Naked (26 page)

“I had to ride. I had no choice.”

“I’ve never known a woman such as you.” His tone became hoarse. “Your courage, your faith—I didn’t think it possible. Aethelflaed, Wealtheow—your name will surely be greater than theirs.”

Fripwebba.

Peace weaver.

I was one of them, now.

The blanket swept across the rushes as I went and stood beside him.

“I’m not so brave.” I ventured a smile. “You once told me courage is only known after the battle is done, do you remember? I wasn’t sure my courage would hold. Last night I spoke in anger but it had cooled by morning. On my ride I didn’t even have it to keep me warm.”

“How can you smile?” His glance swept from my hair to my bare feet. “Is it possible you’ve found it in your heart not to hate me?”

Didn’t he realize?

“Last night I didn’t sleep,” he said. “I came and stood by your bower door.”

I’d known.

“At dawn this morning, I determined to make sure I was there to watch over you as you rode.”

My heart leapt. “You saw what happened.”

“It’s something I’ll never forget. How your people love you! I watched as they went into their houses, and locked their doors. There’s never been a lady loved as you are by her people, Godiva. I doubt there ever will be again. Can you forgive me?”

“For your terrible dare?”

“No.” Leofric shook his head. “Because I’ve just used you as bait.”

“Bait.” The word thudded onto the rush-strewn floor between us.

“There’s been an assassination plot against you, Godiva.”

“What kind of plot?” My stomach roiled. Edmund had warned me of that, too, at the monastery.

“Let me start at the beginning.” Leofric began to pace the room, the rushes crushing beneath his boots. “You know I met your father, Lord Radulf, at the Witan.”

“Yes. I remember.” So long ago. My father had mentioned Leofric then. Admired how he’d won his lands in Mercia.

“While we were at the Council your father took me into his confidence.”

My father hadn’t confided in me. For a moment, I felt hurt. But he must have had his reasons.

“What did he tell you?” I asked.

“For some time Lord Radulf had been afraid there was a traitor in Coventry.”

“A traitor?” Edmund had believed that, too. “Who?”

“I’ll come to that.” He exhaled heavily. “Your father told me of his suspicions. He wasn’t entirely sure of the traitor’s identity, he had a few clues, but he’d become convinced there was someone amongst his people in league with the Danes. That’s why I came to Coventry. Lord Radulf had asked for my help.”

I recalled my puzzlement at Leofric’s words when he first rode up on his great black horse.
Then I’m too late
, he’d muttered, as if to himself. It made sense now.

“When I discovered your father had been killed by the Danes, and your mother, too, I was determined to stay with you in the Middle Lands. I’d promised your father I would help him, and I’d failed. I vowed as a Saxon not to forsake his daughter.”

“So that’s why you stayed in Coventry.” My heart lurched. “I thought you desired my lands.”

“I know that’s what you thought. But there was more to it than that. I was determined to discover the Saxon traitor who had betrayed your father and your mother, too. With my bodyguard, we began to gather intelligence. My suspicions were growing, yet we could find no solid proof of the traitor’s identity. To accuse him, I needed more.”

Those private conversations with Acwell. Conversations that always ended when I came near.

“Then news came from the north. That’s why my younger brother Godwin traveled from Mercia. It wasn’t safe to send a messenger, too much was at stake. Godwin told me that one of Thurkill’s men had been captured by Saxon forces. He’d been part of the ambush that killed your parents. The Danish warrior had started to talk, so I went to Mercia to question him further. I had to be sure my suspicions were correct.”

Anxiously I pleated the blanket. “Were your suspicions founded?”

“So it seemed. Eventually I got the information I needed. But the word of a paid Danish warrior wasn’t sufficient. I still needed more proof. So I came back to Coventry as fast as I could. I didn’t like to leave you alone.”

“You were so angry with me.”

“Angry? I was furious you’d left the safety of Coventry. By the time I returned from Mercia, I realized how danger had increased around you. I was running out of time to stop the traitor. When you started speaking of the penitent’s ride, I seized the opportunity. And I knew the traitor would seize it, too.”

Beneath the blanket a sweat of terror coated my naked skin. “That’s what you meant by saying I was bait.”

Curtly he nodded. “When you vowed to ride in front of all the townspeople, I knew it was my chance to bring the traitor into the open, to draw him out. How could he resist? You were alone. Undefended.
Naked
.”

My body shook. I’d thought my honor in peril, not my life.

“It was a gamble.” His lips whitened. “But we had to flush him out.”

“You were in the town?”

“Inside a house on the main street.”

“In the home of one of my people.” I clutched my stomach, sickened. One of my own people had been plotting against me. Surely it wasn’t possible. Then it came to me, in a flash of knowledge.

The house next to the tavern.
A movement had caught my attention, a chink of light from behind a shutter. I had thought I imagined it. “It was Tomas the tanner’s house, wasn’t it?”

Leofric’s jaw set. “Yes.”

“Tomas is the traitor?” I’d never trusted him, always lurking, with his feaberry eyes always stuck on me, licking his lips.

He didn’t reply.

“Tell me!”

Leofric came and stood in front of me. An odd expression in his river-deep eyes. Pity? Compassion? A message I refused to read.

Hell-dread came over me, icy cold, from where I could not say. “Tell me.”

“Tomas the tanner wasn’t alone.” He hesitated. I’d never seen Leofric hesitate.

“
Tell me
.”

“Someone else was with him.”

A numb circle to form the word. “Who?”

“I’m sorry, Godiva.”

Now my voice was an owl screech. “
Who
?”

Leofric lifted his head. In his eyes I read the name, before he spoke.

“Edmund.”

He caught me in time, the heat of his fingers searing through the woolen blanket to my bare skin as I collapsed onto the bench by the fire.

“Edmund betrayed me.” A statement or a question? Not Edmund, my friend, my playmate. Not the orphaned boy my parents had fostered and made part of our family.

Not
Edmund
.

From childhood I’d loved him.

From childhood I’d believed he loved me.

A gory icicle found my heart.

“Godiva.” Leofric moved in front of me. “For you, I didn’t want it to be so. But it’s the truth, I swear.”

I tried to focus. “Edmund was in Tomas the tanner’s house?”

“They were in league together and have been for some time. Do you remember how Thurkill the Tall knew exactly where to find us on the field for the battle of Coventry? It wasn’t by chance.”

“And Thurkill’s ambush of my parents.”
Moder. Fader
. “Not…”

“Yes. That, too.”

Blood scald. Edmund, rushing into the hall, grey-faced, disheveled.
“Your parents have been killed…”

“He lied to me.”

“He lied to everyone.”

Edmund.

“You were in his sights. He was in Tomas the tanner’s house, at the window with his arrow trained on you. I got there just in time.”

The best shot in the Middle Lands.

He made his own arrows.

Elm wood. Iron-tipped.

“Tomas the tanner was lying on the floor out cold. He’d outlived his usefulness it seems.”

“Tomas is dead?”

“No. He was bleeding badly from his head but he’s almost regained consciousness. He can be questioned later.”

Corpse cold beneath the blanket. “And Edmund?”

Leofric paused. An expression too quick to make out flared across his face. “He’s under guard here at the hall. In one of the grain storerooms.”

The blanket clutched around my numb body I lurched to my feet. “I must see Edmund.”

27

The barking cur …

—Tennyson (1842):
Godiva

Acwell stood outside the storeroom next to the kitchen. From the plant yard beyond floated the scent of lavender and rosemary, warming in the afternoon sun. It seemed incongruous I’d ever played there with Edmund, lain on the grass, made chains of day’s eyes. Now he was under guard.

An unyielding rock, Acwell crossed his arms and moved his bulk in front of me.

“I can’t let you in, my lady.”

“Lord Leofric has given permission.”

In the bower I’d told Leofric I needed to be alone with Edmund. He’d fallen silent, arms folded, as if holding himself in check. He’d hesitated, then bowed low. Left me to slip on the nearest garment.

“As you will, my lady.” Acwell opened the door. It creaked open.

“Thank you,” I said faintly. My legs were slow to move.

Inside the empty storeroom I could smell the wheat and barley that had been kept there during the winter. But there was no grain now, just the bare dirt floor, a few broken husks. No window but through the ajar door enough light to see. In the corner, a tall man in a grey tunic had his back to me.

He swung around. I bit down my gasp.

This was Edmund. This skeletal-faced stranger, his grey eyes empty in their sockets as they raked over me with cold detachment. His arm was in a sling, his face bruised. Leofric hadn’t told me he’d been injured.

“You’re hurt. What happened?” My words were instinctive. So were my movements, my rush across the room to tend my friend’s wound.

With a snarl he drew back. “You can thank your husband for that. Ask him what happened. He broke my arm along with my bow.”

Edmund’s arrow.

Trained on me.

To the safety of the doorway I edged away.

“Why, Edmund?” A shred, a shard, a splinter. “Why did you do it? Why did you betray me?”

A mockery of a laugh cracked across his tight face.

His smile had been like lightning.

“Why do you think, Godiva?” The venom in his voice became toxic in my veins. He spoke my name in a putrid gush as if he loathed it. “For money. For power. For land. How do you think it was for me always watching you? So spoilt and petted. The precious heiress of the Middle Lands. The fine Lady of Coventry.”

In horror I choked. Words splintered on my tongue.

This was Edmund. This was my friend.

Blindfolded, I’d been. Our hands gripped tight.

I reached for my braid but my hair was still hanging loose. From my clammy forehead I pushed the chopped strands away. “Have you always hated me?”

For an instant I didn’t see the mercenary he’d become. For an instant I saw the orphan I’d befriended so long ago.

Then the boy was gone.

“My estate in the Angle Lands was greater by far than yours.” More black bile. Spilled. “My family far richer, more powerful. Yet all I heard, day in, day out. The Middle Lands. Coventry, Coventry, Coventry.”

How had I not seen this? His affection, feigned. His kisses a violence of hatred. Not desire. “And did you hate my parents, too?”

A savage shrug. “There are always casualties in any war.”

“My family wasn’t at war with you.” Lips funeral numb. “My parents took you in, fostered you, treated you as a son and you betrayed them. We fed you, clothed you, housed you when you had nowhere else to go.”

“And never let me forget it.” He slammed the words back at me so hard I ricocheted. “For years I was treated as a slave, not a son. Like a kicked dog. Thrown a few scraps.”

“That’s not how you were treated! My parents loved you.” Sweat dripped down my spine. Drops thick as blood. “And you killed them.”

He snorted. “I led them to where Thurkill waited. That’s all.”

Talons scraped across my skin.

Moder.

Fader.

“You led them to their death.”

“
Nidstang
.” Edmund swore.

The foul Danish curse.

More hideous knowledge cracked through my brain.

“You speak Danish.” Something else I hadn’t known.

“I learnt it when I was young.”

Hideous understanding dawned. So when Thurkill had me slaughter-bound and gagged, ready to …

“It was you I heard talking to Thurkill the Tall. Outside the hut.”

Another chilling shrug. “We needed a hostage.”

As if Thurkill’s dead fingers were on me I clutched my tunic at the breast.

“I was following my orders.” Edmund’s tone became cutting. Sliced. “The Middle Lands for the Danes. I’d made a vow to King Canute.”

Edmund. The
huscarl
.

My heart sank. “What about your vows as a Saxon, Edmund? To the Middle Lands? My father made you a
cniht
, a knight.”

“
Cniht
to the Middle Lands. Did you really think that was enough for me? How you expected me to bow and scrape. I’m a nobleman, born to rule, not serve. I’d have made a better lord of the Middle Lands than your father. If you’d agreed to marry me none of this would have been necessary.”

A hate-knife. Twisted in my soul. Had I cost my parents their lives? Would they still be alive if I’d said yes to Edmund? “The Middle Lands were my inheritance. Even if we’d married I’d have governed these lands. Not you.”

Another rictus laugh. “Did you think I’d let a
woman
rule over me? You’d have been in your place soon enough. Beneath me. Yes.” His hiss snaked across the floor. “I would have taught you who was lord. Thurkill and I, together we planned it. I let him have you first as part of our bargain. But then you’d have been all mine.”

My legs threatened to shatter. I staggered against the door frame.

“You were always meant to be mine. But you took your time deciding whether to marry me, didn’t you? And your father was beginning to get suspicious. He might have stopped you marrying me even if you’d finally said yes. I guessed Lord Radulf wasn’t coming back from the Witan to give his blessing to our marriage and I was growing tired of courting you. Did you think a few longing sighs or a kiss kept me satisfied? There’s been many a girl in my bed whose lips weren’t so tight.” His gaze licked my body. “But I’d have soon loosened those lips of yours.”