The Forever Queen

by Helen Hollick

  Furious, Æthelred stormed to his feet. “You will do as I say!” He jabbed his finger at Athelstan, poking his shoulder. “Nor will you be King. Edward is to follow me.”

  Athelstan laughed. “Edward? That fragile mushroom? He’ll not make it past infancy!”

  “I was a sickly child—I survived, as will my legitimate son. And there will be others to follow him, others who will take precedence over you.”

  Casually, Athelstan rose to his feet, laid the partially plaited thongs across the stool. “Then if Edward lives, and others are born and they are foolish enough to contest my claim, I will have to kill them.” It was not a threat.

  “I could as easily order you killed. Here and now,” Æthelred growled, low and menacing, his nostrils pinched, lip curled. Why did conversation with his eldest always disintegrate into argument?

  “Then why don’t you?” Leaning forward so that his face was only an inch from his father’s, Athelstan sneered, “I will tell you why. Because I am all you have, and you hate that fact. Edward will not live, and there may not be others.” He took a step back, folded his arms, his expression mocking as he surveyed the area of his father’s manhood. “There’s talk, gossip; I find it most interesting. You lie with all these gutter-slut whores, yet you are rarely presented with their by-blows. Why is that, Papa? Are you getting old? Is your pizzle withering? Is it blunted, of no more use than a broken spear? How can you be sure the brats your Norman whore has borne are yours? Eh?”

  His fists bunched, Æthelred leapt up and drove his knuckles at Athelstan’s jaw, but his son was agile, young, and fit. With ease, he tipped his head aside, felt no more than a brush of air across his skin.

  “You are no match for me, old man. You never were, and you never will be.” Giving a mocking salute, Athelstan turned away, took his cloak from its peg, and sauntered towards the door.

  Æthelred was shaking, enraged and angry, his face suffused purple, his hands white. Through clenched teeth, he spat, “Get out! Get out of my sight, my court, my kingdom!”

  “With pleasure, Papa, with great pleasure.” He headed for the stables, shouting for his men to be roused as he walked. As always, Æthelred would take his anger out on someone of less strength, his wife probably. Athelstan felt a passing twinge of pity for her, but she was a wife, and wives were expected to take the brunt of a husband’s storm-raging moods.

  Conscience was not an emotion a future King could afford to entertain.

  30

  Emma eased herself into the round wooden bathtub. Immersed in the comfort of hot water, she closed her eyes, willed her muscles to relax. Last night she had stood up to Æthelred and had won. Releasing her breath in a long, slow sigh, she felt the tension ease from her body. She had won, God help her! She was seven and ten years of age, and had at last discovered the inner strength of assertive self-preservation and the delicious feeling of power that it gave.

  Horses were in the courtyard, the sound of men’s excited voices mingling with the singing of hounds. With the rain ceasing during the night and a clear blue sky overhead, there were several days of missed hunting for them to catch up on. The palace would be depleted of men and noise until evening. A blissful day without the irritating presence of her despicable husband.

  Opening her eyes, she reached for a tablet of goose fat, chamomile, and lanolin soap, and began to smooth it over her breasts, arms, and belly. There were white stretch marks across her thighs and above the bush of pubic hair; would they increase in length, she wondered idly, with the carrying of a third child? With a sigh of resignation, said aloud, “I do not want another child.”

  “Ah, but a wife cannot refuse her duties to her husband. There is naught we can do but endure.”

  Unaware she had spoken her thoughts, Emma looked up at Leofgifu. “And a husband,” she retorted sharply, “should remember his duty to his wife. Is it not sinful to ill-use a woman?”

  With that Leofgifu had to agree.

  Emma smoothed the washcloth along her right leg. “My husband gets drunk because he cannot bear the weight of his conscience. He shouts because he wants to be heard and no one cares to listen. He fears the night and the dancing shadows, because it is all too easy to hide a dagger blade where there is no light. He lives, day by day, hour by hour, in fear, afraid that one day someone is going to say to his face what troubles his mind. That without his mother he is nothing.”

  Filling a small jug with the bathwater, she poured it over her hair and vigorously applied the soap. “He fears Athelstan because, in all but sex, the boy is the image of his grandmother.” She pointed at the last jug of clean, hot water, bent her head for Leofgifu to rinse her hair. Stripping the water from its long length, she stepped from the tub, allowed her friend to swaddle her in the warmed towel, begin to rub her dry.

  “And now he also fears me, for I have done what he dreads most.” The satisfaction as she spoke her triumph aloud was invigorating. She felt free, reborn, and renewed.

  Leofgifu stopped rubbing, snatched her head up sharply, not understanding. “Lady?”

  Emma was dabbing a second towel at her face and shoulders. “I am with child again; you must have noticed?”

  The older woman nodded; aye, she had recognised the signs.

  “Yesterday, he again attempted to take me by force. He was drunk, angry—another row with Athelstan, of course. He has always to prove himself to someone, and I come in useful to beat and humiliate at will. Last night I found the courage to tell him if he ever dared touch me in violence again, he would join his brother in his grave.”

  Leofgifu gasped, her hands stilled, her eyes widened with terror. “Lady, you did not threaten to kill him? That is treason! He could have you hanged!”

  Emma laughed. “I am not a fool; of course I did not. I merely told him if he abused me, I would take my children and return to my brother, as is my right as a wronged wife. He cannot deny the charge, for his entire hall has witnessed his mistreatment. I told him, in Normandy I would raise an army of Normans and French. Germany, too, would assist if I asked. The Pope, assuredly, would promote my cause, for I would see to it that I offered sufficient financial incentive.”

  Puzzled, Leofgifu frowned. The world of politics and men meant nothing. “But what would you do with an army? How does this help you?”

  With her hair wet and glistening, Emma stood tall and straight, content that at last she had found her courage and pride. “Damaged people,” she said, “are dangerous, for we have already drowned in the darkness, and we know that if we kick strong enough we can survive.” She began to dress, her favourite blue wool with the yellow braiding. “With an army, I would put Edward on the throne and rule as regent.” She fastened a shoulder brooch, delighting in how the sapphires gleamed in the candlelight.

  He had come bursting into her chamber, hurled her women from the room, and forced his mouth over hers. Where had Leofgifu been? Ah, yes, with the children.

  Quietly, without struggling, without attempting to push him away or cower from him, Emma had said, “I heard of a woman who disposed of a King so that she might rule, in her own right, through her son. Her name was Ælfthryth; your mother.”

  He had stood there, silent, as she told him what she intended to do if ever he laid as much as one finger on her again; had realised she was deadly, coldly, serious. What the mother of one future King could do, so could another.

  31

  June 1006—Durham

  Durham,” Uhtred’s messenger had said, sent urgent to Ealdorman Alfhelm in York, “is in extreme danger. If you do not grant my father aid, Bernicia could fall.”

  “Sod Bernicia!” had been the reply.

  ***

  Siege warfare was not a favoured method of fighting for an English warrior. Few towns and burghs were defended by stout-built stone walls; the majority, secured behind the limited protection of palisade fencing which, although constructed in seasoned oak, a wood difficult to burn, were not invulnerable. The border towns along the Welsh
Marches, Hereford and Shrewsbury in particular, were used to attack, but the Welsh preferred the hit-and-run tactics of night raiding. Laying siege was too prolonged and cumbersome. To besiege a town reluctant to bow to a demanded war-geld was an effective procedure. As long as the besieging army was in no danger from counterattack or the apathy of boredom. A haphazard way of doing battle, a siege, for it required organisation, loyalty, and vigilance. A poor leader could rarely sustain an effective long-term campaign; men were inclined, unless held under strict discipline, to wander off in search of more immediate gain rather than sit arse-scratching, day after tedious day, watching ambivalent townsfolk skulk behind strong-held walls. Food, once everything within the near vicinity had been devoured, became scarce—a fact worsened after a famine year. The latrine pits soon began to stink, and the edge of interest began to wear thin.

  By slaying his predecessor, Malcolm of Scotland, the second King of that name, had escalated the ongoing blood feud that ran between the noble families of the High Lands and the Isles. Needing to prove his worth, he chose an inaugural foray across the border, often a profitable exercise for whichever side was doing the raiding. With Ealdorman Waltheof of Bernicia an old and feeble man, the Scot seized his opportunity and swept down towards Durham, setting camp beyond the walls to make ready to starve the inhabitants into submission.

  To be successful, a siege needed planning, cunning, and foresight. Malcolm had all those requirements, and he was a determined man who had no intention of missing an opportunity for easy gain, but he had not bargained on Waltheof’s son, Uhtred, taking over his dying father’s authority.

  Durham was not a fainthearted town ready to surrender at the first thrown spear. This was Saint Cuthbert’s resting place, his grand and beautiful cathedral dominating the huddle of inns, shops, and bothies. A town increasing in wealth, that had an adequate supply of food and water, and the ability to withstand a siege for many months if need be, for the townsfolk believed neither their saint nor their Ealdorman would abandon them. All they had to do was sit and wait. And pray.

  The drizzling rain had scuttled away with a change of the wind, and stars had pocked a bright, clear sky throughout the night. Tendrils of a new dawn purpled the eastern sky, and along Durham’s rampart walls the sentries yawned, stretched, and stamped dew-damp feet, spat at the enemy encampment below, ghostly in its swathe of slow-shifting ground mist. If the Scots were going to attempt another assault at the gateway with their battering ram, it would not be for an hour or two yet. No one was stirring down there among the ragged straggle of tents. Or were they?

  One of the men peered closer. Was that movement at the outer edge of the camp? Something wading through the mist, like a boat being paddled slowly through water? He nudged his companion, pointed. “What be that?”

  His friend looked with squinting eyes against the glare of the rising sun. Laughed. “Bloody fool, ’tis only strayed cattle. Frightened of your own shadow, are you?” He turned away, chuckling, but the first man, excited, grabbed at his tunic sleeve.

  “It ain’t just cows! Look!”

  Through the dawn mist, the black, short-horned cattle of the borders were making their way down to the river, cattle driven by men huddled and bent low against their sides. Men armed with shields and spears and swords. Uhtred’s men. The fight was brief and bloody. Malcolm, complacent, over-sure and caught unawares, escaped within inches of losing his life. For the majority of his men there was only death.

  “What do we do with the dead?” A fifteen-year-old stood eagerly before his father. His boots, his leggings, his tunic, even his face blood-spattered, as if he had a plague of pox spots covering him. “Do we leave them for the ravens? God’s name, Papa, what a fight! Are all battles like this? No wonder the tales are so glorious!”

  Uhtred folded his arms and glowered at the boy. The killing had taken no longer than an hour; this had not been a battle, but a slaughter, as easy to herd cattle into a pen and slit their throats for the autumn butchering. There was much he wanted to say to the boy, that this was not glory, was not a game, a mock skirmish fought with wooden swords. This was real, this was death and maiming, misery and pain. But how could he say all that to an eager lad who had just encountered his first victory? Instead, Uhtred smiled and ruffled his son’s hair, bright chestnut, like his own had been before the grizzle-grey had crept in.

  “Our own dead, what few there are, will be buried with Christian honour, boy. As for the rest, it is wiser to dispose quickly of the dead, for a corpse soon begins to stink. We burn them.”

  “And the Scots wounded?”

  Uhtred lifted his eyes to the sky; the clouds were banking up again over to the west. More rain? It would be welcome; rain would clean away the spill of blood.

  “We leave no Scotsman alive, son. The lesson here this day at Durham must be one to be remembered up above our northern boundary for many a year to come. Remembered down to the grandsons of grandsons.”

  The old Ealdorman might no longer be the formidable warrior he had once been, but his son—and grandson—was every bit as capable. Uhtred was determined to prove it was not wise to set a wrong foot inside Bernicia while he had the holding of its protection, even if it was only by proxy in his father’s name.

  “How do we ensure they remember, Papa?” Eadulf was puzzled as he surveyed the carnage of the fighting, the grotesque dead, the suffering of the wounded. “If we merely slit their throats and leave them with the rest of the dead, who will tell of that?”

  Uhtred snorted. The glory was already beginning to lose its shine for the boy, then. He rubbed at his chin, at the straggle of beard growth, his eyes casting over the muddied, bloodied scene. Cattle to the pen…? Aye, cattle to the slaughter.

  “Hie! Eadulf!” He raised his axe, called to his brother, for whom the boy was named.

  The man frowned, questioning, signalled he had heard, began making his way to Uhtred, stopping every now and then to speak a word of praise or comfort to one of their own wounded.

  “Aye, brother? You wanted me?”

  “It was a good fight, no?”

  Eadulf grinned. “It was a good fight, Uhtred. A pity Alfhelm of Deira was not with us to share in it.”

  Uhtred laughed at the sarcasm. “A great pity!” It was good to laugh where there was so much death. “I have a task for you, brother—for you and the boy here, I think.” He set his arm, proud, against the lad’s shoulders. “I wish all the Scots wounded herded together and beheaded. No exceptions. The bodies piled together and burnt, but not the heads. I want the heads.” He turned abruptly and strode away toward the gateway into Durham that now stood open for its people to pour through, jubilant and praising God.

  Uncle and nephew shrugged. A strange request, but orders must be obeyed.

  It took Uhtred longer to get into Durham than it had to raise the siege, for so many wanted to shake his hand, slap his shoulder; the children—there had been no chance to evacuate—dancing around his heels, the women offering him kisses, aye, and more. He reached the cathedral, endured with resignation the adulation and blessings of the monks; finally, finally, he called for a moment of quiet in which he might speak. It came, slow, reluctant, for the whole town was like an excited child, too taut, too coiled for the discipline of silence and stillness.

  He spoke, his voice booming across the square, of their endurance, courage, and of the brave fight by his men. Then he asked for what he had come for. “I require four women, four washerwomen, to help ensure that slime shall never spit on Durham again.”

  The four he selected did their work well and were each rewarded with the generous gift of one of Uhtred’s own cows. Their task? To wash the hair of every decapitated head and braid it.

  An insult for the head of a warrior to be cleansed and tidied, to have the blood of war removed and the soul left to wander forever, stripped of the honour of the way of dying. And insult beyond all insults, each head was to be displayed high upon the outer walls. There was to be no hiding of
the shame for those who treated Durham with disrespect.

  The pyre of bodies and remains belched black and acrid into the sky, its message carrying northwards on the wind, reaching the nostrils of those few who struggled and stumbled with Malcolm to reach the safety of home. To ensure he knew, Uhtred had the last man spared and set free to return to his Lord.

  They would come back, for the temptation to take what was on offer was always great, but it would not be for a long time. Not until the spears that had been set along Durham’s walls, each spiked with a single head, had been taken down. And that would not happen until the crows had pecked the eyes and ravaged the flesh, and the skulls had rotted to bleached bone.

  Durham would not be forgetting the Scots, nor, for some long while, would the Scots be forgetting Durham.

  32

  December 1006—Shrewsbury

  Alfhelm of York scowled as he watched the dogs flush a pair of ducks from the reeds. The easterly wind was cold, despite the clear sky and a bright sun; there would be another frost tonight, or snow. He shivered beneath the warmth of his otter-skin mantle, lined and edged with squirrel fur. He did not care for winter: short, dark days, hands and feet always numb, dismal weather. Dismal company. That was the trouble with winter, the false gaiety of the Nativity festival and Æthelred winter council. If there had been a way to circumvent attending Æthelred’s Christmas court, Alfhelm would have used it.

  Court was to assemble in Mercia this year, for Winchester and Canterbury were too close to Swein Forkbeard and his over-wintering scum. Alfhelm smiled to himself as he watched Eadric Streona release his goshawk after a pair of wild fowl. A splendid hawk, but too plump, in Alfhelm’s opinion.

  The Danes had returned in early summer and had plundered and looted then sailed away again with the autumn change of weather and wind. Only, unexpectedly, they had not sailed for their own lands, but had followed the Kent coast, rounded Dover, and had made landfall along the many creeks and inlets of the Island of Wight. Watching Streona’s hawk take the female bird with a scatter of feathers, Alfhelm’s wry smile broadened. Swein Forkbeard’s proximity would be giving Æthelred a headache that had the ferocity of a herd of stampeding horses. Serve the bastard right! If he had not whined and mithered and put deliberate obstacles in the way, Alfhelm’s daughter would be wed to Athelstan and the alliance of Deira made firm. As it was, if the King had no wish to commit himself to his Ealdormen, then mayhap those same men might reconsider their own commitment. Perhaps to a better man? Swein Forkbeard?