Godiva (23 page)

“Is it not a correct assumption?” Leofric asked sardonically. He began to rub one of her chilled hands between his large warm ones.

With a conspiring grin, she bent low over him and whispered, “What if I am
delighted
by it?”

He dropped her hand and gently pushed her up away from him. “If you are delighted about riding naked through the streets on the Kalends of May, then you surely are a harlot or a pagan or both.”

“No, no, I mean what if I am delighted about doing what my king demands of me?” she said. In the presence of her favorite audience—her husband—she glowed with playful energy again. “What if my response is: Thank you, Edward, for this command! I am so honored to be given the opportunity to follow your royal will. I am the most fortunate of ladies in the kingdom, that I am singled out by His Majesty with this opportunity to look out for my people's well-being.”

“There is no proof the king ordered you to ride naked through town on May Day,” Leofric said bluntly. “There is no evidence you are following any orders. There is only the evidence of your behavior. The archbishop—or any prelate—could call that heathenism and condemn you for heresy.”

“What an alarmist you are!” she said with a nervous laugh, climbing off the bed. “Aldred counseled it was a good thing to do.”

He sat up and took a deep, steadying breath. “Godiva,” he said. “You cannot prove that. Understand me: If I am right about this, they may excommunicate you and annul our marriage.”

“An excommunication can be reversed.”

“Not quickly. If you are excommunicated then nobody—including your servants, your people, and your husband—
nobody
may have anything to do with you, or the Church will claim we risk contamination from your sinful state. And then do you see what happens? Edward will help himself to Coventry. They require a ruler whose stained soul does not endanger theirs, and if I remain with you, I am just as tainted as you are.”

“Are you telling me Aldred of Worcester and the King of England are conspiring in a plot to steal Coventry from me?”

“No,” said Leofric, “Aldred's not that clever. But if Edward gets some other bishop to condemn you, you cannot turn to Aldred for defense. Aldred will not hold himself accountable for what he said to you, he is too much the coward. And Edward will take advantage of that. You shall be censured, and then I must either shun you or be considered tainted with you, which undermines my rule.”

She sobered, considering this. “So as you have said: Edward is trying to strike at you through me.”

“Yes. That means you should not make the ride.”

“No, it does not. If you pay the heregeld, he still wins. In fact, it is a more dangerous victory, for not only does he take your gold, but he leans upon a tyrant's law to do it. I believe he must be counting on me not to make the ride—what is my brief humiliation worth, against his ability to take power at his will from any of his lords?” As Leofric began to answer her, she put a gentle finger to his lips. “You learned your statecraft, Leofric, in a chaotic age, so I understand you assume the most underhanded scheme is always at play . . . but really, love, I do not think this is a subtle matter. He wants the money. He wants to bully you. He thinks he is about to achieve that. Surely his spies have reported that you've summoned your entire treasury here.” She gave him a generous, indulgent smile. “Tomorrow, I will prevent him from taking it from you. The heregeld must be ended.”

“But not by us. Let Edgiva attend to it, it is her cause.” He made a pained face. “Edgiva. I almost forgot. Good lord, Godiva. If only there were a way to breed headaches for profit, you would be richer than Charlemagne.”

“What I have learned from Edgiva herself,” she said, “is that the problem contains within itself the seeds of the solution.”

“I fail to see evidence of that,” said Leofric. In the distance, the monastery bells tolled Vespers.

“I must remind Edey of that moral immediately, in case she has forgot it. That will help her to solve her own dilemma.”

“Have we solved
our
dilemma? Somehow I missed that,” Leofric said.

She kissed him on the cheek and went to the guest room.

E
dgiva was on the bed, lying on her back. That was an improvement over lying on her side, curled up like a springtime fern, which is what Godiva had been expecting.

“I have come to talk to you—”

“There is no use in talking,” said Edgiva wearily.

“Your options are acceptable,” said Godiva, “if you stop resisting them, and just accept them.”

“That,” Edgiva said flatly, “is nonsense.”

“No, it is not. Our problems are alike, yours and mine. When you strip away all the trappings, the only real obstacle is this: we each fear humiliation.”

“I do not fear humiliation. I am a woman of the Church. The Church preaches nothing but humiliation.”

Godiva laughed. “The church preaches
humility
! That's different!
I
am the one telling
you
this?”

“If you ever fail in your humility, you will be humiliated. One is just the other with a pretty rosary and pentatonic scales to decorate it.”

Godiva stared at her friend. “So you are having a crisis of faith.”

“I am having a crisis of
life
.”

“It is not a crisis,” Godiva promised her, sitting beside her on the bed. “It is an opportunity.”

Edgiva sat up and stared at her as if Godiva had three heads. Her fingers were worrying her pink rosary beads, dirtying them with the ink still on her fingers. “Where do you get such ridiculous notions?” she demanded. “It is a crisis. I cannot go back to the life I had before. I was a good abbess, a very good shepherdess, no matter how hounded I sometimes was by my own private wolves. How else might I be useful? What else am I good for?” Her voice cracked.

“You might make an excellent lady of Hereford,” Godiva said. “I know an earl there who would certainly agree with me.”

Edgiva paled, crossed herself, and lay back down on the bed. “Do you know the havoc that would cause?” she finally said.

“No. And neither, Edgiva, do you. But yes, there will be havoc, no matter what you do. Would you like to discover what the havoc will be if you go to Hereford? Or would you prefer to discover what havoc is caused if you go back to Leominster?”

“Those choices are equally unacceptable,” Edgiva said heavily, sitting up again, and then getting off the bed to pace the tiny room with agitation.

“Then they are also equally acceptable,” Godiva insisted. “If you decide to accept them, they are
both
acceptable. Know that you will live through the consequences of either choice—because you
will
live through them, whatever they are. The worst thing about the consequences is that you do not know what they will be. You are terrified of the undiscovered.”

“As is everyone. We cleave to what is known, that is how human beings
work
. We crave what is established, what is
regular
and
ordinary
.”

“Except when the irregular or the extraordinary happens, and society lurches forward anyhow,” Godiva argued. “Edward's ascendancy to the throne was irregular. The Church telling priests they must no longer have wives was irregular. Sleeping with your neighbor was irregular—”

“It was a
sin
!”

“And yet the world did not end,” Godiva observed. “Nor will it end if you marry him, nor will it end if you go back to the abbey with a big round belly and carry on your mission there of healing the sick and instructing your nuns in beautiful calligraphy. You are scared of doing something irregular. That is all it is. If you had no fear of defying what is considered regular, would you feel so stuck now?”

Edgiva considered. She sat on the bed again, and slowly rested a thoughtful hand upon her diary. “
Perhaps
not,” she said at last. Grudgingly.

“Well then,” Godiva said, “see what I will do tomorrow.”

CHAPTER 23

S
he stayed up very late that night, a pile of parchment to her left, an inkwell, quill pen, and the brightest lamp in Coventry to her right. She would not let Leofric see what she had written, although when her cheerful humming kept him awake, she managed to silence herself.

H
er right hand was cramped the next morning; she had not written so much in an instance ever in her life, not even when she lived in the abbey and spent every morning working on calligraphy. She had been squinting in the candlelight for so long, there were creases around her eyes that she was sure would never subside. Never mind, she thought, today is not a day for beauty anyhow.

She was wearing her lovely set of dark and light blue tunics, girdled with the green-glass belt, her hair contained by a gold fillet and a sky blue veil heavy with embroidery. Everything about her whispered feminine beauty. The silk felt soothing and delicious against her skin.

Edgiva looked much improved when Godiva saw her in the chapel at mass. The abbess did not meet her gaze, but neither did she shun her.

Her husband, as they exited the chapel, gestured to two large carts freighted with locked chests. “There it is,” he said, low in her ear. “The treasury. Let me pay him, and this is over. We have more than I reckoned. He will not beggar us.”

She wondered if this was just a reassuring lie. She turned to look at him. “Are you commanding me, my lord?”

There was some part of her she did not like that wished he would say yes.

His gaze softened and he kissed her cheek. “I can command you when you are my subject, but in this matter, you are my wife, and so, my partner. I may ask you, beg you, cajole or bribe, chastise or even threaten you—but I cannot command you.”

She felt her throat tighten. She wanted to bury herself against him.

She did not move.

T
hey were breaking their fast when a messenger arrived: that same obsequious fop of a man whom Edward had sent earlier. He was announced by the steward and entered as if he were the hero of a parade. He walked straight to them at the high table, bowed almost mockingly, and declared, “His Majesty the King awaits you at the far end of Coventry. If you wish to pay the levy or yield the village, he will come here to receive from you coin of the realm or a piece of town sod as proof of land-grant. If you wish to defy him and take punishment instead, he awaits evidence of your own person, and nothing but your person, at the far end of the high street.”

Leofric to one side of her and Edgiva to the other turned expectantly to look at her.

“I do not defy him,” Godiva said. She sensed, more than saw, their surprise.

The messenger looked triumphantly satisfied. That proved to Godiva she had been right: Edward expected her compliance after all.

“Excellent, my lady. Shall I tell him to expect gold, or the town charter?”

Leofric was shifting beside her.

“Neither,” she said. “I do not defy him, but I rather accept his third offer. I shall meet him at the other end of town. You may tell him to expect me.” She took a sip of wine.

Suddenly Leofric was still as stone. She reached toward him and covered his clenched fist with her free hand. His skin was frigidly cold. To her other side, Edgiva crossed herself.

The messenger blinked. “Very well,” he said. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“I will go ahead of my wife,” Leofric informed the smarmy man, without a glance at her.

“You will?” she said quietly.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I will prepare the way for you. I think I know what Edward is up to, and he shan't have his way.” Back to the man: “You may tell His Majesty we will arrive after we have broken our fast.”

“I shall announce you,” the man said with a smile, and added meaningfully, “to everyone.” He bowed, turned, and flounced out of the hall.

“What does that mean?” Edgiva said.

“What I anticipated,” said Leofric. “Edward has summoned the population of the town to either view his victory promenade, or, as will apparently be the case, gawk at Godiva as she rides. I shall ride out ahead to tell them not to gawk.”

It was as if he'd wrapped a warm protecting blanket round her shoulders. “Thank you, Leofric,” she said.

“It is not nearly enough to stem the damage of your choice,” he replied, coldly, almost a grunt.

She found suddenly she could not eat. Her hand trembled holding the bread; she did not trust herself with her own dining knife. Excusing herself and fighting a terrible sense of agitation, she went back to her room.

She sat on the bed, knees pulled up before her, rocking slightly.

It was the wrong choice. She should not have said it. She should have let Leofric pay the heregeld. He was strong and wealthy enough, and wanted to protect her—she should have let him. Let someone else protest the heregeld. She did it only to please Edgiva, but there was no pleasing Edgiva now.
What a troublesome, foolish woman I am,
she thought.

There was a rap on the door.

“Enter,” she said.

Edgiva came in, in her abbess's modest robes, which made the thought of what Godiva was about to do that much more sickening.

“Benedicite,
” said Edgiva, with compassionate formality. That offered as much warmth and intimacy as the dark of the moon.

But then she said: “Do you need somebody to lead your horse?”

Godiva almost gasped. “You would do that? Even though you judge me?”

Edgiva looked genuinely startled. “I am not judging you,” she said. “How could I judge somebody stuck between Scylla and Charybdis, when I am stuck there myself? The making of a choice at all requires so much soul-searching and sacrifice, and I have not accomplished that. You have. I would be the worst kind of Greek harpy to
judge
you.”

“You do not think my riding naked through town is just the extremity of my comportment?”

Edgiva blinked in amazement and even laughed. “Are you jesting, Godiva? I think it is quite the opposite. Edward harries you by robbing you of coquetry, which is your greatest weapon. If you make the ride, you lose that power, and my heart rides with you in sympathy.”

“Even though you are cross with me for other things?”

“Even though I am cross with you for other things.”

That was not actually what Godiva had been hoping to hear in response.

“So you
are
still cross with me for . . . other things?”

Edgiva gave her friend a warning look. “Have those other things miraculously resolved themselves overnight? No? Then, yes, I am still cross.”

“I am not the one who put or allowed a child in your belly—”

“We are not revisiting that conversation,” Edgiva said sharply. “You are not responsible for my sins, but you are responsible for your interfering, which has endangered Sweyn and complicated everything.”

“I would say you complicated everything, as soon as you spread your knees for him.”

Edgiva's face instantly went crimson, and Godiva wished she had not said it. “Are you trying to convince me to retract my offer?” Edgiva demanded. “Because you are just about to succeed in that.”

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” she said hurriedly. “I need you beside me now, Edgiva. I am sorry I am such an ass. You are a better woman than I am, you have always been so; please be so now. I did not realize how terrified I was until moments ago.”

The abbess softened. “You are my oldest friend; of course I am not going to desert you in a crisis. Even though you brought it on your own head.”

“I thought you were not judging me!”

“That is not judgment,” Edgiva said briskly. “It is fact.” She stepped back and gave Godiva an appraising look. “Let us sort out how to get you through this.”

That was deeply reassuring: Edgiva, in charge, gently pushing things to happen as they ought to. That was an Edgiva Godiva knew from her other life, her regular life, before things had gotten complicated.

“Disrobe here, in this room, in private,” the abbess suggested. “There is something about disrobing that is even more . . . fraught . . . than actually being nude.”

“You speak from years of experience, do you?” Godiva asked wryly.

“I speak from one experience, but it was recent, and enough to educate me,” Edgiva said pointedly. Their eyes met, and Edgiva blushed. Unexpectedly, they shared a sheepish grin.

“It has been so long since my undressing before Leofric felt . . . fraught . . . that I would not have considered that,” Godiva said.

“So disrobe here, in private.”

Godiva nodded. She unpinned her veil. Edgiva held out her hand for it, and Godiva yielded it, and the pins.

“Wrap your longest, fullest mantle round yourself, and go down to the stable covered. Get on the horse, and stay cloaked to the manor gate.” She reached for and received Godiva's wimple and fillet, and watched long pale tresses spill over the slender shoulders.

The countess took a steadying breath, then lifted off the three heavy gold necklaces gracefully, hooping them down the length of her hair. These too she handed to Edgiva, who continued, abbesslike, to instruct: “I shall carry the mantle as we walk to the far end of the street, then I will give it back to you. Come now, off with your tunic.”

Godiva felt clammy, and still trembled, as she pulled off her clothes. Edgiva glanced away, not as if she were ashamed to see her friend's nakedness, but as if she were concerned Godiva stood in fear of her judgment.

Never since her first years with Leofric had Godiva undressed with such awareness of her body's appearance. Everything she liked about it—the smooth skin, the curves at her hip, her slender arms—seemed diminished as she watched herself, as if she were another person undressing another body. Everything she found fault with—a brown spot on her neck where sunlight had poisoned her perfect paleness, her buttocks that did not sit so high as once they did, her ridiculously skinny ankles and bony knees—all of these things suddenly seemed to be what her body was made from. The buttocks would be mostly hidden under her hair, she was sure, but the knees and ankles would be the most visible parts of her. They would be what people would remember of her from this ride.

Not that many people would see her, anyhow. Coventry was but a hamlet, and Leofric was going out before her to tell people not to look.

All the same, surely somebody would catch a glimpse of her bony knee pressed against the horse, perhaps some serf, and he would tell some cousin of his who had migrated to someone else's estate, who would mention it so that it would make its way up the ladder until the thane or carl of that particular area heard about it, and the next time Godiva fluttered her eyelashes at him, he would laugh mockingly and say, “I hear you have bony knees, Countess,” and that would be the end of—

“Godiva, are you listening to me?” Edgiva's voice broke through her unhappy reverie.

“Pardon?” she said hurriedly, and took a moment to review herself: she was down to her shift. She had ungartered her stockings and removed them without paying attention.

“I asked which mantle you prefer,” Edgiva said. “Merewyn has brought you two.” She pointed to the bed. One was dark blue-black, the color of Edgiva's robes; in fact, it was the mantle that had caused a confusion about who had gone to Hereford with Sweyn. The other was a lighter blue, shot through with red and emblazoned with Leofric's catamount, which stood for vigilance.

“Which would you pick?” she asked Edgiva uncertainly.

“I would wear the one that looks like a nun's robe,” she said, “because I am a nun. You are nothing like one.”

“I shall wear it anyhow,” she said. “If Edward has brought a chronicler with him, I do not think Leofric would want me to remind anyone I am his lady today.”

“On the contrary, he might be very proud of you,” said Edgiva.

“I do not think it.”

Godiva pulled the shift off over her head. Now she stood entirely naked, except for the cascading shield of hair that fell to below her waist.

“Must I pin my hair up?” she fretted. “I am sure he wants that, to make all of my flesh completely exposed.”

“If he said you must be nude, then you cannot wear any hair ornaments,” Edgiva said smartly. “Your hair must be as unadorned as you are, so no hairpins.” She smiled conspiringly. Her smile convinced Godiva she could go through with this. Her smile made everything seem almost normal. Almost.

Godiva wrapped the mantle protectively around her and pinned it tightly at her shoulder. “Let us go, then,” she said.

Edgiva held the door open for her. They walked out into the hall.

The housecarls and servants must have heard what was happening by now, for everyone paused, as if suddenly they were posing for a mural, and then hurried to continue their rounds. All of them were straining covertly to glance at their mistress.