Shadow on the Crown (40 page)

Of one thing she was certain, however: Elgiva’s allegiance did not lie with king or queen, with family or retainers. She did not hunger for love or wealth or even happiness. Elgiva hungered for power, and her allegiance belonged to herself alone. Clearly she wished to attend the coming birth, but only because she yearned to insinuate herself among the powerful, a place that she believed was hers by right.

Emma had no intention of granting Elgiva’s desire; it would be like wrapping a viper around her wrist. Certainly she would have to make a place for Elgiva eventually, for the king wanted her bridled to prevent her father using her to forge some dangerous alliance. But a few more months would make no difference.

When Elgiva had finished her story, and had moved to a seat beside Wymarc, Margot sat down upon the stool next to Emma.

“I doubt that we will ever learn the real truth of what happened in Exeter that day,” Margot murmured.

“We all have truths to hide about that day, have we not?” Emma asked.

And she had more to hide than anyone. She rarely saw Athelstan now, but every time she did her heart seemed to shatter anew. There was no warmth in his glance when he looked at her, and surely he had repented of ever having loved her. She loved him still, though, and she could not banish him from her heart. The sin she had shared with him remained unconfessed, a stain upon her soul because she could not bring herself to repent.

“Elgiva has given you good advice, though,” Margot said, “in urging you to stay here for your confinement.”

Emma sighed. She and Margot had argued about this before.

“I do not wish to bring my child into the world amidst a crowd of strangers,” she said. “Is a queen not entitled to privacy when she labors to give birth?”

“The child that you deliver,” Margot said, “will belong as much to them as to you. They have a right to be present. Aside from that, the journey to your manor at Islip, however short, puts both you and the child at unnecessary risk, especially now, when travel is so treacherous.”

Emma did not argue anymore. Margot was right. It was a queen’s duty to grant the women of the court the privilege of witnessing the birth. Yet the manor at Islip, although she had never seen it, remained in her mind a quiet haven and a refuge, and it was only with reluctance that she let it go.

Chapter Thirty-nine

December 1004

Headington, Oxfordshire

T
wo hundred men and women gathered in the king’s great hall on the day of the welcome feast. Christmas was still a week away, so the courses served this night would be meager compared to what was to come. Nevertheless, the rafters and the shuttered windows of the hall were festooned with boughs of holly, ivy, and pine, and a fire roared in the central hearth. Huge banks of thick candles scented the air and filled the dark spaces with light.

Æthelred cast an approving eye upon his queen as he led her toward the dais. She had gowned herself in a festive kirtle of dark green. Her headrail was woven of some gauzy stuff that was shot through with golden threads, and her solemn expression was appropriate to the occasion, although she herself was unaware of the important role she was about to play.

He guided her up the steps, then he turned to look upon the nobles gathered before him. These were men whom he had raised to prominence and to power, though as he gazed on their faces, he all but despaired. They all demanded a piece of him, would suck the very blood from his veins if they could. He was like a mighty oak infested with mistletoe, supporting upon its limbs an enemy that would, in the end, drain it of every vestige of life.

And in return they conspired against him. Oh, he knew of their treachery. His spies kept him apprised of their plots and their schemes. He could trust no one, his sons least of all. They had conspired with Ælfhelm of Northumbria, had met with him in his hall to forge an alliance that would allow Athelstan to seize the throne.

They denied it, of course. They had protested, Athelstan loudest and hardest of all, that they wanted only to support the king, their father.

I beg you to bend toward Ælfhelm
, Athelstan had said
. Listen to his counsel. Find some way to show him favor. If you do not, you will sow the seeds of your own destruction.

Thus he had been forced to listen to threats from the mouth of his own son, the child of his loins. He had been patient with the ætheling, had suffered his willful words and actions far longer than any man had a right to expect. He would put an end to it now. He would free himself from the parasites that sought to fell him, and he would keep the vow he had made to the vengeful soul of his dead brother.

He raised his hands, and the din of noise in the great hall slowly dwindled from a low roar to a rush, then to silence. He felt a sudden surge of power, filled with the knowledge that only he, of all the folk gathered in this room, knew what the next moment would bring. Even Emma, who had grown weary with the weight of the child inside her and sat now at his side, even she had no idea of what was coming.

The faces below him looked upward expectantly, for he stood on the dais as if to conduct a prayer. Canterbury’s archbishop, who would usually have led them in an invocation, was watching for a summons to the king’s side and looking puzzled that it had not yet come. The æthelings stood together in a group directly beneath him, the places of honor. Closest to the king’s person of all save the queen, they, too, watched him, silently waiting.

Æthelred took a scroll of parchment from the clerk who stood at his elbow. He had written the words on that scroll himself, for he had wanted no one else to know what it said. Grasping the document, still bound, in his left hand, he turned to his queen, and gently taking her arm, he raised her to her feet.

“Queen Emma,” he announced, making certain that his voice could be heard in even the farthest corner of the hall, “sister to Richard, duke of Normandy, will soon bear my child. I desire from each man in this hall today a solemn oath of allegiance to this child, if it should be a boy, as my royal heir to the throne of this land.”

The king’s words fell on Emma’s ears like a clap of thunder, and for once she was grateful for his hand at her elbow. If he had not grasped her fiercely to keep her on her feet, she would certainly have collapsed. She managed, with the assistance of his arm and through sheer determination, to maintain her composure in the face of his announcement. She allowed not one muscle to twitch, and she kept the expression on her face calm and sober.

The crowd of men in the hall below, though, made no effort to curb their shock and outrage. Shouts of surprise and protest rang through the hall. Someone near the screen at the back of the room bellowed a curse that was directed not at the king but at Emma. Even the ecclesiastics looked dismayed, and Canterbury’s archbishop glared at her with thunder on his brow.

The tumult of it washed over her like an enormous wave, and she clenched her teeth against it, and took long, deep breaths to contain her fear. She looked at the king’s sons, standing so close that she could have touched them. She looked to Athelstan for compassion and found his eyes fixed on her with surprise and speculation. Beside him, Edmund regarded her with loathing.

Dear God, she thought. What demon had planted this scheme in Æthelred’s mind? Every man here would believe that she was behind it, that she had somehow convinced him that her son, child of a consecrated queen, should be favored over the sons of his uncrowned first wife. They would not look past the obvious. They would not see that with one stroke Æthelred had separated her from everyone else in this room—had isolated her as thoroughly as if he had placed her in a convent on an island in the middle of the sea. The grievances, plots, and intrigues that had swirled around the palace with the king at their center point would now send their malignant impulses toward the queen and her child.

“I must sit down,” she whispered to Æthelred.

He nodded, steadying her as she lowered herself to her chair. He seemed unperturbed by the turmoil he had aroused. Implacable, he beckoned the archbishop to his side and handed the parchment to him. The king removed the golden cross that he wore upon a chain around his neck, and looked to his eldest son.

Athelstan hesitated, and Emma held her breath as father and son glared at each other across a gulf that seemed to widen even as she watched. At last Athelstan stepped forward and took the cross in his right hand. Before he could begin the oath, though, Æthelred reached for his son’s left hand and placed it against Emma’s swollen belly. She felt the babe inside her kick, and she saw Athelstan’s face color in response. He did not look at her, though, but kept his gaze fixed on his father as he repeated aloud the oath that the archbishop read to him.

She could have wept with frustration and misery. Athelstan knew her better than anyone here, and even he must now believe that she was behind this move, that she was his enemy. No one in this hall could imagine that Æthelred would do this except to please his queen.

One by one every man came forward to take the oath, one hand on the cross, the other upon her. She looked into the faces of the æthelings as they gave away their birthright to this unborn brother: Ecbert, eyes hard with resentment; Edmund, glaring at her with fierce, unmistakable hatred; Edrid and Edwig looking bewildered; eleven-year-old Edgar, the youngest, who cringed when his father ordered him to speak louder so that all could hear him.

She ceased to pay attention after that. At first she looked about the chamber, noting the men and women who were present as a way of distracting herself from the line of men, most of them scowling, that had formed before her. Elgiva stood not far from the dais with her brother Wulf at her side. Just behind her stood a man with features that Emma found familiar, though she could not put a name to his face. Clean-shaven and handsome, he looked harmless enough, yet something about him struck a deep chord of alarm in her. The source of her disquiet eluded her, though, and, frustrated, she gave up trying to puzzle it out.

She sent her mind elsewhere, across the Narrow Sea to Fécamp, to the massive church hard by her father’s great hall. She was five years old, and her mother was leading her to the side chapel, bidding her place her hand upon the marble plinth where an angel had once stood. He had appeared there in the year of Emma’s birth and had left behind the imprint of his foot in the stone. It had been worn even deeper since then, by the hands of the faithful that had touched it in reverence.

If marble could be worn away by the laying on of hands, what would happen to a woman? Would she bear a bruise from all the palms that touched her today with obedience and resentment? And what of the babe? Would the hostility that she could feel like a hot wind cause her child to be born misshapen and twisted?

The face of Ealdorman Ælfhelm suddenly loomed before her. His eyes, black and cold as a serpent’s, raked her with undisguised hatred.

She knew in that moment that she must leave this place. She would not deliver her child surrounded by enemies. Tomorrow, she vowed, she would go to Islip.

The following morning Athelstan stood flanked by Edmund and Ecbert and watched from beside the swollen River Cherwell as their father escorted Emma to the vessel that awaited her. It was a sullen day, clouds hanging heavy in the sky and rain an ever-present threat. The queen walked, even this late in her pregnancy, with a firm step and erect figure. Ealdorman Ælfric, whom she had asked to escort her on the short voyage to Islip, straddled the wooden dock and the gunwale of the
Trinitas
, his hand extended to assist the queen aboard. She grasped his hand, stepped onto the deck, and walked gingerly to the small shelter midship without even casting her husband a farewell glance.

That was just as well, Athelstan thought, for the king had turned away as soon as he handed his wife, like so much cargo, to someone else. Æthelred was already making his way back toward the crowd of thegns and their ladies who had accompanied him to the water’s edge. His face was set in a grimace, and he walked with the brisk stride of a man who has just relieved himself of a heavy burden.

Athelstan, though, watched as the cluster of women and servants who would accompany the queen boarded other, smaller vessels for the short voyage upriver. At last the crew of the
Trinitas
maneuvered the craft away from the nearly submerged dock and into the river’s deeper central channel.

Beside him, Edmund turned and spat.

“We’re well rid of her,” he grunted. “She must have poisoned the king against us. If she should die birthing her Norman whelp, you won’t catch me weeping for her.”

Athelstan gritted his teeth, but he had given up trying to defend Emma to Edmund. Besides, in this instance Edmund may very well be right. It could have been Emma who had convinced their father to disinherit his elder sons, for it was Emma, through her child, who would gain power and standing from such a move.

“Pray God she bears nothing but daughters,” Ecbert muttered.

“Even if she should bear a son,” he reminded his brothers yet again, “it can do us little real harm as yet. Our father is still hale. He is likely to wear his crown for a good many winters yet, and change his mind about his heir a hundred times over.”

“Unless some mishap befalls him,” Edmund said darkly. “The saintly King Edward met with an early, violent death that he did not anticipate.”

Athelstan snorted.

“Think you that a group of England’s nobles would strike our father down to place a babe on the throne?” he scoffed. “Emma has few supporters, and none that I could imagine raising his hand against the king.”

“Do not underestimate ambitious mothers,” Edmund growled.

Athelstan flicked him a sharp glance. The hand behind their father’s rise to the throne had ever been shrouded in mystery, but everyone had heard the rumors that pinned the blame on the dowager queen. Did Edmund believe it?

“Remember, too,” Ecbert added thoughtfully, “that Emma has supporters across the Narrow Sea. If the king should die, it will be Emma’s brother who will control her fate. You have said yourself that he may be a pawn of the Danes. Who can tell what plans Duke Richard may already have in hand in the event that our father meets an unanticipated death?”

Edmund grunted assent. “It would not surprise me to learn that some of Richard’s gold has already found its way into the hands of some of our northern nobles. There are rumors that he is eager to see England under the sway of Normandy and Denmark.”