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and, as the great and good of England gathered for the spectacle of government, Edyth was left to keep that uneasy association to herself.

CHAPTER THREE

    E dyth! At last. Have you no conception of politeness? Where in the name of all the saints have you been?’
    ‘Sorry,’ Edyth muttered. ‘I lost track of time.’
    Her mother, Lady Meghan, was sat on one of the front benches, frothed up in a new dress and three strands of amber beads and fuming with righteous anger. Edyth ducked around her and slipped in
between her two younger brothers, cheeks burning at the smirks from those sat behind them.
    ‘You’ve been naughty, Edie,’ nine-year-old Morcar said gleefully.
    ‘Very naughty,’ Brodie agreed smugly from Meghan’s other side. ‘Some people just have no idea about decorum, do they, Mother?’
    Edyth resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at her elder brother and instead looked around her at the gathering crowds. The council was to be held, as always, on the stretch of Thorney
Island between the crumbling Westminster Abbey and the low shingle beach down to the great River Thames. Servants had been working since dawn to erect a wooden dais some twenty paces long and now
Edyth looked up to the two huge thrones sitting upon it, carved backs to the river, and willed the king and queen to take their places and start the meeting before her mother could complain
further.
    ‘We’ve been here for ages,’ little Morcar told her. ‘My bum’s sore from sitting.’
    ‘Ssh, Marc.’ Edwin, two years older than Morcar but at least five years more serious, frowned crossly at his brother. ‘You can’t say words like that in public.’
    ‘Words like what? Bum?!’
    Edwin raised a hand and Edyth quickly sat forward and dived in her pocket for the remains of the marchpane she’d bought at the market. She divided it between the boys and, for the moment
at least, peace was restored. She gave a small sigh of relief and settled herself. She was in plenty of time, whatever her mother said. The eighteen councillors had not yet taken their places on
the elegant seats below the dais and many of the lords and ladies were still filing onto the semi-circles of benches facing them. Mind you, with the earldom of Northumbria up for appointment, every
last noble seemed to have made the journey to Westminster and Edyth realised her mother must have been here for some time to secure her prime position at the front. No wonder she was grouchy.
    ‘Not you too!’ she heard her mother mutter now and Edyth looked up, hiding a smile as her grandmother, the stately Lady Godiva of Mercia, slid graciously into a slim stretch of bench
next to her.
    ‘Thank you, my dear,’ Godiva said to her, settling her beautiful golden-coloured skirts and tweaking the richly laced sleeves of her undertunic so that they made a discreet
appearance at her still slim wrists.
    ‘You’re late,’ Meghan hissed.
    Godiva glanced lazily at her daughter-by-marriage.
    ‘On the contrary; I am perfectly timed, my dear. I’m far too old to be waiting around for those lazy councillors to show their faces.’
    Edyth giggled but at last the ‘lazy’ councillors – all the highest men of England – were emerging from the abbey precinct and making their way through the crowds and, in
a panic, latecomers were crushing into seats all around.
    ‘Must you push so?’ Edyth’s mother said now, turning indignantly to an ample woman trying to squeeze onto the end of their bench.
    ‘Yes I must,’ the woman fired back. ‘I can’t sit on the floor like a commoner, can I?’
    She gestured superciliously to the mass of folk settled quite happily on the scrubland before the abbey’s domestic buildings to their left. They had arrived, as they always did, with rugs
and sacks and straw bales to sit on and with baskets full of food to feed the mass of children who played around them. The councils were a fine spectacle and no one within walking distance wanted
to miss