The Price of Blood (11 page)

Emma grasped the young slave by the arms and pulled him toward her. He was new to the court, still raw and untutored, sold into slavery during the worst of the famine when his parents could no longer feed him. He had meant no harm. He had only been eager to tell her the news, but a slave who could not hold his tongue was of no use to her.

“You are never to speak in my presence until I give you permission to do so, whatever the message you carry. I shall punish you if you ever burst into my chamber like that again. Do you understand?”

He nodded, his eyes wide and frightened.

“Good,” she said, drawing him still closer. “Now, tell me,” she said more gently, for his ears alone, “what else do you know of their fate?” She cast another quick glance at Hilde and saw with a pang that the girl’s face was wet with tears as she clutched a whimpering Edward to her breast and stared pityingly at Aldyth. Hilde’s father had suffered this same cruel punishment, had even survived it, although he’d spent the rest of his life in exile, consumed by bitterness and hatred. Hilde had known him only in the weeks before he died—a twisted wreck of a man. This news, Emma thought, must bring back all the anguish that his young daughter had felt for him. Swallowing the hard knot of pity in her throat, Emma turned back to the boy and asked urgently, “Do the prisoners still live?”

“I know not, my lady,” the boy whispered, clearly frightened by the distress he’d caused.

“Go and see if you can discover it,” she said, “and bring me word.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said, remembering to bow before he scampered off.

Emma drew in a long breath and stood up, considering what to do next. Aldyth still sat on the floor, wrapped in Margot’s arms and sobbing with sorrow or with terror—likely both, Emma thought. The girl certainly had good reason to be afraid. She belonged to a family that had earned the king’s enmity, and there was no telling how far Æthelred would carry his vengeance. If he should send men here to take Aldyth away, even she would not be able to stop them.

All work on the archbishop’s altar cloth had ground to a halt. Edward was crying despite Hilde’s efforts to soothe him. Aldyth was distraught, and Edyth was frowning at her while her younger sisters stared at the weeping girl with frightened eyes.

“Hilde,” Emma said, taking Edward from her and pacing with the light, bouncing step that usually quieted him, “please take the younger girls outside for a walk.” That would remove them from this turmoil and give Hilde a task that would hopefully take her mind from painful memories.

But it was Edyth who stood up and began to herd her sisters toward the chamber door, saying, “I will take them.”

“I wish you to stay, Edyth,” Emma said. “I may need your assistance.” Edyth was old enough now to begin to learn how to deal with a court crisis.

“And I wish to go,” Edyth said, her voice taut as the string on a bow. She paused beside Aldyth and said, “You should not weep for those men. They were my father’s enemies. He would not have punished them had they not deserved—”

“Be silent!” Emma said sharply. In an instant she had thrust Edward into Hilde’s arms and, drawing Edyth aside, she hissed, “Edyth, you must show compassion for this girl. Her cousins have been horribly punished, her uncle is dead, and whatever they may have done, she must be very frightened. She is all but a hostage because of them.”

“If she has done nothing wrong,” Edyth replied, “then she need not be afraid. My father will not harm her. Why do you not tell her that?”

Emma wanted to weep with frustration. “I cannot tell her not to be afraid,” she said, “because things are not as they should be. Everyone is frightened, tempers are raw, and I cannot speak for the actions of anyone.” Least of all the actions of the king.

“But it is your duty to defend my father,” Edyth persisted, her face growing flushed and angry. “Only you will not, because you hate him.”

Emma stared at her. Where had this come from?

“You are mistaken, Edyth,” she said coldly. “I do not hate the king.”

“Yes, you do,” Edyth insisted, her voice rising. “You hate all of us. You only care about Edward and no one else. My brother Edmund says that you will not be happy until all of us are dead.”

Emma slapped her almost before Edyth finished speaking. The girl glared at her for an instant, then turned and fled the chamber.

Still stunned by the poison of Edyth’s words, Emma let her go. Her heart, though, was filled with misgiving. When had Edyth begun to resent her? At the time that she and Æthelred had wed, his daughters, all of them so very young, had accepted her almost as if she were an elder sister. Whatever suspicions the king’s sons may have harbored against her, his daughters had warmed to her. Clearly that had changed, at least where Edyth was concerned.

Had it started with Ecbert’s death, or did it go even further back, to the birth of Edward?

She put her fingertips to her temple and rubbed them against the pressure that had begun to pulse there.
Dear God
, she should have expected this. She should have prepared herself to face it, for it had to come sooner or later—this chafing between them. The girl was mature enough now to understand that her prestige had been lowered when her father had wed a Norman bride and given her a crown that Edyth’s own mother had never been granted. Edward’s birth could only have added to Edyth’s resentment. Edyth was ambitious. As she grew older, she would likely demand a role that held some influence within the court, and until she got it there would be no peace between stepmother and king’s daughter.

She looked at the others in the room—all of them upset and afraid. The younger girls were most frightened of all, she suspected, because they would not understand what tensions lay behind the little drama they had just witnessed.

She nodded to Hilde to take Edward and his half sisters away, then she drew Aldyth to the bench along the wall and sat beside her. Even as she murmured words of consolation, though, she brooded on the king’s eldest daughter. She would have to find a way to reassure Edyth, win her over somehow; only she was at a loss as to how to go about it.

Edyth was too proud ever to admit that she could be in the wrong. She shared that trait with her father.

And was the king wrong about the guilt of Ælfhelm and his sons? Perhaps not; but the cruel measures that he had taken against them and his silence about their crimes could only breed discontent among men whose loyalty was already strained. If the summer brought dragon ships to England’s shores, would the men of England unite under their king, or would they turn to someone else to protect them?

Once more, her thoughts flew to Elgiva, who was as capable of treachery and deceit as her father and brothers. Where was she, and what kind of vengeance might she even now be plotting against the king?

A.D. 1006
Then, over midsummer, came the Danish fleet to Sandwich, and they did as they were wont; they barrowed and burned and slew as they went.

—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Chapter Ten

July 1006

Cookham, Berkshire

T
he midsummer sun was at its height as Athelstan rode with Edmund and a dozen of their hearth guards along the Camlet Way toward the royal manor at Cookham. The road here, just north of the bridge that crossed the Thames near Shaftsey, cut through a forest of oaks, and he was grateful for the cooling shade. As they neared the river the trees thinned, and a horn blared from the walls of the burh that guarded the crossing.

Good, he thought, the guards are vigilant. He counted fifteen of them on the palisade. His bannermen, riding at the head of his company, signaled to them, they signaled back, and the wail of the horn faded. Casting a critical eye on the fortified structure perched on the island midriver, he noted that two new watchtowers had been added since last he was here.

“It looks like Ealdorman Ælfric has been strengthening the shire’s defenses,” he said to Edmund. His brother made no reply, and Athelstan, irritated, scowled at him. “Edmund, something’s been eating at you all day. Are you going to tell me what it is, or are you going to continue to keep me in suspense?”

Edmund scowled back at him, but finally he broke his sullen silence.

“How much will you tell the king about what you’ve been doing?”

It was a fair question, and one that Athelstan had been asking himself for weeks as he met with thegns all through the Midlands in an effort to stem their outrage over Ælfhelm’s murder. He had told them that Ælfhelm had been consorting with men close to the Danish king. He had done what he could to convince them that his father had been forced to move against the ealdorman, but he had not been able to defend the king’s tactics—the ruthless butchery of Ælfhelm and his sons. When pressed he had vowed that if he were on the throne, he would be far more open and even-handed in his dealings with his nobles than his father had been.

It was a promise not likely to endear him to the king, should he hear of it.

“Are you afraid that I will end up like Wulf and Ufegeat?” he asked Edmund. Poor devils. They had been mere pawns in their father’s dangerous game, yet they had died miserably in a dank and fetid stone cell, their wounds, it was rumored, gone untreated. Siferth and Morcar, it seemed, had been granted possession of the ravaged bodies of their kinsmen for burial, and they had borne witness to the consequences of the king’s wrath. Word of it had spread through the realm like wildfire.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Edmund turned the question back at him.

“Yes,” he growled, “I am. The king sees enemies everywhere and I am hardly invisible. But if he demands an accounting from me, I will give an honest answer. Someone has to speak openly to him about the uncertain temper of his nobles.”

Edmund was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “The king’s enemies
are
everywhere. Our northern border is under attack by the Scots, and the king’s spies have warned that the Danes will strike before summer’s end—God alone knows where. I think he was right to make an example of Ælfhelm. He has made it clear that he will punish treachery and disloyalty. It used to be that gold and lands and preferment were enough to keep men loyal. No longer, though. In times such as these, fear of punishment may be the only thing that will compel men to cleave to their king.”

“But he is a weak king, Edmund, and no warrior. If the men inside his realm turn against him, it is because they fear he cannot protect them from the enemies who press us from outside. Mark me, there is a storm coming and we are ill prepared to meet it.
Jesu
, with Ælfhelm dead there is no longer an ealdorman in Northumbria or in Mercia. Who will organize the defense if the Danes strike the towns along the Trent or the Ouse?”

“Eadric of Shrewsbury, judging by the trust the king has placed in him lately.”

“Eadric!” Athelstan snorted. “He is a henchman, not a warrior.”

“Warrior or not, he is better than no leader at all,” Edmund countered.

As to that, Athelstan had his doubts. What they needed was time—time to consult over the leadership of the northern shires, time to bring in the harvest, time to prepare and stock the burhs for defense. He had begged the churchmen he had spoken with to pray for time so that they could gather strength to meet their enemies.

But as Edmund said, there was already fighting along the border with the Scots, and he feared there was an ill wind blowing across the Danish sea. The one thing that the people of England did not have was time.

They were over the bridge now, the island behind them, and the gates of the palace rose ahead, reinforced, he noted, by a triple guard. Within the walls all was clamor and mayhem, far surpassing the everyday comings and goings of servants, retainers, and men-at-arms. He had difficulty guiding his mount past men sorting through piles of arms and equipment, women and children scurrying from building to building weighed down with bundles, and grooms loading horses and pack mules.

The king’s household was preparing to move, but there was nothing orderly or methodical about these preparations. Something was wrong, something more pressing than the Scots’ invasion of far-off Northumbria.

He and Edmund dismounted, tossed their reins to a groom, and went into the hall. Here, too, all was chaos, except for a table full of scribes who sat writing furiously on wax tablets. Instructions from the king to his royal thegns, Athelstan guessed. He paused to address a steward who was hurling curses at a trio of slaves that was frantically packing silver candlesticks and goblets into chests.

“What is amiss?” he asked.

“Danish ships have been sighted at Sandwich, my lord. We’ve not been told yet where we are to go, but word has come down that we are leaving on the morrow.”

Athelstan glanced at his brother and knew that they were thinking the same thing. Time had just run out.

Inside the royal apartment, the king sat at a central table with a small circle of advisers about him. Athelstan, flicking his gaze around the chamber, found Emma in an alcove lit by a bank of candles. Her Norman priest, Father Martin, stood at a writing table beside her, his stylus moving swiftly across the parchment laid out before him.