The Price of Blood (14 page)

That was what she would be forced to do, assuming her hazy memory was correct and she had actually been wed to that youth in the hall. There had been no priest to bless the nuptials, but that made no difference. Whoever he was, he could claim her as his handfast wife once he’d bedded her. No doubt he would set about that soon enough.

The chamber door opened slowly and she sat up, expectant and wary. A woman entered, perhaps several years younger than she was, thin as a stick, with flaming hair that hung in plaits to her waist. Her green woolen cyrtel was belted with a silver chain, and she wore strings of amber beads around her neck.

Someone of status, then.

Another woman slipped into the room behind the first. This one would be a servant or slave, for she was gowned in a shift as gray and plain as dirt, and she moved as silently as a shadow. She went to a stool in the corner and, pulling a spindle and wool from a basket, she began to spin.

Like one of the Norns, Elgiva thought, one of the mystical creatures that the Norse believed in, who spun the thread of fate for each living being. Even as she thought it, the woman looked up with an expression so dark and knowing that Elgiva instinctively flinched and looked away.

She is but a slave, she told herself, and no Norn. There is nothing to fear from her.

She turned instead to the woman in green, who was still hesitating near the door.

“Who are you and what do you want?” The question was probably pointless. She’d heard nothing but Danish spoken since she’d arrived in this miserable place.

“I am Catla,” the young woman whispered. She looked nervous, her eyes enormous and her skin pale as milk. “I am wife to Thurbrand, and he has bid me attend you until your lord comes.” She smiled weakly and gave her head a little shake. “I cannot abide the hall when the men get . . .” She waved her hand helplessly.

Dear God
. This waif was hardly a match for the bearlike Thurbrand. He must chew her up and spit her out daily to make her look so frightened. But at least the girl spoke English and might be able to tell her something useful.

“Sit here, then.” Elgiva gestured to the bed but she could not bring herself to smile. She was still too furious at the trick Thurbrand had played on her. “I won’t bite you. Tell me of the man they’ve foisted on me. Do you know who he is?”

The girl came closer but she did not sit down.

She reminded Elgiva of a fawn or a rabbit, frightened of its own shadow.

“He is Cnut, lady. Son of Swein, son of Harald, son of Gorm.” She recited it as if she were a skald about to begin a tale, or as if it had been beaten into her.

“Swein,” Elgiva repeated. “Is that the man I saw in the hall, clad all in gold?”

Catla gave a quick nod. “He landed on Lammas Day, and he was furious when he did not find you here. It’s as well that you arrived today because by tomorrow he and his son would have been gone.”

Elgiva closed her eyes. Another day, and she would have escaped this fate. How the Norns must be laughing at her.

When she opened her eyes again, Catla was gesturing toward the caskets that stood beside the loom.

“King Swein bid me tell you that everything here is yours. The bed, the hangings, everything in the boxes you see there, even Tyra”—she nodded toward the gray woman with the spindle—“belongs to you. She will be your body servant. They are all morning gifts from Cnut.”

But Elgiva was no longer listening, for the words
King Swein
had struck her ears like a thunderbolt. She thrust herself from the bed and crossed the chamber to lift the lid of one of the coffers that stood against the wall. It was filled with silver—rings and chains, cups and plates, crosses, candlesticks, and medallions. She turned to another coffer and inside she found golden arm rings, enameled necklaces, finger rings set with precious gems—a Viking hoard of gold and jewels.

She knew now, who it was that she had wed. She was the handfast wife of the son of King Swein of Denmark. It must be. She had never heard of any other king named Swein, and the wealth in these chests argued that she was the bride of a king’s son.

She closed her eyes, remembering the prophecy of her old nurse, Groa.

You will be a queen, and your children will be kings.

She had always believed that she must marry Æthelred or one of his brood for that to come true. It had never dawned on her that there might be another way. But there was, and this was it. This marriage was an alliance that would inspire northern lords like Thurbrand, men dissatisfied with the kingship of Æthelred, to pledge themselves to the warrior king from Denmark—and to his son. Æthelred might one day find himself ruler of only the southern half of England, while Swein held all the rest.

And someday, when Swein died and Cnut was crowned king after him, she would be queen beside him.

How long had her father been negotiating this marriage? And why had the fool not confided in her, not told her that it was Cnut she was to wed? She would have helped him, not betrayed him. If he’d had the good sense to trust her with his great secret, he might still be alive and her brothers would not have been tortured and left to die.

Her father, damn him, had wasted all their lives.

The sound of voices outside brought her bitter musing to an abrupt end. She made it back to the bed just before the door was flung wide and the room filled with drunken men. Two of them carried torches, and when one of them stumbled toward the bed, she cried out for fear he would fire the hangings. But he righted himself and she saw that it was Alric, ogling her and grinning like an idiot.

She scrambled to the top of the bed and pulled the furs up against her breasts, making the men howl with laughter. Catla, the little coward, slipped out the door like a shadow, but Elgiva knew that for her there would be no escape. She was wed to Cnut, and his kinsmen had come to watch him plough his furrow and plant a babe in her belly.
Jesu
, if they expected to find blood on the sheets afterward they were in for a disappointment, for she was no virgin.

She glanced at the king, who was staring at her wolfishly, his mouth set in a leer. Would they kill her in the morning because she was no maid?

No. They needed her to claim the allegiance of her kin.

She had no more time to think about that, for Cnut had come to the foot of the bed and he was surveying her with eyes that showed no trace of drunkenness. He pulled off his tunic and skinned his breecs away as the men cheered and pounded their feet on the floor—for encouragement, she supposed. But Cnut was naked now, standing tall in the torchlight that gleamed on his skin, and judging by the way his rod stood at attention, the encouragement was hardly necessary.

Well, she was not going to just sit here like a stick of wood, like a frightened little Catla.

She drew her feet under her, stood up on the mattress, and slowly walked its length to face her husband. A shout of anticipation went up from the men, and Cnut eyed her warily, perhaps thinking she might spit at him again. But she knew who he was now, and she had no qualms about consummating this marriage. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, drawing his tongue into her mouth. He responded by slipping his hands beneath her shift and pulling her roughly against him. Beneath the pounding of blood in her ears she heard the howls of the men as Cnut guided her back down to the mattress.

He sheathed himself inside her and she wrapped her legs about his hips, moving to the rhythm that he set. His thrusts were quick and hard and deep, and it did not take long. Well, what was she, after all, but a prize to be plundered? When he collapsed on top of her the Danes sent up a roar. The slave, Tyra, came forward, and for an instant their eyes met and held. Elgiva felt her skin prickle under that knowing gaze, and she breathed a sigh of relief when Tyra drew the curtains around the bed and that cold glance was hidden.

They were alone after that, and as she lay spooned against Cnut beneath the furs, he murmured to her in Danish. She did not understand him, and she was glad when he finally fell asleep, his hand cupped possessively over her breast. She was uncomfortable in his arms, though, and in spite of her weariness she lay awake far into the night. She tried to conjure up her future, tried to imagine herself in a great hall wearing a golden circlet, but the only images that rose in her mind were the faces of her father and her brothers, who stared at her with cold, accusing eyes. At last she fell asleep, and she dreamed of a woman in gray who sat spinning, and the golden thread that fell from her fingers shriveled into dust.

The next day, gowned in her own shift and cyrtel, and bedecked with some of her bridal gold, she followed Cnut through the hall to the dais, where King Swein waited to greet her. Alric, looking haggard after last night’s celebration, fell in behind her, whispering that he had been commanded to act as interpreter.

Cnut took her hand, standing at her side as Swein pinned her with those black eyes of his, eyeing her belly as if he had the power to discern whether Cnut’s son was already growing there. She resented that look and resented the way this marriage had come about, although she was satisfied enough with her husband—assuming that, in the end, she got what she wanted.

“I wish to know,” she said, not waiting for the Danish king to speak first, “when King Swein will take the crown of England as his own.”

She watched Swein’s face as Alric translated her question, and she thought she caught a flicker of amusement in the king’s eyes.

“When you give Cnut a son,” the reply came back, “blending English blood with Danish, I will wrest the crown from Æthelred. Your father’s death stalled our preparations, but we will begin again. You have but to do your part.”

She nodded. It would do, for now. She would complete her part of the bargain. After all, even the whey-faced Emma had finally produced a son. Surely she must be as fecund as Emma, although—the alarming thought fluttered into her mind—she had not conceived in the months that she had slept beside the king.

She reminded herself, though, of the prophecy that Groa had sworn to her was true, that she was destined to wear a crown, destined to bear sons who would be kings. So it was foretold and, therefore, she assured herself, no power on earth could prevent it.

Windsor, Berkshire

Æthelred paced his inner chamber as he waited for Emma to respond to his summons. It was late and he was weary but, by Christ, he would not face another night in his bed alone. His dreams were a torment, filled with phantoms—the dead come to haunt him. His brother, his mother, even his father had troubled his sleep for a week. Their faces, decaying and putrid beneath golden crowns, hovered over him, as if they would warn him of some coming disaster. Last night it had been Elgiva, beautiful and naked, riding him hard until suddenly she was no longer Elgiva. It was her father whose dead weight pressed upon his chest and whose rough, bearded mouth covered his own, drawing all the breath from his lungs until he woke, crying out in terror.

The menace of that nightmare still clung to him, yet it offered a glimmer of hope, for it could mean that Elgiva, too, was now rotting in some unhallowed grave.

So far, she had not been discovered in either Mercia or Northumbria, and he dared to hope that some mischance had befallen her—the last of Ælfhelm’s brood of vipers.

Alive, wedded to some powerful Danish lord, she could be a threat—a rallying point for Ælfhelm’s disgruntled northern kin.

Dead, she could do no more than haunt him.

He paused at his worktable to finger a pile of scrolls and wax tablets that bore news from Kent, where the Danes continued to burn and plunder. His fyrds were doing exactly as he had ordered, shepherding his people into the burhs to protect them. From within the safety of their fortress walls, though, they had to watch as their homes were torched and their livestock driven away. They were powerless to stop it, for they had not the numbers to confront the better-armed shipmen and their savage leader—some bastard, he saw scrawled on one of the tablets, named Tostig.

Was Tostig the warlord who had sought the hand of Elgiva? She had been promised to a Dane. What if that marriage had already taken place? What if she was still alive and this Tostig had taken her as prize? Might he not hunger for a far greater treasure than he could plunder from the villages and towns of Kent? Might Elgiva not goad him into seeking a crown?

All the more reason to hope that Ælfhelm’s daughter was dead.

He looked up as the door to his chamber swung open to reveal Emma, clad in her night robe. She was as beautiful as the day he had first seen her—perhaps more so. Her pale hair hung in a long braid over her shoulder and her complexion was as smooth and fair as marble. She regarded him with those startlingly light green eyes—not the downcast eyes of a maid but the thoughtful, knowing gaze of a woman and a queen, and for once he was comforted to see her. He was weary of struggling against phantoms; surely she would serve as armor against them. When he buried himself inside her, the lingering horror of Elgiva’s succubus must fade.

He poured mead into cups for both of them, then gestured toward the table and its pile of tablets.

“You may as well read those.”

She sat at the table, and as she read through the reports he studied her face. She looked anxious, and he wondered if it was because of the Danes harrying his realm or some small thing having to do with Edward. Motherhood had softened Emma in a way that puzzled him, for maternal affection was far outside the realm of his experience. His own mother had been cold, had seen him as nothing more than a stepping-stone in her rise to royal power. She had ground him beneath her feet like so much chalk. And as for his first wife, she had barely glanced at her offspring once they’d left her body.
God’s plague upon women for the sin of Eve
, she’d called them.

Emma, though, delighted in her son, and was unwilling to be parted from him for very long. That was inconvenient, and it would have to change. Not that he would make an issue of it just yet, but he could not allow Edward to be so closely tied to his mother’s girdle. God willing, he would get her with child again soon—maybe even tonight. Put another babe in her belly and it would be easier to wean Edward from her side. Certainly it helped that while she was here she spent much of her time in his hall, listening to the debates over the English response to the Danes, or consulting with the churchmen and nobles who had answered his summons. It meant that she had little time to spend with her son, but that, he knew, was a double-edged sword. For she was taking this opportunity to make allies among his counselors, and he did not welcome any division of loyalties within his hall.