Naked (27 page)

I stared, aghast.

Malice gleamed silver. “How I played with your vanity, like a cat’s paw to a mouse. Oh, the speeches you lapped up. How I admired you. You wanted to be admired, didn’t you? Women are all the same. Like your friend Beolinda.”

He spat on the floor.

“I had her, you know. She gave you away soon enough with my tongue inside her.”

Another axe-blow. Blunt. Out of nowhere.

One more betrayal I hadn’t been prepared for.

Pretty, frivolous, Beolinda. Fun. Flirty. Foolish.

She’d slept in my bower. Eaten at our table. I’d supped at her table, slept in her bower, too. While she’d handed over information to Edmund.

“So that’s how you found out I was at the monastery.”

“You’ve never been able to see what’s going on around you. Always so idealistic, thinking everyone adored you, while she’s been helping me all along. She put the
huscarl
sword in the stables, in Ebur’s stall.”

Letting go of the door frame, I almost doubled over as pain gutted me. Beolinda, who’d come to Coventry to witness my wedding to Leofric. She’d been my attendant, stood at my side, her arms full of flowers.

“At their hall. That is where you’ve been hiding all along. With Beolinda.”

Where has Edmund gone?
Her lashes fluttering wide.

“I’ve had other missions.”

My hand blade fisted. “The
huscarl
sword was yours.”

“Of course it was mine. I thought you’d work it out, but you didn’t.” He smiled thinly. “How well my sword served its double-edged purpose. It laid the way for your suspicions and a warning for Leofric. He knew what it meant.”

Danger
. Leofric had known it for a death threat aimed at me.

“So when I put the sword in the stables again—”

“Beolinda retrieved it and gave it back to me.”

“You could have killed me that night at the monastery. Why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t be sure your nurse wasn’t hidden behind a blackberry bush. She’s always out at night, the old witch. She’d have raised the alarm. Anyway, I hadn’t decided then if I’d marry you once I’d gotten Leofric out of the way. It was easier to let the Middle Lands come to me through you. They’re annoyingly loyal to you, your people.”

“I trusted you, Edmund.” Whispered words. Fragments.

“More fool you and your Saxon pride,” he sneered. “I was glad I hadn’t killed you at the monastery. The real opportunity came later on. How you played into my hands!”

“The ride.” I shivered as though once more on Ebur’s saddle, alone, a perfect mark for assassination. If anyone’s arrow would have found its target, it would have been Edmund’s.

That evil laugh again. “There’d have been civil war between the Middle Lands and Mercia once word got out you’d been killed on the ride your husband had so ungallantly sent you on. The beautiful and saintly Lady Godiva, struck down naked on her horse!”

War between the Middle Lands and Mercia. Two Saxon strongholds torn apart instead of united. A gift for the Danes to divide and conquer.

My people. Slaughtered. Enslaved. A reign of terror.

“So you’d have blamed Leofric.”

“Suspicion of him would have been enough. I’d have been able to get the Middle Lands under my control and probably Mercia, too. No one would have listened to a man who offered up his brother for power and then his wife.”

Those rumors planted as rotten seeds in my brain. Why had I believed them? “Leofric loved his brother Northman. He never betrayed him to the Danes. That’s a disgusting lie!”

Again he shrugged. “You’ll never know.”

“I do know.” I said fiercely. “I know Leofric.”

“Leofric of Mercia.” Another spit. “It was so obvious you’d fallen for him. Ready to spread your legs for the great Saxon earl. He’s a fool just as you. Canute asked Leofric to join the
huscarls
. He refused.”

“You’re the fool, Edmund.” I let his coarse insults wash over me. “The
huscarls
are nothing but paid assassins.”

His face darkened.

“What did Canute promise you? If you delivered the Middle Lands to the Danes?”

“My own lands restored in the east.” His mouth turned childish, petulant. “They’re under Danish control. I deserve to have what’s mine.”

“And you believed him? Canute was just having you do his dirty work.”

“You don’t know anything about Canute. He saw something in me, something your father never saw.”

“Canute saw a traitor,” I hissed.

“He saw a Saxon who would do what needed to be done. The Danes are here to stay. Fighting them is futile. It’s all right for you to be so idealistic, so conceited about the Saxon way with your land and money behind you.”

“Surely you know me better than that. I’d be true to the Saxon way if I had to live in the Forest of Arden for the rest of my days. I’d never surrender to the Danes.”

“So haughty,” he jeered. “
The Saxon way
.”

Edmund sprang.

Strangled my neck with my hair.

I screamed. “Leofric!”

He crashed into the storeroom, hauled Edmund off.

“Get her out of here!”

Leofric shouted at Acwell who’d followed hard behind. “Get her out!”

*   *   *

Aine was waiting for me in my bower, her dark eyes black as a raven’s wing. Acwell had delivered me, pausing only while I retched in the latrine.

By the fire I shook and shivered, my hands wringing my neck. Still nauseated.

The hatred in Edmund’s grey eyes.

So ruthless. Treacherous.

A Grendel. A demon-monster such as Beowulf had to fight.

I couldn’t halt my twisting fingers.

Aine prised them off and thrust me a pottery cup full of a green liquid with leaves floating in it.

It smelt of mint but there were other herbs in it—I knew not what. It took the vile taste away.

“Your parents were betrayed by Edmund,” Aine said.

Aine had always known everything. I could only nod.

Lifting her arms she muttered some words, a swirl, a summons, a curse that cracked around my head and filled the room with the stench of smolder.

“Aine!” The empty cup fell to the floor broken in pottery pieces. “What have you done?”

“What needed to be done,” she muttered fiercely. “For your mother. For you.”

“You’ve always suspected Edmund.”

“From the moment he came here,” Aine nodded. “So sly, he was, behind that smile. You were in danger, even as a child. Devious. Full of pride, envy, and hate. And you never saw it.”

“I trusted him.”

“You trusted the wrong man.”

In shame I hung my head.

Into my hands she pressed a wooden trencher. A hunk of bread, some cold mutton. “Eat.”

Hard to swallow. But I obeyed.

Slowly, strength crept into my limbs.

Aine brought a basin, washed my hands and face as if I were a child. A balm dabbed on the bruises on my neck. Witch-hazel and comfrey. All-heal. The mother of herbs.

Soothing.

When she’d finished she began to brush my hair.

“Lord Leofric is worth a hundred of Edmund.” Her strokes were hard.

I winced. “I know that now.”

“Some bindweed is poison. I tried to warn you.”

“I know, Aine. I know.”

With her mouth pursed she braided the ragged, short pieces into a kind of coronet. The remainder hung in waves. Free.

A memory came to me as her skillful fingers worked. “When you had a premonition, Aine. The night before my parents went away to the Witan. You said you saw a face. Was it Edmund’s face you saw?”

“Not Edmund. I saw Lord Leofric.”

Aine laid down the brush. “You must tell your husband of your feelings.”

“I don’t know if I can.” What right did I have, now?

“You must.” She tossed a log into the fire. “He comes.”

Footsteps sounded outside the door.

A knock pounded.

So did my heart. “Come in.”

Leofric opened the door.

Aine bowed and slipped away.

The bower filled with his presence as it always did when he entered. But he moved differently this time. The hard shell had gone as if tough armor had been removed.

His gaze searched my neck as if he touched it. Yet his fists stayed by his sides. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Aine’s treatment had been magic. There were barely any marks. On the outside at least.

Another searing search of my skin. Still no contact. Then a nod.

“So now you’ve seen Edmund,” he said.

As if for the first time.

“You were outside the storeroom door.”

I’d known he was there.

“I thought you might need me. Even if you didn’t want me.” That stillness in him again. “It wasn’t safe to leave you alone with him. But I understood you and Edmund had things to say to each other.”

Such terrible things.

“I needed to hear him with my own ears, see him with my own eyes to believe it. I’ve been wrong about so much,” I choked. “Edmund, Beolinda, Tomas the tanner. I didn’t know I had such enemies.”

“Those who have no enemies are not to be praised. Those who have no enemies have never stood up for what’s right.”

Everyone had their suspicions, except me. “But Edmund was my friend. At the monastery, when he showed me the
huscarl
sword, I didn’t realize it was the same one that had been hidden in the stables. He told me…”

“He told you it was my sword,” Leofric said quietly.

“Yes. He said … he said you’d betrayed your brother.”

And my parents, too. But such evil slander could never be repeated.

Leofric’s face became a granite mask.

I flew to his side. “Forgive me. I should never have listened to anyone saying such things of you, I…”

He held up his hand to halt my torrent of words.

When he spoke, his voice was so low I could hardly hear him.

“But I did betray my brother.”

28

She took the tax away.

—Tennyson (1842):
Godiva

Leofric paced the bower like a caged beast.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean you betrayed Northman?” Surely it was impossible.

“You know that Thurkill the Tall was in Mercia.”

“When you four brothers were outlaws in Sherwood Forest.”

“What he did to my people, to my lands and cities, was an abomination. We did all we could from Sherwood to fight him. But we were losing, badly.”

Clench-jawed, the muscles of his neck stood out as he swallowed.

My own hands clenched, I braced myself. The ride. Edmund’s betrayal. They’d sapped my strength. But I had to find more. For Leofric.

“Northman decided to cede defeat. I was furious. I believed that if we held out we would have been able to eventually gather enough forces to overthrow Thurkill. It was only a matter of time, if we had the will.”

He paused.

“You had the will,” I prompted.

“Yes. I would never have surrendered, never have made any concessions. Northman was losing heart. But not I.”

“
We call him Leo for his lion’s heart.”
Godwin had revealed.

“Not everyone has the heart strength you do,” I said.

“No.” His mouth twisted. “I discovered that, when I found out the terms that Northman was going to make with the Danes. Northman would be returned to power, but Mercia would be under the Dane law. North refused to acknowledge that this would leave him a ruler in name only, a puppet of King Canute. Worse was the fact that our way of life and law, the Saxon way, would be lost.”

“Surely that’s what you were fighting for,” I said with passion.

“You understand that.” His mouth curled into a bitter smile. “To my shame, Northman did not.”

The fire crackled as he tossed another log onto it. In silence, we watched the flames leap high.

“We fought,” Leofric said at last, his face shadowed. “He had made arrangements to meet Thurkill in a ley not far from Sherwood. I refused to go. Northman begged me to accompany him, to ride out together, brothers in arms. But I would not. I didn’t want peace with the Danes on such terms. I went deeper into the forest. Many of our men came with me, including Acwell, and Edwin and Godwin, though they were only boys.”

Another leap of the flame before he could talk.

“It was a Danish trap,” he said, anguished. “There was to be no truce. Northman was beheaded in a clearing by Thurkill’s axe.”

“This axe killed your brother.”
Thurkill had jeered.

“How is this your fault?”

“Don’t you understand? If I had been there, if I had stood by him, ridden out with him as he begged me to, he would never have been killed. He wasn’t just my brother, he was my lord. What good was my word as a Saxon, if I could not even obey our most valued principle, that a lord’s command must be followed? No matter whether I agreed with Northman, I should have honored that.”

His tortured tone made me wince. So heart sore. Grief- and guilt-stricken. There was no way of knowing if Leofric could have saved Northman or whether he too would have been killed. In his mind, it was his fault and his alone. But I had to draw out the bramble thorn that pained him, as if from Ebur’s hoof. Only then could the pain be cured.

I had to bring healing to my husband’s battle-scarred heart. If I could.

“Then what happened?”

“When I discovered what had happened to Northman, what the Danes had done, it was as if a fire burned within me. I had to avenge him. From deep within Sherwood, we used daring tactics we never had before, and they worked. Raid, ambushes, skirmishes, cutting off supplies, these became our mark, in preference to open battle. We wore them down. The power of Thurkill and his Danish forces began to lose its stranglehold, and it became clear that the men of Mercia would never submit willingly to Danish rule.”

“So you won.” Pride in him thrilled through me.

“Canute realized that the unrest and fighting in Mercia could go on for years. He arranged to meet with me, though I took no chances after what had happened to Northman. He offered to make me Earl of Mercia, if I would align with him. My condition was that we wouldn’t buckle under the Dane law, but remain Saxon. He agreed. We respected each other. I told you the story of the sycophants who surround him, who believed he could quell the waves. He despised such false flattery. He discerned I would never surrender. But I’ll not blindly do his bidding. I’m no
huscarl
. I leave that to men like Edmund.”