Shadow on the Crown (35 page)

And her mother would be right. The queen’s place was here, no matter what the danger. She might, even now, be carrying a child—a son of the royal blood who might one day rule this kingdom. This realm would be that child’s birthright. She would not take him away from it.

She placed her hand beneath her breasts, resting it upon the fine green linen of her gown. She prayed for courage, and that her womb might be quick with Athelstan’s child.

It was very late when, summoned at last by the king, Emma entered his bedchamber. Æthelred sat at the long table on one side of the room, stands of glowing candles all around him, a cup and flagon near to his hand. His steward, Hubert, sat at the table as well, laboring over an official-looking document. He cast her a furtive, ratlike glance that made Emma shiver with sudden trepidation.

The king ignored her altogether, and so she stood where she was, a heavy cloak wrapped around her linen nightgown, her feet cold inside her thin slippers as she awaited her lord’s pleasure. She was uncomfortable in this chamber, this fortress of sovereign privilege. It was Æthelred’s retreat, and she never ventured here unless summoned. Tonight she had been roused from her bed to attend him, and that had not happened before.

Again she felt a slight shudder of unease, and a finger of cold crept along her arms despite the cloak she wore over her nightshift. Nervously she glanced toward the far end of the chamber where the candlelight could not reach. The flickering darkness there preyed on her imagination, for she seemed to sense movement in the shadows whenever she was not looking directly at them.

It was just a trick of the light, she told herself, or the play of a draft fingering the thick curtain that was strung there from wall to wall. Behind that dark drapery were the chests and caskets that held much of the king’s personal treasure. Æthelred’s wealth was legendary, and his kingdom a prize coveted by men who would wrest it from him if they could.

She looked at him, smitten of a sudden with compassion for this man who saw himself as so beset by enemies that he could not trust even his own sons. He seemed to sense her gaze upon him, for he lifted his head just then and met her eyes. His were hollowed, and it seemed to her that the lines of his face too were deeper tonight than they had been this morning. But perhaps that was merely a trick of the wavering light, for the shadows in the room seemed to stretch and shudder like living things as the steward picked up a candle from the table and used the dripping wax to seal the document that he had just completed.

The king motioned to the monk to leave, and the little man rose, bowed, then gathered up his writing materials and slipped out of the room. He cast a sly glance at her before the heavy oak door groaned shut, leaving her alone with the king, and with the shadows that threatened from outside the circle of light. Emma felt another stirring of apprehension.

Æthelred tossed back whatever it was he had been drinking and rose slowly to his feet. He was clad in a nightshirt of fine embroidered white linen, with a thick, dark, woolen cloak thrown over it for warmth. He offered her no words of greeting, nor any invitation to be seated, and the expression on his face was forbidding.

“I have written to your brother,” he said, “to inform him of the attack upon Exeter by Swein Forkbeard, although I do not doubt that Richard knows of it already. Indeed, he may have had word of it even before it happened.”

He shot her an appraising glance, as if he were daring her to contradict him. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, wanted to assure him that her brother could have known nothing of what Forkbeard intended. Yet she was not certain of that herself. Her brother might, indeed, have turned a blind eye to the Danish ships massing on his northern coast. Athelstan had suggested as much, and the possibility that this could be so had gnawed at her all summer long. Yet even if it was true that Richard had known Forkbeard’s plan, she could not imagine how he could have stopped it.

She had no answer for the king, and seeing it, he smiled a cruel, hard smile.

“Do you not think it interesting,” he went on, “that the Danes attacked your dower city, my lady? I have been pondering this, and I begin to think that Forkbeard was aiming at England’s queen rather than its king.” His face was speculative as he awaited her reaction to his suggestion.

Emma feigned puzzlement, but she felt her blood run cold under that gaze, for his words pricked her like the point of a blade. Did Æthelred know of the hours she had spent in Forkbeard’s hands? Was the letter to her brother written to inform Richard that the king was setting her aside?

“I cannot think what you mean, my lord.” She forced herself to speak through lips that had gone suddenly dry.

“Can you think of nothing?” he asked, raising quizzical brows and twisting his mouth into a sneer of disbelief. He moved slowly toward her, took her left hand in his large paw, and began to toy with the ring on her third finger that was the symbol of their marriage bond. “For myself,” he said, “I cannot help but wonder if your brother might have promised your hand in marriage to someone else prior to bestowing it upon me.”

He fixed his watery blue eyes upon her face, looking for her reaction, but she was so astonished by his words that she merely gazed at him with blank incredulity.

“Swein Forkbeard has two sons,” he continued. “Did you pledge yourself to a son of the Danish king, Emma, and then break that vow when my emissary made a better offer?”

“I did not, my lord,” she protested. “Nor did my brother make any such pledge, I assure you.”

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Then perhaps it was the Danish king himself who won your . . . admiration, shall we call it? I asked you on our wedding night if you were a maid, and although I believed you when you assured me of your innocence, I have to wonder about it now. Did you perhaps bestow your favors upon Swein Forkbeard before your brother granted your hand to me? Did I purchase used goods for my bride? It is your lands that Swein has ravaged, Emma, not mine. A spurned lover’s revenge perhaps?”

Her first instinct was to slap him, but with an effort she governed her rage. This was Æthelred’s fear speaking. He was like a dumb animal cruelly baited, and so lashing out at anything within reach. If she gave him an excuse to hurt her, he would do so with savage glee. She must not lose her head now, for she was completely in his power.

She wrenched her hand from his grasp and said, icily, “I was a virgin when I wed you, my lord king, and I was pledged to no one before I gave you my hand. As for Swein Forkbeard’s choice of target, I would not presume to guess what is in his mind. Surely he would see all of Wessex as the property of the king.” She folded her arms against her body. The room was cold, and the king’s sour smile made it seem colder still.

“Nevertheless,” he replied, “the destruction of Exeter will, I fear, adversely impact your income, and I have so informed your brother. You would do well to consult with him regarding some means of additional financial support, since you will receive little from your Exeter holdings until the devastation there has been repaired. I promise you that you will receive nothing more from me until you complete the task that, virgin or no, you were sent here to do. Shall we?” He gestured toward the bed.

She stared at him. This was a man who had paraded first one mistress and then others before her, almost from their wedding day. Yet now, based on acts that he had spun out of his own foul imagination, he would brand her a whore. She despised him. She did not want him to touch her, did not even want him to speak to her. Whatever compassion she had felt for him had evaporated, and she wanted nothing more than to get away from him.

“Are you not afraid, my lord,” she said, with as much cold disdain as she could muster, “that I will contaminate your hallowed sheets?” Perhaps he would merely cuff her and throw her out of the room.

There was no flare of anger in his eyes, though. All she saw in his face was cold calculation and, to her astonishment, a kind of grim amusement.

“You are right,” he said. “Why should I sully my bedding with a Norman whore? You need no bed to fulfill your role as royal vessel.”

He grasped her arm and shoved her toward the long table. For a moment she was bewildered. Then, with deliberate, steady pressure upon the back of her neck, he forced her head inexorably downward. She reached out instinctively to brace herself against the hard wooden surface, but she could not resist him—could do no more than turn her head to the side just before her face hit the table.

“I can call my servant in to hold you down, if you like,” he whispered in her ear. “Or you can do your duty like a good wife. Which will it be? You must tell me.”

He demanded an answer, she guessed, because he craved her complete submission to his will. Absolute power over someone else was, for Æthelred, the ultimate arousal.

“I shall do my duty,” she grated through clenched teeth.

She felt him lift her gown so that her warm flesh was exposed to the cold air. His hands grasped her hips to pull her hard against him as he entered her. She clung to the edge of the table with her fingers, and with each deliberate thrust she watched the candle shiver.

When he was finished, as she lay there, stunned and humiliated, he wiped himself with the hem of her robe.

“You will attend me here tomorrow night in this same fashion,” he said, “and you will continue to do so until you can inform me that you are with child. Get out.”

She pushed herself from the table and adjusted her skirts, but she did not hurry. She would not give him the satisfaction of running from him, and she would not show him any fear. She glared at him, her chin held high, then stalked toward the door.

“Emma.” His voice stopped her before she could lift the latch and escape from his loathsome presence.

She did not turn to look at him. She had not the stomach for that.

“You will stay away from my son,” he said. She could hear him filling his cup again. “Do you understand me?”

So. This was more than punishment for some imagined, long ago tryst with the Danish king. This was some phantom, feral competition between the king and his son. What did he guess of her feelings for Athelstan, or of his for her? Surely if he knew the truth her punishment would have been far worse.

“Do you understand?” he repeated, more sharply.

“Yes, my lord,” she said.

For the next three nights Emma attended her husband in his chamber, returning afterward to her own bed, where she lay curled protectively around the womb that she prayed held the seed of a child. On the fourth morning she woke to find her linen stained with blood. There would be no child, and she grieved her loss with an aching heart and secret, bitter tears.

A.D. 1003
Then was collected a very great force which was soon ready on their march against the enemy; and Ealdorman Ælfric should have led them on; but as soon as they were so near, that either army looked on the other, then he pretended sickness, and he began to retch, saying he was sick. . . . When Swein saw that they were not ready, and that they all retreated, then led he his army into Wilton, and they plundered and burned the town.

—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Chapter Thirty-four

August 1003

Winchester, Hampshire

T
he city of Winchester lived in a fog of apprehension and fear for seven agonizing days. On the horizon to the southwest a thin smudge of smoke showed a sickly yellow-brown against the relentlessly gray skies, for the invaders burned every village, hamlet, and croft that lay in their path. A steady stream of refugees brought word of the Danes’ northward progress.

Winchester itself had been bled of most of its able men, for they had taken up arms and marched west with Ealdorman Ælfric to make a stand against the foe. Those left behind took their turns upon the city walls, watching for signs that the invading army was drawing near. All commerce stopped. Shopkeepers and craftsmen shut their doors. No one was left to work the mills, and bread became scarce. Only the huge stones of the palace mills turned, and they worked from first light to full dark. At midday the gates of the palace were flung wide and servants distributed flour to the citizens who formed a line that wound past the Old Minster, through St. Thomas Gate, and up into Ceap Street. Inside the walls of the two great churches and the confines of St. Mary’s Abbey, the monks and the nuns stormed heaven with prayers for mercy.

On the eighth day after the Danes had attacked Dorchester, the fate of Winchester was decided on a plain to the west, near the town of Wilton. Two days after the armies met, Athelstan and Edmund heard an account of what occurred from Ecbert, who had witnessed it firsthand.

“We came within sight of the enemy in the early afternoon.” Ecbert spoke from his sickbed, and Athelstan moved his stool closer to hear him better. “Christ, we were close to each other. We were close enough to see their faces, the ugly bastards.” He stopped and swallowed several times before going on. “The men on both sides were in a frenzy, ready to fight. We were taunting each other, shouting insults and curses. Not that we could understand each other’s words, but the meaning was more than clear.” He tried to fake a grin, but it twisted into a grimace.

“I hope you picked up a few Danish obscenities,” Edmund said. “They might come in useful sometime.”

Ecbert laughed, then groaned.

Athelstan, impatient to hear the tale, growled at Edmund. “Don’t interrupt him. What happened next?”

“We had stopped midmorning so the men could have something to eat. Ælfric had called his battle leaders, a dozen or so of us, to break fast with him. I forced myself to swallow some bread and meat, and while we ate, he laid out his plans for the coming battle and gave each of us our orders. We knew what to do, how to place our men. . . . We knew it all. But we never got the chance to do it.”

Ecbert stared at the opposite wall, as if he could see the events recurring, right there in front of him. A fine sweat dewed his forehead.

“We were not yet into position,” Ecbert went on, “and I was still mounted when I first realized that something was wrong. The Danes had already formed a shield wall, and they had begun to bang their swords against their shields, ready for battle. It was like thunder, that sound, only it was as if the thunder was inside my head. I closed my eyes against the pain of it, but it would not go away. When I opened my eyes again I saw Ælfric only a few steps from me. His thegns had surrounded him, and he was on the ground, on his hands and knees, spewing his guts out.”

He closed his eyes and placed a big hand over his face.

“I just sat there, staring at him, with this awful pounding in my head and a gnawing gripe in my belly. I remember feeling dizzy, and then I saw Osric, who had been sent to parley with the Danes, ride up and just slump off his horse, as if he had been struck by an invisible arrow. My own pain had gotten so bad that all I could think of was that I had to dismount before I fell, too. I made it to the ground, and then I was retching, and my hands shook so that I could not even hold onto my reins. Christ, the pain in my head and my gut was so awful that I would have welcomed the thrust of a Danish sword to put an end to it.”

Athelstan studied his brother as he lay there, limp and spent. Ecbert was not yet recovered although the events he related had happened two days before.

“The men are saying,” Athelstan said slowly, hating to burden his brother with the news but knowing that he would hear it sooner or later, “that Ælfric was terrified at the sight of the Danes.”

Ecbert cursed. “Even sick as I was I could hear the men around me muttering, calling me a worthless, puling coward.” He sighed. “In truth, that’s what it must have looked like.”

He sat up and grabbed Athelstan’s arm, but his grip was weak.

“I was afraid, Athelstan,” Ecbert whispered. “That much of the calumny is true. But it was not fear that struck me down, I swear to you! It was some kind of curse, some heathen magic that drove us to our knees. I do not know how they did it.” His voice broke, and he sank back into his pillows. “I do not even know what happened after that. The rest of it you must tell me.”

“There were ten or so men stricken like you,” Athelstan said. “You and Ælfric, Osric, Edric, Brihtwold, Lyfing. All the leaders, do you see? When the leader is sick, the whole army is hindered. There was no one left to command, and so the entire host fell back. The Danes won the battle without lifting a sword.”

“It must have been treachery,” Edmund insisted. “Some Danish spy made it through the lines and poisoned the food or the drink.”

“But it had been hours since we had eaten,” Ecbert protested. “Surely poison would have worked sooner than that.”

Athelstan said nothing, for he had no answers to give. Some force, he was certain, was assisting the Danish king. He had no idea, though, if it was the hand of God, of man, or of the devil. He sighed, frustrated and disheartened. They had suffered a defeat, it was true, but in the end it was not as bad as it could have been.

He told his brother the rest of the tale, all the events that Ecbert had not seen, because he had been lying in a covered wain, lost in fevered dreams as he was carried back to Winchester.

Ælfric’s great army, leaderless, had been forced to retreat. Many of the men had drifted away to return to their homes and farms. Most of them, though, had stayed together, making their way to the royal city.

“The Danes swarmed first into Wilton, and then Salisbury. They looted homes and businesses, and they took a massive haul of silver from the minters’ workshops and storerooms. That booty seemed to content them,” Athelstan said dryly. “They did not attempt to lay siege to Winchester. We owe thanks for that to the remnants of Ælfric’s host, who joined us on the walls as we prepared to defend the city. The Danes, seeing that, bypassed Winchester completely and went south along the Avon. We sent men in their wake, and I expect we will soon hear that they have taken ship for home.”

“So our father will not have to bribe them with yet more silver to go away and leave us in peace,” Edmund said.

“If we gave them any more silver,” Athelstan growled, “their vessels would likely sink with the weight of it.” He looked at Edmund and saw in his brother’s eyes his own fear reflected there. “The Danes will not leave us in peace for long. You and I both know what Forkbeard will do with all his newly gained wealth.”

Edmund nodded. “He will build more ships, and he will buy more men.”

“And then,” Athelstan said grimly, “he will come back.”