Coventry
Leofric had put a lookout on the manor walls, who trumpeted when he saw the riding party. The town—some eightscore including the population of both the manor and the monastery—thronged together in the small, still-grassy market green.
But closer than the green, on the gentle curving rise the hamlet couched in, stood Leofric beside his horse, with several housecarls in attendance, staring toward the west, toward the travelers. When he was in clear view, Godiva’s party cantered the last length, as that was easier than trotting for Edgiva.
The veiled sun was behind them, and as they came closer, Godiva saw Leofric freeze for a moment, and then take a stiff step or two toward them, before stopping abruptly. He pointed toward the riding party. The housecarls echoed his movements. They all looked suddenly confused, or agitated. Leofric had not known she would be bringing Edgiva with her; obviously, that explained his change of mood.
No, it did not. There was something more. Somebody shouted, but Godiva could not make out the words. As they approached and drew rein, her gaze was distracted by the population of Coventry swarming, sudden but cautious, around the outlying town buildings, creeping collectively closer to witness their lady’s homecoming, anxiously muttering among themselves. When her eye returned to Leofric, she found him staring at Edgiva, his mouth slack with amazement. She had never seen him slack-jawed, and she had never known him to be speechless. He was speechless now.
“Greetings, husband,” she said, making herself sound cheerful despite exhaustion. “We have returned safely, and have brought a beloved friend to visit for a while.”
The look on his face did not change, but the color of his skin began to darken. His brows began to knit. He was angry—and yet still so shocked he could not speak. The townsfolk’s muttering died away.
“The abbess is fatigued from our long journey, and so I request that we dispense with formal homecomings, or at least delay them until later, that she may enter the manor and instantly rest,” Godiva said.
He kept staring. The housecarls were staring. The villagers were staring. The monks were staring. The manor servants were staring. Not one person so much as whispered to another.
“You,” Leofric finally said, in a husky voice, to Edgiva. “Mother. What make you here?”
“I have come to visit,” Edgiva said. She looked as if she might be sick again. “At the invitation and urging of your lady wife. Why look you so amazed at that?” Her voice grew frail, and real fear crept into it. “May I not visit? Am I not welcome here?”
Her voice broke the spell of silence; the villagers and monks and servants—but not the housecarls—all began to whisper to one another, as if on cue, and most of the women in the crowd crossed themselves.
“Silence!” Leofric shouted, without taking his stare from Edgiva.
Silence.
“Husband, what’s the matter?”
His eyes still on Edgiva, Leofric informed them: “We have just received notice, over the past day, from the Bishop of Worcester, and the Bishop of Hereford, and Leominster Abbey, and His Majesty. These notices alarmed me, for they had to do with events at Leominster, where I knew my wife had been. I am relieved to see my wife returning safely. But I am confused that she has brought with her Mother Edgiva, who—as half the kingdom has been informed—was forcefully abducted by Sweyn Godwinson to Hereford.”
Edgiva now looked as astonished as Leofric had moments earlier.
“Godiva, shall I assume you followed them to Hereford and wrested Edgiva from Sweyn’s lascivious grasp? And if so, dare I ask what you did to convince him to let her go?”
“No, no, I . . .” And here Godiva too could not speak for a moment. “She never went to Hereford. She left straight from the abbey gates and headed here to Coventry.”
“There were witnesses, Godiva,” Leofric said, angry, although he kept his voice too contained to be heard by the villagers. “Stop concocting tales; that will not help you now.”
“How could there be witnesses? She did not go to Hereford,” she insisted. “I will swear that on the Holy Writ. She went straight to Worcester and I met her there, and she has not been out of my sight since.”
A confused pause.
“You met her there?” he echoed sternly.
“I rode with Sweyn to Hereford to make sure he would not pursue her, and then . . .” Godiva let it trail off. She suddenly felt light-headed and was glad for the warmth of her drab mantle and tunics.
“Mother Mary,” said Leofric, sounding pained.
“Who would ever think I might be mistaken for an abbess?” Godiva said with a nervous laugh, trying to make light of it. Which was a dreadful mistake. “Is not that the embodiment of irony?”
“Who claims it?” asked Edgiva. She was pale and a sweat had broken out over her face. “Who claims they saw Earl Sweyn abduct me?”
Leofric shook his head. “The witnesses are not named, it is written only that there were both villagers and residents of the abbey, looking over the walls.”
“I removed all of my jewelry and gave it to Edgiva,” the countess said. “The intention was to keep her from looking like a nun. It did not occur to me that without the jewelry, I myself would look like one.” ’
Leofric’s face reddened with anger. “I should have known you had a hand in this.”
“I was trying to help,” Godiva said. “Sweyn had come to take her. I prevented that. There is a very unfortunate rumor about now, but it is wrong. We need only announce the truth to set the record straight.”
“The record will still say that he showed up and demanded me,” said Edgiva quietly. “And that is your doing too.”
“What?” Leofric kept his voice low but his face was turning purple.
“You did not know? She wrote to him and told him to abduct me.”
“That is not true!” Godiva protested.
Leofric was so outraged his wife could see the veins on his neck even from horseback.
“Why did you have to bring her here?” he demanded through clenched teeth. “Why did she leave the abbey? And why exactly did she depart at the same moment that you did? It must have been at the same moment, the same heartbeat, or there could not have been this confusion.”
That he was willing to do this in front of the entire population of Coventry was a deliberate shaming. He was furious at her.
“Of course there was confusion, people were very frightened, they had been told—mistakenly, by someone else—that the Welsh were attacking, the bells were ringing, everyone was hiding in the church . . . but there was chaos and confusion inside the walls before he ever reached the gate.”
“But he would not have been at the gate were it not for you,” Leofric snapped. Turning to the abbess, “Do I have that correct, Mother Edgiva?” he demanded.
She nodded anxiously without speaking. She looked as if she might swoon.
Leofric made a wordless sound of exasperation. He turned to face the villagers and monks and servants, and something in his movement and his expression startled the lot of them; they leapt back together. “All of you go home!” he said. “Leave! Now!” Immediately the wave of people melted back behind the buildings.
Leofric turned back to the two women. “I cannot turn you away,” he said curtly to Edgiva. “I cannot fathom why she brought you or why you agreed to come. It is close to a disaster that you are here. You do not look well—”
“I am not, sir,” Edgiva said with quiet urgency.
“So come inside and we will have you tended to, and I must have a few words alone with my wife.” He said this without looking at Godiva, his teeth so clenched he could have cut an apple with the sharpness of his tone. Without a glance at her he turned and briskly led his horse back into the village. His housecarls followed.
When it was just Edgiva and Godiva, and the men who had ridden with them, the abbess released a shaking breath that bordered on a sob. “Oh, Lady Virgin,” she said softly. “What will happen to Sweyn now?”
“Nothing,” Godiva said, sounding surly. “ ’Tis just a big mistaken rumor. I will explain the truth to Leofric. Everything will be fine.”
Edgiva gave her a horrified, disbelieving expression. “Everything will not be fine. Everything will never be fine again. How ignorant are you that you don’t see that, Godiva?”
Edgiva urged her horse forward into the village as the monastery bells began to toll None.
Godiva, shaken more than she wanted to allow, dismounted in the manor yard, then went to the hall and asked for a basin to wash the dust of the road from her face. Clean water had never felt so good on her skin. Merewyn went to fetch her a more proper dress and veil, ones that did not make her look like an abducted abbess. She chose her blue-and-rose Easter outfit again, in the wan hope of appearing innocent to her husband and therefore hapless, rather than meddlesome. Leofric was in their room and Edgiva in the guest chamber, so she stood near the kitchen screens to change. The sensation of the silk brushing smoothly against her skin was so lovely after days and days of the drab woolens she had been wearing.
Their chamber was off the far end of the hall. Taking a deep breath to ready herself, she crossed through the hall, went to the door, and rapped upon it.
She heard the bolt slide. The door moving slightly in the jamb as it released. Then his footsteps walking away from the door. He was not even opening the door for her.
She pushed the door and stepped inside.
“Close it behind you,” he said tersely. “Bolt it.”
She did. The entire manor population would, of course, within moments be hovering on the other side. She stayed near the door.
Leofric was seated on the bed. They had one window in this room; it was still covered with parchment, but the curtains were open, and diffused daylight filtered in and gently lit his haggard face. He looked at her without a word for a long moment, his expression that of a disappointed father.
“Is there anything you can say to me that will change my view of what has happened here?” he asked, in a rhetorical tone.
“Yes,” she said defiantly. “Edgiva is pregnant with Sweyn’s child.”
New astonishment wiped all other expression from his face. He went nearly white. “God’s wounds,” he said, pushing his hand hard against his temple and then up through his hair. He clutched a handful of hair as if he would tear it from his scalp.
“So you see,” she continued, in his silence, “I am not the only one who has misbehaved here. I am not even the one who has misbehaved the most!”
“This would bring me to an early grave were I of a lesser constitution,” Leofric said, almost philosophical in his shock. “I would prefer the heat of battle to the mess that we now face.”
“You do not mean that,” she rebuked him.
“No, but very nearly,” he snapped back. “And do not use that voice with me, Godiva, I am the only one in this who does not deserve scolding. You are certain of her condition?”
“Yes. And that Sweyn is the father. Beyond that, I know very little. Everything happened so fast. I went there to get her advice about Edward’s punishment, and I had been there not an hour when Sweyn arrived.”
“But he arrived there because of you,” he said sternly.
“Not exactly,” she said. She moved to the foot of the bed but did not dare—not yet—to sit beside him. “I told you at the Council I saw them falling for each other, do you remember that? She rode back north with his party when the Council adjourned, and stayed the night in Hereford with him. Just one night, but that is all it took. That happened without my meddling, Leofric—I was not there; we were on the road home. Edey went back to Leominster, realized she was with child, and wrote to me in a panic. But I did not realize the import of her message, I thought she was merely in love, and so I wrote to Sweyn—who I thought was in Hereford—telling him to pay her court.”
“Godiva!”
“Not to show up armed outside her gate with half an army, screaming for her!” she protested. “I knew that he was pining for her, he had told me that bluntly, and when I knew it was reciprocated it seemed right—it seemed my calling—to encourage them to pursue it.”
“She is an abbess!” he thundered.
“She was made an abbess, she has no calling for it. I am not saying she lacks faith, but she surely lacks vocation. She uses her power and position constantly the way a countess might. You have seen it. She has no native interest in a cloistered life. She is accustomed to it, she is adept at it, but have you ever seen her pray or lead a service with a quarter of the passion she gives to her work as a healer, or even, by heaven, a calligrapher? It was political convenience that put her in her position, not vocation. God knows well what her strengths are upon this earth, and she need not be an abbess to make the most of the gifts the Lord has given her.”
He had grown quiet during her speech. Now he said, much calmer, “That is very eloquent, Godiva. Moving, even. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with attending to this crisis.”
“You’re right, I am sorry,” she said. She finally sat down on the bed beside him. “If you are thoroughly finished shouting at me, let’s you and I talk through and see if we can best determine what to do now.”
He flopped back heavily onto the pillow. “I should have guessed you were responsible for all of this as soon as I caught wind of it . . .”
“I am not responsible! ’Twasn’t I who ploughed her furrows!”
He laughed ruefully, briefly, with frustration. “Do you know? The punishment for rape is a fine paid to the woman’s guardian, but Leominster Abbey is in Herefordshire, so I suppose he owes himself the fine.”
“You are patron of the abbey, so he should owe it to you—no, what are we saying, Leofric, he doesn’t owe it at all, because he did not rape her.”
“It might have been better for her if he had.”
She glared at him. “I did not hear you say that.”
“While you were changing I wrote to Sweyn and told him to keep his head down for a while.”
“He knows she is here.”
“I assumed as much. I told him not to come.”
“He has already promised me he would not,” she said, desperate to show she deserved credit for something.
“That was before there were condemnations and threats being issued against him by the bishop and the king,” he said. “Were I in his position, the first thing I’d do would be to put out a letter to all of England informing everyone that I had not abducted the Abbess of Leominster, because Godiva of Coventry had got there first. I would also use that opportunity to deny I was the father of her child—unless he decides politically it is in his interest to claim it as his, which, now I think of it—”
“He knows nothing of that,” she said, standing up with agitation. “He does not even suspect.”
He opened his eyes wide and looked up at her. “You mean you kept out of something?” he said. “Praise Woden and pass the mead.”
“Not funny,” she said sharply, and lightly kicked his foot. She was relieved the rage had passed and he was willing to speak to her—actually speak to her, not at her—again. “In fact, he said that even if the two of them were to wed—”
“Which will never happen.”
“He said even if the two of them were to wed, they should have no child until Edward has an heir. Otherwise it would appear to be political maneuvering on his part—maybe even on Edey’s—and he did not wish to put her in that position.”
“And you fell for that?” he said, making a face. “Surely you are too savvy to fall for such nonsense.”
“I did not fall for anything. He meant it. He,” she informed him, “is besotted. He may not mean it half a year from now, but trust me, he means it now. Anyhow, he knows nothing about the child.”
“So.” Leofric took a breath and sat up again. He patted the bed where she had just been sitting. “Come here. Let’s talk this through. What will Edgiva do?”
Godiva sat. “She needed to get away from Leominster even to consider it. She was in distress the whole ride; it would have been wrong of me to push her to speak of it, especially with the men around us. The one thing she has determined is that she will carry it to term. She nearly aborted it, but found she could not.”
“And we know this is no trick of hers, to elevate herself from abbess to future queen mother?”
She smacked his knee. “I cannot believe you would even entertain that notion.”
“We must contemplate every possible angle. Few people know her so well as we do—nobody knows her so well as you. Others will look to unsavory motives. If we cannot anticipate those, rumors will get out of hand. And we have already seen what rumors can do.”