The city had grown: buildings stood where once had spread only orchards, streams had been enclosed…and yet nothing had changed. The Troy Game was still here.

William could feel it beneath his feet. By sheer luck (or design, perhaps?), this tower stood over the very heart of the Labyrinth, buried many feet below the crypt of the cathedral. Now the power of the Troy Game throbbed up through soil, wood, stone and the leather soles of his boots, surging through William’s body as strongly as it had done when he stood with naked feet on the Labyrinth itself.

More strongly.

Caela had said the Game had changed, and William could feel it. It had grown…independent.

It was going to be very hard to control.

It would be impossible to control without his kingship bands.

William shivered, and gazed over the night-time city. Caela had moved all six of the bands; or, at least, the six had been moved. William could feel four of them very clearly, calling out to him, longing to be touched and slid over his flesh once more. They were now scattered to the west, north and south of the city, miles away, but he could feel them, and could feel how the Game had grown to meet them.

The remaining two bands…

They were not where he’d left them two thousand years earlier. Caela had taken them, but he could not sense them at all.

What had she done with them? Where had she hidden them?

“My, what a fine man you have grown into. Taller than I imagined. I wonder if those bands will still fit you, could you ever discover them.”

William whipped about. Silvius stood two paces away, his arms folded, dressed in the manner of Troy with nothing but a white waistcloth and boots.

His flesh was very dark in the low light, but his good eye flashed while of his left there was nothing but a seething pit of darkness.

“What do you here?” William said, trying to keep his voice level.
Gods, how much power had both Silvius and the Game accumulated if his father could appear this solid, this real, this…
here?

“Come to see my son. What else?” Silvius let his arms fall to his side, and he took a half pace forward. “Come to wonder.”

“At what?”

“At you, of course.” Silvius paused. “Come to see what my son has made of himself.”

“Do you like what you see?”

“Does it matter any more what I think or like?” Silvius paused, his eyes running up and down William’s body. “You have seen Caela. Did she tell you that she and I—”

“Yes,” William said curtly. “You have become most intimate with Caela, it seems.”

Silvius’ face took on a lecherous cast. “Very intimate. She has changed, and vastly for the better. It seems you have not. Vile corruption has ever been your creed, has it not? You founded this Game on it, and you seek it out still.”

There was a strange note to Silvius’ voice, and William did not know what to make of it. “Did it make you happy to lie with her? Did that give you satisfaction? She is not
yours,
Silvius.”

Silvius laughed. “Oh, yes, she is. She gave herself to me freely.
Gave
herself to me, William. Freely!” He paused, and when he resumed his voice was roped with viciousness and contempt. “You lost her two thousand years ago. She can never be yours now.”

William regarded his father with as much steadiness as he could summon. “Why do you interfere, father? What has any of this to do with you?”

“
You
made me a part of it.
You
founded the Game on my murder. I warned you not to found the Game on corruption, that patricide was no way to—”

“This is none of your business, Silvius. Crawl away back to your death. Leave Caela alone. Leave me alone. Leave the Game to play out as it will.”

“The Game will play out according to
my
will, William. Mine.”

William’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment it appeared as if he did not breathe. Then he said softly, “No wonder my mother Claudia died in my birth. It was her only means of escaping you.”

Silvius’ lip curled. “You killed Claudia. Not me.
You
tore her apart.”

William stared at Silvius, his own eyes almost as clouded and dark as his father’s empty eye socket.

“You shall never succeed,” he said. “The Game is mine.”

And with that he pushed past Silvius, and disappeared down the stairway.

William raced down the steps as if his life depended on it, his breathing harsh and ragged as it tore through his throat. Four times he stumbled, almost falling, sliding inelegantly down five or six steps before his scrabbling hands managed to find purchase on the stone walls.

When he finally reached the bottom he took time to steady his breathing, glancing back up the stairwell as if he expected Silvius to come bearing down upon him at

any moment, before he stepped out to meet the concerned faces of his men.

“Robert,” William said to one of his most trusted men-at-arms, “there is a priory about two miles out of the city on the northern road. Ride there, and deliver a message to the dowager queen Caela. Let her pick the place, but demand that she meet with me
tonight.
Impress upon her the need for urgency. You have that?”

Robert nodded, then left at a trot.

William closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.
Gods, let her agree! Let her agree!

The situation had been bad before this night. Now it was almost irreparable.

When he had been Brutus, and Silvius had been his living father, his mother’s name had been Lavinia.

Not Claudia.

Never Claudia.