Читать книгу: «Shadow on the Crown»
Copyright
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Patricia Bracewell 2013
Map © Matt Brown 2013
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Cover photography © Richard Jenkins
Patricia Bracewell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780007481767
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007481750
Version: 2015-09-29
For Lloyd, Andrew, and Alan
The English Court, 1001–1005
Æthelred II, Anglo-Saxon king of England
Children of the English king, in birth order:
Athelstan
Ecbert
Edmund
Edrid
Edwig
Edward
Edgar
Edyth
Ælfgifu (Ælfa)
Wulfhilde (Wulfa)
Mathilda
Leading Nobles and Ecclesiastics
Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria
Ufegeat, his son
Wulfheah, his son (Wulf)
Elgiva, his daughter
Ælfric, ealdorman of Hampshire
Ælfgar, his son
Hilde, his granddaughter
Ælfheah, bishop of Winchester
Godwine, ealdorman of Lindsey
Leofwine, ealdorman of Western Mercia
Wulfstan, archbishop of Jorvik and bishop of Worcester
The Norman Court, 1001–1005
Richard II, duke of Normandy
Robert, archbishop of Rouen, brother of the duke
Judith, duchess of Normandy
Gunnora, dowager duchess of Normandy
Mathilde, sister of the duke
Emma, sister of the duke
The Danish Royals
Swein Forkbeard, king of Denmark
Harald, his son
Cnut, his son
A.D. 978 In this year was King Edward slain at even-tide, at Corfe-gate, on the fifteenth before the kalends of April, and he was buried at Werham without any royal honours. Nor was a worse deed than this done since men came to Britain … Æthelred was consecrated king. In this same year a bloody sky was often seen, most clearly at midnight, like fire in the form of misty beams. As dawn approached, it glided away.
– The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Author’s Note
Glossary
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
Eve of St Hilda’s Feast, November 1001
Near Saltford, Oxfordshire
She made a circuit of the clearing among the oaks, three times round and three times back, whispering spells of protection. There had been a portent in the night: a curtain of red light had shimmered and danced across the midnight sky like scarlet silk flung against the stars. Once, in the year before her birth, such a light had marked a royal death. Now it surely marked another, and although her magic could not banish death, she wove the spells to ward disaster from the realm.
When her task was done she fed the fire that burned in the centre of the ancient stone ring, and sitting down beside it, she waited for the one who came in search of prophecy. Before the sun had moved a finger’s width across the sky, the figure of a woman, cloaked and veiled, stood atop the rise, her hand upon the sentinel stone. Slowly she followed the path down through the trees and into the giants’ dance until she, too, took her place beside the fire, with silver in her palm.
‘I would know my lady’s fate,’ she said.
The silver went from hand to hand, and against her will, the seer glimpsed a heart, broken and barren, that loved with a dark and twisted love. But the silver had been given, and at her nod, a lock of hair was laid upon the flames. She searched for visions in the fire, and they tumbled and roiled until they hurt her eyes and scored her heart.
‘Your lady will be bound to a mighty lord,’ she said at last, ‘and her children will be kings.’
But because of the darkness in that heart across the fire, she said nothing of the other, of the Lady who would journey from afar, and of the two life threads so knotted and tangled that they could not be pulled asunder for a lifetime or for ever. She did not speak of the green land that would burn to ash in the days to come, nor of the innocents who would die, all for the price of a throne.
There would be portents in the sky again tonight, she knew, and high above her the stars would weep blood.
A.D. 1001 This year there was great commotion in England in consequence of an invasion by the Danes, who spread terror and devastation wheresoever they went, plundering and burning and desolating the country … They brought much booty with them to their ships, and thence they went into the Isle of Wight and nothing withstood them; nor any fleet by sea durst meet them; nor land force either. Then was it in every wise a heavy time, because they never ceased from their evil doings.
– The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
24th December 1001
Fécamp, Normandy
The winter of 1001 in northwestern Europe would have been recorded as the coldest and fiercest in seventy-five years, had anyone been keeping such records. In late December of that year, a storm tore out of the arctic north with terrible speed, blasting all of Europe but striking hardest at the two realms that faced each other across the Narrow Sea.
In Normandy, it began with a sudden drop in temperature and a freezing rain that coated the limbs of the precious fruit trees in the Seine’s fertile valley. A driving wind swept behind the rain, snapping brittle, frozen branches and scattering the promise of next summer’s harvest over wide, sleet-covered fields. For a full day and night the storm raged, and when the worst of it was spent, a light snow fell upon the wasted landscape as quietly as a benediction.
Watching from within their abbey walls, the monks of Jumièges and of Saint-Wandrille contemplated the loss of their apple crop, bowed their heads, and prayed for acceptance of God’s will. Peasant farmers, huddling together for warmth in frail, wooden cottages and fearing that the end of the world was come, prayed for deliverance. In the newly built ducal palace at Fécamp, where Duke Richard and his family had gathered to celebrate the season of Christ’s Mass, the duke’s fifteen-year-old sister, Emma, quietly pulled heavy boots over her thick woollen leggings and prayed that she would not waken her sleeping sister – to no avail.
‘What are you doing?’ Mathilde’s voice, raw and resonating with elder sister disapproval, emerged from a thick nest of bedclothes.
Emma continued to tug at a boot.
‘I am going down to the stables,’ she said.
She threw her sister a sidelong glance, trying to gauge her mood. Mathilde’s thin brown hair was pulled into a tight braid that gave her face a drawn, pinched look and added to the severity of the frown that she cast upon her younger sister.
‘You cannot go out in this storm,’ Mathilde protested. ‘You will catch your death.’ She started to say more but was racked by a sudden, cruel fit of coughing.
Emma went to her, snatched up the cup of watered wine from a table beside the bed, and held it for her sister to drink.
‘The snow has stopped,’ she said, as Mathilde sipped from the cup. ‘I will be fine.’
And unlike Mathilde, Emma thought to herself, she rarely took sick. Poor Mathilde. It was her misfortune to be the only small, dark-haired, sickly child in her mother’s brood of blond, vigorous giants – eight brothers and sisters, all told.
When her sister had drunk her fill, Emma snatched up a shawl from the foot of the bed and threw it over her thick, bright hair.
‘You are going to check on your wretched horse, I suppose.’ Mathilde’s voice was little more than a throaty growl. ‘I do not see why. God knows all of those creatures are tended with as much care as if they were children. It is mean of you to leave me here all alone.’
Emma, who loved the outdoors, who loved horses, dogs, and hunting, and who was happiest when she was riding along the Norman shore beneath high chalk cliffs, knew better than to try to explain her errand to Mathilde, who detested all of those things. Emma was sorry that Mathilde was ill and bored, but she would go mad if she could not breathe some fresh air and be alone for just a little while. The two of them had been pent up together within doors for three full days.
She lifted a heavy, fur-lined black cloak from its peg on the wall and threw it over her shoulders.
‘I will not be gone long,’ she said.
Mathilde, though, had thought of another objection.
‘What if the shipmen return while you are down there?’ she demanded. ‘You cannot trust those Danish brutes not to molest you if they come upon you alone and unprotected.’
Emma fastened her cloak beneath her chin, pondering this warning.
The Danish king, Swein Forkbeard, had petitioned her brother for winter harbour along Normandy’s northern coast, and Duke Richard, unwilling to offend the fierce warrior king, had granted it. To Richard’s fury, though, Forkbeard’s own ship and a dozen more had sailed into Fécamp’s harbour two days ago, forcing her brother out of courtesy to invite the king to join his family at the palace.
The king had accepted swiftly and had settled into her brother’s great hall with a score of his companions – rough, hard-faced warriors with only the thinnest gloss of civilization about them in spite of the wealth of gold that they flaunted on their wrists and arms. Mathilde, sick with the ague, had kept to her bed. Richard’s wife, Judith, only a few weeks out of childbed, had done the same. So it was Emma’s mother, Dowager Duchess Gunnora, with only her youngest daughter at her side, who had offered the king the welcome cup upon his arrival in the hall. The duchess, proud of her Danish heritage and her blood ties to the Danish throne, nevertheless had no illusions about Swein Forkbeard. She presented Emma to him with formal courtesy, then banished her daughter to the private quarters with all of the other young women.
Emma had not been sorry to go. Forkbeard had greeted her with cold, fiercely calculating eyes and a silent nod. His brooding gaze seemed to weigh her, as if she were not a woman but a commodity that could be bought and sold – a trinket that he might purchase in the market at Rouen. She had coloured beneath his fixed, brutal stare, and had wanted to take to her heels to escape it. But she had forced herself to walk slowly from the hall, chin held high, acutely aware of the shipmen all around her who raked her with merciless eyes.
These were men who made their living by murder and rape, men who had been baptized to Christ but whose souls still belonged to heathen gods, or so she had heard. Their grim, weather-scarred faces had haunted her dreams that night, and like her brothers, she wished that Forkbeard and his shipmen had never come to Fécamp. Today, though, the palace was emptied of Danes.
‘The shipmen have gone to the harbour to inspect their vessels for storm damage. They will likely not return until dark. I will be back long before that, and I promise I will keep you company then until we put out the candles.’ With that she slipped from the room before Mathilde could think of any other objections.
The courtyard was deserted as she made her way towards the stables, and the air was so frigid that it hurt to breathe. She followed the wall, grasping at its stones with one hand as she navigated the slippery mud and slush that had been churned up by men and horses. Emma’s snow-white mare, Ange, whickered a greeting, and Emma nuzzled the horse’s neck, warming her face against its thick winter coat. A moment later, though, she heard a commotion in the stable yard that worried her.
Could the men have returned so soon? Surely not all of them. They would have made a great deal more clamour.
Using Ange as a screen, Emma peered towards the wide doorway and saw Richard and Swein Forkbeard leading their mounts towards the stable. She had always thought her brother quite tall, but the Danish king bested him by half a head. They were the same age – both of them very old by her reckoning, for Richard had been born more than twenty years before Emma. But the king of the Danes, with his white hair and long white beard, worn forked and braided, looked far older. There was a sternness about Swein Forkbeard’s countenance, a hard-eyed ruthlessness that frightened her. He even frightened Richard, she was certain, although he masked it with courtesy.
She had no wish to greet the Danish king again, or to face her brother’s wrath at finding her here, so she shied behind her horse to wait for them to go away. They seemed in no hurry, in spite of the cold. Richard, in halting Danish, was relating the pedigree of the king’s mount and doing his best to explain what he looked for in breeding his horse stock.
She smiled at her brother’s clumsy efforts with Swein’s tongue. Like all of the Duchess Gunnora’s children, he had learned Danish at his mother’s knee. And like most of his siblings, he had abandoned it at an early age. Emma had been the only one to embrace it, and she could speak as fluently in Danish as she could in Frankish or Breton or Latin. She had even learned some of the English used by prelates who sometimes visited her brother from across the Narrow Sea.
Neither Richard nor her brother Robert, the archbishop, knew of Emma’s gift of tongues, as her mother called it. Gunnora had advised Emma to keep this remarkable skill a secret. Use it to listen, she had said, rather than to speak. You will be surprised at what you will learn.
Emma listened now and realized, with a start, that the conversation between her brother and the Danish king had moved from the breeding of horses to the breeding of children.
‘A marriage alliance would be in both our interests,’ Swein Forkbeard said. ‘I have two sons who need wives. One of your sisters might do, and you would gain much from such a marriage, I promise you. Of course, were you to reject it, you could lose a great deal.’ There was silence for a moment, and then the king said, his voice speculative, taunting, ‘How much, I wonder, are you prepared to lose?’
Emma covered her mouth with her hand, shocked by the clear threat in Forkbeard’s words. What would he do? Send shipmen to ravage Normandy unless Richard sent one of his sisters to Denmark to wed one of Forkbeard’s sons?
She held her breath, waiting for Richard’s reply.
‘My sisters are overly young to wed.’ Her brother’s fumbled words were so casual that Emma wondered if he had understood all that the Danish king had said.
‘Age matters little,’ Forkbeard replied, his tone amiable now. ‘My youngest son has seen only ten winters, but like his elder brother, he is already a skilled shipman and warrior. As for your sisters,’ he paused, and Emma twisted her fingers nervously in Ange’s mane as she waited for him to go on, ‘you must not be too tender in your care of them. The Lady Emma seems ripe for bedding. You would do well to breed her now, for a good price, or you might find that you have left it too late.’
Emma felt the blood rise to her face, humiliation and anger warring with shock and fear. Surely Richard would not agree to sell her to Denmark! It was a harsh, brutal place, barely Christian. Her family could trace their bloodline back to the northern lands, but that was in the past. Surely it was not part of their future. Denmark was a land of fierce men ruled by a ruthless king. Swein Forkbeard had not inherited his crown but had won it in a battle to the death waged against his own father. Richard could not allow her to marry into a family such as that!
Her blood pounded in her ears, and she had to strain to hear her brother’s response to Forkbeard’s words.
‘Your proposal does my family great honour,’ Richard said. ‘You will understand, of course,’ he went on, his voice smoothly persuasive in spite of his broken Danish, ‘that a betrothal is too delicate a matter to be settled quickly. There are many things to consider and to weigh, and as you know, I have two sisters. You have yet to meet the elder, who, by tradition, should naturally be the first to wed.’
She did not hear the Danish king’s reply, for the men’s voices faded, replaced by the clink of bridles as grooms led the horses to their stalls. Emma remained rooted to the spot where she stood, her face buried in Ange’s neck, her thoughts in turmoil over what she had heard.
Swein Forkbeard’s proposal must carry great weight with her brother. Richard was a realist. He would consider the sacrifice of a younger sister a small price to pay for Norman peace with Denmark. It would be terrible for the bride, though – banished to a hostile, distant land. Mathilde would hate it, even as Emma would. She felt her throat constrict at the very thought of it.
No, her brother could not do such a thing to either of his sisters. He would not send them so far away. He had wed their elder sisters to great lords in Brittany and Frankia, securing his borders and adding considerably to his treasure. Surely he would use Mathilde and herself in a similar manner, for Normandy’s border was long and Richard had need of allies.
But Richard was ambitious. A royal marriage, even to a son of the barbarous Swein Forkbeard, would enhance her brother’s prestige throughout Europe. Forkbeard may be a Viking warlord rather than a godly Christian king, but all of Europe feared him, and that made him a valuable ally. She could easily imagine Richard succumbing to that argument, and she feared what he might be plotting with the Danish king in his private chamber.
She whispered a few endearments into Ange’s ear, then, afraid that Forkbeard’s men might arrive hard upon his heels, she hurried back towards the palace. She would say nothing of what she had heard to Mathilde. Their mother, surely, would have some say in the matter, yet Emma was frightened for her elder sister.
A slender needle of anxiety began to prick her insides. She did not trust Richard.
25th December 1001
Rochester, Kent
In England that December the fierce snowstorm blinded and buried countless travellers caught on the high chalk downs of Wessex, even within a few short steps of shelter. Near Durham in Northumbria the snow piled so high on the thatched roof of Lord Thorkeld’s great hall that it collapsed of its own weight, burying the lord and his family and retainers, twenty folk in all. On the Isle of Wight a storm surge swept an entire village into the sea. In Devon the once prosperous towns of Pin-hoo and Clyst, their houses, workshops, and storerooms razed to the ground during the previous summer’s Danish raids, were buried beneath fifteen feet of snow, as if they had never existed.
In the king’s hall at Rochester, Æthelred II of England and his councillors sat at table for the winter feast swathed in furs against the bitter cold. Their mood would have been dour even had the weather been more moderate. They drank their Christmas ale with grim determination rather than pleasure, their company unleavened by the presence of any women. The king’s mother, a force at court for nearly twenty-five years, had gone to God some five weeks before, in November, on the Feast of St Hilda. The king’s lady wife, brought to childbed on Christmas Eve for the eleventh and final time, had breathed her last on Christmas morning. Her cold body lay beneath the vaulted wooden ceiling of the king’s chapel, mourned by her attendants. The child, born too soon and perhaps sensing his loss, found no comfort in the arms of his wet nurse. Whenever the roaring of the wind and the desultory muttering of men momentarily abated, his feeble cry wafted through the hall like the wail of a soul wandering between heaven and earth. The women tending the babe shook their heads, lips pursed. The child was not long for this world, they deemed, for he would not suck.
The men who kept company with the king at the high table gave little thought to the infant and his prospects, for Æthelred had sons a-plenty, several of them fully grown. What he lacked now was a wife, and they were determined to find him one, whether he would or no. They disagreed, however, on where to look for her.
King Æthelred, a man haunted by his past and troubled about his future, sat among them, his tall frame hunched over his silver plate and his right hand clenching a gilded drinking horn. Twenty-three years on the throne had seared creases into his face that were unusual for a man who had not yet seen forty winters. Telltale streaks of grey in his tawny hair testified to the hardship of rule, and the bent angle of his head beneath the thick, gold crown suggested that it was more burden than ornament.
The king, regarding his advisers with watery blue eyes, was well aware of the line of division among them with regard to his marital prospects. The men with lands in the north, led by Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria, would urge him to wed Ælfhelm’s daughter Elgiva – a beautiful witch of a girl as ambitious, he suspected, as her father. A marriage there would strengthen the bond between the king and the northern lords, whose allegiances to Ælfhelm and to each other were somewhat stronger, Æthelred knew, than their fealty to him.
The men with lands in the south would urge him to look beyond the Narrow Sea to Normandy for a bride. Wed the duke’s sister, they would tell him, and persuade her brother to side with Æthelred against the Danes who pillaged English towns and abbeys. Æthelred suspected that it might take a great deal of persuading. The Vikings paid Duke Richard well to harbour their ships on his coast and to trade their spoils in his great market in Rouen. If Æthelred should marry one of the duke’s sisters – and if he sealed the alliance with enough gold – Richard might be willing to bar the Danes from his ports, and so stop the Viking rape of English coasts.
Then again, Æthelred knew, he might not.
The hubbub in the hall, which had been muffled while the men filled their bellies, rose again as the meal came to a close and the drinking began in earnest. Æthelred motioned to his cupbearer to refill his drinking horn, then eased himself back in his chair and glowered at the men around him from hooded eyes, focusing at last on Ælfhelm of Northumbria. The ealdorman had risen from his bench and stood now in earnest consultation with a knot of nobles and clergy. His face was as craggy as a weathered scarp and just as difficult to read. Æthelred had never been able to decipher the subtle workings of the mind behind that stonelike visage, but he would wager half of Wessex that tonight Ælfhelm was garnering support for his daughter’s marriage to the crown.
And he would find it, certainly. It was customary for England’s king to choose his bride from one of the noble families of the realm. Æthelred’s wife and his mother both had been daughters of northern lords. Their fathers, though, would have been more pliable than Lord Ælfhelm. It seemed to the king that Ælfhelm was not mortal, but carved from granite and stone. Æthelred neither liked nor trusted the man, although he was careful to hide this. And while the king understood that it was wise to bind his enemies close, it seemed to him that the marriage bed might be too close for comfort. Ælfhelm had sons as well as a daughter, sons who, like their father, hungered for the power that came with a royal marriage. That power, combined with the family’s wealth and northern allegiances, could be more trouble than any girl was worth.
As for the girl herself, the last time the king had seen Elgiva she had been all of thirteen summers old. She had looked far older though, her body full and womanly, her mouth as red and voluptuous as ripe fruit. She was a woman born for bedding, and had she been older he might have forgotten himself and obliged her. But her youth had stopped him. That and her obvious awareness of the power she had over men, which had chilled his ardour somewhat. Now, at sixteen, wealthy and beautiful, with powerful kin and with family lands that rivalled his own, if he did not marry her himself he should have to watch her carefully. Whatever man she did marry must have no pretensions to the throne, or Æthelred might find his very crown at risk.
The king took another long pull at his cup. As for the unmarried sisters of Richard of Normandy, there were two of them, and that was all he knew about them. He knew something of Richard, though – a pretentious upstart sprung from Danish raiders who had decimated the northern territories of the Frankish kingdom, and then settled there to breed horses and brats. Richard’s pedigree was nothing like Æthelred’s noble ancestry, and although Richard himself was a Christian and styled himself ‘duke’, he was little more than a Danish pirate. In his youth he had even gone a-viking, raiding the Irish coast for gold and slaves, and he had ever welcomed the dragon ships to his harbours. Even now, rumour had it, there were Danish longships, their holds filled with English plunder, sheltering along Normandy’s coast. So to wed one of Richard’s sisters and plant a babe in her belly might be wise. It might give the Norman duke a more personal interest in the security of England’s shores.
Æthelred frowned. To take a Norman bride would offend his northern lords and bind them more strongly to each other – and against him. To wed Ælfhelm’s daughter instead of the Norman girl would be to throw away perhaps his only opportunity to quell the Viking threat to his kingdom. There was peril whichever way he turned, north or south. Taking any wife at all would be a devil’s bargain, and if it were up to him, he would not do it. He was the king. He wanted no woman in his hall.
He drank again, deeply, from the gold-rimmed horn, but the sweet mead that should have sent fire racing through his blood did not warm him. Instead, a chill, cold as the mouth of a grave, snaked along his arms and grazed an icy finger up his spine. A heaviness oppressed him, an inescapable black dread, and he whispered a curse against the sending that he knew was come upon him and that he could not escape. His vision blurred to haze, the sounds of feasting stilled, and from every dark corner, shadows streamed towards him until they reached the dais and formed a pulsing darkness before him. From its murky heart, his dead brother’s face, eyes glowing and malignant, stared into his.
He tried to pray, to curse, but he could make no sound except the formless, silent howl that was the voice of nightmare. The drinking horn slipped from his hand, yet he did not hear it fall. He heard only a low keening, like the sound of the wind hurtling against white cliffs above a pounding sea. It grew until it filled his brain, and again he tried to cry out, clutching his head in his hands as other hands grasped him, and the black phantom before him rippled and then faded at last.
Alarmed voices rang in his ears, and someone held a cup to his mouth, urging him to drink, but he dashed the cup away and shook off the hands that would tend him. Desperate to distract them, he called for music and was rewarded by the strum of the harp and the chanting of his scop.
His men scattered back to their places, but as Æthelred cast a furtive glance around the room, the eyes that met his were guarded and troubled. What did they think they had seen? A king besotted and drowned in his cups? A man overcome with grief at the death of his wife?
Better that than a king haunted by his brother’s ghost.
Three times now the thing that had been his brother had appeared thus before him, staring with glistening eyes. He had seen it first a month ago, hovering like some monstrous bird above his mother as she lay dying. Three days later, when he followed the dowager queen’s body to its resting place at Wherwell Abbey, he had glimpsed Edward’s face glaring at him, a darker shade among the chapel shadows. And tonight it had come again to torment him. Was it to be his wyrd, his fate, to be visited for ever by his dead brother now that he alone remained alive of those who had seen Edward die?
What was it that drew the dead forth to walk among the living? And what would it take to send the thing back into its grave?
His thoughts flew to his dead wife, Ælfgifu, lying cold and still upon her bier. Tomorrow he would take her body by ship to its resting place at Minster Abbey. Would the spectre of his brother be waiting there for him, as it had waited at Wherwell? He shuddered at the thought of it. Tonight he would pray for redemption, beseech forgiveness and mercy from God for the death of his brother. He would even plead for the repose of his mother’s soul, although he had no doubt that she was tasting the torments of hell.
25th December 1001
Aldeborne Manor, Northamptonshire
Elgiva of Northampton – great-granddaughter of Wulfsige the Black, granddaughter of the Lady Wulfrun of Tamworth, and only daughter of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria – stood at her chamber window and saw with satisfaction that a heavy snow was once more piling up against her father’s manor walls. The massive drifts would keep the men indoors for several days, and that suited her purpose exactly.
She sat down upon a stool and gestured to a servant to latch the wooden shutter against the cold. Pulling her thick woollen shawl closer about her, she tried to control her impatience as her old nurse stood behind her and used deft fingers to tame her mass of dark curls. She must look her best at tonight’s Yule feast. There were royal visitors awaiting her in the hall, and if events played out as she intended, she would soon be sharing her bed with the eldest son of the king. After that it would be a simple enough matter for her father to negotiate whatever details were necessary to arrange a royal marriage.
She picked up a silver mirror and contemplated the perfect arch of her dark brows, then angled the disk to reflect Groa’s aged face beneath her grey linen headrail. That face was as familiar to Elgiva as her own, yet there were secrets behind the shadowy grey eyes that she had never been able to fathom.
‘Tell me again,’ she said, ‘about the prophecy.’
Groa’s normally brooding expression lit up with a rare, knowing smile.
‘You are destined for queenship, my lady,’ she said. ‘Your children will be kings. You have but to reach out your hand and grasp what you desire.’
Elgiva pursed her lips, studying their fullness in the mirror.
‘I intend to,’ she said. ‘I intend to make Athelstan desire me tonight.’ She wanted him to hunger for her body in exactly the way the priests railed against in their sermons.
‘How can he not?’ Groa asked. ‘You are as beautiful as you are wealthy. Even the king desired you, and you were but a child then.’
Elgiva smiled, relishing the memory of her meeting with the king at Yuletide three years before. She had bribed a servant to help her escape from an evening of prayer in Lady Ælfgifu’s chamber, and in the dark passage outside she had unwittingly stumbled into the king. Æthelred had saved her from a fall by pulling her hard up against him, holding her there for far longer than necessary while he inquired if she was hurt. She had answered him with her most beguiling smile, had eagerly pressed her body against his as he held her close. Then, with a skill she could not help but admire, he had slipped a hand through the neckline of her cyrtel to fondle her breast. She had let him do it, of course, because he was the king, and because she had been too astonished to protest. Besides, she had liked it. Who would have guessed that a man so old could have such eloquent, liquid hands?
She had dared to hope that he would lead her to his chamber, but it was at that interesting moment that one of his attendants had come to drag him to some meeting or other, and so her brief little tryst with Æthelred had ended.
Angling the mirror a little lower she studied her full breasts and the necklace of thick gold that had been a gift from her brother Wulf. It had been Wulf who had told her father about her little interlude with the king. Her father, who had ever been one to strike first and ask questions later, had cuffed her so hard that her mouth and nose had bled. He would have hit her again had Groa not come between them, fingering the pagan amulet she wore at her throat and threatening him with a curse. That had stayed her father’s hand, for he was wary of Groa and her curses and potions. Still, her father had hurled filthy words at Elgiva, calling her a cunt and a whore, and he had sent her from court that very day. She still hated him for that, but she had learned a lesson. She was very careful now about what secrets she confided to her favourite brother.
‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that I did not give my maidenhead to the king. It would have been a waste.’
‘As he already has a wife,’ Groa replied, her face in the mirror gone all grim again, ‘it would have done you little good, to be sure.’
Well, it might have got her more lands and more money if she had become the king’s leman, but she was already one of the wealthiest women in the realm, and one of the few who owned her estates outright. Still, it would not have made her queen, and that was what she truly wanted. Groa had said she would be the mother of kings, after all, so it must mean that she was meant to wed Athelstan, who would surely take the throne when his father died.
And for the next two weeks, Athelstan and two of his brothers would be under this roof for the Yule feast. It was perfect.
Even better, her father was not here, although he had nearly ruined everything by insisting that she go south with him to attend the king’s Yule. He would have had her spend Christmas Day on her knees mouthing prayers with the king’s wife and her ladies. She had gulled him out of that, though, and she smiled to herself as she remembered how her father’s brow had darkened when she casually said that she hoped to become much better acquainted with the king during her time at court. He had raised a threatening hand, and she had feared that he might strike her, but Groa had whisked her out of the chamber, scolding like mad, and that had saved her. After that nothing more had been said about taking her south, and with her father and elder brother now gone, she could do as she pleased. Wulf certainly would not stop her.
‘I think that Lord Athelstan has a look of the king about him,’ she observed. They had the same golden hair and square, pleasing face.
Groa snorted. ‘When I saw him in the yard this morning he had the look of a man who spends more time grooming his horse than he does himself.’
‘I did not ask for your opinion,’ Elgiva snapped. ‘And you are not being fair. Any man looks unkempt when he has been riding.’ Besides, there was an air about Athelstan, an unconscious swagger that she found infinitely appealing. At sixteen years old he was the heir to the throne of all England, and no one knew it better than he did.
She had watched from the hall steps as he rode through the gate, and he had lifted his eyes to hers and snared her in an unsettling blue gaze. She had seen it then, that awareness of just exactly who and what he was. He had worn it like a mantle, and from that instant she had wanted to wrap herself in it.
One day Athelstan would be the most powerful man in the realm, and her destiny, she was certain, must be bound to his. For two weeks he would be her guest – time enough, surely, to make him desire her, and to convince him that he must have her for his wife.
31st December 1001
Aldeborne Manor, Northamptonshire
It was the seventh night of Christmas feasting, and Athelstan stood with his brothers amid a throng of revellers near the central fire of the great hall at Aldeborne. The bad weather had finally broken, and it appeared that every estate holder in the hundred of Northampton had ventured out of doors to join Lord Wulfheah and his sister Elgiva at table. The timbered hall, its carved rafters garlanded with greens, was redolent with succulent aromas, and the haunches of roasting meat above the coals made his mouth water. The high table at the top of the hall had been laid, as it had been every night since he’d arrived, with a snowy cloth, silver plates, and fat candles. Tonight numerous extra tables had been set up in the hall as well, and the noise from the crush of guests was almost deafening.
As Athelstan turned to say something to his brothers, the hall quieted, and he saw that Elgiva and Wulf had appeared on the dais to begin the business of formally greeting their guests. They made a striking couple. They were both black-haired and handsome, although Elgiva’s petite figure and small features gave her an elfin grace that was missing from her brother’s taller, warrior’s frame. They were both clad in deep scarlet, and Elgiva’s shimmering gown clung to her in a way that was guaranteed to make every man in the room uncomfortable inside his breecs. Her hair was dressed in loose, wanton curls that framed her face and cascaded down her back, and when her voluptuous lips curved into a beguiling smile, a man would have to be made of stone not to smile back.
He ought to know. She had been favouring him with that smile – and somewhat more – from the moment he’d ridden through Aldeborne’s gate a week ago. On Christmas night she had welcomed him with the ale bowl that was traditional and a molten kiss that was anything but. It had surprised the hell out of him, but he had not been fool enough to take it seriously. Not at first. She had placed him by her side at the table, though, and the casual grazing of knee and shoulder and hand all through the long meal had nearly driven him mad with a desire that food would not satisfy. By then he had caught on to her little game, and although he’d been playing it for seven nights now, it had lost none of its allure. She aroused him still, and he would find relief again tonight with the pretty blonde he had plucked from the kitchens – a girl who expected no reward beyond a few silver coins.
And that was the difficulty with Elgiva, he thought, watching her as she made her way through the hall with the brimming ale cup. Bedding her would cost him far more than a little silver. If he got her with child – even without a Christian marriage or a handfasting – it would have political repercussions that would further shift the weight of power in England to the northern lords.
Elgiva’s brother Wulf had to know that. He was five years older than she was, and he had a place on the king’s council. Since he was making no effort to curb his sister’s little game, he must approve. Did her father know of it? Had he even put her up to it? The ealdorman was not here and so could claim innocence if any spark flared between Elgiva and one of the æthelings. The blame – and the king’s wrath – would all fall on him.
He had not taken his eyes from Elgiva, and his brother Ecbert leaned towards him and whispered, ‘The hell with it. Why don’t you just bed her and put yourself out of your misery?’
Athelstan threw him a dark look. ‘The lady comes with far too much baggage, and you know it,’ he muttered. ‘Do not let me drink more than a single cup of mead tonight, or I might lose my senses and take what she’s offering. Why don’t you bed her, Ecbert, if she is to your taste?’
Ecbert snorted. ‘She would not have me on a platter,’ he said, ‘more’s the pity.’
‘It is the eldest ætheling that she wants,’ Edmund said, ‘and do not flatter yourself that your good looks have anything to do with it.’
Edmund had the right of it. Athelstan was only too aware of the mantle of responsibility that he bore as the eldest son of the king. When he wed, and that would likely not happen while his father lived, it would be for political expediency, not personal inclination. To form any kind of attachment with a girl of noble birth would be to hand the girl and her family a weapon to use against the king. He could bed any girl in the kingdom, as long as she was not crown-worthy.
Elgiva, who at that moment stepped in front of him to offer him the ale cup, was forbidden fruit. Her dark eyes held his as he drank, but for once her face was grave, and she was careful not to touch his fingers with her own.
Was this another move in the game, or had she learned about his trysts with the kitchen wench? He hoped the girl would not be punished. He would have to make sure that she was well compensated, just in case.
Whatever was behind this sudden coolness, he must play his part. He returned Elgiva’s gaze with a grave bow and said, ‘Your beauty, lady, is a gift to us all.’
Elgiva, gazing into Athelstan’s guarded blue eyes, accepted his compliment with a curt nod. She knew he desired her. She could see it in his glance, could feel it in her fingertips whenever she chanced to touch him.
But he would rather bed a kitchen wench than the Lady of Northampton. Wulf had told her that, sneering that Athelstan obviously preferred a woman with experience in bed play. I can give you some of that, sweetheart, he had whispered, kissing her forehead and laughing when she stalked away from him.
Wulf stood beside her now, his hand at her waist, distracting her with a light caress. She slipped away from him, ignored Athelstan, and smiled at Ecbert, who she had determined would sit beside her at the feast tonight. Let the king’s eldest son gnaw on the knowledge that he was not the only ætheling in her hall.
At the table, the younger brother seemed gratified by her sudden favour, and he responded by regaling her with a series of ribald tales that he, at least, seemed to find enormously entertaining. He reminded her of nothing so much as a boisterous puppy, gaunt and clumsy, with none of the grace of his brothers. Even Edmund, the youngest of the three and built like a tree stump, had more to recommend him than the lanky Ecbert, who was all arms and legs and, she thought, very little brain. His horselike face and braying laugh added nothing to his charm. It was a pity that he was too young to grow a beard, for she judged that it would improve his looks considerably. There would be less of him to see.
Still, he seemed open enough and completely guileless. Perhaps she could get him to reveal something about Athelstan that would be the key to bewitching him.
She signalled to a serving girl to fill Ecbert’s cup, which he had already emptied three times, and she noticed that a servant had slipped behind the table to deliver a wax tablet each to Wulf and to Athelstan. She recognized her father’s seal on the tablet that Wulf opened, and the question she had been about to pose to Ecbert died unspoken on her lips. She turned to her brother instead.
‘What does my father say?’ she asked him. To have arrived tonight the messages must have been sent from Rochester at the very first moment that the weather allowed. Surely they contained news of some import.
Wulf did not answer her but glanced at Athelstan, who was reading his own missive.
‘It is heavy news,’ her brother said, his face grave. ‘I am sorry, my lord.’
Elgiva held her breath. It must be a death. Nothing else would make her brother look with such concern towards the ætheling. Was it the king? Dear God, if he were dead, then the witan would surely offer Athelstan the throne. The implications of that for her own future could be enormous. The new king would need a wife, and her father would make sure that Athelstan looked to Northampton for his bride. She might be a queen before Eastertide.
But Athelstan had set the tablet down in front of him, and now he rose and faced the throng in the hall. His expression was solemn, and his movement drew all eyes towards him. A hush fell over the revellers as they waited to hear what he would say.
‘I am bid by my father the king,’ he said, his voice echoing through the silent hall, ‘to announce that on Christmas morning my mother, the Lady Ælfgifu, died after giving birth to a son. The babe, alas, followed his mother in death. I ask that all present here tonight pray for both their souls.’ He turned to Elgiva and Wulf. ‘I would speak with my brothers alone. Please excuse us.’
Elgiva watched the three brothers make their way from the table. Their mother’s death was a sorrow to them, she supposed, but her passing was of little significance to anyone else. The king’s wife had borne him numerous children, but as his consort and not his queen, she had done little else. Her death would have no effect on the kingdom or on Elgiva’s world.
She turned to her brother, who was looking thoughtfully at the tablet in his hand.
‘What does my father say?’ she asked again. ‘I suppose that the king’s sons will leave for Rochester tomorrow.’ This news must put an end to the feasting, in any case.
‘They do not go south,’ Wulf replied. ‘There is no reason to do so, for their mother is already in her grave. My father writes that the æthelings are to take charge of our house troops and go to the king’s manor at Saltford. He will meet them there, but he does not say when. Not immediately, I think.’ He tapped a finger against the tablet, then he looked speculatively at Elgiva. ‘The king, it seems, will take another wife, and very soon. I am ordered to stay here with you, in case you are summoned to court. It appears, my dear sister, that my father entertains the hope that you will be Æthelred’s bride.’
Elgiva gaped at her brother, while her mind played with new possibilities. To be wed to the father and not the son was not the destiny that she had been anticipating. Would it suit her? Well, it would certainly put her in a position of power much sooner than she had looked for it. Yet it was not an honour that she was certain she would like, and it was not exactly the power that she had hoped for.
‘To what end would the king marry?’ she asked Wulf. ‘Æthelred is an old man with seven sons. What need has he of a bride who would give him yet more sons?’
‘He is not so old,’ her brother said. ‘And, as you have good reason to know, he enjoys his earthly pleasures. Better to marry than to burn, the Scriptures say.’
She frowned. She wanted to wed a king, and yet …
‘His first wife was never crowned queen,’ she protested. ‘What good to wed a king and not get a crown?’
Wulf’s hand snaked behind her as if he would caress her, but instead she felt his fingers grasp her neck in a painful, vice-like grip that she could neither escape nor shake off without making a scene.
‘Do you never think beyond your own petty concerns, my dear sister?’ he hissed into her ear. ‘Do not delude yourself into thinking that this alliance would be for your benefit. Its sole purpose would be to strengthen my father’s influence with the king, not cater to your monumental vanity. You will do whatever you are bid to do, wed whomever you are bid to wed, and let your father and brothers handle whatever details are to be negotiated.’
He let her go, and she rubbed her neck surreptitiously, smiling up at him for the benefit of anyone in the hall who may have noticed their little interaction.
‘May I ask, then, if my father is negotiating my betrothal? Am I to be allowed to make preparations for my nuptials?’ She would need new gowns, jewels, more attendants, and her own furnishings for the lady’s chambers at the Winchester palace. How much time did she have?
‘It is somewhat more complicated than that,’ Wulf replied.
She did not like the sound of that.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You are not the only maid that the king is considering.’
Now he leered at her, and she realized that he was toying with her, forcing her to tease the news out of him bit by bit, revelling in the power he held over her.
‘You are lying,’ she said, refusing to be baited any more. ‘There can be no one else, for I am the obvious choice.’ And now that she had grown somewhat used to the idea, the prospect of wedding Æthelred, the king with the liquid hands, was suddenly extremely appealing.
‘Are you so confident, my dear?’ Wulf asked, his dark eyes dancing with amusement. ‘I would not be so, if I were you. My father does not provide any names, but he states quite clearly that other possible brides exist. Their advantages are even now under consideration by the king.’ He leaned towards her to whisper in her ear. ‘If you had gone to Rochester you might have been able to use your many charms to sway Æthelred in your favour. But, alas, you stayed here. Poor Elgiva. It looks as though you should have accompanied our father to the Christmas court after all.’ He nipped her ear and then got to his feet. Moments later he had joined a group of guests below the dais.
Elgiva, following him with her eyes, still wondered if he had told her the truth. If he had, and if the king chose to look elsewhere for a bride, then her decision to remain here for the Yule feast was, quite possibly, the worst mistake she had ever made in her life.
January 1002
Fécamp, Normandy
The cold, hard frosts of early January clung tightly to the lands that bordered the Narrow Sea, and for many days after the turn of the year, the tall masts of the Danish longships bristled in Fécamp’s harbour. When the ships set sail at last, following the whale road back to their homeland, folk in the town breathed a collective sigh of relief, and in the ducal palace life settled into its winter routine.
The women of the duke’s household spent their daylight hours together in the chamber of Richard’s young wife, Judith, attending to their needlework. The lighter-weight summer tunics, mantles, fine linen shifts, even chausses and braies that belonged to members of the ducal family, had been drawn from their coffers, inspected carefully for rents and tears, and sorted into piles for repair.
Emma, who had some skill with the harp, played softly for the women who were seated in a companionable circle around the brazier. As she plucked the strings her glance drifted to where Mathilde had taken advantage of a shaft of daylight filtering through the high, horn-covered window. She had recovered from the ague that had troubled her over the last weeks, and now her face, although still thin, had regained some colour and vibrancy. She was bent over an embroidery frame, where she worked a grail in pure gold thread upon a cope of white silk. It was to be a gift for their brother, Archbishop Robert, and Mathilde’s lips curved with satisfaction as the beautiful thing came to life beneath her fingers.
Judith, pacing the chamber with her six-week-old son on her shoulder, paused to inspect Mathilde’s handiwork.
‘It is a magnificent and generous gift, Mathilde,’ she pronounced in a tone of grudging approval. ‘I hope that when it is completed you will turn your skill towards something more practical. You will require some fine new gowns, I think, when we return to Rouen.’
Emma, watching her sister, saw her mouth purse. They both found it irksome to be ordered about by their brother’s wife, however well-intentioned her directives might be. Twenty years old, with nut-brown hair and a pleasingly rounded figure, Judith of Brittany’s benign appearance belied her strident personality. She had shouldered the role of duchess of Normandy with a vigour that irritated even the Dowager Duchess Gunnora. Months of internecine skirmishes between the duke’s wife and his mother had threatened to turn into all-out war, until finally the two women had managed to forge a workable truce. Gunnora continued to advise her son on matters of state, and Judith ruled his household. Emma and her sister had found the terms of the unspoken treaty not especially to their liking, but they had not been consulted.
‘Are the gowns that I already own not fine enough for my attendance at your court in Rouen, my lady?’ Mathilde’s voice rang high and sharp, with an unmistakably brittle edge that made Emma wince.
‘It was not meant to be a criticism, Mathilde,’ Judith snapped, shifting her child from one shoulder to the other, ‘but it is time to think about preparing for your betrothal and marriage. Now that Richard has a son I am certain that he will wish to provide for you and for Emma in the same way that he did for your elder sisters. You, Mathilde, will surely be the next to wed, and it may be sooner than you think.’
Startled by Judith’s remark, Emma struck a false note, then set the harp aside. Her mind fastened on Judith’s words, and now she recalled the conversation she’d overheard between her brother and Swein Forkbeard. Had Richard, after all, promised his sister to the son of the Danish king? Or had that conversation with Forkbeard merely spurred Richard to bend his thoughts towards his youngest sisters’ marriage prospects?
‘Is my brother contemplating an alliance for my sister?’ she asked, keeping her tone light. ‘Pray, Judith, if you know something, do not keep us in suspense.’
‘Your brother,’ Judith said, ‘has Mathilde’s welfare, and yours, Emma, always at heart. Whatever provisions he makes for you will be explained to you at the appropriate time. I only bring this up now because, as you are both of an age to marry, you must comport yourselves differently than you have in the past. In particular, you, Emma, will not, under any circumstances, accompany Richard on his progress this summer. Best you put it out of your mind completely.’
Emma stared at Judith in shock. ‘But I have always made that journey!’ she protested. From the time she was a little girl and, even she had to admit it, her father’s spoiled pet, she had been allowed to accompany the duke and her brothers on the summer progress to the ducal forts, abbeys, and manors that lay scattered across Normandy. Emma had been the only one of the sisters to make the annual trek, and she had revelled in the relative freedom of those excursions. It was true that she was accompanied by a small phalanx of personal attendants, who never left her side, but the rhythm of that itinerant existence provided a welcome contrast to the sequestered life inside the castle walls.
‘You are a child no longer,’ Judith said. ‘I have advised Richard that your place must be here, with the women of the court, and he has agreed. We will speak of it no more.’
Emma bit her lip. Beside her, Margot, the healer and midwife who had assisted Emma into the world and who had accompanied her on those summer-long journeys, patted her hand in commiseration. Heavyhearted with disappointment, Emma began to sort through a pile of her gowns, searching for signs of wear. She would appeal to her mother about this, although she suspected it would do her little good.
Judith, meanwhile, had handed her babe to a wet nurse and seated herself among the women again. They worked in less than amiable silence for some time, until it was broken by the sound of commotion from the castle yard below. Clearly some visitor of importance had approached the gate and was requesting audience with the duke. The calls of the gatekeeper and the door warden were too muffled, though, for anyone in the chamber to make out what was said.
Judith gave a quick nod to Dari, an Irish slave who had accompanied her from Brittany. Tiny, soft-footed, and clever, Dari made an excellent little spy. She brought the ladies word of activities occurring in the duke’s hall long before any messages were conveyed along more formal lines. Judith rewarded Dari with ribbons, trinkets, and even silver pennies, depending on the import of the information that she carried, saying that it was well worth it in order to receive news almost as soon as it was heard in the kitchens.
Emma, still brooding over the loss of her summer’s adventure, took up a cyrtel of her own and, inspecting it, found a rip at the hem. It was one of the gowns she wore when riding, very full and loose. She placed it on the pile to be mended, then looked up to see that Dari had returned, wild with excitement.
‘The messenger is English, my lady,’ Dari said breathlessly. ‘A company of men from across the Narrow Sea has landed at the harbour and will be with us soon. There is an archbishop among them, and an ealdorman. What is an ealdorman?’ She spoke the unfamiliar word with a wrinkled nose.
‘It is an English title of some kind,’ Judith said. ‘Something like a duke, I believe, only not as powerful as Richard. An archbishop, though …’
There was no need for her to complete the sentence. All the women understood the importance of an archbishop, who represented both temporal and spiritual power. Appointed to their sees by the reigning monarch of the land, they controlled enormous wealth, administered large estates, and maintained a retinue of fighting men. Emma’s brother Robert, archbishop of Rouen, was second only to his brother, the duke, in terms of prestige and power. The arrival of an English archbishop in Normandy meant that some matter of great import was at hand.
‘Go down to the kitchens, girl,’ Judith said to Dari, ‘and learn whatever you can. Hurry now!’
Dari slipped away, and the women returned to their work, although Emma guessed that each of them was as distracted by the arrival of the English as she was.
‘Will he be offering a treaty, do you think?’ she asked. The presence of an archbishop seemed to imply that. In her father’s time the pope himself had brokered a treaty between England and Normandy regarding the trading of stolen English goods in Norman ports. She had been too young to pay close attention to the talk that swirled around the hall, about the wisdom of bowing to the pressure exerted by the pope, and by England’s king. She could remember, though, heated discussions between her mother and her two brothers when the issue of the treaty had been raised again a few years ago.
Archbishop Robert had insisted that Richard, as the new duke, need no longer abide by their father’s treaty with England. It infuriated Robert that King Æthelred, reportedly the wealthiest monarch in all of Christendom, would demand that the duke of Normandy forego his quite lucrative trade with the Danes or the Norse or anyone else. He had convinced Richard of the wisdom of this point of view, and since then Richard’s coffers had grown heavy with silver from a brisk trade in slaves and booty looted from England.
‘I expect,’ said Judith dismissively, ‘that it will be some matter of trade or policy that your brother and the dowager duchess will settle. We will learn about it in good time, but I will wager that it has nothing to do with us.’
Judith’s lips stretched into a thin line, suggesting to Emma that Richard’s wife was not yet at peace with the fact that she sat here sewing while Richard’s mother sat at his right hand in the great hall. The politics of marriage, Emma thought, appeared to be every bit as complicated as the politics of kings.
January 1002
Near Saltford, Oxfordshire
Athelstan, Ecbert, and Edmund rode at the head of a small company of men along a track that wound through a snow-smothered landscape. Above them thin white clouds driven by a light breeze streaked the sky. For two weeks the æthelings had been awaiting the arrival of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria, at the royal estate near Saltford, the men restive and chafing under the enforced inactivity brought on by repeated bouts of foul weather. In that time the æthelings had received no further word from either the ealdorman or the king, and Athelstan felt as if they had been abandoned, awaiting word of their father’s pleasure. He wondered what was in the king’s mind to keep his eldest sons distant at such a time.
It had not concerned him that news of their mother’s death had reached them only after she had been laid to rest, for he understood that the deadly Christmastime storm had made it impossible for a messenger to make it through any sooner. He and his brothers had mourned her in their own way, yet her loss had touched them almost not at all. Although she had borne eleven children she had tended none of them in their infancy or their youth. Her impact upon her sons and daughters had been of no greater weight than that made by a single snowflake when it touches the earth. She had been but a shadow in their lives, almost invisible in the far larger shadow cast by their father, the king.
Now, though, Athelstan found it worrisome that Ealdorman Ælfhelm and the other great lords of the land remained with the king in Winchester while the eldest æthelings had not been summoned. What matters of moment were being discussed among the king’s counsellors?
What secrets was their father keeping from his sons?
‘He will marry again,’ Edmund had said flatly, when they had discussed it among themselves.
Ecbert had guffawed in disbelief, but Athelstan was inclined to agree with Edmund. Their father was not a young man, but he was vigorous and hale, and his carnal appetites were an open secret among the nobles of his court. The bishops, certainly, would urge him to marry.
Such a step could have momentous consequences for the æthelings, and the fact that Athelstan and his brothers were not privy to their father’s deliberations gnawed like a canker. Even as he turned his face up to the pale light of the winter sun, Athelstan’s thoughts were as cold as the wind that blew at their backs.
He urged his horse up a gentle rise, towards an ancient stone that stood black against the sky. It marked the final leg of this morning’s quest, a journey that had been suggested by Ecbert, half in seriousness and half in jest. He had heard tell of a crone living alone in a fold of the hills, a wisewoman who could read events far in the future.
‘We should seek her out,’ he had urged last night, as he faced Edmund across the tafl board, deliberating his next move. ‘She might tell us something to our advantage.’
Athelstan and Edmund had both scoffed at their brother’s suggestion, but Ecbert had persisted.
‘The local folk swear that she has the Sight,’ he insisted. ‘Even the prior from the abbey hereabouts has been known to visit her cottage.’
‘Probably to persuade her to leave her pagan ways,’ Athelstan said drily, from where he sat watching their play.
‘They say that she knows things,’ Ecbert persisted, ‘that she can decipher men’s hearts.’
‘You might want to ask her for advice on how to win at tafl,’ Edmund said, making a move that captured Ecbert’s king and ended the game. ‘That is your third loss, man. You are utterly hopeless tonight.’
The normally genial Ecbert threw up his hands in frustration.
‘I am bored, Edmund! I am fed up with waiting here like a kennelled dog. If the weather is fine tomorrow, I shall ride out to consult the old woman. Athelstan, will you come with me? Who knows? She may be able to tell us what is in the mind of the king.’
Athelstan thought that unlikely. Nevertheless, the journey, at least, might not be such a bad idea. He glanced around the hall, where men clustered in small groups over games of dice or nodded over cups of ale. They were all of them bored and not a few of them surly. They would be at each other’s throats soon if he did not find something to occupy them.
He nodded briskly to Ecbert.
‘It can do no harm,’ he said, ‘and the men and horses will benefit from the exercise, fair weather or no.’
And so they had set out mid-morning, following landmarks that a local man pointed out as he led the way – a tree blasted by lightning, an abandoned mill, an ancient mound that the folk thereabouts called the Devil’s Barrow. They had arrived at last at a long, low ridge where the snow lay less thick than it did on the surrounding countryside, and where the standing stone, its edges scored in primitive runes, pointed skyward.
Athelstan checked his horse beside the ancient, lichen-covered stone. Gazing into the shallow vale beyond, he caught his breath at what he saw: a circle of what he guessed must be a hundred standing stones, each one the height of a man or a little more, mushroomed from the valley floor. Like monstrous, deformed fingers, black against the blanket of snow, the stones cast long shadows that speared, ominously, straight at him.
They might not be as massive as the giants on Sarum’s plain, he thought, but there were far more of them, and they had the same menacing power. He did not like it, and he felt his gut begin to churn.
Ecbert and Edmund came up beside him, and he watched their faces as they surveyed the scene before them. From their stricken expressions it was clear that they were having second thoughts about this venture – as was he. There were enough dark things in this world. One needn’t seek them out.
‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked Ecbert.
‘No,’ Ecbert muttered, ‘but it would be stupid to turn back now.’ He flicked a glance at Athelstan. ‘You go first, though.’
Athelstan scowled at him, then peered into the valley again, looking for signs of life. The stone circle was fringed by moss-bearded oaks, and on its far side he could see a small croft sheltering among the trees, its thatching frosted with snow. He realized with a shock that what he had taken for another stone, standing in the gloom near the hut, was a living figure staring back at him.
She had been waiting for them, then. He was certain of it, although he could not say how he knew. There was something else he was certain of as well, and it added to his anxiety. He was meant to go down there. Ecbert was right. There was no turning back now.
He led the way down into the grove, threading his horse through the trees towards the croft, purposely avoiding the clearing and its hulking, glowering stones. As they neared the cottage he saw that the figure waiting there was swathed in layers of coarse, black wool, her head covered by the folds of a shawl so thick that the old woman’s face, if it was a woman, was all but invisible.
‘God be with you, my lord,’ she called.
The voice was surprisingly deep and harsh – roughened, Athelstan guessed, by wood smoke and disuse. He dismounted and went towards her, Ecbert and Edmund trailing behind him.
‘God be with you, mother,’ he said. ‘It must be hard faring for you this winter, living so far from your neighbours as you do. Will you accept a small gift, some supplies to replenish your larder against lean times?’ He gestured to one of his men, who placed a large sack filled with cheese, bread, and pulses beside the hut and then hastened back to his mount.
The eyes watching Athelstan showed neither surprise nor gratitude.
‘What would you have of me?’ she asked. ‘You have come far from your appointed road, for you are bound north, I think. The herepath lies that way.’
She gestured to the west, where the old road built by the Roman legions, the Fosse Way, ran from Exeter in the southwest to Jorvik in the north. Presumably, whenever Ealdorman Ælfhelm arrived to lead them to Northumbria, they would, indeed, follow that same northward road.
Still, Athelstan reassured himself, it did not take second sight to hazard that a group of armed men wearing the badge of the ealdorman of Northumbria would likely be headed that way.
‘Perhaps you have already given me what I seek,’ he said, ‘if you can predict nothing more for me than a road that leads north. But it is my brother here,’ he motioned to Ecbert, ‘who wishes to consult you.’
She peered up at him then, and he saw the gleam of shrewd eyes from within the folds of her shawl.
‘Nay, lord,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘You are the one who has need of guidance. Will you give me your hand?’
He hesitated, brushed by a whisper of foreboding. The knowing eyes fixed on his, though, flashed a challenge that he could not ignore, and he placed his hand within her outstretched palms. Her fingers felt thin and clawlike, as roughened and calloused as his own.
She peered at his palm, and for some time she was silent while Athelstan’s disquiet grew. The standing stone on the ridge, the menacing stone circle, the skeletal touch of the old woman’s hands – all of it was forbidden, pagan magic. He felt a wild urge to flee, but in the next moment she spoke, and in a voice far different from the one with which she had greeted him. Now it was vibrant, full and feminine. The timbre of it pulsed through him in the same way that a tolling bell vibrates through the blood.
‘There is great strength in this hand,’ she proclaimed, loud enough for all his men to hear, ‘strength enough to wield even the great Sword of Offa.’
Next to him he felt Edmund give a sudden start of surprise, and he could guess what his brother was thinking, for the words struck him, too, with a force as sharp as a blow. Offa’s Sword, once wielded by that legendary Saxon king, even now hung on the wall behind their father’s chair in the great hall at Winchester. By tradition it was bestowed by the ruling king upon his designated heir. It had not yet been promised to Athelstan, but he expected that one day it would be his.
Yet how had this woman guessed that she spoke to the eldest son of the king? Had word reached her somehow that the æthelings were at Saltford? Possibly. Possibly this was all an act, but if so, to what end?
Now the woman curled his fingers into his palm and leaned close to him.
‘Sword you may wield,’ she said, so softly that only he could hear her, ‘yet the sceptre will remain beyond your reach.’
It took him a moment to grasp the import of her words, and by then she was already turning away to enter her croft. Quickly he covered the space between them, caught her arm, and held her.
‘Who will take the sceptre, then, when the time comes?’ he hissed softly. ‘Who will wear the crown?’
She turned, and for a long moment she looked past him, at each of his brothers in turn, until at last she faced Athelstan again and slowly shook her head.
‘There is a shadow on the crown, my lord,’ she murmured, ‘and my Sight cannot pierce the darkness. You must be content with the knowledge you have been given, for I can say no more.’
No, of course she would say no more, he thought. She was wily, this one, toying with her supplicants as skilfully as a practised harlot so that they sought her out again and again. Yet she could have no real power, not unless one granted it to her. And he would not journey down that dark road.
He released her with a curt nod.
‘Go with God then, mother.’
She turned away from him, and he followed her with his eyes until the dark maw of her croft swallowed her.
Ecbert had already mounted his horse, but Edmund was waiting for him, studying him with dark, speculative eyes.
‘What did she say to you, there at the end?’ he asked. ‘What did she say about us?’
‘Nothing of import,’ Athelstan replied gruffly. ‘You did not really expect anything, did you? She is nothing but a fraud, Edmund.’
He mounted his horse and made for the ridge top, but in spite of what he had said to his brother, his thoughts ran on the old woman’s words. Her prediction about Offa’s Sword was no more than he already knew. He had been born the eldest son of one of the richest kings in Christendom, and Offa’s Sword was his due.
As for the rest of it, if there was any truth in the future that she bespoke him – that he would never be England’s king – then he must find a way to change his destiny.
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