He clasped his own hands around hers and looked upon her with such tenderness that she wanted to weep.
“And if I do as you ask,” he said, his voice so coldly rational that he might have been presenting an argument to his father’s council, “if I wait to take the throne, what guarantee is there that the throne will still be there to take? The Danes are bleeding us dry. It will be as it was in the days of Alfred, with ships and men and arms arriving with the summer winds like a plague upon the land, year after year after year. What had once been fruitful will be blasted and wasted, fields and flocks and villages plundered. Even the great Alfred was unable to stop their depredations until he bribed them with land where they could settle. My father is no Alfred! He has nothing whatever that he can use to placate Swein Forkbeard.”
His face above her wavered as tears filled her eyes, for he was right about his father, about the Danes, about all except the solution.
“And would you add to the misery of your people by making them choose between father and son, by harrying the land with your own armies who will kill and maim and bloody each other, and who will take for sustenance whatever food and cattle the Danes have not already devoured? How many good men will fall to the sword, my lord? How many women and children are like to starve because you turned against your own?”
Her words, sharp as a volley of arrows, goaded Athelstan from the bed. He flung her pleading hands away and swept past her to pour a beaker of wine and gulp it down. He was furious with her for her blind loyalty to his father. He was furious with himself for telling her of the design that remained even now only half formed in his head. He should have simply taken her to some stronghold and held her there until it was all over. It was a royal courting practice not unheard of in Wessex, and whether the chosen bride was maid, wife, or nun made little difference. It had its advantages; even Emma would have been convinced of his righteousness once he had an army at his back and a crown on his head.
Why could she not see it now, though? He knew that she loved him. Had she not given herself to him with abandon, forsaken the stiff reserve that had for so long kept them apart? To him their coupling was not just a completion but a beginning, a new alliance that would sweep all past allegiances away.
Emma, it seemed, saw it differently. He set down his cup and began to don tunic and breecs.
“And what would you have me do,” he asked her stiffly, “while I wait for my appointed time?”
She had risen to her feet, but she made no move to bridge the gap that yawned between them. “You have no need of me, my lord,” she said softly, “to tell you that. You know it already.”
“Yes, I do,” he sneered, distilling all his pent-up anger and frustration into poisonous sarcasm. “Have I not been doing it for two years now? My role is to sit at my father’s board like an obedient son and watch him lead the woman I love to his bed. And then I entertain myself by imagining his greedy hands pawing and groping at her white breasts, and his stiff cock tenderly suckled by—”
“Stop it!”
She was glaring at him, not with shame, which was what he had wanted, but with fury.
“Had enough, my queen?” He snatched up the wine and raised it toward her in a salute. “Well, so have I.” He drained the cup and then hurled it to the floor, but it provided no satisfactory release for his rage.
“Your anger is misplaced, my lord,” she said, her voice hard as stone. “Neither you nor I can control the destiny that keeps us separate. In taking me to wife your father has taken nothing that belonged to you. But Swein would take everything from you, if you let him. That is your true enemy, Athelstan. Be your father’s right hand in his campaign against the Danes, and you will have earned the right to kingship.”
It was the old argument again. She was ignoring the reality of Æthelred and his unwillingness to trust any counsel but his own.
“My father does not listen to me!” he shouted, enunciating the words with terrible clarity, as if by doing so he could get her to understand and accept them, and to make an end of it at last. “He treats me as a child!”
“Your father,” she said softly, “is terrified of you.”
He looked at her sharply, startled by her words. His surprise must have shown on his face, for she was nodding slowly.
“Your father gained his crown through the murder of a brother. Do you think he does not worry that God will strike him down? You have sensed some darkness within him, and I have seen it. He does not sleep, Athelstan! He fears for his life, and because of that, he fears even you.” She gave a bitter laugh that was almost a sob. “It would seem, from what you have said to me today, that he is right to do so. But I will not believe, even now, that you would ever commit such treachery. You may chastise your father in your heart. You may even despise him. But you will not raise your hand against him. Oh my love, in spite of your anger you must convince him that you will not break your oaths to him. Can you not see that he may be testing you, looking for a reason to give you his trust?”
“You are raving, Emma,” he said, running a hand through his hair. She was a woman and a Norman. What could she possibly know about how his father’s twisted mind worked? “You are imagining that my father is wise, foresighted, and crafty rather than vain, lecherous, and brutal.”
“Your father is all of those things, my love.”
He almost laughed then, but she went on.
“Think, Athelstan! You already sit on his council. You demonstrated your courage and loyalty when last year you stepped between your father and a Danish blade, a mark in your favor. And then what did you do? You castigated him for his actions on St. Brice’s Day. You were right to do so, yes, but you went about it at the wrong time and in the wrong way.” She smiled bleakly. “I was no wiser, I fear. I knew him little then, and I spoke my mind without thought of diplomacy.”
He saw a flash of pain cross her face. If she had spoken plainly to his father, Æthelred would have punished her for it. Another black mark set upon his father’s soul, he thought, but Emma had not finished.
“Then, in front of his entire court and without consulting anyone, you advised him how to deal with Swein. Yes, I heard the story. You humiliated him before everyone. And when he reprimanded you, you fled the court without his leave. Is it any wonder, Athelstan, that he looks upon you with fear and distrust?”
“And supposing that you are right,” he challenged her, “how am I to change the man’s mind about me?”
“Not by taking arms against him,” she said gently, walking toward him and placing a hand upon his shoulder.
“Nor by bedding his wife?” He pulled her against him, and she twined her arms around his neck. For a moment they held each other close. For a moment she belonged to him again. “If I do as you say, Emma,” he whispered against her ear, “if I play the role of good son, bow to my father’s will, what of us then?”
She took a step back and gazed at him, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“Whatever role you play, my lord,” she said, “there can be no us.”
She would have pulled away from him, but he would not let her go.
“And if you are even now with child? What then?”
She was silent, but he read the answer in her eyes. He released her then, and she turned from him with a brisk step.
“I must get to Winchester as soon as may be now, especially if I am with child.”
She had to get the king’s prick between her thighs, so that if there was a child, all would believe it to be Æthelred’s.
His hands so itched to grasp and shake her that he dared not allow himself within reach of her, for he was not his father—it would give him no pleasure to cause her pain. He wanted Emma to come to him of her own will, to place her hands within his and pledge herself to him, body and soul. Yet he knew that she could not, for that pledge had already been
given.
In that moment he faced the stark truth about himself: He did not want his father’s crown so much as he wanted his father’s woman. But she had made it clear that while his father lived she would never be his.
Chapter Thirty-one
August 1003
St. Giles Priory, Sidbury, Devonshire
Eager as Emma was to return to Winchester, she had first to gather the remnants of her company, for she could not leave them to fend for themselves with a Danish army abroad in the land. She rode with Athelstan to the nearby priory of St. Giles, and from there sent messengers to Wymarc and Father Martin.
At the priory she found survivors from the sack of Exeter, refugees who had sought haven within the priory grounds. They told of the city’s destruction, and many swore that Exeter would never have fallen but for the treachery of the queen’s reeve. It was Hugh the Norman, they said, who had betrayed the city to the Danes.
Once within the walls the shipmen had plundered homes, ransacked churches, emptied shops and warehouses, and despoiled the king’s minters of their silver. They murdered all who opposed them, set the city ablaze, and turned their fury even upon the surrounding walls, reducing them to little more than piles of rubble. When the Danes returned to their ships, Hugh the reeve was seen in their midst. He had betrayed Exeter, it was said, and left behind a ravaged city.
Emma listened to the stories, sick at heart. She searched among the ragged survivors for faces that she knew, for folk who had journeyed with her from Winchester in June, but she saw only strangers. She was able to learn nothing of Elgiva and Groa, and as she listened to the tales of horror, she began to lose what little hope she had for their survival.
Four days after the fall of Exeter, Emma and her retinue set out swiftly for Winchester, driven by the rumor of war at their backs. The Danish ships had gone, but no one knew where they might strike next.
At Emma’s insistence she and her women were garbed in the plain robes and hooded cloaks of the sisters of St. Giles. Escorted by Athelstan and twenty of his armed men, they followed the king’s paved highways, camping wherever they found themselves when darkness fell—always off the road and hidden, with stern-eyed men in mail set to watch during the long hours of the night.
It was in those dark, lonely hours that Emma met with each of her companions and heard what they could tell of the events that she herself had not witnessed. She learned how Margot and Wymarc had hidden and had listened to what unfolded in that ill-fated lane near Magdalene Abbey, and how, when all was quiet and they were certain it was safe to come out, they had found the cart and its grisly cargo. Margot had urged Wymarc and Brother Redwald to go with all speed to search out the ætheling at Norton while she waited with the dead on that lonely road until help arrived. She had accompanied their bodies back to Magdalene Abbey, where Father Martin saw them buried in hallowed ground.
Wymarc told of her agonized wait for news of Emma, and for word of the fate of Exeter. Her voice faltered when she spoke of Athelstan’s returning hearth troops, for they brought word that Exeter had fallen swiftly to the Danes but could tell her nothing of Hugh. She wept in Emma’s arms, and the queen wept with her for the man whom they had both come to admire and to trust, and whom Wymarc had learned to love. It seemed to Emma then that they had reached a moment in time where love had no place. It was something to be snuffed out, burned, and discarded, and there was only room in the heart for hatred and fear and, at best, the occasional cold alliance. Her own love—for the child she’d lost, for Athelstan, even for her Norman kin—had brought her nothing but pain. Love belonged to some other world. Perhaps it could be found after death, but it was unwise, she thought, to look for it here.
Father Martin’s tale was of Hilde’s father, Ælfgar, who had shown neither surprise nor satisfaction upon learning that Swein’s forces were abroad in the land. Swein’s coming, Ælfgar had said, was as inevitable as the tides. He had predicted, like some soothsayer from ancient days, that Æthelred and his sons would be swept away like so much flotsam. Emma shuddered when she heard this and whispered a prayer to ward against such an evil augury. No man can read the future, Hugh had assured her. Yet there had ever been prophets who had some foreknowledge of what was to come. She recalled the feral words howled by the knife-wielding Dane who had tried to murder Æthelred. Death to the king! Death to the council! She wondered now if his words had been ravings, as Athelstan thought, or something more dire. Could they have been a foretelling? There was a Danish army in England now, promising dark days ahead for the king and all his people. Once more she whispered a prayer for protection and mercy.
At last Father Martin told her of Hilde, who had been heartbroken when her father had refused to allow her to stay with him, telling her that she meant less than nothing to him. Hearing this, Emma wondered again if love could exist in a world such as this one.
She herself never spoke of the hours she spent as a captive of the Danish king, except to tell those who knew of her capture and escape that they must never speak of it to any human soul. She trusted them to keep that secret, for they knew that if word of her abduction were whispered abroad, all would assume that she had been sullied by her captors, and she would no longer be considered a fit wife for a Christian king.
As for the hours that she had spent in the embrace of her husband’s son, that secret she kept locked in her heart.
On the sixth day after leaving St. Giles, the queen’s company arrived at Wherwell Abbey, ten miles from Winchester’s city walls. There they rested and refreshed themselves, and Emma, with the aid of the nuns, was gowned and groomed so that she could present herself before the king. On an August evening, lit by a sinking sun, she returned to the city of Winchester, where Æthelred and his court awaited her.
Chapter Thirty-two
August 1003
Winchester, Hampshire
Æthelred, seated upon his throne in the great hall, watched Emma approach with an impatience he found difficult to conceal. This welcome was mere formality, for he had received messages the day before informing him of the queen’s safety and of her impending arrival. Te Deums had replaced the prayers of entreaty that had been offered for the queen’s safe deliverance from Exeter, and from the moment she had set foot within the city, the bells in every church had rung with clamorous rejoicing.
Only moments before, though, word had come from the south that Dorchester had been sacked and burned. His kingdom was under siege, and the gravity of the peril weighed heavily upon his mind.
The members of the council who had been summoned to advise him were clustered now in small, buzzing groups while Æthelred stood to welcome his queen with the solemnity due her. She had clothed herself in a gown of finely woven linen that was as black as the night sky. Its only adornment was a wide silver border at the hem and delicate silver embroidery upon the silky black veil that covered her pale hair. A thin, silver cross hung on a chain between her breasts. She looked travel weary, but she was still as beautiful as he remembered. Her face seemed to glow from the dark folds of her raiment, but her eyes were red-rimmed, as though she had been crying.
She had reason enough to weep and to garb herself in mourning. Her sojourn in Exeter—which he had hoped would deter the Danes from attacking her lands—had ended in calamity, brought about by the perfidy of her Norman reeve.
He frowned, for the attack on Exeter still puzzled him. He had expected Richard to warn Swein away from Emma’s lands, and so he wondered if there was more at work here than he was able to discern. This was not the time, though, to consider the problem.
He kissed Emma’s brow in greeting, but he did not wish to prolong this rite of welcome any longer than necessary.
“You are tired, my lady,” he said. “You will rest now, and we will speak on the morrow. When you say your prayers, beseech God to bless all that we do here tonight.”
He expected her to
take her leave, but her eyes locked upon his, and something glinted there that he could not interpret. Was it anger? Fear? Resentment? Then it was gone, and she had bent her knee in submission.
“As you will, my lord,” she said.
He watched her leave the hall, his brow furrowed. Something about her had changed. She had ever been a mystery to him, but now, with one glance, it was as if a veil had been drawn aside and then quickly dropped again. He sat down, irritated by the unease that she could raise in him with just a look. She distracted him, damn her, when he had need of all his wits to deal with more pressing matters. The Danes had struck in the west while he had prepared for a landing in the east, and now he had to decide what to do.
He slid his gaze toward Athelstan, who stepped toward the dais now, flanked by half a dozen of his hearth companions. Æthelred signaled to the gathered nobles that they should be seated. He would waste no more time with pointless ceremony, but he wanted the entire court to see this contentious son of his get the welcome he deserved.
Emma approached her chamber with a brisk, angry step. Once again she would be imprisoned within palace walls, and she did not know if she could bear it. For the past three months she had tasted freedom and responsibility. In Exeter she had been the one holding court, seeking advice, and making decisions. How was she to content herself again with nothing but the minor details that came within her small sphere of power? In the great hall below, the king and his council were deciding the fate of the kingdom, while she was expected to kneel in her chamber in silent prayer.
By the time she reached her apartments, she had come to a decision. She would not be treated like a prize jewel—placed in a dark casket and tucked safely away. She would not allow herself to be distanced from the affairs of the court and the king. And if her lord forbid her to be present at his council, then she would find some other means of making herself privy to the decisions that were made there.
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