King's Blood (9 page)

Abbess Christina had kept Edith waiting in the anteroom for a long while. Edith was dizzy with lack of breath when at last she was ushered into the presence. She had to struggle to walk steadily, to bow the proper degree and then stand with proper humility: hands folded in front of her, head bowed, eyes lowered.

She could feel that cold scrutiny on her. The walls were closing in. All that saved her was memory of the brightness she had come from, and Cecilia's voice telling her that she was free to choose what she would do.

“It is time,” Abbess Christina said, “that you begin the instruction for which your mother sent you.”

That startled Edith into speaking without thinking. “But, lady, I already have. I've been studying Saxon and Latin and Norman and—”

The abbess cut her off with chill precision. “Additional instruction befitting your blood and breeding. Sister Gunnhild will take you in hand for an hour each day. She will teach you what a daughter of kings has most need to know.”

Edith looked up under her lashes. The nun who had fetched her from the far end of the cloister was still in the room. Edith peered through the shadows, picking out white hands tightly folded, and a pale face framed in the black veil. The rest of her was wrapped in darkness.

Her eyes were lowered as Edith's should be, her lips pressed together as tightly as her hands. Everything about her was locked shut.

Edith's heart felt small and cold. Her stomach had drawn into a knot. She kept thinking of the ruined wood and the strangling web. Here were the hands that would guide her into them—make her part of them.

She could run. But where? She was too small. The world was too big. The time when she could have escaped, when she was on the long road from Scotland to this place, was gone.

It did not matter what Cecilia had said. She did not have a choice. No child did.

She bowed her head. She could feel that the abbess was pleased. Sister Gunnhild glided forward. Edith did reverence as was proper.

“You will begin now,” Abbess Christina said. “Apply yourself well. Take heed of what you are taught.”

“Yes, lady,” Edith said. It was all she could say.

CHAPTER 10

There was no angel with a flaming sword at the gates of Winchester, barring William from the city or the treasury. He rode in as one who had every right, and found the chancellor waiting, with clerks in attendance.

They were expecting him. The keys to the treasury were ready for him to take, the guards bowing him in.

His shoulder blades prickled. This could be a trap. But he had not come this far to tuck his tail between his legs and run. His own picked men were with him. He left half of them with the guards and told the rest to follow him.

William the elder had had a reputation for acquiring every scrap of wealth he could and keeping it as close as he judged politic. His generosity had been calculated to the last groat and farthing.

Now William the younger walked where none of the sons had been invited to go. He had seen the treasuries in Rouen and Caen, and the train of sumpter mules and laden chests that traveled with the king. Those had been remarkable enough—and belonged to his brother Robert now, except for what the old king's will had left to Henry and the sisters.

This was William's own. Room upon room of it. Chests of gold, silver, jewels both loose and set in rings and brooches, armlets and collars. Bolts of silk and linen and wool, and cloth of gold and silver. Mantles and robes of ermine and vair and sable, packed away in strong spices. Armor, weapons, horse-trappings. Banners and tapestries. One enormous chest of books, which William could see little enough use in, except that they were bound in good leather and set with gems.

He had had no inkling that there was so much. England, he would wager, was notably richer than Normandy.

He found that he was grinning like a loon. His men were wandering through the rooms, peering into chests and boxes. Robert the clerk was deep in conversation with one of his English colleagues.

Robin FitzHaimo stood close by him, smiling that subtle smile of his. “Does it feel real now?” the boy asked.

It was a remarkably intimate question. William should have resented it to the point of a fist across the face. But he could not find any violence in him, not against this one.

His grin had died, but he had a smile to spare still. “It will be real when I have the crown on my head,” he said, “instead of in a box on a mule's back.”

Robin reached into the chest nearest him. In it was a crown of gold set with pearls. He held it up with a flourish. “Here's a crown,” he said.

“Are you an archbishop, then?” William asked him.

He laughed. “Not in this life.”

“But in another?”

William did not know why he asked that. Nor did Robin look at him strangely. The boy shrugged, as light as ever. “Maybe.” He turned the crown in his hands. “It's pretty.”

“I think it's for a queen,” William said.

“It does have the look,” Robin agreed. He laid the crown back in its box and slid his eyes at William. “Have you thought yet about who might wear it?”

A swift flush ran through William's body. “No,” he said. “No, I have not.”

Robin did not press him, but wandered off down the row of chests and boxes.

The heat drained from William's skin. Robin knew. It was nothing he did or said. It was a quiver in the belly, a deep sense: he knew.

Well then; so did every man in William's guard, and a good number of his father's old court as well. William's father had known, he was sure. His mother had, for certain. His brothers? Probably. Most of his sisters, too. A man in this world, unbound to priestly vows, did not get past the age of thirty without a woman in his bed. Henry at nineteen already had a pack of bastards. Robert at nearly forty had his fair share—and women enough with or without them.

It was not a thing anyone spoke of, but it was there. Everyone knew it. There had been company in his bed—discreet, and well cared for when the flush of passion died on either side. William had been lucky in that. His line did tend to be.

This was different. He did not know why it should be. There had been other beautiful boys, and young men, too—some a great deal prettier than this. A few had even had magic.

Not like this.

God. Was he besotted? Was he—God forbid—in love?

He was a king, or nearly. If he had learned nothing else from his father, he had learned to bestow his favors carefully and to trust seldom. This boy made his flesh sing, but he knew nothing of the spirit behind the face. That could be treachery in the making, or a friendship he would cherish for his life long. At the moment he could not tell which.

There would be time—God and Britain willing. He turned amid the gleam of treasure and called his men together. “We'll secure this,” he said, brisk and sharp. “Tell the clerks to carry on with their inventory, and keep a good accounting. I'll be on my way to London.”

“Westminster,” said Robin. It was not a question.

William nodded. “I suppose you have ways to fetch the Archbishop of Canterbury—and every other prelate in England. They'll be officiating at a crowning.”

Robin bowed in all apparent seriousness. “It will be done, sire,” he said.

 
It was done, and well done. With Robert the clerk in Winchester and Robin the knight in London, William was most well served. Within the fortnight, England prepared to crown its new king.

The night before his coronation, William could not sleep. All had gone well. Too well, he was thinking—though the thought alone might ruin the luck. He had a suspicion that certain powers of Robin's acquaintance had seen to it that nothing interfered with William's advance toward the throne.

That was a good thing, he tried to tell himself. He wanted nothing to do with such things. If others took on the burden, all the better for him.

But he was too well trained to let it be, and too ill-trained to know how to go about it. He paced instead, prowling through the palace that old Edward had built, who had named a Norman his heir and so changed the face of England.

Every human soul was abed. The things that flitted in the shadows were of no consequence. He knew the hum and flutter of magical wards: those were thick along the walls and above the roof. They let him by without trouble, apart from a brief, intense quiver in the skin, like an itch too deep to scratch.

The abbey of Westminster had lost the raw newness that William remembered from the early days, when it was just built and consecrated in time for King Edward to be buried in it and Harold the usurper to be crowned and then, a scarce year later, the conqueror from Normandy who had been Edward's true and sanctioned heir. It was settling now, the new-stone smell softening, the carvings losing their sharpest edges. Marks of feet were beginning to show on the paving.

In the night, by the light of vigil-lamps and the odd candle, it breathed like a living thing. Wards were here, too, but they were deeper, stronger. They thrummed like the notes of a great organ.

There was a figure standing near the entrance to the choir, thin and stooped and shrouded in black. Swirls of translucent spirits wreathed him and spiraled up to the vaulting.

William checked his stride. There was no reason for the stab of apprehension. It was only Lanfranc. He must be preparing for the morrow.

The archbishop was not alone. Two shadows stood behind him. William knew them both as well as his own skin. One was Robin in a dark mantle. The other was a woman in a nun's habit, but William happened to know that she was no Christian.

Her eyes on him were clear and hard. She had always weighed him light. From her expression, that had not changed a bit.

He knelt deliberately and kissed the archbishop's ring. Then he nodded to Robin, who seemed more amused than not. Only after that did he acknowledge his sister. “Cecilia,” he said. “I thought you were in Caen.”

“I've been in England since the spring,” she said. Her tone was cool.

His brow twitched upward. “Premonitions?”

“Something of the sort,” she said.

“You're not going to make a wizard of me.”

Even to his own ears he sounded desperate. None of those three mocked him for it. His sister said, still cool, “We would not dream of it. But a king—it seems you will be that.”

“That troubles you?”

She shook her head. “It had to be you. For all our objections, you are the one the gods chose.”

“The gods?” William wanted to laugh, but he found he did not dare. “Not Father?”

“Our father did as he had to do. As will you.”

“What—” William broke off. “Don't tell me. It's magic, I know it. I want no part of it.”

“You want the crown,” she said.

“Do I?”

She let the echoes of that fade into silence. The others were watching and listening, offering no commentary.

“Well enough,” he said. “I want it. You're not going to force your wizardry on me. Do you understand?”

They did not answer that, either. They were trying to provoke him—and succeeding rather well.

He considered turning his back on them and walking away. He considered it thoroughly and in all seriousness. But he had never run from a battle yet.

He fixed his glare on Lanfranc. “Is that what this is? Are you going to refuse to crown me unless I swear to be your puppet?”

“Some would prefer the word ‘disciple,' ” Lanfranc said mildly. “I prefer neither. You will be what God has made you to be. My duty is to set the crown on your head, then try to guide you to the best of my ability. But I have no power to force you.”

“No?” William put in the word all the doubt and suspicion that was in him—and that was a great deal.

“You have to take this of your free will,” Robin said.

“Take what?” William demanded. “I've told you what I'll give, and what I'll have. If it's fated as you all keep telling me, then it doesn't matter whether I agree to be a wizard's familiar. I'll be king regardless.”

“It would be better,” Lanfranc said, “if you accepted the fullness of what you are.”

“Yes, you've told me,” William said: and if that was rude, then so it was. “You've had our minions show me, too. I know what you think I'm supposed to be. I can only be what I am. Either that's enough or it's not. You can kill me now and get it over. I'm sure my little brother Henry would be delighted to take my place.”

“It is not his time,” Lanfranc said. He sighed. He looked very old and frail, and impossibly tired.

William hardened his heart. Lanfranc was the strongest of them all. If he played at weakness, it was only to trap William—and William was not that much a fool.

Robin stirred as if to speak, but William saw how Cecilia's glance stopped him. She raised her hands, a flutter of white in the sea of black that was her habit. “So be it,” she said. “You've made your choice. Another way would have been easier in the end, though difficult to begin; you might have lived longer. But you will do as you will do.”

She was playing, too, at spells and subtle disturbance. William made himself impervious—and waited for Robin to strike the third and final blow.

The boy did no such thing.

Or did he? His silence, calm and without judgment, was a force of its own. He left William to his free choice—and that was a stronger compulsion than any other.

William's mind was made up. He knew what kind of king he had to be. No fear or force or niggle of guilt would shift him.

That was power. He felt it there, in front of these masters of magic. They could do nothing within the bounds of their law and the destiny they foresaw but let him do as he chose.