Godiva (14 page)

G
odiva walked into the cool sunlight, squinting in the sudden glare. She cracked the seal on the letter. In Edgiva's flowing hand were words reminiscent of their childhood scrivening:

To you, I lay down the secrets of my heart. I am fallen. I cannot free myself of his presence, though he be not by. What I crave and what I fear are become as one. I am distrustful of my own counsel, and would converse with you as with myself. Advise me immediately, before the problem takes on a life of its own, I beg you. Edey.

Godiva smiled, delighted. Leofric would have told her not to, would have told her it was unsympathetic, but she could feel only satisfaction. Edey was in love! With Sweyn! And Sweyn was in love with Edey! How delightful. And how very convenient, politically, for Leofric.

She called for parchment, quill, ink, and her green mantle. She settled on a bench outside the southern wall, with a board across her lap. It was chilly, but the air was fresh and the sun held promises of warmer days to come.
She craves my advice.
Usually it was the countess writing to the abbess, quoting plaintively the friendship letter. Edgiva wanted Godiva's advice. Had that ever been the case? Ever? Suddenly the countess felt extremely wise and worldly.

She stared at the parchment. What should she say? What counsel did Edgiva really want? Surely she knew Godiva would never say, “Forget him.” And yet surely she knew Godiva could not say, “Run off and marry him” (although Godiva desired very much to say that). Did she desire Godiva to come in person? But Godiva could not do that until she had sorted out Edward's demands. On the other hand, had Leofric not just suggested she seek out Edgiva's counsel about submitting to the ride? Surely the two women could advise each other.

She stared at the blank parchment before her until her teeth began to chatter in the cool. She wished she were wearing her warmer stockings. She could not think of a reply. And she could not presume to ask for aid in her own dilemma if she was not helping Edgiva with hers. Although Edgiva's, to be frank, was not a dilemma; it was merely an inconvenience. And a convenient inconvenience, by Godiva's lights.

She took from Edgiva's message that perhaps Sweyn knew. That they had perhaps acknowledged their feelings for each other, and had perhaps agreed to hide them, only now Edgiva found she could not.

Or, perhaps, she meant only that she had managed to keep aloof from him entirely, and now found the burden of perfect secrecy too hard to bear. What then should Godiva say to her?

I should tell her to tell him.

But the abbess could hardly tell the earl in writing, and when were they likely to cross paths again? They lived a dozen miles or more apart and occasion almost never placed them in each other's presence.

There it is,
Godiva thought.
That is how I can help
. She sat up straighter, finally dipped the quill into the ink, and wrote clumsily with numbing fingers:
If you want her, you need but go to Leominster for her.

She rolled the vellum around two chilled fingers, moved the board aside, and went in to call for sealing wax, her warmer mantle, and a glass of hot wine. She sealed the message with her ring—a complicated signet of Leofric's double-headed eagle above, her dragon below. Then she gave the scroll to her fastest messenger. He was a grown man who weighed barely more than a boy, and could travel two dozen miles a day—not in itself too remarkable, but he could continue on at that rate for several days on end.

“This is for Earl Sweyn of Hereford,” she informed him. “Find him at Hereford Manor, or if he is on circuit, follow after. Ask him to indulge me in a verbal response.”

As she went out again, heading across the yard to the carding shed with her hands cupped around the heated wine, she made a calculation. Sixty-odd miles lay between Sweyn and Coventry; if the messenger had half of today and all of two days after, and did not falter, then Sweyn might get the message the evening of the day after tomorrow. The following day, Sweyn could go to Leominster, and by three days after, she might receive news of what had transpired, either from Hereford or from Leominster. Hopefully something both to Godiva's liking and to Leofric's political benefit.

She was fond of Sweyn, but he had his father's ambition and energy. Possibly his ruthlessness as well. He had recently made an alliance with Gruffydd of Gwynedd, the brutal Welsh chieftain who had killed Leofric's brother Edwin in a gratuitous incursion into Mercia seven years earlier. The best way to contain the Welshman was to have sway over his chief ally. That was plain enough, and Leofric would agree with her.

Having recently taken two of the three Welsh kingdoms by usurpation, Gruffydd also wanted the third, the southernmost one. He had convinced Sweyn—and indeed, King Edward—this would be in England's interest, as the current prince of the southern kingdom was raiding the marches even more often and more violently than Gruffydd raided them himself. When Leofric had learned last year about Sweyn's pact with Gruffydd, he had spent a day raging about the rashness of the young, the rashness of the Godwins, and therefore the impossible rashness of Godwin's sons. That Edward had blessed the Hereford-Gwynedd pact had only made him rage more.

Sweyn as their neighbor could become increasingly dangerous with time, unless there was a mitigating factor—such as his marrying Godiva's closest friend. The Church would go into seizure about that, but every churchman Godiva could think of was either corrupt, untried, or dying. With the value of nuns eroding as it was, there would be little time to fret about an absent abbess—indeed, given how formidable a woman Edgiva was, the Church might be glad to be rid of her. Edgiva had organized and stewarded the abbey so magnificently that even the most ordinary of sisters might step in to replace her without the place going to ruin, so—decided Godiva—there was no harm done there. Now that Edward was married, and (one assumed) in the process of getting an heir, his niece's potential offspring would pose no dynastic threat or complication.

Clearly, Sweyn and Edgiva marrying would engender far more good than ill. It would engender no ill at all, in fact, just some temporary upset with the Church, but nothing compared to most of the other upset the Church was already dealing with. Most of which it brought upon itself.

Satisfied with the reasoning, Godiva turned her attention from policy, which was tiresome, to choosing dye colors for the spring shearing, which was pleasantly distracting. She had in mind a new overtunic for next Christmas, and now was the time to ensure that the red she was after would be rich enough. But the dye required cockles from the coast, and so she elected not to have it made in Coventry. She settled instead on a simple blue that could be made from local berries.

She forgot entirely about actually responding to Edgiva in the process.

It was only that evening at supper that she was reminded, when she saw the Leominster messenger dining with the lower servants. She told the steward to invite the fellow to stay the night in hall, and then depart for Leominster in the morning with a verbal message: “
Trust me
.”

CHAPTER 15

I
t was only after she'd sent the messenger off that she realized she had complicated her own circumstances: she required Edgiva's counsel regarding the ride before committing herself to it, but she must now delay the asking until she knew Edgiva's own evolving circumstances.

As soon as she received any news, she would herself ride to Leominster—or Hereford, or wherever Edgiva was—and seek her advice. There was nothing else to be done until then. If Edgiva of all people told her she was foolish, that she should pay the tax with Leofric's help, she would pay it and wait for another opportunity to protest the heregeld.

The next morning, she began counting the days. As she took communion at mass, as she visited the monastery in her lovely layers of blue tunics that moved so flatteringly when she walked, as she discussed with Avery how the ploughing and sowing were progressing, as she helped to card and spin wool and oversee the improvements on the fulling mill, as she and Leofric received reports from their estates around Mercia and sent orders and requests in response, her mind stayed triply bent on Edgiva, Sweyn, and Edward's demands. Leofric asked nothing of her plans, which most likely meant that he hoped she had abandoned them. She knew he'd sent a messenger to Brom Legge, where his coffers were, no doubt to alert his chamberlain of a huge—perhaps impoverishing—expense. It was uncomfortable, not to be in counsel with him. But there was no seeing eye to eye on this without Edgiva's mediation, so until they had it, it was best that they each keep their own minds.

Two more days of dry but cloudy weather gone by—her green tunic, and then the lovely blue ones again—and their runner had surely reached Hereford. A third day (pink silk—from her Easter costume, as she had run out of new arrangements of raiments) and Sweyn was certainly to Leominster, given how impulsive a youth he was. Godiva was giddy with anticipation all that day. Something so joyfully momentous made her problem with Edward seem quite transient. It was very difficult to keep anything from Leofric, but given that they were already avoiding discussing the ride, she swore herself to secrecy regarding Sweyn and Edgiva. When it all came out—assuming it came out well—then she could preen to Leofric that she had been the shepherdess; if it did not come out well, she would escape his rebuke. And in the meantime, she did not want him to worry. He had enough to worry about already.

Assuming no complications, two evenings from now, or three at most, she might receive some word, from either Leominster or Hereford, and then she would know where to seek out Edgiva for advice.

She went to mass, she breakfasted with Leofric, she sent for jewelers and goldsmiths to display their wares for purchase for the monastery; she combed out her long pale hair and gritted her teeth when the comb found snarls; she wrote to Alfgar, asking how his Easter had been, and if they should expect to hear news of a betrothal soon; she watched the dyes she had chosen being tested; she received a summary of the manor's stores; she heard reports of the wood storage, the granaries, the mill, the flocks; she sent alms to the outlying chapels and promised to visit them all before departing Coventry. The weather continued strangely—ever cloudy but never damp, no rain but no sun, chilling without being cold, even as spring flowers and leaf buds promised spring.

She helped to card wool, and to spin wool, and more wool and more wool and more wool. She helped repair the rollers at the bottom of the looms with her own delicate hands, which could reach into crevices the serving women's couldn't. She expected to hear something, surely, by the sun's first night in Taurus. No word. She knew she must be patient. She was not good at being patient. Expecting something by Sunday evening was, in fact, evidence of her impatience. Although given how quickly Kalendis Maia was approaching, her urgency felt justified. She wished now she had written to ask Edgiva's advice after all. Edgiva was a wise and gracious woman; she would surely have given counsel, even if her own life was amok.

Monday morning, in the layers of blue that were her new favorite, while in the gilded wooden chapel for Terce-mass, Godiva heard the mark-bells from the west announcing a traveler, and she was joyful with hope.

But when they exited the building, the porter came for Leofric, not for her. The excitement in her upper belly sank to frustration in her lower belly.

The air was damper, but still no rain had come—there had been none since Holy Week. As the bells down at the monastery tolled Sext, and she was reviewing the herbs in the kitchen garden with the cook's wife, the horses in the stable neighed together plaintively, as they often did when another horse approached. She felt shivers of anxious delight in her stomach, butterflies of expectation. As soon as she had finished the list of new herbs to be added to the garden, she fairly skipped across the courtyard to see who was at the gate.

It was no messenger from Sweyn, or even from Edgiva. The livery was loud and boastful: a golden cross on white, a bird nestled in each quarter, a fifth perched atop it. King Edward had sent a messenger to query her.

May Day was only ten days away, and His Majesty was growing impatient for her answer.

Leofric had heard the horses too. He joined her, and they received His Majesty's messenger in the hall. Leofric sat in his chair by the fire pit; Godiva sat on a stool at his knee.

The messenger was pompous. Worse, he had a Norman accent, which made his pomposity all the more pompous. They found it hard to be polite to him.

“I have not yet determined my course of action,” she said as airily as she could, when they had begun the official audience. “I require more time to determine what is best for Coventry.”

“His Majesty requires a response immediately,” said Pomposity Embodied. “I must depart from hence at once with your answer, in order that I may return to him with it and he may then begin his journey hither in time to be present on May Day.”

“Who uses words like
hence
and
hither
in common conversation?” Leofric scoffed.

“There is nothing common about any discourse concerning His Majesty,” the messenger said loftily.

Leofric opened his mouth to retort, but Godiva put a hand gently on his arm and asked the fellow, “Will His Majesty arrive on the Kalends of May regardless?”

“Indeed he will. He wills it that he arrive knowing what to expect—either that you yield the town, or pay the tax, or that, in the event that you refuse to do either, that you acknowledge your state of rebellion and surrender yourself to his demands by—”

“I know what he has required of me, thank you,” she said tersely.

“But who else knows?” Leofric said. To the messenger: “Tell me what you know of his intended punishment for her.”

There was no blush, or sneered lip, or anything in between, on the man's face; only mild confusion. “In lieu of corporal torture, His Majesty will demand of the lady a punishment of the spirit, which the two of them have already discussed in private.”

Leofric relaxed a little. “That is all? No details?”

The man shook his head. “Not one. He took great pains to create the phrase, as he is a most gentle and considerate—”

“Thank you, stop talking now,” said Leofric. The messenger looked as if he'd been slapped. Leofric turned to his wife. “So. Edward is not discussing it.”

“A good thing,” she said.

“Yes, unless it is a bad thing.”
How very Leofrician,
thought Godiva at that. “Perhaps it means the king assumes you will yield and give him either property or money. But perhaps it means he is holding the arrangement secret so that he may divulge it publicly at a moment of benefit to him.”

Godiva sighed with exasperated impatience and spoke to the messenger: “I am not prepared to give an answer yet, so I will deliver my answer in person on the first of May.”

The messenger blinked. “But I must
bring
your answer to His Majesty.”

She shrugged. “Well, then, you must wait until I am prepared to give you one. We are quite full to capacity here at the manor, but I am sure you should be able to find lodgings in the village, or perhaps at the monastery, although I am not sure any of the roofs are complete yet on the guest wing, and I hear we may have rain tonight. Godspeed.” She stood up and began to walk away from them; she could feel herself trembling with rage. Even her knees were shaking.

Behind her, Leofric said to the fellow, in a tone of mock camaraderie: “I would help you if I could, but there is just no controlling these Saxon women.”

She walked toward the hall door, needing air. She noticed the strewing herbs had lost their savor over the winter and a cool mustiness was starting to take over. She would have to discuss that with Temman.

Outside, she inhaled deeply of the sharp April breeze, willing the cool of it to quiet her blood. She wished she had asked for a mantle—these tunics were all thin silk, and the damp went right through them. She stood there, lost a moment, acutely aware of her own body under the draping silk as goose bumps rose up all over it.

A moment later, she felt Leofric approach her from behind. He draped her beaver-lined green mantle over her shoulders, then pressed his chest against her back, encircling his arms around her. “I sent the scoundrel off,” he said into her veil.

“Thank you.”

“I am glad you did not commit yourself. Please, Godiva, do not do it.”

“I suppose you think I
want
to do it,” she said, tensing. “I suppose you think I
relish
the idea of
exhibiting
myself.”

“Not to a herd of common villagers, of course not,” Leofric said, squeezing her.

“Not to
anyone,
” she protested.

“I've sent for money,” he said. “It will be here by the first of May.”

She nodded, pursing her lips. “You should not pay him.”

“Nor should you by abject humiliation.”

She said nothing.

“The entire town is not worth a fraction of the tax he's levied,” Leofric said, carefully studying her. “Its accumulated worth over the course of your life is less than what he is demanding now.”

She gave him an alarmed look. “You are suggesting I give up the town. To a tyrant? To spare myself a horseback ride?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head, frustrated. “The way you always paint a problem simpler than it really is . . .” He let it trail off. Then: “It is a husbandly instinct I cannot ignore. I do not ever like to see you exposed. Come inside now; if the gods have compassion it will start raining any moment.”

She pulled her arms tight against herself to shrink from his touch. “I do not
expose
myself. I have used my wiles on enough men to understand the power of concealment. What is exposed loses its power; what is covered remains a mystery and thus alluring.”

“I fail to see how that is an argument for making the ride.”

“Edward is forcing me to display how literally vulnerable I must make myself at his commandment.”

“Yes, he is. What about that makes you want to do it?”

“I do not want to do it!” she protested. “But I would sooner do it than lose the town. If I must choose between being bereft of my dignity for half an hour, or a potent source of revenue for a lifetime, it is an easy choice.”

“Those are not the only choices, Godiva,” he said, again tightening his grip on her.

“I will not be ransomed. We will not let him use the wife's dilemma to extort money from the husband.”

Leofric blinked, as if hearing something that surprised him. Then his expression, usually calm even in his irritation, suddenly grew very hard. He turned her around so that they were looking at each other, his arms still hooped about her.

“How could we not see this?” he said. “Extorting money is nothing compared to what he really wants. He wants to cuckold me, without laying a hand on my wife.”

“What?”

“He wants control of your body above my objections . . . how could we not have grasped that the moment he said it?”

“Leofric—”

“You are a means to an end. You are nothing but an instrument for punishing me. Not just taking money from me. Actually shaming me, and so undermining me.”

“Oh,” Godiva said, considering.

“To all the landed women of the kingdom, Edward is warning: see what I can do to you. And to all the lords, he is warning too: see what I can do to your wives. Is that not worse than simply paying an unfair tax?”

“I . . .” She shook her head, confused now. “I cannot believe that is it. The Great Council will not allow such a perverse use of power.”

“You are assuming he cares about the Council. Harthacnut did not care.”

“He does not want to be like Harthacnut. That is why he demands I ride naked rather than demanding you burn down Coventry.”