The Price of Blood (56 page)

That night in his London hall, Athelstan sat scowling into a half-empty wine cup as his brothers recounted what had occurred after he’d stalked out of All Hallows.

“The bishop must have summoned every clergyman in London to escort Ælfheah’s body to St. Paul’s,” Edrid said. “The queen and Eadric led a line of mourners that stretched across half the city.”

“And is that not an unholy alliance,” Edmund snarled, “the queen and Eadric? I have warned you for years that Emma is not to be trusted. Now that she’s whelped a second son, she is near to achieving the power that she’s been lusting after since she first set foot in England.
Christ!
She would strike a bargain even with the devil if—”

“Leave it, Edmund!” Athelstan barked. He had nearly managed to erase the image from his mind of Emma glaring at him with hatred in her eyes and with Eadric at her side. He did not need it thrown in his face.

“Listen to me!” Edmund was shouting now and clearly not willing to let it go. “Eadric and Emma will urge the king to forge an alliance with Thorkell without questioning whether the vermin can be trusted. You know that! And because Emma speaks the Northman’s tongue—and that is something she has craftily hidden until now—
Christ!
What a liar she is!” He stopped for breath. “Because of that, she is likely to be given a seat at the king’s council. Think you there will be room for us there when Emma, Eadric, and Thorkell have the king’s ear?”

Athelstan took a long swallow from his cup, then slammed it to the table and got to his feet, goaded by the suspicion that Edmund could be right.

Emma was no fool. She must have recognized that if Thorkell pledged his service to the king, her knowledge of Danish would no longer be a liability but an advantage. Why else would she have revealed such a thing after hiding it for so long?

But Edmund had not finished. “The king will surely accept Thorkell’s offer of ships and men,” he went on, “but not without great cost. He will have to tax his nobles yet again and they will not thank him for it. Few of them will be comforted, I think, by the sight of a Danish fleet settled on our shores.”

Athelstan was only half listening to him, for he was seeing again the scene in the chapel—Emma trying to block the sight of Ælfheah’s shattered face, Emma grasping the blade of his sword, Emma stanching blood with a fold of her cloak. And then, abruptly, another memory intruded, of young Edward held fast with a knife at his throat.

He had urged the Dane to dispatch the boy, hoping to gull him into thinking he had hold of a useless hostage.
Jesu
. Had Emma believed him?

“Athelstan!” Edmund’s voice recalled him to the present. “The men on the king’s council will resent Thorkell. They will balk at having to pay for his fleet, and their discontent might suit our own purposes. We could—”

He rounded on his brother. “What purposes, Edmund?” he demanded. “Would you counsel me again to rebel against the king? How many times must I tell you that I will not walk that road?” He had given Ælfheah his word on that. Even the archbishop’s death did not release him from his vow. “You would have me seize the throne, but where would I look for allies? In the north Elgiva and her brothers are dead; those of her kin who remain have been showered with lands and offices to bind them to the king.”

Edmund was on his feet now, the two of them facing off against each other.

“You cannot mean to stand aside and do nothing,” Edmund protested. “You cannot believe that Thorkell can be trusted!”

Athelstan shoved past his brother. He was not certain what he believed. At All Hallows he had been convinced that Thorkell’s appearance in London had been some ploy to get inside the city’s defenses. Now he was not so sure. Thorkell’s fleet still lay at Greenwich, their sails furled and bound, no threat to London. The men he had sent there for news had reported that, far from being responsible for Ælfheah’s death, Thorkell had gone to great lengths to try to prevent it.

What had the Dane said to Emma there in the church that had made her trust him? He did not know, but something had convinced her that he would keep his word.

“I do not know what to make of Thorkell,” he said. “But I will not make any move that would fracture this kingdom.”

Edmund cursed. “The kingdom is already fractured,” he snarled, “and has been since Eadric murdered Ealdorman Ælfhelm.”

Athelstan turned to glare at him. “And what do you think would happen if we do as you suggest: make alliance with disgruntled northern nobles and raise our banners against the king?”

Edrid stood up and moved to Edmund’s side. “Athelstan is right,” he said. “The king would use Thorkell and his shipmen as a weapon against anyone who dared oppose him. It’s too big a risk.”

“We must be patient,” Athelstan insisted. “The balance of power at court is shifting beneath our feet. Ælfheah is dead and we cannot know who will replace him. Thorkell will negotiate some kind of alliance with the king, but we can’t even begin to guess how much influence he will have. Eadric still holds the king’s favor, and with both Edwig and Edward under his thumb—”

“Edwig is no use to him,” Edmund objected, “drunk or sober.”

“We cannot be certain of that,” Athelstan cautioned. “Every ætheling is throne-worthy. There is no telling what use Eadric may have in mind for our brother.” He frowned. “I think he will use his hold on young Edward to exert pressure on the queen. And she is more likely to have the king’s ear now, with two sons to her account.”

“So the court is a vipers’ nest,” Edmund spat. “Can you think of no better strategy than to merely avoid being bitten? I put it to you again: What if this Thorkell cannot be trusted? What if he turns on England, betrays us to our Danish enemies from within?”

Athelstan ran an unsteady hand through his hair, troubled by Edmund’s words. His brother, God forbid, could very well be right.

“Let us pray that does not happen,” he said. “But if it does, Edmund, and we are not united behind the throne, when the Danish hammer stroke falls, England will shatter like glass.” He drew a long breath. “It is but another reason why we cannot break with our father.”

He looked at Edrid, who nodded his agreement. He looked to Edmund, who gazed back at him, his face still dark with whatever black conjectures were running through his mind.

Finally, Edmund ground out reluctantly, “As you wish. We will not break with the king.” Then he glowered at Athelstan and added, “Not yet.”

Athelstan heard the warning there, but for now he was satisfied. He turned away from his brothers and stared into the flames of the hearth, calling to mind the very last words that the seeress had said to him.

I see fire and smoke. There is nothing else.

If that prophecy was true and England was to be tried by fire yet again, he hoped to God that he would not have to be the one to set it alight.

A.D. 1012
Then submitted to the king five and forty of the ships of the enemy; and promised him, that they would defend this land, and he should feed and clothe them.

—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Chapter Thirty-Seven

April 1012

Windsor

E
mma stepped from the gloom of the king’s great hall into the fading light of late afternoon. The palace yard swarmed with priests, royal messengers, hearth guards, and kitchen slaves—all of them members of the king’s household who populated this Windsor manor. She paid little heed to them as she turned her steps toward her own apartments, for she was still sifting through the events that had taken place in the hall over the past few hours.

Inside her chamber, Wymarc and Father Martin rose quickly to greet her, and Wymarc hastened to slip the cloak from her shoulders.

“It is done,” Emma told them. “The king has accepted Thorkell into his service. There is to be a formal oath-taking at the midsummer assembly.”

So much had happened in such a very little time! Eight days ago she had stood in All Hallows Church raging at the Danish warlord over Ælfheah’s shattered body. Three days later she had mourned with all of London as the archbishop was laid in his tomb. Today she had arrived here to serve as interpreter between the Dane and the hastily assembled king’s council until an agreement had been hammered out between them.

Today’s meeting, though, had left her restless and uneasy, and her discomfort was compounded by the throbbing in her wounded hand.

Wymarc seemed to read her thoughts, for she appeared at her side with a cup of wine.

“It will ease the pain in your hand,” she said, “and help to restore you. The meeting could not have been an easy one. I imagine the king was not well pleased that Thorkell insisted that you be there to speak for him.”

“No,” she replied, “he was not pleased. Nor did he offer a warm welcome to his new ally, although I suppose that is only to be expected. What I did not anticipate, though, was that today’s council session would be so ugly.”

“There was opposition to the alliance, then,” Father Martin said.

“There was a great deal of opposition, yes,” Emma replied.

“And Lord Athelstan?” Wymarc asked. “Did he oppose it?” Emma knew that she was remembering Athelstan’s rage at All Hallows.

“He was not there,” she said. “None of the æthelings were there.” They had not been summoned, she had been told, and it was just as well. The meeting had been hostile enough without them. “The king himself said very little,” she continued. “It was Eadric who directed everything.”

Eadric, who had hastened to the king with his version of the events at All Hallows even before Ælfheah had been laid to rest. Eadric, who had embraced the Danes and their forty-five dragon ships like a lover.

“Today I saw a side of the ealdorman that I have never witnessed before,” she said. “He was no honey-tongued flatterer, using half-truths to persuade and cajole. He was a bully. He abused any man who spoke against him so savagely that he may as well have walked into the hall with a cudgel.”

In spite of that, many men had opposed him, for they were bitterly against the king’s alliance with the Danish warlord. She had been hard-pressed to translate all the rapid, angry exchanges for Thorkell’s benefit, even as she suspected that he understood far more of what was said than he was inclined to reveal.

“It is strange that the king would trust anyone else to handle the negotiations, even Eadric,” Father Martin observed. “Could it be that the injuries from his fall still plague him? He is not a young man.”

Emma considered it. She had seen the sinister gash across his brow, and she had been told that he needed a staff when he walked. But if he had been in pain he had hidden it well. She was familiar with Æthelred’s black moods, and it was not pain that she had discerned in his glowering silence, but a seething rage that he barely managed to keep in check.

She was about to speak of it when a servant appeared with a summons for her from the king.

“There must be some mistake,” Wymarc protested. “She has only just come from the hall. She’s not even had a chance to catch her breath.”

But the servant was adamant. The king was in his chamber, and the queen was to attend him there.

“It appears that Æthelred is about to break his silence,” she said as Wymarc helped her with her cloak.

Her friend’s brow was clouded with concern, for they both knew what this was about. Emma squeezed Wymarc’s hand to reassure her, but as she followed the king’s man, her heart was hammering.

She found Æthelred seated in his great chair, his bandaged foot stretched out in front of him. His only attendant, Hubert, was reading aloud from what appeared to be letters, but when she entered the chamber the steward’s high-pitched voice abruptly ceased.

As she approached the king he pinned her with a black look. Yes, she thought, this is going to be unpleasant.

As it was clearly a formal interview, she made an obeisance. He did not bid her rise, though, and she realized that he wanted her on her knees before him, like a penitent at the feet of an angry God. But she was no sinner come to ask forgiveness. She was his queen, and she had done nothing for which she needed to repent. She met his gaze and, despite the rage that she read there, she stood up, defiant, regarding him with practiced calm as she waited for him to speak.

“I see that the office you performed at the council today has swelled your sinful pride, lady,” he snarled. “How it must have amused you all these years to keep me ignorant of your excellent command of the Danish tongue so that now, at long last, you could make me look ten times a fool. If you think that I am pleased to discover that my queen can parley with my enemies so effectively, you are much mistaken.”

“My lord, until now I saw no advantage to you in revealing something that might raise suspicions that I could somehow be a Danish—”

“It is not your task to determine what is and is not to my advantage!”

“It was not to
my
advantage, then,” she said. A bitter memory assailed her, of the beating she had suffered in the early days of their marriage. She had upbraided him for ordering the slaughter of Danes settled in his kingdom, and he had left her battered and bleeding. But to dwell on that would make her angry, and anger would not serve her today, so she thrust the memory aside. “Now that Thorkell has given you his pledge,” she continued evenly, “my knowledge of his language can be of some service to you. Use it or not, my lord, as it pleases you.”