Shadow on the Crown (9 page)

She blessed Margot under her breath, because the wine she had consumed made the task seem ridiculous rather than onerous. She had to stifle the urge to giggle. She had stood naked like this often enough in front of serving women who washed her from head to foot, and she willed herself to think of this as no different. The chamber was cool, though, in spite of the charcoal brazier, and she felt her nipples harden. She lifted her chin a bit and, giddy with wine, was sorely tempted to ask the king to disrobe so she could inspect him as well, but she thought better of it. It would be a new sight for her, and she had no idea how she would respond to her first glimpse of a naked man. In any event, he would have to undress sooner or later. She had but to wait.

Æthelred gazed sullenly at his bride, desire warring with suspicion. It disturbed him that she had complied with his crude command so readily. He had spoken out of anger—at his councilors for inflicting this marriage upon him, at her brother for demanding a coronation, and at Ælfhelm, damn his soul, for turning his own sons against him. None of it was the girl’s fault, yet now that she had disrobed so brazenly in front of him, he was forced to wonder why.

Cursing, he made for the small table that held a flagon and poured a cup of wine.

“Are you a maid?” he asked. That would explain why Richard had foisted this younger sister upon him. She was used goods. For all he knew she might be carrying a Norman brat in her belly.

He stared at her over the rim of his cup and saw that her entire body had flushed in response to his question.

“I am a maid,” she said. “I am also your queen, and I will not be treated like some slut from the gutter.”

He downed the wine, tossed the cup to the floor, and began to remove his garments. “You are queen by my pleasure,” he said. “You would do well to remember it. And in the morning, when the council inspects the bed linens, we will know for a surety whether or not you are a slut from the gutter, as you so colorfully put it. Now get into the bed and let us get on with the matter at hand.”

Later, when she lay asleep at his side, Æthelred stared wide-eyed into the flames of the candles that flanked the bed. He had done his duty as king and husband in as efficient a manner as possible. The girl, to her credit, had done the same. She was no whore, if he was any judge. She had lain beneath him as unresponsive and boneless as a sleeping cat. He had expected something better, after seeing her naked before him like some Viking goddess; but she had disappointed him.

It was just as well. He wanted as little to do with her as possible—only enough to satisfy the demands of church and kingship.

He closed his eyes, and in that darkness his thoughts strayed to his dead wife. He had been but seventeen when he wed her, and she was twenty. In all the long years of their marriage he had never seen her naked. When he lay with her she had responded like a nun, tensing with repugnance at the act that she was forced to endure. Although she had never refused him, she had borne his attentions every time in virtuous silence, had likely prayed her way through each ordeal. Whenever she quickened with child she informed him immediately, with undisguised satisfaction, for while she was breeding she did not have to accommodate the carnal activity that she found so odious. She was always happiest when she was pregnant. He was content then, too, for he found his pleasure elsewhere, with women who spread their legs for him with relish.

He sat up in the bed to study the girl curled beneath the furs, her hair spilling over the pillows like silver in the candlelight. She did not seem to be repulsed by the act. He had even caught her studying his face with detached bemusement as he entered her, and it had made him wonder what was going through her mind.

It might be possible to forge a bond with her, if he took the time to do it. She was young enough and inexperienced enough to be trained as a lover. It could be quite pleasant to share his bed with her.

But that would give her some measure of power over him, and as his queen she had too much power already. He did not want a queen—did not even want a wife, curse it—yet here she was.

He lay down again, on his side, his back to the other body in the bed.

He owed this girl nothing. He would use her for his pleasure because her nakedness aroused him. He would fill her belly with a child and would order his Mass priest to beseech heaven for a daughter. Beyond that he would give her no more than what the terms of the marriage contract required of him. Her title of queen would have to satisfy her, for that and a child were all that she would get from him.

Chapter Ten

April 1002

Canterbury, Kent

O
n Easter Monday over one hundred women crowded into the great hall of the archbishop’s palace to greet Æthelred’s bride. Elgiva arrived late, with Groa in her wake. As she tried to make her way toward the dais, a fat matron stinking of cloves pressed hard against her, and the sharply sweet smell of the spice was almost Elgiva’s undoing. In an instant she was a child again, hiding in her mother’s clothes coffer—unable to move, scarce able to breathe, too weak to free herself, and enveloped by darkness, the scent of cloves, and a mindless panic.

That same panic clawed at her now, and she began to whimper as she tried to twist away from the stench of the spice and from the crowd that engulfed her. Sickened and faint, she pulled her own cloak against her face, but it did little to block the pungent smell of cloves. She felt her gorge rise and she thought she would be sick, but Groa took her hand and squeezed it to steady her.

“Let us make for the wall,” Groa said urgently. “You will be able to breathe there.”

Frantic and dizzy, she blindly followed Groa as the old woman doggedly elbowed her way past a score of protesting noblewomen. She felt herself growing more and more faint, but she clung to Groa’s hand, and at last they reached the wall. The next thing she knew Groa had cleared a bench of gawkers and helped her up. A blast of frigid air from a narrow window scored her face, and she drew in a long breath that was deliciously free of the stink of cloves and wet wool.

Slowly her light-headedness began to dissipate, and she rested her now throbbing head against the wall as Groa joined her on the bench to watch the proceedings taking place at the top of the room. When Elgiva saw the new queen, though, her gorge rose again. Emma, flanked by guards and attendants, sat enthroned beneath a golden canopy. Regally swathed in a deep blue mantle, her blond hair braided into two long plaits, she wore upon her head the same golden circlet that the archbishop had placed there yesterday.

“It should have been you,” Groa said softly.

And that was the truth of it. That bland, pasty-faced Norman witch had cheated her out of her destiny. Who would have imagined that Æthelred would take a foreign bride, and then make her a queen? It should never have happened. The king had made the wrong choice, and her father was not the only one who said so. By now even the king must realize his error. She had not missed the way his eyes had lingered on her face yesterday when she stood with his sons below the royal table. If he did not already regret his choice of bride, he surely would in time.

An endless parade of women made obeisance before the queen, presented their gifts and received tokens from the queen in return—a pin or a brooch, and always of silver. The queen, it seemed, knew how to purchase affection. Well, Emma would not purchase Elgiva’s affection, no matter how precious the gift.

Dear God! How long would she be forced to live in the queen’s household? Months, certainly. Maybe even years.

She felt ill again at the thought of having to scrape and bow before Emma, but even that, she supposed, was better than moldering away in Northamptonshire. This queen, at least, was young—not like Æthelred’s last wife, who had been older, even, than the king.

And like it or not, she would be one of the queen’s household. Her father had made that clear when they broke their fast together this morning.

“You must be my eyes and my ears at court,” he had said, “for I journey north at week’s end until the
witan
gathers again in summer. I want you to make every effort to gain the trust of the queen. She is little more than a hostage for her brother’s good behavior now, but if she gives the king a son, there is no telling what power she might wield.”

“God forbid,” Elgiva had murmured, “that she should give Æthelred a son.”

Her father had merely shrugged and left her. She had dawdled over her food, pondering her father’s words and wondering if she might eventually maneuver herself into Athelstan’s bed, and if not his, mayhap the king’s. She was toying with that possibility again as Groa touched her arm.

“You had best go forward, my lady,” Groa urged, “if you wish to make your obeisance before the queen. I will lead you through the crowd.” She held out the gift that Elgiva would present to the bride.

Elgiva took another long gulp of air and allowed Groa to help her from her perch. She cared not what her father wanted. She would not smile and fawn before this queen like the other fools here. She had heard their talk yesterday—the whispers about the beautiful young queen and her noble lineage. Emma, they said, had been named after her mother, the Frankish king’s sister, who had wed Emma’s father when the two were little more than children.

That was nothing but a
skald
’s tale, invented out of sunbeams and moondust and probably spread abroad by the king himself to enhance his bride’s prestige. Groa had nosed out the truth of it, and Elgiva intended to make sure that the women of the court learned the queen’s secret.

When she finally reached the canopied throne, and the steward had announced her name and titles, she made her obligatory courtesy before Emma, but she did not smile. She would not simper for this queen, although she had chosen the bridal gift with great care. She rose from her obeisance and held up the small, intricately carved ivory casket. On its lid a fierce dragon ship sailed upon an ivory sea, and along the casket’s back and sides a monster of the deep twisted and writhed.

“I bring you a treasure from Jorvik, the capital of my father’s vast district of Northumbria,” she said, pitching her voice so that the women all around her would be able to hear. “It is of Danish workmanship, and therefore a fitting tribute for our Danish queen. Your mother, I am told, is a Dane. Is this not so?”

The words echoed in the room, and Emma felt a tremor in their wake, like the tingling in the air just before a lightning bolt strikes. There was little love for the Danes in Æthelred’s England, and Emma suspected that her Danish mother had probably been kept a royal secret—until now. Few outside of Normandy would concern themselves with the marriage practices of the Norman duke who had had two wives at the same time—one a Danish heiress who brought him lands and children and the other a barren Frankish princess whom he had not wanted.

Emma looked into the dark, triumphant eyes of the girl who stood before her and saw there the same contempt that she had read in Ealdorman Ælfhelm’s face the night before. Like father, like daughter, then. She had yet to discover the source of their enmity, but she would have to begin to deal with it this very moment.

“It is true, Lady Elgiva, that my mother was born a Dane. I, however, was born a
Norman
,” she emphasized the last word, and now she stood up so that she could be seen easily, directing her next words to all the women in the hall. “Yesterday, when I wed your king, I was born anew before God and all the world as an English woman and an English queen.” The room erupted in riotous applause, and Emma acknowledged it with a smile before she turned solemn eyes upon the Lady Elgiva. “I thank you, lady, for your gift. It symbolizes, I trust, your allegiance to me and to my husband. In token of my acknowledgment of your honored position among my attendants, I bid you accept this ring.”

Emma slipped a gold ring from her finger and placed it in Elgiva’s palm. She doubted that the gesture would win the young woman’s friendship, never mind her allegiance. Nevertheless, she had to make the effort, for Elgiva was to be part of her retinue, and live in the queen’s quarters. It would be, she feared, akin to living with a beautiful bird that had an unfortunate tendency to bite.

Æthelred let his three eldest sons stew for several days before summoning them to his private chamber. As they had been in no hurry to attend his nuptials, he would let them wait upon his pleasure to question them about it.

He knew that they resented his queen, fearing that any son Emma might bear would have a stronger claim to the throne than their own.

Nevertheless, he was still the one wearing the crown, still the one his sons needed to placate, not the other way round. Apparently they needed to be reminded of that.

Eyeing them as they came into the room, he said not a word. Let them sweat a little while longer. Athelstan met his gaze unblinkingly, but there was an uneasy question in his eyes. Edmund, the dark one, did not dare to even lift his head. Ecbert smiled sheepishly until Æthelred’s glare wiped the idiotic grin from his face.

“What is it that you would say to me?” Æthelred growled, addressing Athelstan, whose uncanny resemblance to the dead Edward continued to gall him, like a constant reproach.

“Why did you give her a crown?” Athelstan demanded.

Edmund flinched, and well he might. The question was far too raw. Æthelred kept his temper, but only just.

“Is it thus that you question the policy of your king, as if you were my equal? Who in Christ’s name do you think you are to do so?”

“I am your heir,” Athelstan replied, bristling like a hedgehog. “I have every right to ask such a question. You have taken a Norman bride to your bed and made her your queen. What do you expect me to do, wish you happiness? Shall I pretend that my own interests are not at stake?”

“You have no interests beyond those that I give you,” Æthelred thundered back at him. “You have no monies nor estates nor powers other than those that have been granted by me. Christ! You are too young to even have a thought in your head that does not agree with my wishes.”

“You are wrong there, my lord. Indeed, I have many thoughts, and almost none of them, I expect, agree with your wishes.”

“Then it should have come as no surprise to you,” Æthelred spat, “that I did not seek your counsel before I made my decision to wed.”

His son flushed, his expression wounded. “And yet,” he said, “it did surprise me. It surprised all of us. For weeks we waited for a summons from you, my lord, requesting us to attend your council. Yet it did not come. Tell me then: Whose counsel did you seek? Which of your brilliant advisers encouraged you to grant a crown to a foreign bride? I warrant it was not Ealdorman Ælfhelm. He makes no secret of his belief that you are either mad or a fool.”

So, here it was. Here was what he had suspected all along. Ælfhelm had turned even his own sons against him.

“Has Ælfhelm persuaded you, then, to his point of view?” he demanded. “All of you?” He raked them all with his glance, but no one would answer that query. Even Athelstan looked somewhat taken aback now, by his own audacious words. “I knew when I placed you under Ælfhelm’s leadership that he would try to twist your minds against me, but I had hoped that my sons would show more fealty to their father and king. It seems that my trust was misplaced.”

“My lord,” Athelstan’s tone was placating now. “I did not mean to—”

“I know exactly what you meant. By word and deed you have declared yourself. Since you hold my marriage and my queen in such low esteem, you are banished from my presence and from my court. Get you to St. Albans, all three of you, until I send for you again. Lord Ælfhelm has taught you to question your king. Let us see if the good brothers at the abbey can teach you patience and humility. Now get out.”