It was only after she’d sent the messenger off that she realized she had complicated her own circumstances: she required Edgiva’s counsel regarding the ride before committing herself to it, but she must now delay the asking until she knew Edgiva’s own evolving circumstances.
As soon as she received any news, she would herself ride to Leominster—or Hereford, or wherever Edgiva was—and seek her advice. There was nothing else to be done until then. If Edgiva of all people told her she was foolish, that she should pay the tax with Leofric’s help, she would pay it and wait for another opportunity to protest the heregeld.
The next morning, she began counting the days. As she took communion at mass, as she visited the monastery in her lovely layers of blue tunics that moved so flatteringly when she walked, as she discussed with Avery how the ploughing and sowing were progressing, as she helped to card and spin wool and oversee the improvements on the fulling mill, as she and Leofric received reports from their estates around Mercia and sent orders and requests in response, her mind stayed triply bent on Edgiva, Sweyn, and Edward’s demands. Leofric asked nothing of her plans, which most likely meant that he hoped she had abandoned them. She knew he’d sent a messenger to Brom Legge, where his coffers were, no doubt to alert his chamberlain of a huge—perhaps impoverishing—expense. It was uncomfortable, not to be in counsel with him. But there was no seeing eye to eye on this without Edgiva’s mediation, so until they had it, it was best that they each keep their own minds.
Two more days of dry but cloudy weather gone by—her green tunic, and then the lovely blue ones again—and their runner had surely reached Hereford. A third day (pink silk—from her Easter costume, as she had run out of new arrangements of raiments) and Sweyn was certainly to Leominster, given how impulsive a youth he was. Godiva was giddy with anticipation all that day. Something so joyfully momentous made her problem with Edward seem quite transient. It was very difficult to keep anything from Leofric, but given that they were already avoiding discussing the ride, she swore herself to secrecy regarding Sweyn and Edgiva. When it all came out—assuming it came out well—then she could preen to Leofric that she had been the shepherdess; if it did not come out well, she would escape his rebuke. And in the meantime, she did not want him to worry. He had enough to worry about already.
Assuming no complications, two evenings from now, or three at most, she might receive some word, from either Leominster or Hereford, and then she would know where to seek out Edgiva for advice.
She went to mass, she breakfasted with Leofric, she sent for jewelers and goldsmiths to display their wares for purchase for the monastery; she combed out her long pale hair and gritted her teeth when the comb found snarls; she wrote to Alfgar, asking how his Easter had been, and if they should expect to hear news of a betrothal soon; she watched the dyes she had chosen being tested; she received a summary of the manor’s stores; she heard reports of the wood storage, the granaries, the mill, the flocks; she sent alms to the outlying chapels and promised to visit them all before departing Coventry. The weather continued strangely—ever cloudy but never damp, no rain but no sun, chilling without being cold, even as spring flowers and leaf buds promised spring.
She helped to card wool, and to spin wool, and more wool and more wool and more wool. She helped repair the rollers at the bottom of the looms with her own delicate hands, which could reach into crevices the serving women’s couldn’t. She expected to hear something, surely, by the sun’s first night in Taurus. No word. She knew she must be patient. She was not good at being patient. Expecting something by Sunday evening was, in fact, evidence of her impatience. Although given how quickly Kalendis Maia was approaching, her urgency felt justified. She wished now she had written to ask Edgiva’s advice after all. Edgiva was a wise and gracious woman; she would surely have given counsel, even if her own life was amok.
Monday morning, in the layers of blue that were her new favorite, while in the gilded wooden chapel for Terce-mass, Godiva heard the mark-bells from the west announcing a traveler, and she was joyful with hope.
But when they exited the building, the porter came for Leofric, not for her. The excitement in her upper belly sank to frustration in her lower belly.
The air was damper, but still no rain had come—there had been none since Holy Week. As the bells down at the monastery tolled Sext, and she was reviewing the herbs in the kitchen garden with the cook’s wife, the horses in the stable neighed together plaintively, as they often did when another horse approached. She felt shivers of anxious delight in her stomach, butterflies of expectation. As soon as she had finished the list of new herbs to be added to the garden, she fairly skipped across the courtyard to see who was at the gate.
It was no messenger from Sweyn, or even from Edgiva. The livery was loud and boastful: a golden cross on white, a bird nestled in each quarter, a fifth perched atop it. King Edward had sent a messenger to query her.
May Day was only ten days away, and His Majesty was growing impatient for her answer.
Leofric had heard the horses too. He joined her, and they received His Majesty’s messenger in the hall. Leofric sat in his chair by the fire pit; Godiva sat on a stool at his knee.
The messenger was pompous. Worse, he had a Norman accent, which made his pomposity all the more pompous. They found it hard to be polite to him.
“I have not yet determined my course of action,” she said as airily as she could, when they had begun the official audience. “I require more time to determine what is best for Coventry.”
“His Majesty requires a response immediately,” said Pomposity Embodied. “I must depart from hence at once with your answer, in order that I may return to him with it and he may then begin his journey hither in time to be present on May Day.”
“Who uses words like hence and hither in common conversation?” Leofric scoffed.
“There is nothing common about any discourse concerning His Majesty,” the messenger said loftily.
Leofric opened his mouth to retort, but Godiva put a hand gently on his arm and asked the fellow, “Will His Majesty arrive on the Kalends of May regardless?”
“Indeed he will. He wills it that he arrive knowing what to expect—either that you yield the town, or pay the tax, or that, in the event that you refuse to do either, that you acknowledge your state of rebellion and surrender yourself to his demands by—”
“I know what he has required of me, thank you,” she said tersely.
“But who else knows?” Leofric said. To the messenger: “Tell me what you know of his intended punishment for her.”
There was no blush, or sneered lip, or anything in between, on the man’s face; only mild confusion. “In lieu of corporal torture, His Majesty will demand of the lady a punishment of the spirit, which the two of them have already discussed in private.”
Leofric relaxed a little. “That is all? No details?”
The man shook his head. “Not one. He took great pains to create the phrase, as he is a most gentle and considerate—”
“Thank you, stop talking now,” said Leofric. The messenger looked as if he’d been slapped. Leofric turned to his wife. “So. Edward is not discussing it.”
“A good thing,” she said.
“Yes, unless it is a bad thing.” How very Leofrician, thought Godiva at that. “Perhaps it means the king assumes you will yield and give him either property or money. But perhaps it means he is holding the arrangement secret so that he may divulge it publicly at a moment of benefit to him.”
Godiva sighed with exasperated impatience and spoke to the messenger: “I am not prepared to give an answer yet, so I will deliver my answer in person on the first of May.”
The messenger blinked. “But I must bring your answer to His Majesty.”
She shrugged. “Well, then, you must wait until I am prepared to give you one. We are quite full to capacity here at the manor, but I am sure you should be able to find lodgings in the village, or perhaps at the monastery, although I am not sure any of the roofs are complete yet on the guest wing, and I hear we may have rain tonight. Godspeed.” She stood up and began to walk away from them; she could feel herself trembling with rage. Even her knees were shaking.
Behind her, Leofric said to the fellow, in a tone of mock camaraderie: “I would help you if I could, but there is just no controlling these Saxon women.”
She walked toward the hall door, needing air. She noticed the strewing herbs had lost their savor over the winter and a cool mustiness was starting to take over. She would have to discuss that with Temman.
Outside, she inhaled deeply of the sharp April breeze, willing the cool of it to quiet her blood. She wished she had asked for a mantle—these tunics were all thin silk, and the damp went right through them. She stood there, lost a moment, acutely aware of her own body under the draping silk as goose bumps rose up all over it.
A moment later, she felt Leofric approach her from behind. He draped her beaver-lined green mantle over her shoulders, then pressed his chest against her back, encircling his arms around her. “I sent the scoundrel off,” he said into her veil.
“Thank you.”
“I am glad you did not commit yourself. Please, Godiva, do not do it.”
“I suppose you think I want to do it,” she said, tensing. “I suppose you think I relish the idea of exhibiting myself.”
“Not to a herd of common villagers, of course not,” Leofric said, squeezing her.
“Not to anyone,” she protested.
“I’ve sent for money,” he said. “It will be here by the first of May.”
She nodded, pursing her lips. “You should not pay him.”
“Nor should you by abject humiliation.”
She said nothing.
“The entire town is not worth a fraction of the tax he’s levied,” Leofric said, carefully studying her. “Its accumulated worth over the course of your life is less than what he is demanding now.”
She gave him an alarmed look. “You are suggesting I give up the town. To a tyrant? To spare myself a horseback ride?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head, frustrated. “The way you always paint a problem simpler than it really is . . .” He let it trail off. Then: “It is a husbandly instinct I cannot ignore. I do not ever like to see you exposed. Come inside now; if the gods have compassion it will start raining any moment.”
She pulled her arms tight against herself to shrink from his touch. “I do not expose myself. I have used my wiles on enough men to understand the power of concealment. What is exposed loses its power; what is covered remains a mystery and thus alluring.”
“I fail to see how that is an argument for making the ride.”
“Edward is forcing me to display how literally vulnerable I must make myself at his commandment.”
“Yes, he is. What about that makes you want to do it?”
“I do not want to do it!” she protested. “But I would sooner do it than lose the town. If I must choose between being bereft of my dignity for half an hour, or a potent source of revenue for a lifetime, it is an easy choice.”
“Those are not the only choices, Godiva,” he said, again tightening his grip on her.
“I will not be ransomed. We will not let him use the wife’s dilemma to extort money from the husband.”
Leofric blinked, as if hearing something that surprised him. Then his expression, usually calm even in his irritation, suddenly grew very hard. He turned her around so that they were looking at each other, his arms still hooped about her.
“How could we not see this?” he said. “Extorting money is nothing compared to what he really wants. He wants to cuckold me, without laying a hand on my wife.”
“What?”
“He wants control of your body above my objections . . . how could we not have grasped that the moment he said it?”
“Leofric—”
“You are a means to an end. You are nothing but an instrument for punishing me. Not just taking money from me. Actually shaming me, and so undermining me.”
“Oh,” Godiva said, considering.
“To all the landed women of the kingdom, Edward is warning: see what I can do to you. And to all the lords, he is warning too: see what I can do to your wives. Is that not worse than simply paying an unfair tax?”
“I . . .” She shook her head, confused now. “I cannot believe that is it. The Great Council will not allow such a perverse use of power.”
“You are assuming he cares about the Council. Harthacnut did not care.”
“He does not want to be like Harthacnut. That is why he demands I ride naked rather than demanding you burn down Coventry.”
“So my forced submission is not compelled by violence, but it is forced submission all the same.”
She grimaced and looked down. Her goose bumps were subsiding, and she liked him for that, even though she still felt disposed to argue with him. “But it is also a forced submission if you pay the heregeld. If every choice is a forced submission, should I not make the choice I most believe in? A choice that will not beggar us for decades?”
Leofric made a noise, half grunt, half sigh, and brooding, he looked into the distance. Thinking.
“There is still the matter of the Church’s response,” he warned.
“The Church’s response,” she echoed, with an ironic sigh. “Towering over all of us, over everything, recklessly meting out punishment and blessing, and eternal damnation to the wayward.”
“That is no small thing,” said Leofric. “And Edward intends that your behavior offend the Church.”
“The Church is quite selective about what offends it,” Godiva insisted. “Just look at the Land Ceremony, or Rogationtide. Such things are not in the Bible, they stink of heathenism, and yet the Church does not denounce them.”
“But God himself is invoked in those hybrid convocations,” Leofric objected. “A naked woman riding bareback on a horse on Kalendis Maia is doing nothing in concert with God’s will.”
“On the other hand, how could there be anything nefarious about it?” Godiva retorted. “I am performing no ritual, invoking no charms. I am simply riding. On my own horse. On my own estate. The temporary absence of clothing means nothing. Surely, it means nothing.”
“Unless somebody wants to claim it means something.”
She groaned with aggravation. “I need Edgiva’s counsel,” she said. “And clearly I can wait no longer. I shall ride to Leominster straightaway.”
His arms stiffened around her. “No,” he said. “You will not.” It was spoken not as his desire, but as a statement of fact.
“As if you could stop me,” she said casually. “I will take an escort, of course.” She was surprised by the expression on his face. “But why do you say that?”
“The Welsh chieftains are warring with each other, and Sweyn Godwinson has gone into Wales to fight beside Gruffydd of Gwynedd,” he said. “I received word just this morning, before Edward’s sycophant arrived.”
Godiva felt a surge, almost physical, of dread.
“Where is the fighting?” she asked hoarsely.
“Beyond Offa’s Dyke, I know nothing more. Sweyn sent a brief statement to the three earls, and the king. I know nothing of how close to the border the fighting has moved.”
“Oh, heaven,” Godiva said, feeling ill.
“There may be reprisals on Sweyn’s estates or those near him. The abbey is not safe.”
This was why she had not heard about their rendezvous: there had not been one. Sweyn, off warring in Wales, had not even received her message.
Why, then, had her runner not returned yet? Had he gone on, into an unknown battlefield, to find Sweyn? He was a dutiful man, but . . .
“Godiva?” said Leofric. “Your mind has wandered.”
“Yes, sorry,” she said. “If Sweyn is in Wales—he is her lord protector—and he is not there to protect her, and we are the abbey’s patrons, so we must go at once to guard Edgiva.”
“She is guarded well enough by virtue of being in the abbey. It is around the abbey that would not be safe.”
“I must go to her. I require her advice, and I am running out of time.”
“Godiva—”
“Based on Bishop Aldred’s counsel, I will make the ride. If you want to dissuade me, Edey is your best hope. So you had better let me go to her.”
He knew her stubbornness well enough, and that his own stubbornness could not sway it. She saw his jaw clench; he closed his eyes and grimaced. “Woman,” he growled in frustration.
“Women, actually,” she said in mock apology.