Godiva Read Free Page B

famous Godwin of Wessex: the most powerful man in England, more powerful than the king himself, and father of young Sweyn. He was tall and leathery faced with shoulders one could break rocks against.
    Siward’s eke-name was “the Stout.” And not without reason. But he was rumored to have pagan tendencies, and Godiva found that endearing.
    Mother Edgiva declaimed gracefully, despite the shapeless dark robes that left nothing visible but the center of her face. Her voice resonated in the deeper tones of a woman twice her age. Godiva had always loved that voice and admired Edgiva in her rhetorical ecstasy. She had been pontificating gently since she was five, and she grew more splendid at it yearly.
    And yet Godiva, in her red and gold and green layers of double-girdled tunics, her large gold and garnet necklaces weighing on her neck, clanking gently against her enormous circular pure-gold Byzantine brooch . . . Godiva remained bored almost to nausea. She already knew the intention of Edey’s speech. At every Great Council, the abbess chronically agitated on behalf of those who had no direct voice here. This was foolhardy. Godiva cared about such people too, but lecturing about them to this Council was a waste of time.
    â€œ. . . abolish the heregeld and dispense with the mercenary bodyguard,” Edgiva was saying this time. “They are a reminder of a barbaric king and his barbaric rule. You cannot claim to have advanced the monarchy if you do not forswear them.”
    Of all the suggestions Edgiva had ever made at council, thought Godiva—giving slaves the rights of serfs, allowing priests’ wives the same religious status as nuns, returning to certain elements of Roman governmental policies—this was by far the most unlikely.
    â€œBut Mother Edgiva,” said King Edward, with a cloying smile, relaxing into his fur-trimmed leather cloak. “I do not tax the clergy or the Church. Your abbey is safe enough.”
    â€œI do not protest it for myself,” she said. “I protest it surely on behalf of England.” Her somberly sweet face, bright eyes, thick dark brows, turned to stare at the crowded hall. “Will none of you stand up with me on this? It is your subjects who suffer under the tax.”
    Her eyes rested meaningfully on Leofric, who frowned and looked straight at the floor. Godiva subtly stroked the back of his broad hand.
    Rooted as an oak tree, slender as a sapling, Mother Edgiva began her litany: “We are battle-scarred from decades of invasions and strife. If we do not thrive, the invaders will come again. But we can only thrive by having a healthy population to provide food and materials and services to each other and to us. It is one thing to levy taxes that give rulers the means to care for their charges. But the heregeld was invoked by a despot, to pay his soldiers to keep all of us in submission to him. The perversion of that alone should make an enlightened monarch abolish it at once.”
    There was murmuring around the room, at this unsubtle slight to His Majesty. His Majesty scowled at the back of Edgiva’s head, but said nothing. Serenely, as if oblivious to having just insulted Godwin’s Anointed, she continued. “There should be no need to raise monies to pay mercenaries to protect His Majesty from his own subjects. The heregeld is obsolete and should be abolished.”
    There was a moment of silence. Then:
    â€œAllow me the presumption, Mother, of explaining our silence.”
    Earl Sweyn of Hereford stood up, the eldest son of the most powerful man in England, and brother to the king by marriage. He had regained the composure Godiva had robbed him of earlier, and had pushed his very short leather cloak back over his broad shoulders, drawing attention to their broadness. Nicely done, thought Godiva, who wished her handsome, broad-shouldered husband attended likewise to his presentation.
    Sweyn strode to the open