The Forever Queen

by Helen Hollick

  Cnut kissed her cheek, motioned for her to sit. “How often must I tell you not to stand on your feet so much? You must rest, elskede, I insist upon it.” He set a scroll of ragged parchment in her hand. “This is one of the drafts; the scribe is copying the final agreed version as we speak. What enemies?”

  Eagerly, Emma sat and began to read, saying absently, “I am perfectly all right. And there are no enemies; I have none.” She scanned the first few lines, her lips moving silently, then she began to read aloud, “‘I, Cnut, King of the English at the request of my Queen, Ælfgifu’”—Emma detested the continuing use of her official name, but there was nothing she could do about it—“‘grant to the venerable Archbishop Ælfstan a certain grove of woodland commonly called Hazelgrove in the famous forest of Andredesweald.’” Her smile broadening, Emma looked up at Cnut’s benign expression. “Thank you, my Lord; I am delighted to be giving this gift.”

  “Valuable land, is it?” Harald asked.

  “Of course it is. Of what use would poor scrub be?” Cnut snapped.

  “I only thought perhaps you ought not be giving away assets that may be needed,” Harald answered, making himself comfortable in one of the other chairs. “If there is no tithe collected by Easter, then you must find alternative payment for my men.” His eyes held Cnut’s, unblinking, plain in their meaning. “We will not wait longer than Easter.”

  “Your men? We?” Stifling the inclination to call in the guard and have this irritating bastard executed here and now, Cnut poured himself ale, sat in his chair after thumping the cushions. “I was under the impression my fleet decimated your men, Harald. That I thrashed those who rebelled. Most of them have only God, and the fishes of the sea, to receive anything from. There will not be payment for those who survived; to live is sufficient.” Cnut’s voice rose as he neared the end of the sentence and, with it, his temper. He flung the ale aside and, lurching to his feet, bore down on Harald, his fingers curling into the folds of his brother’s tunic.

  “London, brother, has sent its ten-thousand-pound tribute; it came yestereve. In full. I intend to keep forty ships for my own; those who wish to stay are welcome to join my English scyp fyrd. The rest of you will be paid at sunrise on the morrow and may leave in what ships remain on the noon tide.” The material tightened at Harald’s neck as Cnut’s fingers gripped harder, choking him. “You shall be with them, and if you ever so much as glance in England’s direction again or dare to insult my wife as I overheard, then you will regret the day our mother spewed you from her womb!” Cnut flung Harald from him, causing him to overbalance, fall to one knee.

  With the false congeniality swept aside, Harald brushed off imaginary dirt from his sleeves and backed towards the door, his face puckered in livid hatred. “You shall regret this. I do not tolerate insults.”

  Cnut stood his ground, defiant, fists on hips. “Neither do I, and it is you who shall do the regretting. You have a choice: you board one of those ships and be gone from my sight, or I shall find some form of appropriate accommodation for you here in England. Something that closely resembles six feet of soil.”

  In reply, Harald made an obscene gesture and slammed from the room.

  “Oh, I think you have offended him,” Emma stated with an approving smile.

  11

  8 April 1018—Oxford

  Cnut’s political genius was so successful at the Easter gathering of court that the chroniclers in later years found little more to write of him beyond the recording of his virtues and generosity. The achievement at Oxford was partly due to Archbishop Wulfstan, who saw, with relieved delight, an end to the horrors and deprivations of the devil’s work. Ironically, because of Cnut’s coming, their suffering was over, God’s wrath was appeased, and all would be right with the Christian world,

  There was more to this meeting of council than the religious rhetoric of Archbishop Wulfstan, though, for with the demanded tribute finally paid, the assembly at Oxford was to become the watershed of Cnut’s acceptance by the people of England. He was to offer more than his pledge to rule as a King should rule, reasserting his vow that the English would henceforth live in peace, as one nation of Anglo-Danes. Every man, from Earl to Thegn, pledged his honour to Cnut and eagerly took a binding oath, sworn in the name if God, to obey his King.

  “Sir? My Lord King?” Leofgifu edged onto the dais, trying not to disrupt what she privately thought of as long-winded speech making. “Sir, it is my Lady Queen.”

  His brows shooting downwards into a frown, Cnut swivelled in his chair. “The babe? It has come?”

  Leofgifu hesitated; she had not wanted to be the messenger, but someone had to tell him. “It has come,” she said, “the babe is born.”

  Cnut jumped up, waving Earl Thorkell, who was making an opulent and praising oration, to silence. “Well, woman? How is it? What is it? How does my lady wife?”

  Taking a breath, Leofgifu blurted everything in one sentence. “The babe is well, as is my Lady, although she be tired. You have a daughter, a baby girl.” She almost flinched, expecting a bellow of disappointed rage, but it did not happen. Instead, Cnut laughed, punched the air with his fist.

  “I have a daughter!” he shouted, “another daughter, praise be to God!” After twirling Leofgifu around, not an easy task given her ample girth, he jumped from the dais and, grasping mens’ hands as he passed, hurried to the doorway.

  “Forgive me, this meeting is concluded. I have a daughter to greet, and you have several barrels of my finest barley ale to break open in celebration!” He was gone, whisking himself away to Emma’s chamber.

  “You would have thought he would have preferred a son,” someone said, as men scraped back their stools, began to fasten cloaks or collect scrolls of parchment.

  “He wanted a girl child,” someone else said. “Mark my words, if the Queen ever gives him a son, there will be all Hell let loose from the direction of Northampton.”

  ***

  “What do we call her?” Cnut asked, his voice hushed as the babe lay asleep in his arms, her tiny fingers curled tight around one of his own.

  “It is for you to choose, but I would call her Gunnhild, after the good friend I once had, your father’s half-sister.”

  “Then Gunnhild it is.” Cnut looked down at the child’s sleeping face, a week old, already grown so much, yet still so vulnerably small. She was perfect, absolutely perfect.

  Moving slowly, he sat on the edge of Emma’s bed, his wife shifting her legs to make room for him. Carefully he tucked the shawl under Gunnhild’s chin, rocked her as she stirred.

  Watching him, the love that was pouring from him to his daughter as if it were a waterfall in full spate, Emma asked, “You have another daughter, Ragnhilda. Why do you never speak of her?”

  Cnut wiped dribble from the babe’s lips with his finger. “She was a beautiful child, too.” He glanced, with a smile, at Emma. “Like her mother, as this little one is like you.”

  “Ragnhild? I have heard that you loved her.”

  Chewing his lip, Cnut looked back into the past, those stolen months of happiness in Norway. Then, when he had lost Ragnhild, he had thought happiness would never find him again. Was that why he had pushed himself to come to England? Why he had taken risks against Edmund? And he had taken them; he had the battle scars on his arms and legs to prove it. Edmund Ironside had not been the only one to keep secret the damage done by sword and spear. Except Cnut’s wounds had been minor compared with mortal injury, although some of them persistently ached when the wind moaned at night from far-distant lands away to the northeast.

  “I thought I would die when I lost Ragnhild; some part of me, I think, did die.”

  “Strange,” Emma said, touching her hand lightly, lovingly, on his arm. “A part of me died when I was wed to Æthelred. I only came alive when I married you.” She was not envious or jealous of Ragnhild. How could she be? The woman, unlike Ælfgifu of Northampton, was no threat. The living caused the mischief, not the dead.

>   “You know, of course, that Norway was lost to Denmark soon after Erik Håkonsson left to come to England with me?”

  Aye, she knew that.

  “We left Erik’s son and his brother, Ragnhild’s father, in charge of Norway. Capable men, the both of them, but a man called Olaf Haroldsson, an old enemy of my father’s, proved more capable. With Hlaðir fallen, they fled, taking my daughter with them, intent on joining me here in England.” Cnut paused, rocked the child. “But the winds of the North Sea can be treacherous, and the ships were blown and tossed about as if they were wooden toys bobbing in a spring-flood mountain stream. A few who had fled reached safety on the shores of the Isles of Orkney. Only a few, Erik’s son and brother were not among them.”

  Cnut laid his lips lightly against Gunnhild’s forehead. The child, Ragnhilda, had survived. Somehow the child had been saved.

  “She remains in Orkney, up in the High Islands, where I have friends and kindred to take care of her. I had hoped, one day, to send for her, but…”

  “But?”

  He shrugged.

  Emma answered for him. “But now you are wed to me, and we have a daughter born, and you did not think I would approve of having a child of a different woman within my household?”

  He shrugged again. Ja, he had thought that.

  “The two brats dropped from the whore in the north, no, I would not allow within spitting distance, but Ragnhilda is different.” A daughter could not be a threat. “Send for her. Bring her to court.”

  It took a while for Cnut to swallow the lump that had hurried into his throat, to blink back stupid tears and look at his wife. What did this intelligent, proud, clever woman see in him?

  “One day soon, not too far into the future, I will have to sail to Denmark to sort matters there. When I return to England I shall personally collect her, if you are certain you do not object.”

  “Why should I object? She will be company for this little one.”

  Cnut laughed suddenly, wrinkled his nose. “She may only be a small bundle, this second daughter of mine, but the smell she produces can outshine a barn full of swine!”

  12

  29 March 1019—Winchester

  After years of waiting, Emma had visited her estates of Exeter in Devon and was relieved to find the memories of old friends were no longer raw. Cnut’s primary intention had been to consolidate the southwestern counties, but there was opportunity too for him to enjoy the delights of family life with his wife and baby daughter, particularly during the Nativity, which they spent together at Buckfast Abbey. The deer were plentiful on the moorland regions of Exmoor and Dartmoor, and although Emma did not share her husband’s enthusiasm for the chase, she found the scenery as enchanting as Pallig had once described it to be. She had told Cnut about Pallig, forgetting he had known the man, for Gunnhilda had been Cnut’s aunt.

  “I grieved for them for so long,” she had confided to him one night as they lay close together after making love. “They were the only people to be kind to me when first I came to England as a shy and frightened girl. My only friends.”

  Cnut had laughed. “You? Shy and frightened? Pull the other oar!”

  She had laughed with him, but inside the memory had rekindled those fearful, lonely months of emptiness. It was a sorry thing not to have a friend, and now she had found one to cherish, she was not going to let Cnut go. Prayed God would grant them long years of happiness together.

  Devon had not entirely been hunting and holiday, for there were duties to attend, judgements of law to make, charters to grant, but the winter months had passed pleasantly with only a few minor falls of snow hindering them for no more than a handful of days. An enjoyable experience, but Emma was delighted to be back in Winchester, for her house was almost completed. At last, her own private residence.

  They had arrived, weary and saddle-sore, the previous evening, Gunnhild red-cheeked and irritable. Emma had thrown herself into bed with barely the energy to remove her travel-grimed clothing, had fallen instantly asleep. When Cnut joined her, she had woken, briefly, to feel his shivering body against hers, but had slept on. Come morning he was gone, with only a dent in the pillow and his own scatter of muddied clothing to show for his being there.

  By midday, Cnut felt as if he were drowning in the demand of duties of government and called a halt to the tedium. “I am a man born of a wind-rippled fjord and the open toss of the sea,” he said, rubbing at his aching temples. “I need fresh air to fill my lungs, or I swear I shall suffocate.” By way of added excuse, he offered to accompany his wife to inspect her new manor.

  “They are so stubbornly pedantic, these sombre-faced clerics,” he confided to her as they walked, arm linked through arm, along the wide stretch of the High Street with their escort of four stalwart housecarls, two making way ahead and two trudging discreetly behind. “Have they no sense of humour? I swear these clerics would argue with Saint Peter at the very gates of Heaven over some triviality of written legislation!”

  Emma laughed and squeezed his arm affectionately. “They fall over their feet in an attempt to impress you, to show how competent and efficient they are.”

  “Ah, so that is what they are doing. I wondered.”

  The eastern end of the High Street was broad and flat, for here it was low ground and often flooded from an overspill of the three brooks that provided a living for several families. Constant running water was essential for so many trades; in this instance the brooks made income for a fuller and several leather workers. On hot days Winchester stank from the debris and waste-strewn stagnant water, and the obnoxious stench of the fuller’s yard. The High Street was a busy, cluttered thoroughfare, even on days such as this, when there were no market stalls set along the cobbled street. The Saint Swithin’s Priory, the Old Minster, was a much patronised place, and Winchester itself, with its royal importance, a focus for trade and legal jurisdiction.

  The two housecarls ahead cleared a pathway through the crowd, their shields and spears allowing no one to linger or push by, the few grumbles at their casual roughness lost among the general hubbub made by so many busy people. Footsteps, talk, laughter; the occasional angry exchange. A donkey’s stubborn braying, a dog’s anxious barking. Traders, craftsmen, housewives, servants, slaves, children, monks; they were all here in Winchester, and most were used to the presence of royalty walking up their main street. A crippled beggar chanced his luck for a tossed penny, but received only a scowl and the threatening end of a spear from one of the housecarls. A child playing football with three other boys almost collided into Cnut, but chuckling, he kicked the pig’s bladder aside, sending it rolling and bumping back down the hill, the boys whooping with delight in pursuit. Cnut was the King, Emma his Queen, and Winchester loved the both of them.

  With the High Street beginning to climb, Emma slowed their brisk pace to an amble. She was a fit woman who enjoyed walking, but she so rarely found the chance to have her husband to herself that she took the opportunity to stretch the stolen hour into something longer.

  Ahead, the archway and squat tower of the west gate dominated the final rise of the hill, and the street split into two, one way sweeping out underneath the gateway, the other arm swinging to the right into the gold-lenders’ street, the Jewish quarter, where several Jews were settled in a small community. Emma had no care for them and shared the common feeling that one or two would, before long, encourage the coining of many. But Winchester, as with any trading town, was a centre for the business of buying and selling, and where you had merchants you had money. And that attracted the Jewish moneyers. They were taxed high and brought considerable revenue, so they were tolerated. Ever it was so; money gave way to prejudice.

  The manor was before the right-hand turn, the high wall, higher than a man on horseback, giving it both protection and privacy. The gateway stood open, and, dramatically, Cnut paused at its threshold and bowed.

  “Should I carry you across as if you were a new-come bride?” He did not wait for rep
ly, but bent and swooped her into his arms, strode purposefully under the arch, and set her down again, with her giggling like a virgin maid, in the courtyard beyond.

  Builders’ scaffolding was in place along two of the main hall walls, and despite the workmen, the place seemed oddly hollow. Standing, looking around, her arms folded critically, Emma took a while to realise why. There were no servants, no dogs nosing for food, no chickens scratching and squawking at a midden heap or crooning to themselves on hidden nests. No horses looking, prick-eared, from the stables. No smoke or smell of baking bread or roasting meat drifted from the kitchens. It was an empty building, soulless and lifeless—just a house, not a home.

  Seeing their arrival, the master mason climbed down the cross-tied beams of scaffolding, his feet sure and confident as he swung along the narrow slippery rungs of the ladders and, wiping his roughened hands on his leather apron, forced a smile onto his harassed face and bowed.

  “You are welcome, master, mistress. Had I known you were coming I would have had the place tidied.” His voice trailed off as he looked, mournfully at the mess that builders invariably left behind: a coil of frayed rope, a broken pulley wheel, piles of rubble, stone dust, wood shavings.

  Emma waved his concern aside. “I would have been more displeased to find my hall abandoned and neglected.” She smiled reassuringly. “Here I can see for myself that work is in progress. Is there much more to do?”

  Pleased to be able to impart good news, the mason grinned. “Another four or five days, madam, that is all.”

  Like Emma, the master mason was Norman; he had worked on several of her brother’s castles and, in part, on the cathedral at Rouen. This, Emma’s house, to the best of his knowledge, was the first stone building, outside of a religious complex, to be built in England. Given free rein and a full purse, Emma had been set on rivalling the Norman Duke for grandeur and comfort. The style of her house was large in design but modest in size, a two-storeyed building, with stone walls and vaulting on the ground floor of the public hall, the more traditional timber, daub, and wattle for the upper private chambers.