She was of the stock of Thorold, this young wife, sheriffs of Lincolnshire and a devout and noble family. It had been like garlanding of a bull with flowers, this wedding of her sweet gentleness with the stormy Saxon earl. Yet from the first she had had influence with him. He bore her humorously, one moment reverencing her, the next loving to bring the shameful scarlet to her cheek, and then to crush her about with his arms in mighty protection and ownership. She had a soft white beauty like a rose, and it was good thus to hold her full fragrance against his breast.
Now, trembling a little and her eyes cast down, she sought Father Thomas, the chaplain of the house, and told him all. Was she justified in the venture? she asked him, her voice scarcely audible.
The man was young and erotic, under his habit a sickly craver of emotions. He would often in his inmost soul gloat upon a dream, a thought—wild and scarce conceivable; yet the authority of his cloth was potent. It was a swooning experience to him to be near her day by day, to feel the leaning of her soul towards his, to handle the soft places of her conscience. Accepting what was regard for his office as regard for the priest, he would whisper to himself: “Even greater miracles have come to pass.” Wherefore now, moistening his dry lips and thinking of her loveliness, he answered her with the Greek proverb: “A little evil is a great good. You are justified, my daughter.”
She turned and fled from him with a strangled cry. Perhaps she had hoped against hope to find her venture banned by Mother Church; perhaps, unrecognised by herself, the pure spirit in her had recoiled from contact with a thing unclean. Yet he was God’s servant, and he had spoken.
For days after, awaiting the ordeal, she walked as in a nightmare, a rose of fever in her cheek. She named the hour of her trial, and sent her herald forth to cry it, and to pray all human creatures of their love to spare her shame, since she was consecrating her womanhood to their salvation, and offering herself for their sakes to be exposed on this pillory. And a sound like a wind went throughout the town, and each soul there, from thrall to freedman, kindled like dull fire blown upon, and dropped upon his knees to call the bitter curse of Heaven on him that should prove a traitor to such trust. And Godiva heard and sighed; yet she could not escape that sense of soilure in her, since to a spotless soul it is defilement enough to be outraged in a dreamer’s thought. “O, Mother Mary, ward and hide me!” she prayed perpetually.
Her lord learned the truth amazed. She was resolved, then, after all? She would take him at his word to browbeat and defy him? Yet he would not interfere, nor move one step to control her. But ever in his frowning eyes was a shadow like death, and on his lips a muttered curse: “Will she do it? Will she do it? A wanton—no wife of mine.” And, thinking so, he let her have her way, even to the brief command of all his house and borough.
Now, on that day of sacrifice, by noon all Coventry was like a city of the dead. The last step had echoed from its streets; the voice of lean barter was hushed; behind veiled windows a thousand ears were strained in thrill and ecstasy to hear the tinkle of a palfry’s feet upon the stones without. Only one sacrilegious hound, doomed to eternal infamy, could be found to slur the honest record—a small, livid-faced man, slinking like a fearful thief, his cowl pulled over his eyes, up the steps of the Byward tower by the castle gate. Father Thomas it was, who had left Godiva in the chapel prostrate before the figure of the Virgin, praying for strength to do her part. It was only right, he told himself, licking his pale lips, that the Church should sanction this live-offering by its presence.
The Castle had fallen as silent as the town. Its inmates whispered apart, or wept if they were women. Its great gate was flung open, its battlements were deserted, its windows stopped and eyeless; only in the courtyard a single creamy jennet, fastened to a pillar, champed and fretted for her rider.
The frowning Leofric, his ear bent to a curtain close at hand, fingered his sword-hilt as he waited listening. His fair Saxon face, clean-shaved but for the corn-coloured beard which forked from its chin like a swallow’s tail, was flushed a deep red; the muscles of his bare arms and thighs, white against his purple gold-hemmed tunic, twitched spasmodically; the leggings of twisted gold upon his calves seemed to undulate like snake-skin.
“She shall die first!” he kept muttering to himself. “She shall die first!”