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(2013) Shadow on the Crown

Page 1

by Patricia Bracewell




  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2013 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Patricia Bracewell, 2013

  All rights reserved

  Map illustration by Matt Brown

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Bracewell, Patricia, 1950–

  Shadow on the crown / Patricia Bracewell.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60619-3

  eBook ISBN

  1. Emma, Queen, consort of Canute I, King of England, d. 1052—Fiction. 2. Ethelred II, King of England, 968?–1016—Fiction. 3. Great Britain—History—Ethelred II, 979–1016—Fiction. 4. Queens—Great Britain—Fiction. 5. Normans—Great Britain—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.R323S53 2013

  813'.6—dc23 2012028932

  Designed by Nancy Resnick

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For Lloyd, Andrew, and Alan

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Characters

  Glossary

  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

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Glossary

  Ætheling: literally, throne worthy. All of the legitimate sons of the Anglo-Saxon kings were referred to as æthelings.

  Ague: any sickness with a high fever

  Augur: to predict from signs or omens

  Braies: French term for trousers, made of linen

  Breecs: Anglo-Saxon term for trousers

  Burh: an Anglo-Saxon fort

  Byrnie: a mail tunic

  Ceap: the market, or high street

  Chasuble: an ecclesiastical vestment, a sleeveless mantle covering body and shoulders, often elaborately embroidered, worn over a long, white tunic during the celebration of the Mass

  Chausses: French term for hose, or long stockings

  Cope: an ecclesiastical vestment, often of silk and elaborately embroidered; it resembled a long cloak

  Culver: Anglo-Saxon term for pigeon

  Cyrtel: a woman’s gown

  Danelaw: an area of England that roughly comprises Yorkshire, East Anglia, and central and eastern Mercia where successive waves of Scandinavians settled throughout the ninth and tenth centuries

  Ealdorman: a high-ranking noble appointed by the king to govern a province in the king’s name. He led troops, levied taxes, and administered justice. It was a political position usually conferred upon members of powerful families.

  Fyrd: an armed force that was raised at the command of the king or an ealdorman, usually in response to a Viking threat

  Gafol: the tribute paid to an enemy army to purchase peace

  Geld: a tax
levied by the king, who used the money to pay the tribute extorted by Viking raiders

  Godwebbe: precious cloth, frequently purple, normally of silk; probably shot-silk taffeta

  Handfasting: a marriage or betrothal; a sign of a committed relationship with no religious ceremony or exchange of property

  Headrail: a veil, often worn with a circlet or band, kept in place with pins

  Hearth troops: warriors who made up the household guard of the king or a great lord

  Herepath: a military road

  Hird: the army of the Northmen; the enemies of the English

  Host: army

  Kalends: the first day of the month in the ancient Roman calendar, which always fell on a new moon

  Leech/leechcraft: a physician; the practice of the healing art

  Leman: lover; from Old French

  Pennons: banners

  Pulses: dried peas and beans

  Reeve: a man with administrative responsibilities utilized by royals, bishops, and nobles to oversee towns, villages, and large estates

  Rood: the cross on which Christ was crucified

  Scarp: a steep slope formed by the fracturing of the earth’s crust

  Scop: storyteller; harper

  Screens passage: a vestibule just inside the entrance to a great hall or similar chamber, created by movable screens that blocked the wind from gusting into the hall when the doors were opened

  Seax: knife

  Sending: an unpleasant or evil creature sent by someone with magical powers to warn, punish, or take revenge on a person; from Old Norse

  Skald: poet or storyteller

  Tafl: a popular board game in early medieval England and Scandinavia with some similarities to modern-day chess

  Thegn: literally “one who serves another”; a title that marks a personal relationship; the leading ones served the king himself; a member of the highest rank in Anglo-Saxon society; a landholder with specified obligations to his lord

  Wain: a wagon or cart

  Wergild: literally “man payment”; the value set on a person’s life

  Witan: “wise men”; the king’s council

  Wyrd: fate or destiny

  A.D. 979 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 honors. 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

  Prologue

  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 center 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 forever. She did not speak of the green land that would burn to ash in the days to come, or 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

  Chapter One

  December 24, 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 woolen 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 w
retched 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 harbor 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 harbor 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.

 

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