The Chosen Queen (36 page)

He touched his temporary crown, a simple plait of rowan, and Edyth’s fingers went instinctively to her own. They had been crowned king and queen of the Trimilchi as soon as the party had
deposited St Mary beneath the oak and were honorary faeries for the night. Edyth laughed at the thought.

‘Come, Harry,’ she teased, ‘a civil man like you cannot believe in witches and sprites?’

‘No,’ he agreed and his voice was surprisingly sombre, ‘but there is more to this world, Edyth, than we will ever know. That’s what . . .’

He caught himself.

‘What Svana says?’ Edyth asked and he nodded. She thought for a moment and then said, ‘She would like tonight. Indeed. Harold, if the court were this way all the time she might
like it enough to—’

‘But it is not.’

‘No.’ Edyth pushed away her own ghosts and reached up to kiss his cheek. ‘So we must make the most of it. Shall we dance?’ She pointed to the spiralling figures around
the oak, winding long ribbons round the great trunk to bless it and seal its fertility and their own. They were holding hands and laughing, their costumes melding into the green of the grass as the
light faded. ‘It looks fun, does it not?’

‘It looks fun, Edie,’ he agreed, ‘but if you have not noticed, they are all women.’

‘Then they will welcome a man.’

Harold laughed. He reached for her chin and tipped her face up to his. Someone had set fire to the tinder in the two piles of wood beyond the oak and she could see the first of the flames
dancing in his pupils as he smiled down at her.

‘Later, Edie. The men will dance later.’

‘I don’t doubt that, my lord. I have been green-gowning before, you know.’

‘Edyth!’

‘Harold? You don’t need to play the innocent with me these days.’

He huffed.

‘I remember a time when
you
were the innocent one, Edyth Alfgarsdottir.’

‘I was thinking on that myself just now but it is a time, thankfully, long past. Torr is gone, praise God.’

‘For now.’

‘For now is enough, Harry, and if you will not dance with me, I will go alone.’

She took a step towards the dancers but he caught her hand and pulled her back.

‘No green-gowning.’

‘Only with you.’

He smiled and bent to brush a light kiss across her lips before letting her go. She ran to join the women who opened up their circle to let her within. The ribbons were wound to the ground now
and the court musicians, who had earlier been grumbling about the effect of the night-damp on their precious instruments, seemed to have forgotten their complaints and were stirring up a jig. The
notes of their lutes and pipes tripped across the soft air and tickled at the heels of the ladies. Several, Edyth noticed, had already shed their shoes and she was glad she’d remembered to
send the steward’s men out across these grazing lands with brooms and rakes.

She clucked at herself; it was a festival night and she should not be fussing about domestic trivia. She need not be queen now, just a girl in a rowan crown dancing by the firelight. She let her
hands be clasped and picked up her feet to the music. The bonfires were burning high, throwing flames skywards as if they sought to be stars. Sparks thrust into the purpling sky and fell to the
ground where children, squealing, pounced on them with their hard little boots. Edyth spotted Nesta clasping her Uncle Morcar’s hand, heedlessly keeping back the older ladies vying for
attention from the new earl. Ewan and Morgan were with a gang of the court lads playing tag in and out of the trees and she heard their voices calling to their new friends in swift, easy English
with barely a whisper of a Welsh lilt.

‘Catch me if you can!’

Their happy calls rippled between the notes of the jig, warming Edyth’s heart. ‘For now’ was indeed enough. Tonight, at least, the enemies over the seas could stay in the
shadows with the other evil spirits; the English fires were burning high enough to keep them all away.

The woman to her left dropped her hand and new fingers clasped her own. They were warm and dry and something about their touch caught at Edyth’s breath. She turned. It was almost dark now
and the woman’s face was lit only by the firelight catching in its contours but Edyth would know it anywhere. She gasped and her lips formed the name but the woman stopped her.

‘Don’t say it. If you do not say it then I am not here.’

Edyth stared at her old friend.

‘You are a sprite, then?’

‘Nay. Nay, not that, Edyth. Never that. I am all too human.’

Edyth drew Svana in against the rainbowed trunk and the circle of revellers danced on around them.

‘I’m so sorry . . .’ she began but again the other woman silenced her.

‘No apologies, Edie. Not tonight. Not ever.’

‘Then why have you come?’

‘To see you.’

‘To see if I am filling my role?’

‘Nay! Not to test you, Edyth, truly, just to
see
you. To . . . know you are still here.’ She looked down. ‘You think me foolish.’

Edyth relaxed.

‘I do not. I have been thinking the same myself, only not so clearly. Even when I was in Wales I never felt so far from you as I have done these last months.’

‘It must be that way, Edyth, we both know that, but I thought that tonight, beneath the trees with the solid world in flux, I might creep between the gaps of “must be” for just
a while.’

‘You creep well. Come, we should find Harold.’

At that, though, Svana recoiled.

‘I could not, Edyth. He is yours now.’

‘But—’

‘He is yours. Come, my love, the dance is turning without us. We must rejoin the circle.’

She indicated the women still moving around them and Edyth drew in a deep breath. The air was rich with the scent of earth and soot and spiced wine but beneath it all now ran a wisp of meadow
flower – summer truly come at last. On an impulse, she grasped one of the myriad ribbons sewn to the waist-clasp of her gown and tugged it loose.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘We must tie it to the tree for friendship.’

Her old friend pulled a ribbon from her own dress, green too but a far lighter shade, like a new leaf. She handed it to Edyth who twisted the two together and knotted them firmly closed at
either end. Grasping a sturdy stem, she threaded the interlinked ribbon over it, looping it back on itself to keep it tight to the tree. It spun giddily as she released the branch and she watched,
entranced.

‘They look half-crazed.’

‘Maybe we do too. Come, Edie, let’s dance while we can.’

Edyth nodded and together they stepped out of their little space at the centre of the revellers and rejoined the circle. Night had fallen in earnest now and all around people had become their
own shadows – shapes against the fire that held back the night. The great Thames rushed past to one side, eddying in pockets of froth like souls dancing in the moonlight, and beyond, torches
burned on Thorney Island, illuminating the pale stone of Edward’s beautiful abbey. Edyth half-expected him, too, to materialise on the Chelsea meadow but no such ghost came to seize
Harold’s crown, or her own. King Edward was dead but England lived on, strong and proud and certain.

In the shades of a night half-Christian and half-pagan it no longer seemed to matter who was who. Laughter sounded the same from lord or lowly servant and together the English court celebrated
the arrival of another summer. Time became as formless as faces. The moon rose, silver-bright, and couples crept like beetles into the trees. Edyth danced on, entranced, until suddenly an arm
caught her waist and she was pulled from the circle.

‘There you are, Edie. I thought my queen had been spirited away.’ She blinked up at Harold, then looked nervously around. ‘Edyth?’ His voice tightened. ‘Edyth,
where have you been?’

‘Dancing, Harold. Here, with . . .’

She looked around again. Faces swam in the misty moonlight but she could not find the one she sought.

‘With whom?’

‘Are you jealous?’

‘Should I be?’

‘No. No, you definitely should not.’ She pulled him closer. ‘I have been with Svana.’

‘What?’ He leaped as if stung by an arrow-tip. ‘That’s not possible, Edyth. You have drunk too deeply of the wine.’ Even as he spoke, though, his eyes flitted
across the turning crowd.

‘Truly, Harold, I have been with her.’ Her own heart was doubting itself now and when she glanced to the oak, she was relieved to see the intertwined green ribbons swirling gently.
‘She was here,’ she insisted.

He frowned, blinked, put a hand to Edyth’s forehead, but then there she was again – Svana, moon-pale but resolute just a few steps away. Harold’s eyes widened like petals at
dawn. He reached out but she moved back with a slight shake of her head.

‘I’m sorry. I should not have come.’

Harold could only stare and it was Edyth who replied.

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘I will be gone by dawn.’

‘You must not feel—’

‘I will be gone by dawn, before the bells ring in the summer. I pray it brings us peace.’

‘Pray rather,’ Harold growled, finding his voice at last, ‘for it to bring us victory, for that is the only way we shall have peace.’

She nodded slowly.

‘So you always said.’

‘Svana . . . !’

The name seemed to chime around the dark meadow and she put up a hand once more.

‘And I am sure you are right. Truly. I came here out of love – for you both – and perhaps out of weakness of my own, but I came also with news. I’m sorry, Harry, but I
must tell you. I have men on the eastern shores, fishermen. They have seen ships, far out yet but moving south. One . . . flew the sharpened spear.’

‘Torr!’

‘It seems so.’

Harold moved towards her again, but again she stepped back as if his touch might crumble her to dust. He flinched, then squared his shoulders.

‘Then he is not with William at least,’ he said. ‘How many ships?’

‘A handful, no more.’

‘My brother has not found himself many supporters in any land then. I do not think a handful of ships need worry us too greatly.’

‘That is true but, Harold, my men say they are Scandinavian in design.’

‘Hardrada!’ Edyth breathed and Harold turned to her.

‘We must find your brothers, Edyth. If the Vikings are sailing with Torr they will need to look to their defences.’

They both scanned the meadow but the weak moon did not light up the young earls.

‘How will we find them tonight, Harold?’ Edyth asked. ‘I am not hunting Marc down now. I followed a man into the woods once before if you remember and it gave me such a shock I
fell from my tree.’

Harold smiled and glanced at Svana and for a flicker of time it was as if they were back in Westminster, back at the beginning. Then someone called ‘Sire!’ and Harold looked around
and the past was lost.

‘I must send messengers at least,’ he said.

‘You will call out the fyrd?’ Edyth asked.

‘I’m not sure. I shall send men to gauge the threat. We cannot afford to muster too soon, not with Duke William lurking over the narrow sea. What do your men say of . . . ?’ He
looked back to Svana but she had turned her face to the moon. He sighed. ‘Warmongering,’ he muttered.

‘Harold?’ Edyth asked but it was Svana to whom he replied.

‘You have always hated my warmongering.’

She nodded.

‘Yet can you not see that ’tis nights like this we fight for?’

Svana’s eyes were upon him now but still she said nothing.

‘That is true, Harold,’ Edyth said quietly, ‘but what is also true is that having fought for them we must enjoy them. Come now. The fyrd can wait until morning,
surely?’

His fingers found hers. They were cold and she squeezed them tight, seeking to pump life into them from her own, even as she drew it from Svana’s on her other side. The evil spirits had
crept close but they had kept them back. The musicians played on and together, in the darkness, the three of them danced together.

Harold’s men went forth next morning. The Trimilchi celebrations were cut short and the court dared not complain. The king was back on the throne they had elected him to,
his diadem firm upon his head as his rowan wreath lay fading in the bushes. Svana had slipped away with the dawn mist, melting between the rumpled couples creeping from the trees as the abbey bell
tolled out the arrival of summer, and leaving only a wisp of footsteps in the dew to show she was ever there at all. Harold was too busy with his council to mourn but Edyth crept to her bed and
allowed herself to weep for them both. She knew that Harold felt that he had been elected for this duty – to fight England’s fear, not to celebrate her riches – but she hoped he
would at least hold last night in his heart as he did so.

The messengers were swift to return and it seemed that, although Svana’s men had spoken true, the exiled earl had moved fast.

‘Earl Torr has been sighted off the Isle of Wight,’ they reported. ‘Six ships are heading for the south-east coast. Earl Lane is monitoring them from Kent and he believes they
mean to attack.’

‘With six ships?’

Harold was scornful of his younger brother’s intelligence but less so when the next men arrived to report that Torr’s old deputy was sailing down the east coast with seventeen more,
all, as Svana’s men had reported, Scandinavian in design.

‘The King of Norway is not aboard,’ they assured them, ‘nor his sons, but it seems the expedition has come from the Orkneys which he holds as his own.’

‘An advance party?’

‘Perhaps. And Sire, Earl Lane says to tell you Duke William has been holding a great service at his new abbey at Caen to bless his fleet. He has a banner from the Pope and is proclaiming a
holy war.’

‘Holy! There is nothing holy about the bastard duke, except perhaps that he is wholly determined to take my throne.’

Harold was defiant but when he turned to Edyth she saw his bright eyes clouding.

‘It is starting, Edyth,’ he said quietly. ‘It is all starting.’

Edyth swallowed. She’d known this day would come, they had both known it, but until this moment there had been hope that they were wrong. Now there was no such hope, only faith – in
God, in England, and in their own strength and right. Harold rose. He touched his hands, briefly, to his crown and to Edyth he seemed almost to swell with the demanding energy it gave him.