They had given Edgiva the small room beside their own. She had retired there instantly, attended only by Merewyn, who understood at once what was going on but put her hand over her heart in a silent, spontaneous vow not to speak of it. At the abbess’s request, a quill and ink were brought, and Edgiva busied herself awhile, writing soothing prayers and charms into her diary.
When Godiva went in to her, she was curled up on the bed, ink blots on her fingers.
“Edey,” Godiva said softly, and sat beside her. Edgiva did not move. Indeed, if Godiva could not see the side of her body rise and fall slowly, she would not be sure her friend was living. “Edey, we have your saddlebag with the herbs in it. If you are not well enough to prepare a concoction, guide me to prepare one for you.”
“This is not entirely a sickness of the body,” the abbess said in a low voice. “There is an ailment here that drugs cannot cure.”
Godiva grimaced, then put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. “Everything happens according to God’s will,” she said, citing the abbess’s own words from many past occasions. “Somehow hidden in all this is a blessing, or at least a lesson, waiting to be found out.”
A strange sound came from Edgiva then, almost a derisive laugh. Godiva waited, but there was no other response. She pressed on.
“Leofric and I have been speaking. He knows everything, and hopes you will soon determine your course, so that we in turn know what to do to help. We do not want to confuse the situation by doing anything without your blessing first.”
That same sound, but now louder, barking, more derisive; she shrugged the hand from her shoulder and sat up heavily, her back still to her friend. “That is rich,” she said, her rich voice heavy with venom. “Did you have my blessing when you instructed Sweyn to show up at the abbey and carry me off?”
“I did not tell him—”
“And then,” she went on, rising unsteadily, “did you have my blessing when you took it upon yourself to repair that situation by issuing orders that only worsened the confusion?” She turned to Godiva, her face a color Godiva had never seen before. “Oh, there you are in your pretty little gowns of seduction,” she said with impatient dismissiveness, gesturing angrily at Godiva’s Easter tunic. “I would never have given my blessing to anything you’ve done so far! And will you acknowledge that you have entirely interfered with and possibly ruined my life—as well as Sweyn’s? Heavens no, you pat my shoulder with your delicate little fingers and speak to me as if you were a considerate friend whom I should feel appreciative of, rather than enraged at!” Tears of fury sparkled in both eyes and from the right eye spilled down her mottled cheek.
It was a poisonous anger. She had carried it with her all these days, words of rage she had not had the energy or will to chastise Godiva with, all the way from Worcester.
“Edgiva—” she began in her most honeyed tone.
“Do not use that voice with me!” Edgiva hissed. “I know that voice. That is the voice you use with men to wilt them according to your convenience.”
“I use it with women too,” she said without thinking, in pathetic defense.
“Do not use it with me,” Edgiva said with the same furious whisper. “Do not soften the edge of my anger, do not rob me of this fury. You have already mismanaged my life beyond repair; you will not manage my sentiments as well. You have done unspeakable damage to me and to Sweyn, and no amount of charm can save you from accountability.”
“I warrant you that,” Godiva said, chastised. “But your rage at me solves nothing. I do not deny I helped to cause the problem, but you are the only one who can resolve it now.”
“But that is so like you!” It was a whispered shriek. “You have caused a problem, but some other soul must fix it. You are marvelous at causing problems that you have no power to fix! You have done it from the moment you could speak.”
“You act as if I am the only errant party here,” Godiva shot back, then lowered her voice to a whisper to demand furiously: “Whose child are you carrying, and how did it get inside you? Am I to blame for that?”
Edgiva reddened and her breath caught. “I have already punished myself for that sin, and offer penance every day for it. That is why I do not take the herbs that would make me feel better—I do not deserve my own succoring—”
“God’s wounds, that’s absurd.”
“That is not the point,” Edgiva said, pushing on in a pained voice. “I know that I have sinned, and I am in a constant private dialogue with God about it. I knew I must take responsibility and I was trying to find the time to meditate upon how. You blithely trampled over everything, and now Sweyn Godwinson will be excommunicated and robbed of his land and title for an action he did not commit.”
“What, abducting you? He committed a far worse act than that—”
“Which nobody need ever have known about!” Edgiva seethed.
“Are you content that a sin should go uncorrected? What kind of abbess does that make you?”
“A confused one! Trying to navigate her way through her confusion! Meanwhile my name is being bandied about in confounding ways among the entire population of the Council—”
“They were already talking about you as a tax resister.”
“And now they shall be talking about me as a whore!” she returned. “And so I lose all credibility, all credibility, forever, in a way that no secular lady ever would, for the Church will condemn me and cast me out—”
“This is fearful passion speaking,” Godiva said to calm her, holding out a reassuring hand; Edgiva snatched her arm away angrily. “Rest and eat and take your mind from it but for a day, and you will see that none of this may come out as you fear. Everything can be rectified—”
“How? By deceit?” Edgiva demanded venomously. She was regaining herself, and adopted now the voice of the all-seeing abbess Godiva always loved and sometimes dreaded. “There are three choices here, Godiva,” she said, as if suddenly she were mentor and the countess student. “First, to let these errant rumors run wild, leading God knows where—”
“All Sweyn need do is open his home to show he does not have you, and he is out of danger.”
“Unless somebody implies that he has killed me or is hiding me away somewhere. Where else should I be? People saw me being taken away by him. So either he is suspect in my disappearance, or you and Leofric become suspect yourselves, for why would you set up an occasion in which Sweyn appears to have abducted me, unless you had some plot to get him into trouble?”
“We will speak to S—”
“And even if you resolve things with Sweyn, this is an incident. Everybody is aware of it. Whereas, if I had simply come with you to Coventry, nobody would have cared. Whatever choices I made from there, they would be difficult, and I would deserve the difficulty, but they would be my choices; I would be responsible for them—not Sweyn, not you, not Leofric, not the Church. It is now impossible for me to be mistress of my fate. You have made it impossible.”
Godiva lowered her eyes and fidgeted with the edge of her veil, the gold thread feeling brittle to her fingertips. “I am deeply, deeply sorry for that,” she said. She tried to look up and meet Edgiva’s gaze, but found that she could not. “You said there were three options. One is to do nothing and see what happens, and yes, of course that is not the way. What are the other two?”
“The other two are no better,” Edgiva said with patient impatience—a trick of delivery she excelled at since becoming an abbess. “One is to speak out against the rumors by lying, and the other is to speak out against the rumors by telling the truth.”
Godiva was comforted by Edgiva’s scolding now; it meant the passion was under control and the abbess was, at least, thinking clearly. “Let me call for Leofric,” she said. “He loves you as a sister, and he is as upset with me as you are, so the two of you should peck at me productively and sort out how to handle this.”
Edgiva glared. “You have not taken in my chastisement in the least,” she complained. “Like water on parched ground, it rolls off down the hill instead of penetrating.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are making it the responsibility of myself and Leofric to resolve a problem you have created.”
“Yes, I am,” Godiva said. Edgiva looked startled at the concession. “I do not know how to resolve it myself. If I did, do you think I would not, given how endlessly I like to make everything my business? And what is the more important: that you teach me a lesson by making me try to resolve it on my own, or that it is resolved as efficiently as possible?”
“There is no resolving it!” Edgiva said, her voice breaking with frustration. “That is what I am trying to tell you. What is the point of reviewing all my woes with Leofric, when there is no way to heal them?”
“Perhaps he will think of something we have not thought of,” Godiva said blandly. “He does have some experience surviving crises.”
Edgiva took a breath, trying to contain herself. “Summon him, then, if you must,” she said. “I am sure the three of us together cannot imagine a way out of this without damage done to somebody who does not deserve it.”
“Who of us does not deserve it?” Godiva asked rhetorically. She opened the door and sent Merewyn for Leofric. He was there within moments, in no better a mood than when she left him.
“I understand,” Leofric said from the door, in lieu of greeting, “that you are as much to blame for these troubles as my unruly wife is.”
Edgiva reddened.
“That does not help, Leofric,” Godiva said. “The poor woman has weight enough on her shoulders without your condemnation.”
“I am to blame for my own sins,” Edgiva countered. “Godiva is to blame for all the rest of it.”
So much for sisterhood, thought Godiva.
“Edward will outlaw Sweyn for this,” the abbess continued, anguished.
“He does not have that power,” Leofric said reassuringly. “He must ask the Great Council for a sentence of outlawry, and by the next convening of the Council, all of this will be resolved.”
“But in the meantime, we cannot ignore the rumors,” Edgiva said.
“Obviously,” said Leofric impatiently, still not stepping into the room.
“However,” Edgiva went on, “if we address the rumors, if we send out a message to all concerned that they have not got the right story, then we must decide if we correct it with the truth or with deceit. I am sickened by my own duplicity and can abide no more of it, so I ask you now, what happens if we tell the truth?”
“This is not a catechism lesson, Edgiva,” said Leofric tersely. “I am not accustomed to being spoken to in such a voice, and I will not brook it. Obviously if we speak the truth, the question is, how much truth. Do we tell the world what even Sweyn himself has not heard? What does the truth profit us? You come out looking the worse for it, Godiva looks almost as bad, and Sweyn will still be severely punished for corrupting a religious woman.”
“So we must not tell the truth,” Godiva said decisively. “That means we lie.”
“And what lie shall we tell?” said Leofric. “And how may we control that lie as it works its way across England?”
“I will not lie!” Edgiva shouted, raising her voice for the first time. “My secrets blot my soul enough, do not make me a liar too! I curse you, you Ananias, for putting me in this position!”
Godiva leapt away from her, astonished by her fury. She moved toward Leofric instinctively for comfort. He closed one large gloved hand around her arm—a gesture as much of control as of comfort, but she welcomed his touch, and relaxed a little from her panic.
“Mother Abbess, you do not mean those words,” she said, sounding shaky.
Edgiva looked unnerved by her own rage. “I do not,” she conceded, strained. “But I will not agree to any resolution that requires me to nurse deceit. I will not do it. I have already fallen far enough; I will not throw myself deeper into the mire.”
Relieved by the recantation of damnation, Godiva immediately regained her humor. “We must say that it was a complete misunderstanding,” she said firmly to Leofric, putting her free hand on his hand that grabbed her arm. “Sweyn was only at her gates to bring her the welcome news that the Welsh borders are now secure. Edgiva had already expressed an interest in coming with me—as she told the sisters, in fact—to gather herbs—”
“That lily-white tale does not explain why you rode to Hereford with Sweyn, disguised as a nun,” Leofric said, releasing her and pulling away.
“I was not disguised as a nun,” Godiva protested impatiently. “I was dressed modestly and I took my jewelry off! Other people were hysterical and . . . misperceived me.”
“Very well. You were not disguised as a nun. You still rode to Hereford with Sweyn rather than coming directly to Coventry with your friend the abbess, who was obviously ill. Why did you do that? In this version of the story, where nobody has done anything wrong? Why not cleave to Edgiva from the moment you left the gate?”
They both stared at Godiva expectantly.
Clumsily, inspiration struck: “I was asking Sweyn’s advice regarding the ride,” she said.
“Which would be tomorrow,” Leofric said, rubbing one temple with his hand. “As if we did not have enough crises to contend with.”
“What ride?” asked Edgiva.
Leofric blinked. “What did you just say?” he asked her.
“What ride?”
Leofric released a grunt of frustration. “All of this,” he said to his wife, gesturing as if to imply the whole room, the whole world, “all of this, and you have not even mentioned to her the reason you went to Leominster? The king is on his way here. And now you have put yourself in the middle of a scandal with a woman of the Church. The bishops will be sharpening their legal knives to eviscerate you. My coffers have arrived from Brom Legge; I trust there is enough to pay this perversion of a tax bill, although it may leave us nearly penniless. You cannot make the ride.” He turned toward Edgiva. “For the love of all saints, tell her not to make the ride.”
“What ride?” Edgiva repeated.
Leofric looked at his wife.
She pursed her lips together and thought a moment. There must be some way to tell this tale so that Edgiva would realize Godiva was not entirely devoid of merit. She was championing Edgiva’s cause, after all.
“The king has manipulated the law to levy the heregeld against the residents of Coventry, and no one else,” she said. “What he really wants is either to take the estate from me, or to punish me—or Leofric, really—with a very heavy penalty, as I would naturally pay the tax myself, which means Leofric would pay it, as I have no such means. But Coventry is mine, and I refused to pay the heregeld on the grounds that the heregeld should not exist.”
She paused a moment, to let Edgiva digest the news that her silly friend Godiva had in fact taken a brave stand on something of weight.
Edgiva blinked rapidly a couple of times, and the muscles in her face changed—not that she looked less tense, but now she looked tense in a different way.
“And what did Edward say?” she asked.
“Edward threatened me, of course. He cited Harthacnut’s treatment of Worcester, although that was for the murders, not just the tax revolt. He will not harm the town, as long as I agree to be the scapegoat and suffer humiliation in its stead.”
“What humiliation?”
“I am amazed you did not discuss this with her,” Leofric snapped.
“She was traumatized and ill,” Godiva snapped back at him. Then to Edgiva: “He wants me to ride through the town on horseback, naked.”
Edgiva blinked in astonishment.
“What a . . . bizarre and perverse demand,” she said after a moment.
“He wants her to do it on Kalendis Maia,” Leofric added. “May Day.”
“It is not such a large concern, that it is May Day,” Godiva said.
“Of course not,” said Edgiva. “On the border, the Welsh farmers and peasants observe the old traditions, without even trying to disguise them as Christian as at Rogationtide, or for the Land Ceremony. We look the other way.”
“You see?” Godiva said to her husband, taking his hand and trying to stroke the back of it.
“Would you look the other way if the most powerful countess in the kingdom were to participate?” Leofric demanded, snatching his hand away.
“I think you are reading too much into it there,” Godiva insisted.
“He wants her to make the ride on May Day,” Leofric pressed. “Specifically on the Kalends of May. Not, please note, not as part of any church ritual. He wants the rumor of it to be misinterpreted, misperceived, to imply that the lady of Mercia is openly practicing pagan ritual.”
“I assume he did not say that,” said Edgiva.
“No, he did not, because it is not true,” Godiva said. “And even if Edward in his own twisted mind thinks so, it would require the collusion of the Church.”
“And that is why,” Leofric said in a long-suffering voice, “Godiva traveled to Leominster. To ask your opinion on where the Church would stand. Would the bishops leap at the opportunity to shame our family, and decry her for something so scandalous? Would they commend her for resisting an unfair tax and yet also accepting the punishment for doing so? Perhaps lionize her for protecting her people at the expense of her own dignity? Excommunicate her for participating in unholy rites? What do you think, Edgiva? She should have asked you days ago.”
“I am not a bishop,” Edgiva said crossly. “Ask a bishop what a bishop would do.”
“We asked Worcester,” Godiva said. “Bishop Aldred. Leofric believes Aldred wishes to avoid being held accountable for any position. But surely anyone associated with Worcester must rally to a protest of the heregeld.”
“He has not rallied to me,” Edgiva observed.
“Ah,” said Leofric, conclusively.
There was a silence.
“So,” Godiva said at last, awkwardly. “If you desire a moment’s distraction from your own dilemma, Edgiva, I would be most obliged if you would turn your brilliance, insight, and intuition on mine.”
Edgiva considered her a moment, steely-eyed.
“No,” she said.
“Pardon?” said the countess.
“I said no.”
“How can you mean that?” Godiva asked with a sweetly confused smile. “I am distrustful of my own counsel, and seek to lay down the secrets of my—”
“Do not use those wiles on me, Godiva,” Edgiva said, sharp.
“We are trying to help you with your dilemma, Edgiva, how can you not help us with ours? I am in trouble because I was trying to champion your cause by standing up to Edward.”
Edgiva gave Godiva a look of incredulity, even as Leofric sighed at his wife’s ineptness. “There is nothing parallel in our circumstances,” the abbess scolded. “We must, both of us, make a deal with a devil, but in your case, your enemies have set you up for a fall, for political gain—while in my case, my closest friend has put me, and somebody else, and my unborn child, in a horrific position for no gain to anyone at all.”
“I acknowledge that, I understand it . . . ,” Godiva said, faltering. “So please, Edgiva, advise me how to repair your situation.”
“Make one of my unacceptable options acceptable. Nothing less. Please leave me, Godiva; all of this talk is pointless and dismaying. This interview is at an end.” Trapped between them and the door, she turned her back on them decisively.
Leofric made a gesture of finality, as if flicking water from his hands. He turned and walked out of the room without a word.
Godiva knew his moods. He would go out now, to ride until the sun was setting. He would imagine to himself he was not yet a husband or a father or an earl, just a young man enjoying the beauty of his surroundings and the company of a few friends—or in this case, housecarls. Leofric no longer had friends. Godiva sometimes wondered if he noticed that.