(2013) Shadow on the Crown

by Patricia Bracewell

  “What do you mean?” Emma asked.

  Margot paused in her task and gazed thoughtfully at Emma.

  “I do not say that I agree with the king’s manner of dealing with Edward’s illness,” she said at last. “It would not be my way of addressing the death of a child. But I think, my lady, that it is not unusual. The king is protecting himself from the pain of parting from Edward by drawing away from him. I think that he cannot bear to watch this lingering death that weakens the boy day by day. Tending the sick does not come naturally to a man, and if they have never been taught, they do not know how to act in the face of it.”

  “No one asks him to tend the boy,” Emma said bitterly, “merely to treat him with a father’s affection.”

  “And what,” Margot replied, “does he know of that? His own father died when Æthelred was but a child.”

  This gave Emma pause, for there was some truth to Margot’s words. King Edgar had died when Æthelred was very young, only six or seven years old. What could the man remember now of his father’s love? And yet she could not help but compare again the actions of the king with those of his eldest son, and she found the king lacking. Showing affection for a child was not a trait that one learned. Like compassion and tenderness, it dwelt in the heart and soul of a man. Whatever seeds of such emotions may have been planted once in her husband’s breast, she guessed that instead of being nurtured, they had withered and died.

  She placed a hand upon her belly where a babe had once more taken root. She hoped to present the king with a child early next year, but she had no expectation that it was a gift he would contemplate with much favor. He was not likely to show her child any more affection than he showed his other children; perhaps he would show this one even less, because of his disdain for the mother.

  The thought sent a chill through her, and she stepped away from the window, and, pacing, pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders.

  And what of her? Would she love this child less because its sire was Æthelred and not Athelstan? She remembered, with a sudden pang, her anguish at the loss of the half-formed babe that had been wrung from her little more than a year ago. The pain of that was still sharp, and she knew with a certainty that the father of the child made no difference. The babe would be hers, and she would lavish it with all the love her heart could give.

  In the end it was Emma who watched alone at Edward’s bedside one morning in late June as the boy took his last, shallow breath. She had come to Edward’s chamber the night before, sleepless after being wakened by the mewling of Wymarc’s week-old infant son, and she had found Edward in a heavy sleep. When at daybreak she could not awaken him, she had summoned Father Martin to anoint the child with the blessed chrism, and had sent word to the king that Edward was close to death. Then she held his small hand in hers until it turned cold in her grasp.

  She wished, for Edward’s sake, that the king had been there to bid his son good-bye. But he had gone with the three eldest æthelings to the port at South Hampton to greet the newly appointed archbishop, Wulfstan, upon his return from his consecration at Rome. She hoped that Wulfstan would not come back with them—not yet. The archbishop, whose shock of white hair and fierce expression perfectly matched his fiery sermons, would likely have little in the way of consolation to offer the grieving family. And although it would not matter to Edward, whose lifeless body lay in the Old Minster now, hands folded over his breast, with candles burning at his head and feet, Wulfstan’s overbearing presence was more than she thought she could bear.

  She kept watch near the bier with Margot and Hilde while a flock of sisters from Nunnaminster chanted the prayers for the dead in one of the side chapels. Earlier, as she had washed the wasted legs and arms that had once been so agile, she had wept for the boy who had been her first friend at court. Edward had embraced her as an older sister, if not a mother, and her tears were for herself as much as for him. Now, listening to the sibilant voices of the nuns, Emma’s eyes were dry. Watching Edward suffer had been the difficult part. At least, for him, the worst was over.

  As she prayed, the minster’s massive wooden door opened, and she turned to see the king, who walked down the length of the nave, his cloaked figure silhouetted in the light from the doorway. He came unescorted, and she guessed that he had ordered the others to wait so that he might have some moments alone with his son. Believing that he would wish her away as well, she motioned to her attendants to leave. Before she could slip away, though, Æthelred called her name. Surprised, she went over to him and saw that his eyes were glazed with tears as he looked upon the body of his son. She touched his arm in mute sympathy. Whatever differences lay between them, they were united in their grief at the death of this child.

  For some time they stood together in silence while the Latin chanting of the nuns echoed softly in the great church. Finally the king spoke.

  “I owe you a debt, my lady,” he said, looking not at her but at the face of Edward, as white and still as if it had been carved of marble, “for your tender care of my son.”

  Listening to these words she could not help but reflect on his own coldness toward the boy, and his unwillingness to reach out to Edward when the child had such a need for some sign of affection from his father. What good now was this display of sorrow, when the boy could not know it? But she held her tongue. Even to Æthelred she could not be so cruel.

  “He had need of a mother’s care,” she said, more stiffly than she intended, “and his sisters were not old enough to provide that office. I did it willingly, for Edward seemed to me like the younger brother that I never had.”

  Still he did not look at her but turned his gaze meditatively on a dark corner at the side of the altar. She followed his glance but could see nothing there except shadows that grew and shrank in the flickering light of the candles.

  “Yet it is not every woman,” he said, his eyes still on the shadowy darkness, “who has a heart that is large enough to embrace a child who is not her own.”

  Emma studied his face, and she saw that his eyes were dark with emotions that she could not name. She wished that she could see into his mind, could read the memories that clustered there. Was he speaking of his mother, who had ordered the murder of that other Edward, Æthelred’s half brother, to claim a crown for her own son?

  Emma shivered, as if cold steel had brushed the back of her neck. As yet she had no child of her own to place in her heart above the children of her husband. Would she, one day, be capable of plotting the death of one of the king’s sons for the advancement of her own? That she might even imagine such a thing terrified her. She could not contemplate bloodying her soul for the gift of a crown.

  Then another, more frightening thought slipped into her mind on the heels of the last. Might not the children of Æthelred see her own child as a threat to their power? If she were forced to raise her hand against the king’s children in order to protect her own, would she do so?

  Dear God, she prayed silently, never let me be put to such a terrible test.

  The king’s voice called her back to the present.

  “It speaks well of you, lady,” he said, following his own train of thought, “that you showed such compassion for this child. God grant that you will have a child of your own one day.”

  Emma hesitated. Was this the time, when he was grieving for Edward, to tell him that she was, indeed, with child? And yet, what better time? For the moment, at least, they were in accord.

  “My lord,” she said, feeling as if she were standing at the edge of some dark abyss, “I am with child even now. Indeed, I hope to bear you a son before winter’s end.”

  She waited for his response, still unsure if she had picked the right moment to tell him. His face registered neither surprise, nor joy, nor satisfaction. He did not even look at her.

  “If it is a boy,” he said, “we will call him Edward.” He turned his
gaze once more toward the flickering shadows. “Leave me now. I would be alone.”

  She watched him for a moment, astonished at the ease with which this man could replace one son with another. She turned to leave but stopped when she saw that Athelstan stood just within the doorway, watching her, stony faced. She read in his eyes that he had heard his father’s promise to bestow Edward’s name upon the child in her womb, and that the knowledge had created a gulf between them that neither one could ever cross. His eyes glittered coldly at her before he looked away.

  She swept quickly past him, pressing her hand against her heart, keenly aware that she might be carrying Athelstan’s rival for the crown of England.

  Æthelred contemplated the pallid face of his dead child and wondered if this was God’s retribution—the sins of the father visited upon the son. Or was it merely Edward’s wyrd to leave this life so soon?

  As father and king he had done all that he could to protect his children from perils that they might suffer at the hands of his enemies. But there were other dangers in the world that men could neither explain nor comprehend. Edward had wasted away before his eyes and he had been powerless to prevent it, king though he was.

  He glanced toward the shadows beyond the bier, sensing his brother—that other Edward—lurking in the gloom there like a great brooding bird of prey. Christ, how he hated the thing! It stank of the grave, sickly sweet beneath the candles’ honeyed fragrance. It carried the stench of his own eternal damnation.

  Fear of that specter’s malice clawed at him. His skin was clammy with it, yet even as his spirit quailed, he was consumed by a bitter rage. What business did his brother’s fetch have here beside the lifeless form of a child who was innocent of any crime? Had the dead king, who had never sired a son, come to revel in a father’s grief? Was he drawn to the scent of corruption?

  Or had the murdered Edward come to lay claim to the soul of this boy who bore his name?

  He grimaced into the murky darkness, and as the familiar painful heaviness blossomed in his chest, he sank to his knees, felled by the combined weight of dread and pain. He closed his eyes, his brain dulled and clouded. Yet he struggled against the torpor that enveloped him, searching for some way to quiet forever his brother’s restless spirit. Was it possible to strike a bargain with the dead? Could he offer his brother some boon in return for respite from this endless, creeping horror?

  He flicked a dry tongue across parched lips, and he reached out a hand to clasp the simple wooden rood that stood beside the bier. “I will grant you a son,” he whispered, “another Edward, consecrated to you. He will be your heir, your ætheling. I swear it by the Cross of our Savior. Will you not be content with that, and leave me to rule in peace?”

  He held his breath, searching the darkness for some sign that this vow would free him from his brother’s implacable vengeance, but the shadow was gone, the fetid smell of decay had disappeared, and he could hear nothing but the mournful chanting of the nuns.

  He drew a breath and looked one last time upon the face of his dead son, and he envied Edward, for he had gone to God an innocent. He had never known suspicion or fear, and he had never been riddled with the burrowing worms of jealousy and hate.

  Out of respect for the king’s family, Archbishop Wulfstan delayed his arrival in Winchester by some weeks, and when he did appear the celebrations were subdued. He spent a full month at the king’s court, for his departure was hindered by the rain that continued throughout the spring and now seemed to threaten the summer months as well. There was concern far and wide that the harvest would be meager, and ever on people’s minds was the fear that the Vikings would return to divest them of what little they had.

  At last, in early June, and in spite of the filthy weather, the archbishop prepared to set out for Jorvik. Accompanied by a dozen clerics, by fifty of his own armed retainers, and by the three eldest sons of the king and their retinues of armed companions, his escort was fit for a prince of the church who was arguably the most influential ecclesiastic in all England.

  Athelstan, who would ride at the head of the archbishop’s train, waited with his brothers in a drenching rain for the order to set out. He was eager to be away from the cloying intimacy of the Winchester court, eager to meet with the men of the northern shires. He wished to measure the temper and allegiance of the folk in Northumbria in particular, toward his father as well as toward Wulfstan, their new spiritual leader.

  The entire company waited upon the archbishop now, who stood with the king and queen beneath a canopy on the steps of the great hall as he prepared to take his leave. Athelstan, his eyes drawn inexorably to the queen, watched as Archbishop Wulfstan raised his hands in blessing above the heads of the royal couple. Emma was gowned in black, for since Exeter she wore no color else. The darkness of her raiment today, though, only served to accentuate the bright gold of the thick bracelets at her wrists—gifts, he had no doubt, from his father, in anticipation of the birth of her child.

  No official announcement had been made as yet, and certainly no casual observer would be able to ascertain from looking at her that Emma was quick with child. She was still tall and remarkably slim, and so fair that she seemed lit from within. No, it was the attitude of the king toward her that spoke to the queen’s condition. Even now Æthelred stood with his hand supporting her arm, laying claim to her as if she were a long-held possession that he had suddenly found to be of some worth. Indeed, Athelstan had noticed the change in his father’s behavior toward the queen from that very moment in the minster when she had sought to comfort him for Edward’s death by announcing that she would soon replace the child that he had lost.

  Sometime in the winter, with God’s blessing, Emma would at last attain her heart’s desire. How many times, he wondered, had she sought her husband’s foul embrace to achieve that? She had made no secret of her nightly visits to the king’s great bed. Athelstan himself had seen her, more than once, as she padded down the narrow corridor outside the king’s door, pale as a ghost in the dark watches of the night.

  It maddened him to think of it, yet he could not put it out of his mind. Distance and time must work that miracle for him. As for his own plans, for the moment he would follow the advice that Emma herself had given him not so long ago. He would be patient, he would plan, and he would do whatever he must to win his father’s trust, even as he prepared himself to someday rule the kingdom. His father could not live forever.

  A.D. 1004 This year came Swein with his fleet to Norwich, plundering and burning the whole town. . . . The enemy came to Thetford within three weeks after they had plundered Norwich; and, remaining there one night, they spoiled and burned the town.

  —The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  September 1004

  Aldeborne Manor, Northamptonshire

  A cold draft fingered the hem of Elgiva’s woolen gown as she stood before her father, nervous and expectant. For weeks now there had been nothing but bad news on the wind—foul weather, poor harvests, and tales of Danish savagery on the eastern coast. She had been witless with fear, for her father’s wooden palisade seemed to her a pitiful defense against Danish broadaxes. The gruesome stories coming out of East Anglia, of towns burned and English folk driven in chains to Viking ships, had recalled that black day in Exeter so clearly that she could smell the smoke from the burning and hear again the shrill, panicked screams.

  Surely her father would send her away now, far from the reach of another Danish army that, if rumors were true, was coming straight toward them.

  He looked at her with reddened eyes, and she noticed then the flagon and the half-empty goblet on the table at his side. Whatever he had to say to her, he had needed to fortify himself with strong drink in order to do it. She held her breath and waited.

  “I have news of your queen,” he drawled, “of your Lady Emma.”

  Th
is was not what she had expected. What news could there be of Emma? She was with the king and the court, safely tucked up in one of the royal burhs, no doubt, far from any Danish threat.

  “Well?” she said.

  “She will soon give our king another brat for his collection. This time, though, it will be a Norman brat.” He reached for his cup and waved it at her. “If its brothers have any sense, they will kill it before it can walk.”

  She glared at him. Such news might have tormented her once, but it was meaningless now.

  “Why should I care about the queen or her brat?” she snapped. “Before the year is out I will likely be dead at the hands of some filthy Dane.”

  He threw her a bemused look.

  “Are you so afraid of them?” he asked. “You need not be.”

  “Why not?” she demanded. “Do you not fear them?”

  He waved his cup at her again, brushing away her question. “The fens will swallow them long before they can reach us.”

  His slurred assurances, though, did not quiet her fear.

  Over the next few weeks, as the enemy drew nearer, Elgiva’s fear grew. It became her constant companion, especially in the dark, malignant nights when she woke from nightmares that were filled with blood and fire, and were haunted by the face of Groa, her mouth open in a silent scream.

  Finally, word reached them in October of a great battle between the Danes and a force of East Anglians. The defenders had suffered great losses, but they had driven the Danish army from the land at last. For now.

  Elgiva could learn little more than that, for her father was niggardly with his news. For a more detailed account she had to wait until November when, to her surprise and elation, Athelstan and his eldest brothers arrived at their gates seeking a night’s lodging as they journeyed south from Jorvik toward Oxfordshire.