(2013) Shadow on the Crown

by Patricia Bracewell

  She pushed against his chest with her hands, clawing at him, desperate for air. But Æthelred had been wielding a sword since he was a child. His arms were strong, and her fists had no effect on him. Panicking, she feared that she must suffocate there underneath his weight, until finally he raised himself above her and she was able to snatch a breath. She used it to scream as he brutally thrust himself inside her over and over.

  When he was done he collapsed on top of her once more, but he’d moved his hand from her face, and she opened her mouth on a sob to draw in a lungful of blessed air. He roused himself at that, grasping her head with both hands, holding her down as he covered her mouth with his and thrust his tongue inside her, robbing her of breath once more and making her panic swell again. He ground his mouth against hers, using his teeth to score her lips before lifting his head. When she looked at his face, only inches from hers, she saw her blood on his mouth.

  “I should have done that from the first,” he said, “marked you as my property. You are not a Dane, lady, nor even a Norman anymore. You have my English seed inside you, and that makes you an English woman and nothing else. Never forget it again.”

  He stood up then, and she turned onto her side, crawling up farther onto the bed and pulling her knees up to her chest. She did not see him leave.

  News of the massacre on the Feast of St. Brice reached Athelstan as he was hunting in Hwicce Wood. He listened to the lurid reports in disbelief, then immediately set out for Oxford with a small company to discover what truth lay behind the grisly tales.

  They approached the settlement of Pallig and Gunhild late in the afternoon of a mid-November day, accompanied by a dismal, steady rain. The outer palisade stood deserted, the gate yawned wide, and a rank stench filled the air. In the center of the compound, a gruesome pile of charred human remains, slick and wet from the rain, lay open to the sky. Beyond it, the great wooden hall and its outbuildings stood whole and intact, but devoid of any signs of life.

  Athelstan dismounted, skirted the gory remains of the pyre, and went into the hall. The place had been stripped to the walls. All the furniture, the hangings—everything was gone. The hard-packed dirt floor had been dug up in several places in search, he guessed, of any hoard that may have been hidden there.

  Setting his men the task of burying the remains in the dooryard, Athelstan made his way into Oxford town itself. He passed the burned-out hulk of St. Frideswide’s church but did not stop to inspect it. He had seen enough to confirm the grim rumors. What he wanted to know was if anyone had escaped the king’s wrath. He wanted to discover what had happened to Pallig’s wife and infant son.

  He found the shire reeve in the local tithe barn overseeing the sorting of clothing, furniture, cooking pots and utensils, tools, even armor and weapons. Athelstan could guess where it had all come from—confiscated from the poor wretches who had been slaughtered at the king’s command. The administrative arm of his father’s kingdom worked as efficiently as one could wish. These items would be cataloged and sold among the locals, with most of the proceeds going to the king. Nothing would be destroyed or wasted. Except lives.

  His interview with the reeve was brief. The man assured him that he had fulfilled the king’s command, and that no one had escaped the king’s justice.

  “We struck before dawn with over a hundred men,” he said. “They had watchers at the gate, but we got to ’em before they could raise the alarm. Caught ’em sleepin’, mostly, although that whoreson Pallig put up the devil of a fight before we gutted him. His woman was no easy mark, either. She could sling an ax like a woodsman, that one. Used it to try to keep us from that cub of hers. Murdered two of my men, for all the good it did her.” He grinned and winked, then inclined his head in the direction of St. Frideswide’s. “The ones in the church were townsfolk, living among us as if they belonged here. Filthy Danes.” He turned and spat. “They thought the priest might save ’em, but he was with us. We had a goodly crowd by then, and Father Osbern himself set the thatch alight. The good Lord gave us a fair sky and, oh, it was a mighty burning!” He gave a nod of satisfaction. “I reckon it was a good day’s work, St. Brice’s was.”

  Athelstan cursed as he turned away. Good work, indeed. The men of Oxford had followed the king’s orders to the letter. As for the rest of the country, even the king would likely never learn how many hundreds had been murdered and how many had managed to escape the sword, for surely not every Dane had been butchered. And just as surely, Athelstan knew, someone would carry word of the massacre to Swein Forkbeard and tell him that his sister and her son were among the Danish dead.

  There would be a price to pay for the slaughter of St. Brice’s Day. Blood would beget blood, and Swein would not let this outrage go unanswered.

  By the time Athelstan made it back to Winchester two days later he had heard many more reports of killings that had been carried out in London, Warwick, and Shrewsbury. With each new account his anger increased. Ignoring courtly protocol he strode directly into his father’s inner chamber and slammed both hands on the table before the king.

  “Why did you do it?” he demanded. “What possessed you to put so many innocents to the sword?”

  His father looked up, pursed his lips, and with a flick of his hand dismissed his steward and the clerk who had been scribbling away at a table nearby. Sitting back in his great chair, the king folded his arms in front of him and gazed darkly upon his son.

  Athelstan, watching his father, thought that he looked like the very picture of God that was in the psalter given to him by his grandmother. There he sat, the Lord of Judgment, granting redemption or damnation as he saw fit.

  “The Dane who threatened me,” Æthelred said slowly, “claimed that he was part of an army. You heard him. You spoke with him yourself.”

  “Yes, I spoke with him! He was mad! He raved! There was no army!”

  “There is no army now.” Æthelred’s voice was calm. “My reeves have seen to that. They put only armed men to the sword.”

  “You are misinformed,” Athelstan said stonily. “They put women and children to the sword. In Oxford they burned them alive in the church where they sought sanctuary.”

  Æthelred waved a hand. “That was done in error.”

  Athelstan gaped at him. An error, he called it. Yet there was no sign of regret on the king’s countenance, only mild irritation.

  “It was done in your name!” Athelstan cried. “The deed is upon your soul.”

  “Not mine alone. I took counsel from my advisers.”

  “Then you were ill counseled! Whose advice did you seek? Let me guess. Eadric of Shrewsbury, who makes no secret of his hatred of the Danes who settled near his lands? Æthelmær of Oxford, who will probably double the size of his holdings as a result of this? Abbot Kenulf—”

  “I consulted the men who would be the first to die should our enemy attack us from within!” Æthelred cut him off. “The kingdom is safer now that our enemy has been destroyed. I am safer!”

  Athelstan stared at his father. How could a king be so blind to the consequences of what he had done?

  “You have not destroyed an enemy, my lord,” he insisted. “You have created one. This act will come back to haunt you. Hundreds are dead at your behest. Pallig is dead, even though you gave him the gold to build his hall and granted him the land on which it stood. His wife, Gunhild, and their small child are dead. Think you that her brother, Swein Forkbeard, the fiercest of all the Danish warriors since Alfred’s time, will not seek vengeance?”

  “If so, then he will do it from outside the kingdom, not from within! I could not allow my enemies to dwell within my very borders, making themselves fat off our lands while they wait for a signal to turn upon us and attack. Wiser men than you have given their blessings to this action. They do not question the judgment of their king.”

  “The Danes living among us had n
o reason to attack, my lord. Now you have given them one. Mark my words, father, you will regret this unholy act. We will all of us regret it!”

  “Your regrets interest me not!” the king spat. “We are finished here. Hubert!”

  The king’s steward stepped into the chamber, bowed to his lord, and stood next to Athelstan, staring at him pointedly.

  Frustrated and angered by his father’s resistance to logic, Athelstan slapped his hand on the table, turned, and stalked out of the room.

  His father was a fool. He was wealthy, powerful, and blessed by God, yet still he was a fool. He was making decisions that would lead inexorably to disaster. It was like using Greek fire to douse a flame. And Athelstan greatly feared that now that the blaze had truly begun, they would none of them escape it.

  Æthelred scowled as Athelstan withdrew from the chamber. His foolish son did not understand. How could he? He had not seen Edward’s wraith, had not been burdened with the foreknowledge of his own doom—had not been forced to take measures to prevent it.

  But with this act that his son found so repellant he had triumphed over his enemies and over the vengeance that his dead brother sought to exact from beyond the grave. He had preserved his kingdom and his crown.

  And surely he had banished forever the hideous specter that so haunted and tormented him.

  “My son chides me, Hubert,” he said, “for defending the kingdom that he will one day inherit. He would pit his youthful wisdom against my experience and knowledge.”

  “He is seventeen, my lord. Consider that when you were seventeen you had been wearing a crown for over seven summers. Perhaps your son believes that he is just as capable as you were then.”

  Æthelred frowned. Athelstan was still a whelp. He did not have the experience needed to understand the minds of men.

  “At seventeen I was much older than my years,” he said. “My son, though, has not yet mastered the skills of a leader. He commands his few hearth guards, but he has not been tested.”

  “Yet, my lord, he did you a great service recently, did he not? Intervening when the Dane would have taken your life? Thus, he has shown skill and loyalty. Perhaps such a service should be rewarded with some form of recognition, some visible symbol of your regard for him.”

  “Grant him the Sword of Offa, you mean? Designate him my heir and give him estates to manage?”

  “If my lord Athelstan is taken up with his own responsibilities, he may spend far less time brooding over yours, my king.”

  Æthelred rested his chin upon his folded hands and considered the suggestion. It had merit. Certainly his son deserved some recompense for his quick action that day in the minster square. To grant him the Sword of Offa would only confirm what was already commonly accepted—that the eldest ætheling would one day inherit the throne. As for the lands, it was perhaps time to give all three of his eldest sons more latitude in managing the estates they already held. It would keep them occupied and give them needed experience.

  “At the next witan,” he said to Hubert, “we will bestow the sword upon my son and grant him other offices as well. Let him test his decision-making skills on his own men, and we shall see how well he does.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  February 1003

  Wherwell Abbey, Hampshire

  Emma, wrapped in a warm, sable-lined woolen mantle and attended by Wymarc and Margot, walked slowly along one of the gravel paths of the abbey garden at Wherwell. This was her first venture out of doors for many weeks, and after covering only a short distance, Emma had to admit defeat. She was tired. She was always tired now. Her body, even her mind, was sluggish. Every movement, every thought, took enormous effort, as if her body and her brain fought against a buffeting gale. In the hushed darkness of the abbey chapel she had prayed for relief from this weariness of soul and of limb, but her prayers had gone unanswered.

  She was grateful for the ministrations of the good sisters, and for the care that Wymarc and Margot had lavished upon her ever since the night they had found her as the king had left her—bloodied, bruised, and violated. They had tended to her physical hurts until she was well enough to leave Winchester, transported to Wherwell in a curtained litter, her ravaged face hidden behind a dark veil. The physical marks were gone now. Only this soul-numbing lethargy remained, so enervating that she could not remember how long it had been since she had come here. She had arrived well before Christmas, so it must be two months, she reckoned, at least. Time seemed to stand still, here within the abbey walls, but she knew that the little peace she had found here could not last. She could not continue to hide from the world like a frightened child, not least because the king had insisted that she make an appearance at the Easter court—for the sake of policy.

  And so, for the sake of policy, she must return to Winchester. That disagreeable duty, however, still lay some weeks ahead of her. Ash Wednesday had come and gone, but Easter was yet weeks away. The garden around her, still winter bare, showed no promise of spring. The time of earth’s renewal hovered in the future like a distant dream.

  She came to a bench beneath a tree whose naked branches splayed like skeletal fingers against a blue sky. Shafts of sunlight sifted through the boughs, and Emma sat down and turned her face up to their gentle warmth. She nodded to her companions to join her, and for a few moments they sat in silence, until Emma, turning to Margot, reluctantly picked up the thread of conversation she had abandoned only a little while before.

  “Tell me,” Emma said, “how you can be so certain.”

  “The signs, my lady, are all there,” Margot said gently. “One has but to read them.”

  Emma closed her eyes. She had thought that she might be slowly dying of some wasting disease, some insidious enemy that robbed her of strength and would not let her eat. For a time she had even hoped that it might be so. But in the same way that she knew of the existence of the sun even when it was hidden by heavy clouds, she had known the truth of what ailed her: She carried the king’s child within her at last—the fruit of his cruelty and of her humiliation.

  Opening her eyes, she looked steadily into Margot’s seamed and worried face.

  “I do not want this child,” she said in a whisper, searching the old woman’s eyes for understanding. “I fear that I will hate it, that every time I see it I will remember how it was begotten.” There were ways to end it, she knew. Margot would know what to do.

  The old woman returned her gaze, and her brown eyes did not waver for an instant.

  “I know what you would ask of me, child,” she said. “I also know that if you truly believed that I would grant your desire, you would not ask it.”

  Emma shut her eyes again. She was not certain that Margot was right. Nevertheless, she had her answer. She would have to carry this thing, bring it into the world and find some way to endure its existence. Others could tend it and rear it. She had but to bear it, yet that task would be onerous enough. Love it, she never could.

  “Emma,” Wymarc’s voice, rough as broken glass, slashed across Emma’s brooding thoughts. Emma felt her friend clutch at her hand, as if she would rescue her from drowning in a sullen, black sea. “The child is not the father. The child is a miracle and the answer to your prayers. You have grown to love the king’s other children. Will you not love your own babe even more? Think of little Mathilda, if you doubt it.”

  The image of a sunny, blue-eyed imp flashed into Emma’s mind. Mathilda, the royal daughter who had been dedicated to Wherwell at the age of two, had been Emma’s nearly constant companion from the moment that she arrived at the abbey. Fascinated by the brilliant newcomers who had entered her convent world, the child had attached herself to Emma with the loyalty and trust of an adoring puppy. Emma had done nothing to encourage her, but the girl’s devotion had been impossible to resist. Now they were all but inseparable, and Æthelred’s tiny daughter had been the on
ly ray of light in the darkness that was Emma’s life.

  And yet, she thought, folding her arms tightly beneath her cloak and rocking back and forth in her despair, she did not trust herself to love the child growing within her. The babe had been purchased at far too great a cost. She despised the brutal act that had planted the seed in her womb, despised the man who had perpetrated it, despised herself for submitting to it. How could she not despise the child who would result from it?

  She placed her fingers against her closed eyelids, remembering the days of her girlhood in Normandy, wishing that she could return to that simpler time. Her mother’s image rose in her mind, but she banished it. It was Gunnora’s fault that she was here now, saddled with grief, fear, and an unwanted child. She would forever hate her mother for sentencing her to this wretched fate.

  Yet for her own sake, as well as for the sake of those who depended upon her, she had to wrest herself from the black thoughts that engulfed her. The time for weeping was over. She could not change the past, and she could not continue to brood over her pain like a green girl. She must think like a queen now, for if she did not decide what to do and how to act, others would decide for her.

  Emma dropped her hands to her lap and took a breath.

  “The king must be told of the child,” she said slowly, planning her next move as if a battle lay before her, “but not yet. This will remain a secret until I can tell him myself.”

  Somehow she must find the strength to face him—not as a supplicant but as a queen whose fertility had been proven. She would demand the status to which she was entitled. She would insist upon complete control over her properties and her household. She would claim the freedom to come and go as she pleased.