(2013) Shadow on the Crown

by Patricia Bracewell

  He placed his fingertips upon her lips. “Let us be thankful for what is, my lady, and not waste breath or heart contemplating evils that have not come to pass.”

  She shook her head. “That is easier to do when one has nothing to regret.”

  “Regrets are useless, Emma. They force you to look always to the past. You would do better to look toward the future, to change what is amiss rather than weep over how things came to be that way.”

  She considered his words as she studied his face—the high cheekbones; the strong, square jaw with the closely cropped, fair beard; the blue eyes that gazed at her now, unblinking. It was a youthful face, yet the intellect behind that steady gaze was sharp as a blade.

  “You have ever looked toward the future,” she told him. “It seems that in the past few months you have been given some special gift of foresight. You knew what Swein would do, and you took precautions to thwart him. If your father had only listened to you, if I had only—” She stopped. “Ah, I am again guilty of looking backward. It is because I do not wish to look at my future, I think.” She could foresee only discontent and sorrow in her future, bound as she was to a man whom she could not love, or even trust.

  “What have you to fear from the future, my lady?” he asked, his voice no longer gentle but sharp. “Your role as Æthelred’s queen is secure. You will return to his court and his bed, and you will bear his children, as a queen must.”

  She heard the bitterness in his words, and it savaged her heart. This man who owed her nothing had risked everything—his life, his honor—for her sake. How could she let that go unanswered? Could she not, for his sake, risk speaking the truth just this once?

  He stood up and would have walked away, but she clutched at his hand and slipped from the bed to stand before him.

  “Do you truly believe that the future you describe is the one that I wish to have?” she asked. “Do you think I would not thrust my crown aside if by doing so I could with honor grasp the prize that is dearer to me than anything?” She felt the tears welling, unbidden, but she was past caring now. She was speaking not as a queen, but as a woman. “Do you think that I have not wakened in the night, sick with longing for what will ever be denied me, and that every single day I wake and curse the wyrd that bound me to the father instead of to the son?”

  She had said it aloud at last, had spoken the unspeakable. But she would not call the words back, no matter what the cost. For a moment he hesitated, as if he expected her to renounce every word. When she only gazed at him through her tears, he drew her fiercely to him. She went like a falcon trained to the lure, conscious of neither past nor future, oblivious to right and wrong. She gave herself up, as she never had before, to instinct and to appetite, and to the fierce demands of passion.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Exmoor, Somerset

  Elgiva tilted her head back so that her dark hair floated behind her. She was naked, immersed to her chin in the chilly waters of a mere, and it felt wonderful after the sultry heat of the day and the filthy ride. It felt wonderful just to be alive.

  She cast a glance toward her brother, who sat at the water’s edge, his back against a boulder. He was staring off into the trees, ignoring her. He was in a foul mood. He had objected to her bathing, but she had insisted, and now he was punishing her with his morose silence. He was forced to attend her now that Groa was gone, and he resented it. Well, she did not like it any more than he did, and she was in a foul mood as well.

  After all, she was in mourning. Groa had been her nurse, her confidante, and her willing slave, and she had lost her. It was not her fault, of course. She could not have saved Groa, even if she had tried to do so. She would only have put herself in danger, something Groa would not have wanted. Had she not promised to kill Elgiva with her own hand before she would let any Dane assault her? Groa would have urged her to run.

  Already, though, she missed the wretched woman. It was cruel of Wulf to be so cold to her when she was all but distraught.

  They had ridden almost all night long, until Wulf had finally decided, via some mental reckoning granted by God to men alone, that it was safe to make camp. His men were guarding the horses, and he was guarding her.

  “Why do you not come into the water?” she called to him, hoping to coax him into a better mood. “There is a deep pool here. You must be as hot and filthy as I am, and surely we are far enough away from Exeter that we do not have to fear the Danes. We must be in some other shire by now. Even if the raiders should come north along this very same road, they could not travel at our speed.”

  “The Danish hird has scouts, Elgiva,” he said with a scowl, “who can cover ground even faster than we can. And this is no pleasure trip.”

  “I never said that it was,” she snapped, irritated by his implied criticism. “But I cannot count on another opportunity to bathe between here and Winchester. And as I have had little to eat and almost no sleep, and my companions are a group of filthy men and a surly brother, I shall take my comforts where I find them.” His petulance bored her. “Hand me my cloak,” she said, making her way to the water’s edge.

  He tossed the bundled cloak to her. Wrapping it around her shoulders, she sat down next to him.

  “How many days,” she asked, “until we reach Winchester?”

  “We are not going to Winchester,” he said.

  She looked sharply at him. He had told her that their father was at Winchester, and she had naturally assumed that they would join him there. The king and his sons would be at the palace, and she had business with the ætheling Ecbert, although he did not yet know it.

  “Of course we are going to Winchester,” she said. “Where else would we go?”

  “I have been ordered to escort you to Northampton, to Aldeborne, where you will be safe and well guarded.”

  “I do not want to go to Aldeborne,” she protested. “Surely I would be just as safe in the royal city.”

  “If the Danes attack Winchester, you will only have to run again. Aldeborne is safer.”

  She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Surely they would not attempt to sack Winchester. It is too well defended.”

  “Exeter was well defended,” he said.

  She sniffed. “We do not yet know what happened at Exeter. The raiders may have been routed and forced back to their ships.” She did not like being reminded of Exeter. She wished that she could forget yesterday completely—the screams, the horror of that desperate scramble in the dark, her last glimpse of Groa. She winced, as if she felt a physical pain. She hated to think of Groa.

  “The Danes burned Exeter, Elgiva.” Wulf sneered at her. “That glow in the sky last night was from the city’s pyre.”

  She studied his face, its coloring and features so similar to her own. Yet there was something new there that she had never seen before. He had aged since the spring. There were shadows around his eyes, shadows so dark that it almost looked as if he’d raided her box of eye paints for his own use.

  “You know something that you are not telling me,” she said. “What is troubling you?”

  He scowled. “There is a Danish army loose in the land,” he said. “Is that not trouble enough?”

  “Wulf,” she said, placing her hand gently on his knee, “why will you not trust me with your secrets?”

  He glanced at her hand on his knee, cocked his head at her, and raised an eyebrow. “I tell you everything, dear sister, when I deem that it is right for you to know it. For the moment I have nothing but conjecture, and of that I will speak to no one.” Gingerly, he lifted her hand from his knee and dropped it into her lap.

  She could see that he was determined to thwart her, but she would not give up just yet. Artlessly, she lowered the hand that gripped her cloak, revealing the pink bud of one plump breast. His eyes followed her movement, and she arched her back just a little in a wordless
invitation to caress her. It was a game they had played often when they were children, earning her sweets and presents from her appreciative older brother, until the day Groa had caught them at it and had given Wulf a brisk thrashing. Since they were grown she had not had the nerve to tease him so blatantly. But today she was desperate to learn what he knew.

  “You risk nothing by telling me,” she said, “and you know that I would not deny you anything that you asked of me.”

  His eyes traveled from her breast to her face, and his mouth curved into a cold smile. Slowly he reached out, pulling her close to him, then pinching her nipple so hard that she cried out, her cloak tumbling from her shoulders as she struggled unsuccessfully to free herself.

  “I am in no mood for your childish games, Elgiva,” he snarled. “There is a great deal at risk here, and you, my little slut, are not to take it lightly. And when I want something from you, I will take it, whether you are willing to give it to me or not.” He let go of her breast and grasped her head with both hands, kissing her roughly, his tongue plundering her mouth in spite of her efforts to push him away.

  When he finally let her go she hissed, “You bastard.”

  “Endearments, sweetheart?” he said, getting to his feet. “Save them for the king. We are finished here. Put your clothes on and come back to the camp. Or have I aroused you? Shall I send one of my men to finish the job? Perhaps you would like more than one. I am sure they would all of them volunteer.”

  She spat at him, and he gave a harsh laugh before disappearing into the trees. She dressed herself, then sat down on the warm rock to think, rubbing her painful breast with her fingertips. She should have expected that kind of response from Wulf. There was a cruel streak in him. She had witnessed it often enough, but he only rarely turned it against her, and when he did Groa had always been there to protect her. She had taken that protection for granted, but Groa was dead now, and Wulf had changed into someone she hardly recognized. She would have to tread more warily with him.

  Gazing morosely across the water, she tried to fathom what might be tormenting her brother. What could her father be involved in that he would not even share it with his sons? As she pondered this she saw a movement beneath the trees on the other side of the mere, and remembering Wulf’s words about the Danish scouts, she tensed, ready to spring to her feet and run. But it was no shipman moving among the trees. A stag, its pelt as white as snow, stepped delicately into the sunlight and bent its antlered head to drink. Three more deer, all of normal coloring, followed the stag to the water’s edge. Against their russets and browns, the pale stag looked ghostly—otherworldly. She could not even be sure that it was real.

  Elgiva held her breath. Groa had told her that such creatures existed, but she had never expected to see one. The white stag, Groa had said, is a creature of portent, a sign that the world is about to change—a vision granted to very few.

  Elgiva felt a shiver race down her spine. Surely this was a message meant for her to interpret. The world that she knew was about to undergo some upheaval that would change her life. For the better, she wondered, or for the worse? Was this a promise or a warning?

  She closed her eyes, but the image burned against their lids was the flash of light from an ax head and the spray of blood as the thing met its target. She forced her eyes open.

  The clearing across the water stood empty.

  Chapter Thirty

  August 1003

  Ætheling’s Lodge, near Otter Mouth, Devonshire

  We cannot stay here.”

  Emma heard the words whispered gently against her ear, recognized their truth, and then dismissed them. She turned to face Athelstan, and she nuzzled her face against his as their legs tangled wantonly beneath the linens.

  “Can we not stay just for tonight?” she begged. They had stolen a few hours from the sun’s arc across the sky, had made love as if time itself did not exist. She wanted more of it. No one knew where she was, nor even if she lived. For a little while longer, surely, she had no one to answer to except herself.

  Yet even as the thoughts formed in her mind, she knew that time had run out, and that there were others to whom she must answer.

  Athelstan tenderly swept a lock of hair from her face and kissed her. For too brief a time they clung together, and then he pulled gently away and sat up.

  “We need men and arms, and a fortified haven,” he said. “We will go to Somerset, I think, to Watchet.”

  He frowned, and she knew that his thoughts had moved far away from her.

  “The fortifications there are in good repair,” he went on. “We can gather a force as we go.”

  She sat up, too, and looked at him, puzzled. A vague apprehension began to gnaw at her insides. “A force?” she asked. “Do you think to lead an army against Swein? But will he not go east, think you, along the coast?”

  He laughed—a harsh bark with no humor. “I care not what Swein does now. He can burn and pillage at will. Let my father order his ealdormen to throw whatever force they can gather against the Danes and stop them if they can.” He reached out to run his thumb along her cheek, gazing steadily at her. “The army that I will lead will be for another purpose altogether.”

  She caught his hand and stilled it, her alarm growing. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  Once more he grazed her lips with his. “I am the eldest ætheling,” he said, “and the heir to the throne of a king who is woefully incapable of protecting this land. The queen herself shares my bed, may even be carrying my child.” He gently caressed the soft flesh of her belly. But his gaze was elsewhere, into some vision that she did not share. “If I challenge my father for the throne, the nobles of the west country will support me. I expect more will follow.”

  She stared at him, struck by the horror that such a plan conjured up in her mind.

  She was to blame for this, too, then. He would not be harboring such monstrous ambitions were it not for what had happened here between them, beneath the sheets that bound them even now. She had given him her body, her love, thinking it a sin that would rebound on no one but herself. She should have known that it would not be enough to satisfy him. He aspired to a throne, and he thought that with her at his side he had but to reach out his hand and take it.

  As she searched for words to express her terror he took her hand in his.

  “Do not be afraid, Emma,” he said. “I will find a haven for you where you will be guarded and protected, and where neither Swein nor my father can touch you. Then, when I reign as king in Winchester, you will be queen at my side.”

  She withdrew her hand and wrapped her arms about her body, chilled not just with cold but with the dread that seemed to freeze her from the inside out.

  “You would really do this?” she said to him, modulating her voice to a calmness that she did not feel. “You would challenge your father, and between the two of you would pull this kingdom down around your ears?” He made as if to speak, but she stopped him, for the terrifying images of what might be were racing quick and fast through her mind now. “No, you must listen to me! Can you not see how it would end, my lord? Even if you should win your treacherous battles, what then? Will you sully your hands with your father’s blood? Think you the witan will name you king if the bishops have condemned you as a murderer?”

  He swept her objection aside.

  “I said nothing of murder! It will not come to that.”

  “It can come to only that! Should you best him in a thousand battles, your father will not step down and bow to you. What king of your line has ever done so? You will be like stags in the forest, the young buck challenging the old for supremacy in a fight to the death. And who are these thegns whom you believe will support you in your bid for kingship? The ealdormen, who owe all their lands and their power to your father? Your brothers, who owe him their very lives? They are all bound by o
aths, Athelstan, to the king. Not to you!” She took his face in both her hands and gazed levelly at him. “I am bound by oaths as well,” she said evenly, “to him, and not to you.”

  He grasped her wrists and pinioned her hands in front of her.

  “You have already broken one of those oaths today, my queen,” he said coldly.

  She saw anger, despair, and passion warring in his face, and she realized what folly it had been for her to come here alone with him. Their destinies were like two rivers that flowed ever in the same direction, within sight of each other but never meant to meet, to touch, to join as one. Yet it was beyond her power to undo what was done, as he himself had so recently reminded her. They had lain together, and she could not change that. It was the future that she must attempt to repair.

  “You are right to chastise me,” she said, pulling her hands away from his grasp to snatch up her chemise where it lay near her pillow. She extricated herself from the sheets and the low bed, turned her back on him, and began to dress. She could not, however, control the trembling that coursed all through her body. The firestorm that Athelstan wanted to set alight in this land was more terrifying than any threat that Swein Forkbeard could pose.

  “I am not trying to chastise you.” His voice grated with pain. “For God’s sake. Emma!”

  She rounded the foot of the bed to stand in front of him, half dressed, cold and controlled now, for there was too much at stake for her to make a misstep.

  “I have committed a grave sin,” she said, “and I am ready to make retribution for it. I will accept whatever punishment God sends me, but I will not compound my sin by encouraging you in this madness. All of England will suffer a terrible evil if you follow through with this design.” She dropped to her knees before him and clasped her hands. “I beg you, my lord. Do not break your oaths to the king. You are Æthelred’s heir, and yes, one day you will be crowned England’s king. But your time has not yet come. You must be patient. I beg you to wait.”