The Price of Blood (40 page)

When the priest closed his book, still scowling his disapproval at such a hasty burial, Emma murmured a final farewell: “May the Lord defend you from all evil, and may the power of Christ Most High reside within you.”

Then, along with the priest, she joined the group that had gathered outside the hall. There were not enough horses for all of them. Some would have to walk, but all the belongings had been loaded onto the animals so that the walkers could travel light. She nudged her horse over to where Athelstan, astride his own mount, was speaking intently to one of her Norman guards.

Around them, the day was falling into twilight, and as she looked toward the river she saw mist settling on the water. Several men bore torches to light their road, but she fretted that they would be of little help should a heavy fog set in. There was still no sign of their enemies, and as she was marveling that so mighty a host could approach in such silence, Athelstan swung his horse about so that he was facing her.

“My man Eadmer will lead you,” he said. “The road is muddy and treacherous, though, and your people will be weary. Go slowly and rest often. You should be at Dorchester by dawn. I’ve told your men to keep armed riders at the back of your line, in case any of the Danes take it into their heads to move in your direction, although I don’t think that will happen. Tonight their goal is Oxford. What they will do tomorrow is anyone’s guess, so do not linger in Dorchester. Rest a few hours, and then carry on to Cookham. Try to get to London by week’s end if you can.”

She blinked at him in surprise.

“But where will you be? I thought you were coming with us.”

“There are still some who need to be assisted out of Oxford. Not many, thank God. Your men spread the alarm in good time. We cannot save the town, though, if the Danes are set on burning it. I’ve not enough men. All we can do is shadow them, keep people out of their way, and keep the king apprised of their movements. Edmund is gathering a force in London, and if I see an opportunity we’ll bring our own army forward and try to force a battle. That’s the last thing they want, though, and they’ll take pains to avoid a confrontation.” He smiled grimly. “It’s an endless game of cat and mouse—one we never seem to win.”

He turned in his saddle and signaled to Eadmer, and the company began to move along the London Road.

“I will see you in London,” he said to Emma. “Go with God.”

He reached out to her, and for a moment their hands met, until he released her and turned his horse toward Oxford.

“Go with God,” she whispered, watching the bright head until it faded into the twilight.

Then she guided her mount in the opposite direction, careful of the folk about her who walked in the gathering shadows. They were not a large company—some twenty-odd, she guessed. And although she knew each of them by name, she could not dismiss the sense of desolation that engulfed her.

All those she loved were behind her, somewhere in the darkness that had descended upon England.

A.D. 1009
[Oxford] they burned, and plundered on both sides of the Thames. Being fore-warned that there was an army gathered against them at London, they went over at Staines; and thus were they in motion all the winter, and in spring, appeared again in Kent, and repaired their ships.

—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Chapter Twenty-Six

March 1010

Aldbrough, Holderness

E
lgiva sat on the floor of Catla’s bedchamber, hands clasped about her knees. Two arms’ length in front of her Tyra knelt among the rushes, frowning intently at the rune sticks scattered in the space that had been cleared between the two of them. Elgiva flicked her gaze between Tyra’s face and the rune-marked pieces of bone, with an occasional glance to where Catla, her belly huge with child, lay asleep on the bed against the far wall. Thurbrand’s wife would soon present him with another son, according to Tyra, who claimed knowledge of such things even without consulting her gods.

It was just the three of them in the chamber, although Elgiva could hear Catla’s other two brats howling about something out in the dooryard while their nurse’s voice brayed protests. Except for their distant screeching, all was quiet. Even the looms set against three of the chamber walls were stilled, the weavers having joined the rest of Thurbrand’s people and her own in the fields. The sowing would go on for several more days, moving from one plowed strip to the next until the seed ran out. With luck the weather, like today, would stay dry. If not, they would work in the rain and come inside at sundown wet, chilled, and grumbling even more than usual. When the planting was done she would have to throw a feast. The men would get drunk, and in the autumn half the women would be in the same condition as Catla was now.

And if her own belly were still flat then, she would envy them and silently curse them all.

“Well?” she whispered to Tyra.

But the Sámi woman made no reply. Oblivious to everything but the rune sticks, she began to chant softly, words that Elgiva did not understand although the mere sound of them—eerie and in some strange tongue—made her flesh crawl.

She contained her impatience. Scrying the future, it seemed, could not be rushed. Someday she would ask Tyra to discover how much longer she must stay trapped in this dismal place. She wondered if the Sámi woman knew some magic that would spirit her away from Holderness.

She had forgotten just how tedious this existence was, had even thought of Holderness as a haven when she was making that miserable, bone-cold journey north from her cousin’s lands.

Aldyth’s cruelty in forcing her to leave in midwinter—so unexpected from one who had once been so cowed by her—still rankled. She had lingered at Greetham as long as she dared, hoping to see Siferth, hoping that Alric would return with news of Cnut. But her cousin had been as cold and relentless as the wind blowing across the empty wolds, and she had managed to draw only one concession from her.

“Tell Siferth that I was here,” she had begged Aldyth, “and bid him send word to the king that I died in the pestilence that took your son. It will keep Eadric from hounding us.”

Aldyth had agreed, but there was no way of knowing if she would actually do it.

At last, on a chilly, sunless day when Tyra said that the omens were good, she had left her cousin’s hall. Two days later Alric had caught up with them. Cnut was well, he’d reported, and had been pleased to learn that she was with child. How it had galled her to send Alric back to him with word that she had miscarried.

So much depended on the birth of her son, and her disappointment at having to return here, childless, had been a grim burden that she carried with her the whole length of that awful journey. Nor had her homecoming been any cause for celebration. The night of her return Thurbrand had stalked into her hall bellowing like a bull, raving at her for having slipped away from him last fall. He was so fearsome that she had snatched a knife from the table to fend him off, but one of Swein’s men had stepped between them and Thurbrand had had the sense to back down.

That had been two months ago. Alric had returned since then, but she had sent him hastening south again, to gather what news he could of Siferth and of events at Æthelred’s court.

How she envied Alric his freedom to come and go as he pleased. She longed to get away from here—to go to Winchester or London or Canterbury. The Easter court would soon be meeting at one of the king’s great halls, and Emma would be there—gowned in silk and seated on a chair with embroidered cushions, instead of crouched among the rushes astride a straw-filled sack.

Still, she thought smugly, the Easter court would hardly be a joyous gathering. Thorkell and Cnut had made certain of that. They had led their shipmen almost unchallenged through the Thames Valley throughout the winter. An army had gathered outside of London to bring them to battle, but the Danes had crossed the Thames and deftly avoided a confrontation. Thorkell’s men had torched village after village as they made their way back to their ships, and how it must have enraged Æthelred and his sons to watch that trail of smoke snaking across the sky, far beyond their reach.

Served them right—the wicker king and his straw sons. She would take her own vengeance on them one day. Perhaps, she thought, concentrating once more on Tyra, this Sámi cunning woman might even help her.

Tyra had closed her eyes and was running her hands lightly across each fragment of bone, fingering them, touching whatever power emanated from the scored ivory. Then her eyes opened, focusing with such needle-like sharpness on Elgiva that she shuddered.

“Two sons,” Tyra said, in a voice so strange it seemed borrowed from some other world. “Both will grow to manhood. Both will leave this middle earth before you.”

Both will grow to manhood.

Her sons, then, would not all wither in the womb as the last child had. She need not despair. That her own life would be longer than theirs was hardly a surprise. If a woman could survive childbirth, she might well outlive her sons.

Most men’s lives ended with a sword stroke, while women simply died of boredom.

At least, they did if they lived in Holderness.

Tyra had closed her eyes again, slumping against the bed frame as if she were a poppet made of rags and straw. The power that had been within her had withdrawn, and she looked haggard, her face so pale that even her lips were white.

“Tyra,” Elgiva hissed softly, “you cannot rest yet. You must tell me when Cnut will return, and when I will bear him a son.”

She saw Tyra’s chest move as she heaved a sigh, but the Sámi woman neither opened her eyes nor made any reply. Elgiva clenched her fists with impatience, but she knew better than to press Tyra any further. The woman was exhausted and all her power fled. More questions would have to wait.

For a long moment she gazed thoughtfully on that drawn and pallid face, gnawing on an idea that she had been considering ever since the first time she had seen the cunning woman’s hands play across the shards of bone with their mysterious markings. Slowly she moved her stiffened limbs, repositioning herself so that she was on her knees, mimicking the slave woman’s stance when she had been reading the runes. She leaned forward just as she’d seen Tyra do it, fingering the small, scored rods, hoping to feel some kind of power emanating from them.

She felt nothing. She lacked the skill to make the runes speak to her. Until she gained it, they would be nothing more than bones. She sat back on her heels, and when she looked at Tyra again, the Sámi woman was eyeing her.

“You have lusted after my power for many months now, have you not?” Her voice was normal again, no longer filled with magic. “Why is that, lady?”

Because
, Elgiva thought,
you are a truth teller, and any secrets that you learn about me through your skills might not remain secrets.

Instead she said, “You would not be so weary if you could share the burden of soothsaying with another.”

Tyra grunted. It may have been a laugh, but Elgiva could not tell.

“Look at me,” Tyra said. “Each time I use the power, there is less of me afterward. Is that what you long for?”

She had never considered it in that light; had never thought that in using such a power, she might be used in turn. But what did it matter? The power was worth the risk. And besides, Tyra had just told her that she would have a long life. She would outlive her grown sons.

“I want to learn your skill,” she replied.

“The learning is but a small part of it,” Tyra said. “It is a gift, lady, that is granted only to those of the Sámi blood. If you are not born with the power inside you, even the most skilled gerningakona cannot teach it to you.”

Elgiva scowled, but she did not argue. She well knew that Sámi women were like the Old Ones who hid in the hills of Western Mercia. They could trace their lineage back to a strange, mystical race. They had powers of perception that normal people did not have, and they communed with beings that were not of this world. Her old nurse had gone to see such a one, years ago. Groa would never reveal who it was she spoke with, but she had repeated the soothsayer’s words many times.

Your children will be kings.
She could hear Groa’s voice again as if it whispered in her ear—the only voice that ever came to her from beyond the grave. Her father and brothers were dead, too, but if they spoke to her she could not hear them. Was it because Groa had been pagan? Did her spirit still linger here in this world?

Like Tyra, Groa had come from the far north. But if Groa had known the old magic, she never let on.

She had known other things, though—how to mix potions that could cure or harm, how to recognize herbs and put them to use. She had even known some powerful charms. Surely these were arts that could be taught, whatever race a woman might spring from.

“What of your skill in herbal lore and healing magic?” she asked Tyra. “That knowledge does not reside in blood and bone. I would have died at Greetham had you not saved me with your potions; and that amulet that you wear—it protected you from the pestilence, did it not? These are things I wish to learn, and I would have you instruct me.” Even if Cnut came to her tomorrow and made her great with child, she would still have to spend many months here in Holderness, waiting for the birth. The days and weeks had to be filled somehow, and skill in the knowledge of herbs and potions might prove useful in the days to come.