Godiva (15 page)

“So my forced submission is not compelled by violence, but it is forced submission all the same.”

She grimaced and looked down. Her goose bumps were subsiding, and she liked him for that, even though she still felt disposed to argue with him. “But it is also a forced submission if you pay the heregeld. If every choice is a forced submission, should I not make the choice I most believe in? A choice that will not beggar us for decades?”

Leofric made a noise, half grunt, half sigh, and brooding, he looked into the distance. Thinking.

“There is still the matter of the Church's response,” he warned.

“The Church's response,” she echoed, with an ironic sigh. “Towering over all of us, over everything, recklessly meting out punishment and blessing, and eternal damnation to the wayward.”

“That is no small thing,” said Leofric. “And Edward intends that your behavior offend the Church.”

“The Church is quite selective about what offends it,” Godiva insisted. “Just look at the Land Ceremony, or Rogationtide. Such things are not in the Bible, they stink of heathenism, and yet the Church does not denounce them.”

“But God himself is invoked in those hybrid convocations,” Leofric objected. “A naked woman riding bareback on a horse on Kalendis Maia is doing nothing in concert with God's will.”

“On the other hand, how could there be anything nefarious about it?” Godiva retorted. “I am performing no ritual, invoking no charms. I am simply riding. On my own horse. On my own estate. The temporary absence of clothing means nothing. Surely, it means nothing.”

“Unless somebody wants to claim it means something.”

She groaned with aggravation. “I need Edgiva's counsel,” she said. “And clearly I can wait no longer. I shall ride to Leominster straightaway.”

His arms stiffened around her. “No,” he said. “You will not.” It was spoken not as his desire, but as a statement of fact.

“As if you could stop me,” she said casually. “I will take an escort, of course.” She was surprised by the expression on his face. “But why do you say that?”

“The Welsh chieftains are warring with each other, and Sweyn Godwinson has gone into Wales to fight beside Gruffydd of Gwynedd,” he said. “I received word just this morning, before Edward's sycophant arrived.”

Godiva felt a surge, almost physical, of dread.

“Where is the fighting?” she asked hoarsely.

“Beyond Offa's Dyke, I know nothing more. Sweyn sent a brief statement to the three earls, and the king. I know nothing of how close to the border the fighting has moved.”

“Oh, heaven,” Godiva said, feeling ill.

“There may be reprisals on Sweyn's estates or those near him. The abbey is not safe.”

This was why she had not heard about their rendezvous: there had not been one. Sweyn, off warring in Wales, had not even received her message.

Why, then, had her runner not returned yet? Had he gone on, into an unknown battlefield, to find Sweyn? He was a dutiful man, but . . .

“Godiva?” said Leofric. “Your mind has wandered.”

“Yes, sorry,” she said. “If Sweyn is in Wales—he is her lord protector—and he is not there to protect her, and we are the abbey's patrons, so we must go at once to guard Edgiva.”

“She is guarded well enough by virtue of being
in
the abbey. It is
around
the abbey that would not be safe.”

“I must go to her. I
require
her advice, and I am running out of time.”

“Godiva—”

“Based on Bishop Aldred's counsel, I
will
make the ride. If you want to dissuade me, Edey is your best hope. So you had better let me go to her.”

He knew her stubbornness well enough, and that his own stubbornness could not sway it. She saw his jaw clench; he closed his eyes and grimaced. “
Woman,
” he growled in frustration.

“Women, actually,” she said in mock apology.

Part 3

CHAPTER 16

On the Road

S
he took five housecarls. Including Druce. Armed to the eyebrows, all of them. She promised that if she heard any word of fighting, she would return at once to Coventry, or at worst, divert to Bromyard. Godiva wore the dress—the costume, really, as she thought of it—that she saved for visits to the abbey: a long shapeless tunic of dark blue, with a matching veil and wimple. She refused to lay aside her jewelry, especially her heavy necklaces . . . but for Edgiva's sake, she dressed nearly as demurely as if she were a nun herself.

They set out next morning after mass, leaving the flowering gorse of the northern heath behind them.

Their journey took them along a path linking small villages and smaller hamlets. The weather continued queerly, cloudy but no rainfall, as if the weather gods were mocking all the farmers. Godiva rode astride, but behind her saddle was a pillion pad for respite. This was at Leofric's insistence, which only made her determined not to require respite. From Coventry to Meriden to Solihull to Alvechurch to Bromsgrove to Droitwich they walked and trotted and sometimes, briefly, cantered, and on the second night, they approached Worcester.

The town was beautiful, strangely fresh for one so large—but five years rebuilt since the heregeld razing. The cathedral of St. Mary was still sooty from the fires, but the wattle-and-daub houses were redolent with clean thatch—surely nowhere else in England boasted such a large collection of newly thatched roofs together, in a town that housed more than a thousand souls.

Were Lyfing alive, Godiva would have been his guest at the Bishop's Palace, but she was riding incognita and did not even pay respects to Aldred. Instead her party lodged in a town home maintained by one of Leofric's thanes.

In the morning they went on to Bromyard, moving at a leisurely pace and arriving in time to rest that night. Godiva liked Bromyard. It was a market town for the surrounding villages, in an area excellent for growing hops. As a result, the town was famous for its ale. The lady of Mercia was accustomed to drinking mead, as the Earl of Mercia kept his cellars stocked with little else. “Life it bitter enough already,” he often said, “without adding bitters to it.”

But Godiva liked variety and made sure to sample all the local wares, and, of course, she treated the housecarls to them too.

They all awoke the next morning groggier than usual.

But they managed to get the horses geared up and were on the road by sunup, moving slowly. In the late morning, as the bells tolled the end of Terce-mass, they approached the bounds of Leominster, waiting for them on a slight rise in the middle of a wide and fertile plain.

I
t was a suddenly brilliant day. The air was dryer than it had been, and the breeze was strong out of the west, bringing smells and sounds of civilization and river life before they saw anything but pasture and woods, catkins and wild daffodils.

The village of Leominster was much older than Coventry hamlet, but not much larger. Both had bloomed around monastic communities, and Leominster was a model for what Godiva hoped Coventry would become. It was primitive compared to Worcester or Hereford—but much less primitive than what passed for villages west of here, where there was no civilization to speak of, just the Welsh.

They skirted the earthen defenses of the abbey and walked their mounts through the village, to where the abbey gate faced westward. Despite Leofric's misgivings, there were no signs of recent strife, and there was no fear on the faces of the villagers who watched their approach. There was, at worst, some curiosity, for these people's earl was Sweyn of Hereford, and Godiva's escorts wore the livery of Mercia.

There were hardly streets to speak of, just neatly arranged low buildings clustered around an open market space where pigs were languidly scavenging for food. A path led briefly eastward, to a gate in a wooden palisade. This palisade buried itself in either direction into the earthworks surrounding Leominster Abbey.

From outside, the abbey appeared a motley assortment of small roofs clustered nervously around a church. This church, with its Saxon strip-work and semipagan adornments at the gables, was the most stable sanctum the local folk would ever know. Godiva mused upon the pagan decorations and thought that to have carved any one of them upon a church was surely a more suspect act than riding naked on a horse.

Leominster was a double house: nuns and monks worshiped and lived in segregated communities, side by side, both halves presided over by an abbess, not an abbot. The congregants lived separately yet together in an area some four hundred paces to a side, couched by the growing village. There was a remarkable absence of unwanted babes, which Godiva always believed had mostly to do with Edgiva's compassionate aptness with abortifacient herbs.

The riding party was greeted by a porter and let in through the gate; they dismounted in a small outer courtyard.

From here, three smaller gates allowed entrance: to the nuns' portion of the abbey; to the monks'; to the stables. Lay brothers came to take their horses, and Godiva told her men to wait in this outer court. The porter sent for an escort, and soon a white-veiled girl of no more than a dozen years appeared and bowed shyly.

“Bless me, Mother—my lady,” she corrected herself, pinking.

It was not Godiva's place to bless anyone, but the girl knew no other ritual of greeting, so Godiva smiled gently and returned, “
Benedicite
.”

The girl led her in promenade up the narrow avenue toward the church. An unpleasant feeling filled Godiva's belly as memories of her childhood here washed over her.

There were wooden sheds to either side of the walk, in which novices mixed ink or scraped and stretched parchment; larger sheds were workshops for drying and preparing medicinal herbs—this was a specialty of Edgiva's. All of the smells, mingling together, filled the very pores of her soul, wrenched memory from every muscle. True it was, one could hardly encounter a more accomplished group of women in Britain. Although they were sequestered from the tawdry distractions of the modern world of 1046, they knew poetry, history, grammar, and Latin. But her gorge rose at the remembrance of the strict schooling she had survived. If her parents had considered her too wayward and willful for regular fosterage, she thought now, their attempts to make her pliant as witch hazel had miscarried.

“Mother has been told of your arrival,” the girl informed Godiva primly as they walked toward the sisters' cloister. She was trying not to stare at a countess, especially a countess wearing great jeweled chains of gold.

“I remember being your age, being here,” Godiva said, smiling to put her at ease. “Where are you from?”

The girl blushed and turned her head away. “I do not know,” she murmured.

An oblate. A different kind of castaway. “Well, it makes no matter,” Godiva said gently. “You are lucky to be here.”

The girl nodded, with a hint of a smile. “I know that, milady, I am daily grateful for it.”

She meant it. Godiva had not, at her age. Coming from a world of privilege, knowing she was bound to return to that world, she had always found this place confining and unfriendly. She'd sought out rebellion, from sheer resentment. Only Edgiva had kept her from going mad. Sometimes, in retrospect, it amazed her that Edgiva had put up with her at all.

They crossed behind the west end of the church, through the cloister garden where young sisters weeded, short black veils fitted under their white ones. Then into the refectory, badly lit by rush light. The trestle tables were collapsed up against the wall, and young sisters were sweeping the worn wood floor. This building was much older than Coventry's manor hall, and smelled, eternally, of boiled vegetables.

Sister Audry, Edgiva's student in the healing arts and most ardent devotee, approached. “Greetings, Countess,” she said sternly in a near-whisper with a small, undecorated bow. The quiet: that was another thing Godiva remembered of this place. Nobody ever spoke except at service in church, or during lessons, or in a whisper.

With a gesture, Audry released the novice, who disappeared silently back out into the breezy sunlight.

Audry was a slip of a thing, wound tightly around a spiritual core of belief in damnation and the evil of the supernatural. Ironically, her adoration of Edgiva was based on the work they shared as healers—a skill Edgiva herself had learned from the wise women living outside the village bounds, who claimed they took their lore from fairies, elves, and water spirits.

“Benedicite,
Audry,” Godiva said, suddenly awkward. Audry's look was disapproving, despite the countess's demure garb. The young sister was jealous of the affection Edgiva had for anyone else, meaning Godiva was innately offensive to her. And now she glared at the jeweled chains. And, in truth, Godiva's “habit” had demure silk embroidery at the cuffs and hem, and several ribbons—demure ones, of course—hanging from her veil and falling nearly to the ground. And that veil did not cover her forehead, or even her hairline. And her fingernails were filed delicately to rounded points. So all in all, she admitted to herself, Audry's disapproval was not unwarranted.

“Mother says you are here on a visit of great delicacy that requires privacy, so she will see you alone.”

Godiva blinked. “How does she know?” she asked in amazement, in a normal voice.

Audry made a shushing gesture. “Mother is wise,” she said accusingly, as if Godiva's question implied she was not. As if her answer were an actual answer.

“Shall I see her in her closet,” Godiva whispered, “or will she come down to the chapter house?”

“She requests you in her room. We will set up the guest bed above the dormitory for you; we did not know when to expect your arrival.” There was a hidden rebuke in that.

“I will share Mother's quarters if that makes less work,” Godiva said lightly. Audry looked annoyed but said nothing.

Godiva went outside again, blinking in the sudden brightness. She went up the wooden dormitory stairs to Edgiva's tiny room. The abbess was the only resident of the abbey to have a private chamber, although there were two rooms beside it set aside for noble visitors, and a separate chamber off the infirmary for patients with contagious illness.

Her room contained just a simple bed with wool curtains around it for warmth. There was a chest, some pegs on which her habit hung, and a stool. A large crucifix adorned one wall, but otherwise the room was plain. Godiva had heard—and remembered, from her time here—that most religious authorities lived luxuriously upon the backs of all their minions. Even some sisters dressed flamboyantly, and kept proscribed personal decorations around their dormitory beds to remind them of the luxury of their secular lives.

It was against Edgiva's character to do so. Privately, Godiva believed Edey kept herself so austerely as atonement for a secret lack of real faith, although she could not prove that, for Edgiva was an impeccable abbess. Every donation made to the abbey had its assigned place in her accounting, but none of it ever went for her comfort. She had two habits, and one of them had been an Easter gift from Godiva; it had the tiniest bit of gold embroidery at the hems, so Edgiva never wore it.

Now Godiva opened the door and stepped inside. “Edey?” she said softly. The parchment had been taken from the window, and the shutters were thrown open; the window faced southeast and sunlight flooded the room. “How did you know to expect me?”

Edgiva sat on her bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders, as if she were trying not to panic. Her wimple and veil were off, and her dark hair fell almost to the bed. She leapt up when she saw her friend, ran to her, and threw her arms around her in such a tight embrace that Godiva was momentarily shocked to stillness. She had never seen Edgiva in such a state.

“Thank the saints you've come at last,” the abbess said. “I have been waiting for your arrival every day. Why only ‘trust me'? What was I to take from that?”

That was the message Godiva had given the Leominster messenger; the message would have made sense if Sweyn had followed hard on its heels to claim her, but of course he never had.

“There should have been more to it, I am heartily sorry the rest has not arrived yet. In truth, Edgiva, I came here to ask for your assistance in a sticky matter that has come up between myself and the king. I have refused to pay the heregeld on behalf of Coventry, and he has demanded satisfaction of me that I hesitate to—”

“Damn the heregeld,” Edgiva said, which confounded Godiva. “Did you not understand the import of my message?” She lowered her voice to a fierce whisper, with a nervous glance out of the window.
“I am carrying Sweyn's child.”