Kingmaker is available now in both paperback and ebook format from Amazon.
Here’s a little sneak peek from the first chapter.
“The first sight of my husband is when I stand beside him, as we exchange vows, and Archbishop Plegmund officiates over our wedding.
Luckily, a wimple covers me, so my husband can’t see the horror on my face, although no doubt he imagines it.
He’s old. Old enough to be my father, if not my grandfather, and I am young, only just seventeen.
Neither am I his first wife, nor even his second. And neither is his second wife dead, but merely put aside, as a new, younger bride is found for him.
I swallow my revulsion.
My father would not have approved of this arrangement, but then, he’s been dead almost since my birth, and I’ve no memory of him, only the hope that he might not have sanctioned my mother’s ambitions.
Indeed, not only is my husband old but he also has children older than I. And not just one or two, but many of them, ten in total. I would have sooner married one of them, even the odious Ælfweard. He’s a boy as old as I, and yet definitely a boy, whereas I’m classed as a woman and fit to be wed to someone so much older.
Ælfweard watches me now, a twisted look of desire on his face, as I glance at the king’s many children, lined up at the front of the church. I swallow again, turning my attention back to archbishop Plegmund, listening to the words, waiting for the moment when the wedding mass begins, and I can lower my chin and allow the tears I’m holding back to fall down my cheeks.
Damn my ambitious family, and damn my mother. I blame her for my current predicament.
If my mother expects me to ensure she’s well rewarded for what she sees as the honour of marrying the king of the Anglo-Saxons, then she’s very mistaken. If it were possible, I would never see her again.
Abruptly, I feel the hands of the archbishop on my shoulders and focus on the king before me. The hollows of his eyes remind me of sand around a stone on the shore, sunken and only likely to sink deeper. But for all that, there’s some kindness, and also, and this turns my stomach, a lustful look. Whatever his sympathy is for, it’s not that I’m to be bedded by him when the wedding feast is done.
At the archbishop’s instigation, I kneel on the cushion before me, head bowed, tears continual. I do not want to be here. I do not want to be the king’s wife, and yet, I must be all the same.
I should have more rights, more say in this matter, but Edward is the king, and my family is ridiculously ambitious. They wish to have the ear of the king and to always be high in his favour, and I’m the means of securing that.
In their eyes, I’m little more than a part of the game that will ensure they achieve all that they want. The ambition of my widowed mother and her brothers disgusts me.
I am wed to the king for as the only heir of ealdorman Sigehelm, I claim more land in the ancient kingdom of Kent than even the king. And the king is a man desperate for ever more land, and even more control.”
And if you’ve not yet read The Lady of Mercia’s Daughter, the first book in my Tenth Century series, it is currently 99p/99c in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and the equivalent on the Amazon.DE, FR and IT sites.
M J Porter 