Gods Concubine by Sara Douglass

neck. Even as a baby, apparently, her beauty had been remarkable.
    “Thank the gods this child has swollen only my belly and not my feet, or even my face,” Swanne muttered. She continued to study herself critically, unfastening her heavy outer surcoat and allowing it to fall away from her shoulders and arms to the floor so that she stood only in her under-gown of pale linen.
    She remembered how Tostig had lusted after her in the Great Hall earlier.
    She remembered how other men had followed her with their eyes.
    She remembered how Harold still used her body night after night in their bed.
    She remembered how she and Brutus made love when, as Genvissa, she had been heavily pregnant with their daughter. Her belly hadn’t deterred him then…why would it now?
    She smiled. So her belly was all crowded out with child—that made her no less desirable.
    “I won’t tell him about Coel,” she murmured. “Why? What does it matter?”
    Her hands stilled, and her eyes stared at her reflection. “William,” she whispered. Ah, gods, he was so close! “William!”
    Then again, her voice riddled with desire: “ William! ” He had sent the message, he must be as consumed with the need to know her name as she had been to know his.
    Finally, her mind so inflamed with need and want and desire that all thought of Asterion and of prudence disappeared, Swanne opened her arms, cried out one more time, “ William ”, and vanished.

F IVE
    Rouen, Normandy
    W illiam stood in the tack room of the stable complex in his castle at Rouen, going over the saddles he used for hunting and war with his Master of the Horse, Alain Roussel. Several times a year they did this: checking war and hunting gear for faults, fractures or worn spots that needed repair. Better to spend a few hours in the relative warmth of the stables peering at metal and leather than to have it give way suddenly amidst the heat of battle.
    They had just decided that one of William’s most prized saddles needed a seam restitched when William suddenly raised his head and peered into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused, his face drawn.
    “My lord?” Roussel asked softly, wondering if his duke had heard the sounds of a distant battle that his own ageing ears had yet to discern.
    “Leave me,” William whispered.
    “My lord—”
    “ Leave me! ” Then, in a more moderate tone that was nonetheless tense, “Ensure that no one disturbs me.”
    “Yes, my lord.” Roussel bowed his head, turned on his heel, and left, closing the door behind him. Whatever he thought of the abrupt and strange command it did not show on his face.
    The instant Roussel had departed William began to pace back and forth within the relatively narrow confines of the tack room.
    Genvissa! She had seen, or heard about, his gift to Edward, and recognised it for what it was.
    She was on her way.
    William felt nerves flutter in his belly. Gods, he wanted to see her, to hold her! Yet, at the same time, William worried, his eyes roving from this dark corner to that, wondering if somehow this would expose Genvissa-reborn or himself; if somehow this demonstration of power on her part would awaken Asterion to madness…
    And then she was there, directly before him, breathless, laughing, tears running down her cheeks, her arms held out and William forgot everything else and went to her, holding her tight, laughing and crying with her, kissing her. She was pressing her body into his, grabbing at his arms, his shoulders, then her hands running through the short black curls on his head.
    “You’ve lost your great mane,” she said, somehow managing to get the words out between kisses.
    “It did not suit a Norman man of war,” he said. Then, summoning all his control, he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back a little so he could see her face, and study it.
    “You’re beautiful,” he said, and the wonder and admiration in his voice made her laugh and cry all over again. “More beautiful than