Godiva (21 page)

He had grown quiet during her speech. Now he said, much calmer, “That is very eloquent, Godiva. Moving, even. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with attending to this crisis.”

“You're right, I am sorry,” she said. She finally sat down on the bed beside him. “If you are thoroughly finished shouting at me, let's you and I talk through and see if we can best determine what to do now.”

He flopped back heavily onto the pillow. “I should have guessed you were responsible for all of this as soon as I caught wind of it . . .”

“I am not responsible! 'Twasn't I who ploughed her furrows!”

He laughed ruefully, briefly, with frustration. “Do you know? The punishment for rape is a fine paid to the woman's guardian, but Leominster Abbey is in Herefordshire, so I suppose he owes himself the fine.”

“You are patron of the abbey, so he should owe it to you—no, what are we saying, Leofric, he doesn't owe it at all, because he did not rape her.”

“It might have been better for her if he had.”

She glared at him. “I did not hear you say that.”

“While you were changing I wrote to Sweyn and told him to keep his head down for a while.”

“He knows she is here.”

“I assumed as much. I told him not to come.”

“He has already promised me he would not,” she said, desperate to show she deserved credit for something.

“That was before there were condemnations and threats being issued against him by the bishop and the king,” he said. “Were I in his position, the first thing I'd do would be to put out a letter to all of England informing everyone that I had not abducted the Abbess of Leominster, because Godiva of Coventry had got there first. I would also use that opportunity to deny I was the father of her child—unless he decides politically it is in his interest to claim it as his, which, now I think of it—”

“He knows nothing of that,” she said, standing up with agitation. “He does not even suspect.”

He opened his eyes wide and looked up at her. “You mean you kept out of something?” he said. “Praise Woden and pass the mead.”

“Not funny,” she said sharply, and lightly kicked his foot. She was relieved the rage had passed and he was willing to speak to her—actually speak
to
her, not
at
her—again. “In fact, he said that even if the two of them were to wed—”

“Which will never happen.”

“He said even if the two of them were to wed, they should have no child until Edward has an heir. Otherwise it would appear to be political maneuvering on his part—maybe even on Edey's—and he did not wish to put her in that position.”

“And you fell for that?” he said, making a face. “Surely you are too savvy to fall for such nonsense.”

“I did not
fall
for anything. He meant it. He,” she informed him, “is besotted. He may not mean it half a year from now, but trust me, he means it now. Anyhow, he knows nothing about the child.”

“So.” Leofric took a breath and sat up again. He patted the bed where she had just been sitting. “Come here. Let's talk this through. What will Edgiva do?”

Godiva sat. “She needed to get away from Leominster even to consider it. She was in distress the whole ride; it would have been wrong of me to push her to speak of it, especially with the men around us. The one thing she has determined is that she will carry it to term. She nearly aborted it, but found she could not.”

“And we know this is no trick of hers, to elevate herself from abbess to future queen mother?”

She smacked his knee. “I cannot believe you would even entertain that notion.”

“We must contemplate every possible angle. Few people know her so well as we do—nobody knows her so well as you. Others will look to unsavory motives. If we cannot anticipate those, rumors will get out of hand. And we have already seen what rumors can do.”

CHAPTER 21

T
hey had given Edgiva the small room beside their own. She had retired there instantly, attended only by Merewyn, who understood at once what was going on but put her hand over her heart in a silent, spontaneous vow not to speak of it. At the abbess's request, a quill and ink were brought, and Edgiva busied herself awhile, writing soothing prayers and charms into her diary.

When Godiva went in to her, she was curled up on the bed, ink blots on her fingers.

“Edey,” Godiva said softly, and sat beside her. Edgiva did not move. Indeed, if Godiva could not see the side of her body rise and fall slowly, she would not be sure her friend was living. “Edey, we have your saddlebag with the herbs in it. If you are not well enough to prepare a concoction, guide me to prepare one for you.”

“This is not entirely a sickness of the body,” the abbess said in a low voice. “There is an ailment here that drugs cannot cure.”

Godiva grimaced, then put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. “Everything happens according to God's will,” she said, citing the abbess's own words from many past occasions. “Somehow hidden in all this is a blessing, or at least a lesson, waiting to be found out.”

A strange sound came from Edgiva then, almost a derisive laugh. Godiva waited, but there was no other response. She pressed on.

“Leofric and I have been speaking. He knows everything, and hopes you will soon determine your course, so that we in turn know what to do to help. We do not want to confuse the situation by doing anything without your blessing first.”

That same sound, but now louder, barking, more derisive; she shrugged the hand from her shoulder and sat up heavily, her back still to her friend. “That is rich,” she said, her rich voice heavy with venom. “Did you have my blessing when you instructed Sweyn to show up at the abbey and carry me off?”

“I did not tell him—”

“And then,” she went on, rising unsteadily, “did you have my blessing when you took it upon yourself to repair
that
situation by issuing orders that only worsened the confusion?” She turned to Godiva, her face a color Godiva had never seen before. “Oh, there you are in your pretty little gowns of seduction,” she said with impatient dismissiveness, gesturing angrily at Godiva's Easter tunic. “I would never have given my blessing to anything you've done so far! And will you acknowledge that you have entirely interfered with and possibly ruined my life—as well as Sweyn's? Heavens no, you pat my shoulder with your delicate little fingers and speak to me as if you were a considerate friend whom I should feel appreciative of, rather than enraged at!” Tears of fury sparkled in both eyes and from the right eye spilled down her mottled cheek.

It was a poisonous anger. She had carried it with her all these days, words of rage she had not had the energy or will to chastise Godiva with, all the way from Worcester.

“Edgiva—” she began in her most honeyed tone.

“Do not use that voice with me!” Edgiva hissed. “I know that voice. That is the voice you use with men to wilt them according to your convenience.”

“I use it with women too,” she said without thinking, in pathetic defense.

“Do not use it with
me,
” Edgiva said with the same furious whisper. “Do not soften the edge of my anger, do not rob me of this fury. You have already mismanaged my life beyond repair; you will not manage my sentiments as well. You have done unspeakable damage to me and to Sweyn, and no amount of
charm
can save you from accountability.”

“I warrant you that,” Godiva said, chastised. “But your rage at me solves nothing. I do not deny I helped to cause the problem, but you are the only one who can resolve it now.”

“But that is so like you!” It was a whispered shriek. “
You
have caused a problem, but some
other
soul must fix it. You are marvelous at causing problems that you have no power to fix! You have done it from the moment you could
speak
.”

“You act as if I am the only errant party here,” Godiva shot back, then lowered her voice to a whisper to demand furiously: “Whose child are you carrying, and how did it get inside you? Am I to blame for that?”

Edgiva reddened and her breath caught. “I have already punished myself for that sin, and offer penance every day for it. That is why I do not take the herbs that would make me feel better—I do not deserve my own succoring—”

“God's wounds, that's absurd.”

“That is not the point,” Edgiva said, pushing on in a pained voice. “I know that I have sinned, and I am in a constant private dialogue with God about it. I knew I must take responsibility and I was trying to find the time to meditate upon how. You blithely trampled over everything, and now Sweyn Godwinson will be excommunicated and robbed of his land and title for an action he did not commit.”

“What, abducting you? He committed a far worse act than that—”

“Which nobody need ever have known about!” Edgiva seethed.

“Are you content that a sin should go uncorrected? What kind of abbess does that make you?”

“A confused one! Trying to navigate her way through her confusion! Meanwhile my name is being bandied about in confounding ways among the entire population of the Council—”

“They were already talking about you as a tax resister.”

“And now they shall be talking about me as a whore!” she returned. “And so I lose all credibility,
all
credibility,
forever,
in a way that no secular lady ever would, for the Church will condemn me and cast me out—”

“This is fearful passion speaking,” Godiva said to calm her, holding out a reassuring hand; Edgiva snatched her arm away angrily. “Rest and eat and take your mind from it but for a day, and you will see that none of this may come out as you fear. Everything can be rectified—”

“How? By deceit?” Edgiva demanded venomously. She was regaining herself, and adopted now the voice of the all-seeing abbess Godiva always loved and sometimes dreaded. “There are three choices here, Godiva,” she said, as if suddenly she were mentor and the countess student. “First, to let these errant rumors run wild, leading God knows where—”

“All Sweyn need do is open his home to show he does not have you, and he is out of danger.”

“Unless somebody implies that he has killed me or is hiding me away somewhere. Where else should I be? People saw
me
being taken away
by him
. So either he is suspect in my disappearance, or you and Leofric become suspect yourselves, for why would you set up an occasion in which Sweyn appears to have abducted me, unless you had some plot to get him into trouble?”

“We will speak to S—”

“And even if you resolve things with Sweyn, this is an
incident
. Everybody is aware of it. Whereas, if I had simply come with you to Coventry, nobody would have cared. Whatever choices I made from there, they would be difficult, and I would deserve the difficulty, but they would be
my
choices;
I
would be responsible for them—not Sweyn, not you, not Leofric, not the Church. It is now impossible for me to be mistress of my fate. You have made it impossible.”

Godiva lowered her eyes and fidgeted with the edge of her veil, the gold thread feeling brittle to her fingertips. “I am deeply, deeply sorry for that,” she said. She tried to look up and meet Edgiva's gaze, but found that she could not. “You said there were three options. One is to do nothing and see what happens, and yes, of course that is not the way. What are the other two?”

“The other two are no better,” Edgiva said with patient impatience—a trick of delivery she excelled at since becoming an abbess. “One is to speak out against the rumors by lying, and the other is to speak out against the rumors by telling the truth.”

Godiva was comforted by Edgiva's scolding now; it meant the passion was under control and the abbess was, at least, thinking clearly. “Let me call for Leofric,” she said. “He loves you as a sister, and he is as upset with me as you are, so the two of you should peck at me productively and sort out how to handle this.”

Edgiva glared. “You have not taken in my chastisement in the least,” she complained. “Like water on parched ground, it rolls off down the hill instead of penetrating.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are making it the responsibility of myself and Leofric to resolve a problem you have created.”

“Yes, I am,” Godiva said. Edgiva looked startled at the concession. “I do not know how to resolve it myself. If I did, do you think I would not, given how endlessly I like to make everything my business? And what is the more important: that you teach me a lesson by making me try to resolve it on my own, or that it is resolved as efficiently as possible?”

“There is no resolving it!” Edgiva said, her voice breaking with frustration. “That is what I am trying to tell you. What is the point of reviewing all my woes with Leofric, when there is no way to heal them?”

“Perhaps he will think of something we have not thought of,” Godiva said blandly. “He does have
some
experience surviving crises.”

Edgiva took a breath, trying to contain herself. “Summon him, then, if you must,” she said. “I am sure the three of us together cannot imagine a way out of this without damage done to somebody who does not deserve it.”

“Who of us does not deserve it?” Godiva asked rhetorically. She opened the door and sent Merewyn for Leofric. He was there within moments, in no better a mood than when she left him.

“I understand,” Leofric said from the door, in lieu of greeting, “that you are as much to blame for these troubles as my unruly wife is.”

Edgiva reddened.

“That does not help, Leofric,” Godiva said. “The poor woman has weight enough on her shoulders without your condemnation.”

“I am to blame for my own sins,” Edgiva countered. “Godiva is to blame for all the rest of it.”

So much for sisterhood,
thought Godiva.

“Edward will outlaw Sweyn for this,” the abbess continued, anguished.

“He does not have that power,” Leofric said reassuringly. “He must ask the Great Council for a sentence of outlawry, and by the next convening of the Council, all of this will be resolved.”

“But in the meantime, we cannot ignore the rumors,” Edgiva said.

“Obviously,” said Leofric impatiently, still not stepping into the room.

“However,” Edgiva went on, “if we address the rumors, if we send out a message to all concerned that they have not got the right story, then we must decide if we correct it with the truth or with deceit. I am sickened by my own duplicity and can abide no more of it, so I ask you now, what happens if we tell the truth?”

“This is not a catechism lesson, Edgiva,” said Leofric tersely. “I am not accustomed to being spoken to in such a voice, and I will not brook it. Obviously if we speak the truth, the question is, how
much
truth. Do we tell the world what even Sweyn himself has not heard? What does the truth profit us? You come out looking the worse for it, Godiva looks almost as bad, and Sweyn will still be severely punished for corrupting a religious woman.”

“So we must not tell the truth,” Godiva said decisively. “That means we lie.”

“And what lie shall we tell?” said Leofric. “And how may we control that lie as it works its way across England?”

“I will not lie!” Edgiva shouted, raising her voice for the first time. “My secrets blot my soul enough, do not make me a liar too! I
curse
you, you
Ananias,
for putting me in this position!”

Godiva leapt away from her, astonished by her fury. She moved toward Leofric instinctively for comfort. He closed one large gloved hand around her arm—a gesture as much of control as of comfort, but she welcomed his touch, and relaxed a little from her panic.

“Mother Abbess, you do not mean those words,” she said, sounding shaky.

Edgiva looked unnerved by her own rage. “I do not,” she conceded, strained. “But I will not agree to any resolution that requires me to nurse deceit. I will not do it. I have already fallen far enough; I will not throw myself deeper into the mire.”

Relieved by the recantation of damnation, Godiva immediately regained her humor. “We must say that it was a
complete
misunderstanding,” she said firmly to Leofric, putting her free hand on his hand that grabbed her arm. “Sweyn was only at her gates to bring her the welcome news that the Welsh borders are now secure. Edgiva had already expressed an interest in coming with me—as she told the sisters, in fact—to gather herbs—”

“That lily-white tale does not explain why you rode to Hereford with Sweyn, disguised as a nun,” Leofric said, releasing her and pulling away.