The Price of Blood (43 page)

They joined her now at the very crest of the hill. Father Martin folded his hands, resting his chin upon them before he spoke.

“Everything has its season, my lady,” he said. “This, it seems, is the season for fear and for weeping.”

“You have been afraid before, Emma—we all have.” Wymarc placed a reassuring hand on her arm. “Yet we are safe here, for now at least.”

Emma gave her a grateful smile, for her friend was ever one to find some trace of gold even in a world of gloom.

“It is not for myself that I am afraid,” she said, “but for my children and for your son. I am afraid for the king’s children and for the English out there who are facing a bitter, cheerless winter. I can foresee no happy resolution to the trials that they are facing—that we all are facing. As hard as I look for it, I cannot discover any hope within my heart.”

“Then do not look within,” Father Martin urged. “Look to God. And ask not for hope, but for courage and acceptance.”

Likely there was wisdom in those words, she told herself, yet she could not quite bring herself to trust them. He would have her bow to God’s will, yet she could not accept that England’s ravaging was the will of the Almighty. It was the will of men, and it came with all the cruelty that men could inflict on one another. Sometimes it made her so angry that her prayers were not petitions for mercy but howls of rage.

She could say nothing of this to Father Martin and Wymarc, though. They must each of them find whatever comfort they could. It was true that there were many things for which she should thank God. Her own household had been with her now for some months—Godiva and her nurse, Wymarc, Father Martin, and many of those who had escaped with her from the Headington palace and who wished to remain at her side.

They had come with her to the king’s winter council in this far western corner of England, a place as yet untouched by the enemy and the havoc that they had wrought. The king’s daughters and their husbands had arrived already. Ælfa’s retinue included her little girl, who was two winters old now. Hilde, too, had made the long journey with them from Northumbria, accompanied by a young retainer of Uhtred’s named Godric, who had sought and been granted her hand in marriage. Their wedding feast would throw some welcome joy upon the Christmas gathering.

Three of the æthelings, though, had yet to answer the king’s summons, and that added to her dark mood. Even now she peered into the distance, first north then south, half imagining that she might catch some sign of them. It was foolish, of course. She was too far away to make out the road that Edward would take from Shropshire or the route that would bring Athelstan and Edmund from London.

It was Athelstan’s absence in particular that filled her with misgiving. He was not yet reconciled with his father, had not even spoken with Æthelred for a full year. He had kept the promise that he had made to her in London before Ringmere, though—had not died in battle to please the king. He had been wounded, though, an injury that had been slow to heal but had done nothing to appease his father’s wrath at his son’s disobedience. The king demanded word of him daily and glowered when he could learn nothing. They knew only that he had left London and should have arrived here already—only he had not.

She imagined a hundred things that could have delayed him, but the most likely, it seemed to her, was that his bitterness toward his father might have goaded him into ignoring the king’s summons altogether. She prayed that she was wrong. She prayed that he would come, and soon. His father needed every clear voice of reason left in the kingdom if he was to find a way out of the strife that had engulfed them this past summer—strife that would surely begin again in spring unless something was done.

And if Athelstan did not obey the summons, then his father would see it as the act of an enemy.

Even Edward had been sent for, although the king, wishing to keep her son from her side, had resisted doing so at first. She had won that battle—had presented her arguments with cool deliberation, one after the other, garnering support for each from the churchmen who advised the king. Eadric had argued against her, but when he recognized that she had the more powerful faction on her side, he reversed his opinion. Eadric apparently preferred to change his allegiance rather than lose, no matter what the conflict.

And there was so much conflict now within the royal halls! She and Æthelred lined up arguments between them like shield walls, and she sometimes wished that, years ago, before her brother had sent her across the Narrow Sea to bear arms against a king, he had thought to school her in the arts of war.

 • • • 

When they returned to the king’s hall, riding past scores of tents that sheltered the small army of retainers accompanying the members of the witan, she saw that a new banner had been raised above the entry gate.

Edward had come.

She looked at Wymarc, who met her gaze with glistening eyes and a bright smile. Robert, too, would be among Edward’s company. Both of their sons had arrived.

The cloud of fear and tension that had hovered over her for months lifted. She quelled the urge to hasten into the royal apartments to find Edward, for he must pay his respects to the king first, and she had no wish to be reunited with her son beneath Æthelred’s disapproving gaze. She would wait in her quarters for Edward to appear, as she knew he must. Æthelred could not hope to keep them apart, even though he might desire it.

After what felt like an eternity her son at last entered her chamber, and she wanted to weep at all the changes that two years had wrought. She remembered him as a plump, sunny little boy who had loved to curl up in her lap while she told him stories. Now he was six winters old and he stood before her tall and straight, but stiff and unsmiling. His hair was still fair and fine, but the curls that she had so loved had been shorn away, making his thin face look thinner still.

He was the image of her sister, Mathilde, she thought with a pang, right down to the hollow cheeks and narrow mouth.

Edward made no move toward her. He offered a stiff bow and merely gazed at her in silence, studying her just as she was studying him.

He wore a silver-gray tunic embroidered with golden thread, and under it a saffron scyrte. He looked every inch the heir to a throne, the expression on his face so carefully composed that she thought he must have been made keenly aware of his standing as first among the æthelings.

Would he have any idea how perilous a privilege that was? Edmund would be livid at seeing his half brother robed so extravagantly, especially when the rest of the court was in mourning.

She guessed that this was Eadric’s doing, intended to cause strife among the brothers. Edyth, too, would likely have had a hand in it, for she had of late taken a great interest in Edward. Her once staunch defense of Athelstan’s claim as the king’s heir had been cast aside the moment that she finally resigned herself to permanent enmity between her husband and her eldest brother. Should desire for the crown ever bring Athelstan into conflict with Edward, the support of Edyth and her husband would go to Edward.

Dear God,
she prayed,
please do not let it come to that.

And then she dismissed the king’s other children from her mind and focused only on this silent boy before her. Was Edward shy? Or was he searching his memory for some image of her?

Leaving her chair she knelt in front of him and gathered him into her arms. He suffered her embrace, but clearly it was unwelcome. It was as though she’d wrapped her arms around a child made of stone. When she sat back on her heels to look at him, he returned her gaze with cool politeness.

Had he learned, at so early an age, the trick of hiding his thoughts and feelings? It had taken her far, far longer.

Once more she wanted to weep.

“Do you remember me, Edward?” she asked.

“You are the queen,” he said promptly in a high, clear voice. It was a politic answer, and very correct.

It was not at all what she had hoped for.

She drew him to a bench and for some time they spoke together—she asking probing questions, he providing answers that revealed very little. Eventually a servant came to fetch him, to ready him for the evening meal, where he was to sit at the king’s right hand. When he left her, Edward bowed once more, as stiff and formal as when he first entered the chamber.

She watched him walk away, his back straight and his chin high.

That much, at least, he had from her, although he could not know it. He had been her son once, her darling, her world. Who, she wondered, her heart riddled with grief, did he belong to now?

December 1010

Near Saltford, Oxfordshire

“I think we must have taken the wrong turning at the last crossroads,” Edmund said. “We should have been there by now, surely. Are you certain that you know where you’re leading us?”

Athelstan merely grunted. He knew where he was going. He glanced behind, at the half-dozen men and packhorses that traveled with them, assured himself that there were no laggards, then looked to the path again.

A thin blanket of snow covered the ground, pale in the winter light. The sky was the color of dirty slate, and a late-afternoon breeze bit forehead and cheek, sharp as a blade. Until now Edmund had voiced no complaint nor said much of anything at all. Athelstan had been grateful for his brother’s companionable silence, but he knew that Edmund’s patience would not last much longer. Nevertheless, they rode for some distance before Edmund spoke again.

“Athelstan, we must be lost. You cannot possibly know where this stone circle is. It’s been—what—nine years since we were there? And we had a guide then, not to mention the minor point that we came at it from a completely different direction.”

“We’re on the right path,” Athelstan replied, using the tone of command that brooked no argument.

For a time Edmund relapsed into a brooding silence, and then, as Athelstan had expected, he put it all together. “You’ve been to see her since then, haven’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
“For Christ’s sake
, why? You said she was a fraud. Why go back to consult her again? And why are we going now?”

Why. He had never spoken to anyone about what the seeress had said to him on that first occasion, or ever breathed aloud the even more ominous prediction she had made when he saw her next—that he and his brothers would walk a bitter road.

He had tried to convince himself that she was a fraud, that a man would be a fool to take her dire prophecies seriously.

But three of his brothers were dead, and for the past year, not just the sons of Æthelred but everyone in England had been walking a bitter road. After the slaughter at Ringmere had destroyed much of Ulfkytel’s army and sent those left alive running for their lives, the Danes had sorted themselves, as far as he had been able to make out, into five groups, some horsed, some on foot. They fed on food stolen from the mouths of English children. They forced English men to watch while their wives, sisters, and daughters were raped. They stole whatever loot they could grab, and depending on the mood of the shipmen and their leaders, they torched what they could not carry. From East Anglia to the Fosse Way, and from the Thames Valley to the Fenlands, for seven months England had been brutalized and burnt.

Through it all he had been ordered to stay within the walls of London, under threat of banishment should he disobey. He had railed against this punishment, but Edmund had called him a fool.

“What do you imagine that you would do even if you could quit London?” Edmund had demanded. He had gestured to Athelstan’s bandaged left leg, slashed and broken at Ringmere. “It will be months before you can walk or ride a horse. You are no use to anyone until that’s healed, so stop complaining that you’re being ill used.”

Once his leg had healed it had taken weeks to regain the strength necessary to ride or to stand and wield a sword properly. During that time he had chafed at Edmund’s reports of English levies defeated in one shire after another. The Viking decision to split their force had made it impossible to anticipate where they might strike next and so raise a defense. For England, the summer had been one long string of disasters. The kingdom was verging on ruin, walking the bitter road that the seeress had foretold. Even he did not know what he expected to gain by consulting her again. She had never spoken him good fortune, and he feared that whatever she might tell him today would be no better. Yet he felt compelled to find her, to look once more upon the face of one of the Old Ones as she stood there in the midst of the stones. Perhaps he just wanted reassurance—that if her ancient race still survived in this land, his own people were not doomed.

Edmund, obviously irritated by the long silence, broke it with a string of curses. Then he demanded, “How many times have you spoken to the cunning woman?”

Athelstan hesitated, for once he admitted to it, Edmund would want to know more.

“This will be the fourth time,” he said at last. “And no, I will not tell you what she said to me.”

Edmund cursed again, but there were no further questions.

In the distance ahead of them Athelstan could now make out the sentinel stone on the ridge, its shaft pale against the sky’s lurid darkness. When they drew up beside it he searched the hollow for the black-clad figure. The stones were there, jagged and dark against the snow. But this time, for the first time, she was not waiting for him.

He frowned, searching the stones and then looking carefully among the oaks that surrounded the ring. Where her small cottage had once stood—a thing of wattle, daub, and thatch—there was only a jagged mound of snow beneath trees whose bare limbs were blackened and burnt.

“The Danes must have struck here, too,” Edmund observed. “
Christ
, how did they find it? This is the middle of nowhere. Athelstan, if she truly had the Sight, she would have seen what was coming and fled. We’re wasting our time, and it will be nightfall before long. I would like to sleep in a bed tonight, even if it is only in a raw, half-built hall, which is all that we’re likely to find after this summer’s horrors.”