Godiva (8 page)

Hereford

A
fter the ordeal of dinner, Edgiva had written her daily entry into her codex, undressed down to her shift, and was about to release Aisly when there was a rap on the door between Sweyn's chambers and the one she was to sleep in. Aisly opened it to reveal the earl, absent his usual short cloak.

Even in the dim lantern light, Sweyn looked uncomfortable. It was not a mood that suited him. His boundless energy seemed trapped in his feet, and so as he spoke he rocked back and forth as if on a boat.

“Forgive me if it is forward to come to Mother's chambers this late,” he said, not looking at her. Of course it was forward; it was far more than forward. With a sense of panic, Edgiva gestured to Aisly for her dark wool mantle, which the girl tossed to her; Edgiva hurriedly placed it round her shoulders and pulled it closed. Sweyn noticed none of this, staring at the floor, seeking some excuse to stay. “I have some thoughts on how I may help you oversee Godiva's attempts to champion your petition, and make certain she does not endanger herself. As we both have matters attending us tomorrow, this seemed the only time to speak them . . . Would you like to hear them?”

Aisly looked at Edgiva.

“Let him come,” Edgiva said, badly affecting disinterest.

Once through the doorway, Sweyn seemed to want to move toward her, but became rooted to the spot, his energy still shifting back and forth from foot to foot although neither left the ground now. The earl and the abbess stared at each other stupidly, without speaking. His large frame made the small room smaller. The aroma of his sweat mingled with a spicy scent on his clothes and made her wonderfully dizzy.

Finally Edgiva managed to splutter, insipidly, just for the sake of something being said, “I believe we will be triumphant in this cause, for surely it is God's will for the realm.”

“Then we should celebrate the coming of God's will. Let us do so over wine.”

She stared at him, every part of her going taut except her face, which went red. She realized her mouth was hanging open. She closed it, and tried to look away from him, but couldn't. He himself looked slightly terrified.

“Excuse me, milord,” said Aisly, “I'll just get some from the cellar, if you like.”

“Do not leave us alone!” Edgiva said, more intensely than she meant to. At least looking at the girl meant looking away from Sweyn. “It . . .” She tried to sound lighthearted, and instead sounded brittle. “It would be indecorous.”

“Why?” Sweyn demanded with a nervous laugh. “Is there a risk you might be something other than a chaste observer of your holy vows?”

Edgiva blushed so intensely she felt her scalp tingle. “You pretend to chastise me, sir, but actually you are asking that question with too much hope.”

Sweyn laughed a little, and she found she could hardly breathe. “You must not accuse your noble host of improper intentions,” he said, with forced playfulness.

“I hope my host
is
noble,” Edgiva shot back, feeling desperate.

There was an awkward pause. Aisly cleared her throat to remind them she was in the room. Sweyn caught her eye and then gestured out the door with his thumb.

When he did that, Edgiva felt her knees weaken and a strange feeling surge through her legs and stomach. “Mother,” the servant said, curtsying, without quite meeting her eyes. It almost sounded like an apology.

Edgiva's ears were ringing and she felt light-headed. She tried to speak and could not even whisper. She tried to cross herself and was unable to move her arms. She could not look at Aisly; she could not look at Sweyn either. She heard the girl leave. She heard the door close, aware it was now only herself and Sweyn in the very small room. She could feel his eyes on her and was terrified of looking at him. She was dizzy.

“My lady Abbess,” he said, sobering, and walked closer to her. The closer he came, the dizzier she felt. “I do not pretend to understand this.”

“You feel it too?” she asked. She was thrilled. She was relieved. She was terrified.

“I do not think there is a soul in Hereford who has seen the two of us in the same room without noticing.”

“Although I am a decade your senior, you are a man of the world and are no doubt familiar with this feeling,” she said. “While I have never—”

“I have felt desire before, but nothing near to this,” he corrected, and reached out to take her hand. She made a strange sound without meaning to and sat down hard on the thick sleeping mat. Her hand released the mantle, which fell off her shoulders and pooled around her on the bedding. Sweyn knelt down beside the mat. She was disappointed he had not sat on it with her. She looked at him, looked at the empty spot beside her on the bedding, and looked at him again. He smiled, and chuckled apologetically. “I dare not sit beside you,” he said. “If I did, I cannot promise to control myself.”

“Would it hurt?” she asked, and then turned even redder hearing herself ask the question. Of course it would hurt—Godiva had told her all about that, years back. Despite her vows of chastity, it was a detail she had never quite forgotten.

The pressure of his hand gripped hers a little harder and he made a small sound in his throat. “You are a virgin?” She nodded, terrified to meet his gaze. “Then yes, it would hurt.” A pause. “But only the first time.”

She made a feeble attempt to pull her hand out of his. Sweyn's grip tightened, and Edgiva's heart leapt with pleasure. “This must be the devil's work,” she pressed on. She tried to remember the prayer to St. Mary of Edessa against sexual temptation, but she could not. Instead she found herself thinking of the pennyroyal tincture against conception. She tried to remove her hand again, but he squeezed it even tighter. As she'd hoped he would.

“Not the devil,” he said softly. “You are too pure for the devil to have a grip on you.”

“You would rob me of that purity,” she said, looking away, cringing at how badly she wanted to be robbed.

“I swear I would never rob you,” he said, and rose up on his knees so that he was nearer to her. She felt fluttering sensations low in her stomach, the nearer he got. “I would only substitute your virgin purity with something equally . . . significant.”

A long pause as she looked into the darkened corner of the room, and he kneeled upright as near to her as he could balance. She could feel his breath against the skin of her bare neck. She could smell the leather of his jerkin. She had never been so distressed and happy.

“What do you want?” he asked after a long moment.

“I want you to sit next to me on the bed,” she whispered.

“I have warned you—”

“Sit next to me on the bed,” she repeated, more certain.

Another nervous chuckle from him—it struck her as an apology to God—and he released her hand, rose from his knees, and then settled beside her on the sleeping mat. He was trembling even more than she was. She offered him her hand again. He stared at it for a long moment, then took it, but only to place it in her own lap.

Once his hand was in her lap, it remained there.

An hour later, there was blood on the sheets, and Edgiva was in thrall to Sweyn Godwinson.

CHAPTER 8

Coventry

I
t was a relief to reach Coventry, as small and crude as the town and their lodgings were. They would stay here through Easter before beginning their spring circuit of Leofric's lands. Traveling was never pleasant, but Godiva preferred circuiting to what they had just concluded. It was more bearable to travel with a full retinue, with creature comforts and temporalities brought along by their own people, who knew their routines and preferences. The housecarls, although good men and devoted to Leofric, were not much interested in keeping a lady comfortable. Her groom was the most sympathetic man among them, and he was not conversational. It had been a dull, unpleasant journey, with weather raw and damp throughout. She felt chilled to the sinews, despite her excellent beaver-lined riding cloak. On their way to Gloucester they had been light at heart and Leofric had been chatty; on this return journey, despite the rousing presence of Leofric's son, Alfgar, they seemed to travel under a cloud of gloom. She had no patience for gloom, but it won the battle, and despite Alfgar's friendly conversation, she was as heavy-hearted as her husband when finally they reached home.

H
ome” at Coventry was barely that. There had been nothing but a dismal hamlet here until three years ago, when work had begun on the monastery. They had poured their largesse into that, and artisans and craftsmen (as well as farmers and shepherds who elected to become artisans, for the lure of lucre) had collected around the gates of the religious enclave, or around the gates of their simple manor. Small houses, with low walls and heavy thatch roofs, now lined the route from manor to monastery, a distance of a couple of arrow shots at best. Halfway along the route, the road opened briefly into a market square. Paths wide enough for a cart went off of this main path, leading to the river or the pond, to the gristmill and the fulling mill, to a separate livestock market in what might be called the outer skirts of the town, if only there were anything to count as inner skirts.

The soil was not bad here, although the villages a mile or more away had loamier earth and yielded better crops. The families immediately around Coventry who were not craftsmen raised sheep or pigs or sometimes cattle. The settlement had developed briskly in the past three years, but still it was small, and at night, between village, manor, and monastery, not eightscore souls whispered evening prayers before head was laid on pillow.

The manor itself was modest. There was one central building—a hall, with a chamber at one end for Leofric and Godiva to sleep in, and another beside that where all the officers of the house organized their days and passed their nights. Godiva intended to build a separate sleeping hall, of course, but for now all labor was dedicated to the monastery. The manor staff all slept in hall, as did the housecarls; the cook and his assistants slept in the kitchens just beside the manor; and the grooms slept in the stables with the huntsman and the reeves, except in winter when all of them came into the hall, sometimes bringing the horses and dogs with them, although not when their lady was present, as she did not fancy the smell of horse dung first thing in the morning.

The steward, the dish-thane and the chamberlain, the huntsman and the chief groom, had none of them left Coventry. They'd been alerted by an outrider, and Godiva was grateful to see her attendant, young Merewyn, among those waiting to receive her.

T
heir first full day back would be taken entirely with unpacking and resettling, and relocating the crudely dyed and decorated eggs that had been placed in unexpected places as homecoming gifts—upon their pillows, in their chamber pots, hanging from their clothing pegs on colored thread.

Also this day they would be sending Alfgar north to his own estates after some morning hours of mead and rapport around the hearth. He and his stepmother Godiva loved each other like puppies from the same litter. Their cheerful banter on matters trivial and topical managed finally to lift Leofric's spirits from the gloom of the ride.

Alfgar had in mind a love match for himself, the daughter of a Northumbrian thane. Leofric professed not to approve, but Godiva advised him cheekily on what to say, what not to say, what to do, and most of all what not to do, to win a woman's heart.

“Did the lady's techniques work well for you, Father?” Alfgar asked.

“The lady is still married to me after a dozen years,” Leofric replied. “I must be doing
something
well.”

“I only keep him because I am so fond of his son,” Godiva said conspiringly. “Whom I hope will return to Coventry for Easter?”

“Alas, honored mother, no,” Alfgar said with a regretful smile. “My would-be lady's father has allowed that I might celebrate the day with them, and I must leap at the chance to ingratiate myself.”

“I thought Northumbrians were pagan,” Leofric said laconically.

“That's no reason not to celebrate Easter,” said Alfgar. “Anyhow, it isn't true. Well, not entirely. Not when the archbishop's dining with them.”

“Ah, these thankless sons.” Godiva sighed to Leofric, gesturing toward her stepson, who was nearly her own age. “Show them a pretty face and they will throw over their own mother!” She swatted his knee. “Go with our gladdest blessing, even if your father will not say so.”

T
he second day, after a breakfast of watery porridge, the couple went to the monastery to see the progress there, for the weather was good and all the workmen were about. Godiva was proud of this monastery, the first project she had helped to fund from the ground up. Or nearly the ground up: the actual foundations were already in place from a nunnery that had stood here, beside Coffa's Tree, until King Canute razed it a quarter century ago.

Coffa's Tree, for which Coventry was named, was a massive oak just beyond the monastery walls. The hundredcourt assembled there, as did most festivals—Maying dances, harvest suppers for the town. Nobody knew who Coffa was, but they were grateful for his tree.

As they walked back toward the manor, they could see only the top of the spreading tree, leaves just budding. Godiva liked the way the cut of her new light-on-dark-blue tunics moved against her figure when she walked briskly or when the breeze blew across her. She felt almost girlish as she moved through town.

As they reached the market, a rugged-looking man about her age approached them, bowing every second step, as if he were nervous of offending them with his presence.

They both stopped, and the retinue stopped with them.

“My lord,” said the fellow, and “my lady,” also, bowing low.

“Are not you Avery?” Godiva asked. “You are the tithing man for this region?”

“Yes, my lady, and a farmer,” he said, bowing again. “We are many of us growers, on the south side of the town.” He seemed about to speak, then hesitated.

“What would you with us?” Godiva asked. “Do not be afraid to ask.” She offered her hand.

He kissed it and then glanced nervously behind. Godiva followed his look and saw that between two of the homes just off the square, at least a dozen equally burly fellows huddled together, watching.

“We have had several bad years, my lady, as you know—”

“I do,” said Godiva gently. “Our own stores are low, and our grain comes mostly from you. It is widespread in these parts. Do you ask for an abatement in your food-rent?”

He looked flustered. “We would always be grateful for that, my lady, but that is not why I approach you. We—the farmers—are hoping you might do us the honor of reciting the Land Ceremony Charm for us, this being the fierce month and Hreda seeming particularly fierce this year.”

“But the weather has been mild,” Leofric observed.

Avery bowed again, specifically to the earl. “Yes, my lord, but there has been no rain for such a while. Seeds will not sprout without water, my lord.” And back to Godiva. “ 'Tis an imposition, I know, and we can perform it on our own selves, and the priest at the monastery has already said we may bring the turf there, but it would be such an honor to us if you lead the ceremony.”

Godiva smiled. She glanced at Leofric for approval; he seemed passively amused. “My little heathen,” he crooned drily. “Whatever will our Lyfing say?”

“That he hopes I paid enough attention to him to learn his lines by rote,” she retorted. Then, more gravely, she turned back to the farmer.

“It is my honor,” she assured him. “And, I think, my duty. Shall we wait for the Equinox or do you wish it sooner?”

“The Equinox, my lady, is a propitious time, according to the priest,” said Avery. “It is a very holy week. Annunciation is the very next day, as Easter is the eve of April Kalends.”

Godiva shrugged agreeably. “Very well. I shall tell our steward to expect someone to collect me . . . after Nocturne, isn't it? The night of the Equinox, then. As Pisces yields to Aries. Shall you come, love?” she asked Leofric.

He smiled wanly. “I suppose I should keep an eye on you, make sure you do not get frisky with the peasants.”

Leominster

E
dgiva, upon returning home to Leominster on a grey, damp, windless afternoon, had gone straight into her chamber without even thanking the groom with whom she rode or greeting Audry, her acolyte, or Maire, her prioress. Her face was almost green and etched into a scowl—an expression nobody in Leominster could ever remember upon her face.

“Please leave me alone,” was all she would say when Audry asked to see her. “Unless you send me word of Bishop Lyfing's health.”

Ignoring the display of intricately decorated eggs gracing her pillow, she sank to the floor and rested her head against the leg of her bed, wishing she were dead. She heard the bells toll for None service. Maire would attend on her behalf. She could not bring herself to offer God a psalm for her safety.

She must tell no one at Leominster what had happened. She needed to confess it—desperately, as nothing she had ever needed before—but there was not one priest in all this double house whom she could rely on for absolute secrecy. Only Lyfing—quiet, wise, and imperturbable, with endless compassion for human frailty—had her trust, and he was days away, and possibly still ailing. She was afraid even to consign her sin to print in her private codex, where she reported everything that happened to her and every unfortunate thought or emotion she ever harbored, to keep herself accountable. She most certainly could not write it, even anonymously, into the chapter house's prayer book.

She most especially could not tell Audry. She was Audry's mentor in the healing arts; the girl was gifted, and it was important that she stay at her studies. But she was also rigid and judgmental, and she would not survive the shock of learning how unsanctified her idol had become.

But Edgiva was not a liar. Besides being opposed to duplicity on principle, she had learned in childhood antics with Godiva that she was entirely incompetent at it. When she was tall enough to look out the side windows of the church, she made an oath that she would always tell the truth and never deceive anyone. So her soul was in a doubly perilous state now, and she could conceive no way to salvage it without worrying poor Lyfing. Her distress far outweighed any pleasure she might take in memories of last night with Sweyn. Already by the morning she knew it never should have happened; she was alarmed by his bounding enthusiasm to show affection to her in public and had quietly informed him they were absolutely never to be alone again in each other's presence. He had been crushed; the charming fool would have propositioned marriage if he'd had another go with her. Godiva had been right about . . . oh, dear. Godiva. She wished Godiva knew, so that
somebody
knew until she could confess to Lyfing. She could trust Godiva with such a secret. Godiva's strengths, however dubious, included the art of concealment.

A sense of happiness was trying to work its way to her attention, snaking up from her gut in ticklish waves, but she refused it, would not nourish it, waited for it to die of starvation.

Until that happened, she could speak to nobody. It was one thing to keep a secret, she decided, another thing to lie. One was a tactic, and one a sin. But to go about the abbey now, in the state that she was in, would be worse than merely secretive, 'twould be deceitful—she would be counterfeiting to be a good person, worthy of shepherding them, when she was not. She would have to somehow keep alone until she could expiate her sin. But that meant, to start with, confessing to a priest, and there was nobody here she could tell.

She summoned vellum and a quill, and wrote to Bishop Lyfing. She trusted him, and she knew he would forgive her and provide a proper penance. It would be a heavy penance, that much she knew. Knowing that—knowing exactly how salvation awaited her—she was able with a calmer mind and heart to open her door and return to her position. She still kept a secret, and she did not like that, but she knew it would soon no longer be a lie, and that gave her the courage to perform her duties.