The Price of Blood

by Patricia Bracewell

  She had missed Wymarc this past week.

  “Margot has taken Robert down to the millpool,” Wymarc said, “to look for ducklings.” She shook her head. “It is a marvel that a woman of her years can keep pace with my young son, yet she does it.”

  Emma smiled, imagining Margot, as small and cheerful as a wren, walking hand in hand with a child not quite two winters old. Children, though, had ever been the center of Margot’s world. Healer and midwife, she had been Emma’s guide since birth—and the nearest thing to a mother that Emma had in England.

  She glanced at Wulfa and Ælfa, who were already shedding their mud-spattered cyrtels for fresh garments.

  “The girls will be glad to see Margot,” she said. “Ælfa took a fall this morning and wants a salve for the cut on her knee. And Edyth”—she nodded toward one of the beds where Æthelred’s eldest daughter was curled up tightly, knees to chest—“yesterday she bled for the first time and she’s feeling wretched, of course, and swears that she’s ill. She’ll listen to no words of reassurance from me, but I expect that Margot can persuade her that she’s not about to die.”

  At this the expression in Wymarc’s usually merry brown eyes grew guarded, and the warning glance she cast toward the girls told Emma that something was wrong but that an explanation would have to wait until they could speak privately.

  She changed quickly into clean stockings, linen shift, and a dark gray woolen cyrtel, then she drew Wymarc aside.

  “What is amiss?” she asked, taking the silken headrail that Wymarc was holding out to her. “Is it something to do with Edmund? I saw his bannermen as I came into the yard.”

  “I pray it is not true,” Wymarc whispered, “but there is a rumor that one of the æthelings has died in London.” She clutched Emma’s hand. “Emma, I do not know who it is.”

  The headrail slipped, forgotten, from Emma’s fingers. She stared at Wymarc and had to will herself to breathe. Edmund had been with Athelstan and Ecbert in London. Was it possible that one of them was dead?

  Holy Mary, she prayed, let it not be Athelstan.

  She had been on God’s earth for nineteen summers, had been wife and queen for four of them, and had born a babe who was heir to England’s crown. In all that time she had loved but one man and, God forgive her, that man was not her royal husband but his eldest son.

  Clasping her hands together to stop their trembling, she pressed them against her mouth and shut her eyes.

  “God have mercy,” she whispered, then looked to Wymarc. “I must go to the king.”

  Her thoughts flew back to that moment on the hill above the manor and the foreboding that had shaken her. Had she sensed some trouble in the air then—a portent of loss greater than she could bear to imagine?

  Sweet Virgin, she prayed again, let it not be Athelstan.

  She took long, slow breaths and walked with a measured step to disguise the fear that clutched at her heart, to try not to think of how wretched the world would be if Athelstan were not in it.

  Nodding to the guards at the entrance to the great hall, she slipped inside. Torches flamed in their sockets along the walls and a fire roared in the central pit, but the vast chamber, which should have been busy with preparations for the evening meal, was all but empty. Æthelred sat on the dais in his great chair with Edmund kneeling before him. The king was bent forward, his silver-streaked, tawny hair contrasting with his son’s darker, disheveled locks. The king’s steward, Hubert, stood to one side, dictating something to a scribe; a gaggle of servants hovered nearby looking frightened.

  Filled with dread, Emma walked silently and swiftly to the dais and sank into the chair placed beside the king’s. Æthelred did not even mark her entrance, so absorbed was he in what Edmund was saying. Edmund’s face, she saw with despair, was wet with tears, and she forced herself to listen to him in silence, swallowing the urgent query that was on her lips.

  “It came on suddenly, and he was in agony from the start,” he said in a voice laced with grief. “The leeches gave him a purgative, but that only seemed to make him worse. They bled him, to try to release the evil humors, but even I could see that they thought it was futile. A corruption had taken hold inside, they said, and only a miracle would spare him. They tried to dose him with poppy juice to ease his pain, but what little he swallowed he spewed back again. It was as if some devil would not allow him any succor, would not even let him sleep. His suffering was terrible, my lord. He did not deserve such torment.”

  Edmund’s voice broke, but he took a breath, mastered his grief, and went on.

  “On the second morning the bishop arrived with the relics of Saint Erkenwald and a clutch of priests. They prayed for a miracle, but by midday I was begging God to put an end to his agony.” He drew a heavy breath. “That prayer, at least, was answered. I am come to you straight from Ecbert’s deathbed, my lord. Athelstan insisted that you hear it from one of us and no other.”

  Emma dropped her head into her hands, unable to keep back her tears. She mourned for Ecbert, and she grieved for Athelstan, who had lost his dearest companion. Yet even as she wept for pity, she murmured a prayer of thanks. Athelstan was alive.

  “Why do you weep, lady?” Edmund’s harsh voice flayed her. “Your own son thrives, does he not? And Ecbert was nothing to you.”

  She looked into the grief-ravaged face of her stepson, unsurprised by his words. At seventeen he was a grown man, but even as a youth he had regarded her with resentment and suspicion.

  “I am no monster, Edmund,” she said. “I grieve for Ecbert as I would for the death of any of my husband’s children.”

  “Ecbert would not want your—”

  “Edmund.” Æthelred’s voice silenced his son.

  For once Emma was grateful for the rigid control that the king wielded over his children. She had no wish to wrangle with Edmund. Not today.

  The king was gazing into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused and empty.

  “On what day,” he asked, “and at what hour did Ecbert die?”

  “Two days ago,” Edmund replied. “Shrove Tuesday, just before vespers.”

  Æthelred closed his eyes, and the hand that he lifted to his brow trembled. Emma could only guess at what he was feeling. Anguish for the suffering of his son? Anger at a pitiless God? She wanted to comfort him, and she would have reached out to touch his arm, but his next words checked her.

  “I beg you, lady, to leave us to our grief. Send my daughters to me. I would tell them of their brother’s death.”

  It was as if he had struck her a physical blow—a terse reminder that she was an outsider, a foreign queen who could be beckoned or dismissed at the king’s whim, like a bit of carved wood on a game board.

  Without another word, she left the hall.

  Grieving and wounded, she returned to her apartments and, as the king had bid her, sent his daughters to him. Then she drew her son from his nurse’s lap. Edward nuzzled contentedly against her shoulder, happily fingering the thick, pale braid of her hair. As she paced restlessly about the room, finding comfort in her son’s warm, milky scent, Edmund’s words and the venomous look he had turned upon her played in her head like a bad dream.

  His anger, she feared, was directed as much toward her son as toward her. She had watched it grow and fester for more than a year now—ever since Æthelred had named Edward heir to his throne. In disinheriting the sons born to him by his first wife, the king had pitted all her stepsons against her child. Brothers against brother; a host of Cains against her tiny Abel.

  Athelstan, for her sake she suspected, kept his brothers’ resentment in check. But how long could he continue to do so?

  Royal brothers had been murdered before this for the sake of a crown. Æthelred himself had been but ten summers old when his half brother, King Edward, had been slain. No one had been punished for that murder. Instead, certain men close to the
newly crowned young Æthelred had prospered.

  How many powerful men, she mused uneasily, had interests that would be ill served if her son should one day take the throne? How many of the elder æthelings’ supporters could be called on to dispose of a troublesome half brother for the benefit of the sons of Æthelred’s first wife?

  The thought turned her limbs to liquid, and she had to sit down. She rested her cheek against Edward’s bright silken hair and held him close. He was her treasure, her whole reason for being. His life was in her hands, and Ecbert’s death was a reminder that even for a royal son, life was perilous.

  “I promise you,” she whispered, “that I will protect you from all your enemies.” Then she thought of Athelstan, alone in London and grieving for his brother, and she added, “Even those whom I love.”

  Chapter Two

  March 1006

  Calne, Wiltshire

  The next day dawned sunless, heavy with the threat of rain. As Æthelred performed the prescribed rituals of mourning for his dead son, his mind was filled with thoughts as black as the sullen skies—thoughts that sprang not from grief, but from rage.

  Grief, he told himself, was a sentiment of little use to him. Better to howl than to weep. Better to channel his fury toward a pitiless God and the vengeful shade of a murdered king than to mourn for the innocent dead.

  Both heaven and hell, he was certain, had cursed him—the bitter fruit of ancient sins. He had witnessed the murder of his brother, the king; had raised neither voice nor hand to prevent it; had taken a crown that should not have been his. For these wrongs his brother’s cruel shadow continued to torment him, despite all that he had done to lay the loathsome spirit to rest.

  Ecbert’s death was yet another sign that Edward’s hand—or God’s—was raised against him. Shrines and churches, prayers and penance had not bought him peace. He was still dogged by misfortune.

  Now he understood that the price of forgiveness was far too high. God and Edward demanded his kingdom and his crown, and that was a price he would not pay.

  As he knelt within the cold heart of the royal chapel, he made a solemn vow. He would defy heaven; he would defy hell, too, and anything else living or dead that sought to break his grasp upon his throne. For he was of the Royal House of Cerdic. Never had his forebears relinquished their claim to kingship until the moment that each took his final breath, and neither would he.

  If a king was not a king, then he was nothing.

  By midafternoon the storm had dissipated, but when the household assembled for the day’s main meal Æthelred still seethed with a brooding rage that he directed toward the God who had turned against him. He took his place upon the dais and nodded brusquely to Abbot Ælfweard, seated at his right hand, to give the blessing. A commotion at the bottom of the hall, though, drew his attention to the screens passage. There, a tall figure stepped through the curtained doorway. Cloaked all in black and with the long white beard of an Old Testament prophet, Archbishop Wulfstan strode with measured step toward the high table.

  Here, then, Æthelred thought, was God’s answer to his earlier vow of defiance. Like some carrion crow, Wulfstan—Bishop of Worcester, Archbishop of Jorvik—had come to croak God’s Word at him.

  Like the rest of his household, he stood up as the archbishop advanced. But Wulfstan’s progress was pointedly slow, and he leaned heavily upon his crosier as he made his way to the dais, sketching crosses in the air over the bowed heads of the assembly.

  The old man was weary, Æthelred thought, unusual for Wulfstan, who usually had the vigor of a rutting stallion. A vigor that he dedicated to his king’s service, he admitted grudgingly, as well as to God’s. What was it that had driven him so hard today? Was it Ecbert’s death, or did he bring news of some further calamity?

  Emma, he saw, was already rounding the table to present the welcome cup before kneeling in front of the archbishop for his blessing. Wulfstan passed his crosier and then the cup to a waiting servant, took the queen’s hands in his, and bent his head close to hers to speak a private word. Æthelred watched, irritated. Wulfstan had always been Emma’s champion; indeed, most of England’s high clergy had been seduced by his pious queen.

  Beside him Abbot Ælfweard, who knew his place well enough, scuttled off the dais to make way for his superior, and Æthelred knelt in his turn as the archbishop offered a prayer over his royal head. When the prelate had cleansed his hands and the prayer of thanksgiving had been said at last, the company sat down to eat.

  After glancing with distaste at the Lenten fare of eel soup and bread that was set before him, Æthelred pushed the food away and turned to the archbishop. May as well hear what the man had come to say, he thought, and be done with it.

  “Do you come to console me, Archbishop?” he demanded bitterly. “Do you bring words of comfort from the Almighty that will recompense me for the death of a son?”

  Wulfstan, too, pushed aside his bowl.

  “I bring no consolation, my lord, for I have none to give,” he said, and there was not even the merest hint of compassion in the archbishop’s cold gaze. “Thus says the Lord,” he went on, “your sons shall die and your daughters shall perish of famine. None shall be spared among them, unless you repent of the wickedness of your hearts.” His gray eyes glinted in the candlelight like chips of steel, fierce and bright. “I am come, my lord, because I am afraid—for this kingdom and its people.” He paused and then he added, “And I fear for its king.”

  Fear of God’s wrath. Of course—it was Wulfstan’s favorite theme, the wickedness of men and the need for repentance. But God used men to flay those whom He would punish, and it was the men whom Æthelred feared, although he did not say it.

  “Your kingdom is mired in sin, my lord,” Wulfstan’s cold, implacable voice went on, “and even innocents will suffer for it. The death of the ætheling and the famine that we have endured—these are signs from the Almighty. God’s punishment will be inflicted on us all, from the king to the lowliest slave, and no one will escape judgment. If we are not penitent, God will destroy us.”

  Æthelred gritted his teeth. He had tried penitence, but over and over God had spurned his prayers and his offerings of recompense. His brother’s hideous wraith still walked the earth—how else if not by God’s will? Let others turn to the Lord for succor; he would not. Let Wulfstan batter heaven with his prayers—such was his episcopal duty. Mayhap God would pay heed to him.

  He toyed with a bit of bread, listening with half an ear as Wulfstan gravely catalogued the sinful deeds of the men and women of Worcester. Adultery, murder, pagan rituals, and the miserliness of tight-fisted nobles ranked high among them, but Æthelred had no interest in the petty sins of Worcestershire folk.

  “What of your northern see, Archbishop?” he asked when Wulfstan paused for breath. “What black sins, exactly, do the men of Northumbria have upon their souls?”

  Wulfstan’s hard eyes—a zealot’s eyes in a grim face, he thought—fixed on his own.

  “The Lord said to me, from the north will come an evil that will boil over on all who dwell in the land. The prophet Jeremiah gives you warning, my king, and you would do well to heed his words.”

  Æthelred closed his eyes. Jesu, but the man maddened him. He spoke of prophecies and warnings, but what further calamity did they presage?

  Scowling, he tossed his bread to the table.

  “I could heed your prophet far better if you would make his message plain to me,” he growled. “What mischief is brewing in the north and who is behind it?”

  Wulfstan steepled his hands and rested his chin thoughtfully upon his fingertips.

  “The men of the north have little love for their king.” He shook his head. “They are wary even of their archbishop. It is true that unrest is brewing in Jorvik, but I cannot say who is behind it.”

  Cannot? Æthelred wondered. Or will not?

  “Wh
at of my ealdorman?” he asked. “How does he treat with the men of Northumbria and the Danelaw?” Ealdorman Ælfhelm’s commission was to bend the damned rigid northerners to the will of their king, but he had long suspected that the man’s activities in Northumbria had been far more self-serving. Get close enough and Ælfhelm’s actions stank more of scheming and guile than of vigorous efforts at persuasion.

  Wulfstan’s thin lips seemed to grow thinner still. Whatever Ælfhelm was doing, the archbishop did not approve.

  “I am told that he has the ear of the northern nobles,” Wulfstan said, “although what passes between them I do not know. Lord Ælfhelm does not confide in me.”

  No. Ælfhelm was not the kind of man to confide in an archbishop. But Wulfstan clearly knew something about the ealdorman that he was reluctant to reveal. Sensing that there was more to come, he waited, and eventually Wulfstan spoke again.

  “I urge you to speak with Lord Ælfhelm on these matters, my lord. I, too, will take counsel with him at the Easter court, for I have reason to believe that some men in the north consort with pagan believers and evildoers from foreign lands. They must be brought to heel through fear of God’s wrath and the punishments sanctioned by law.”

  Æthelred grunted his agreement to Wulfstan’s advice, but his thoughts lingered on the foreign evildoers the archbishop spoke of. He would like to know more about them and their dealings with the men of Northumbria, and perhaps with Ælfhelm himself. He would get nothing else from Wulfstan, he knew. The archbishop had never been one for details.

  As for his ealdorman, he had grave doubts about Ælfhelm’s ability to bring the men of the north to heel. Or perhaps it was willingness that was lacking. Although Ælfhelm was the most powerful and wealthy of England’s magnates, he wanted more power still, and he would use every means at his disposal to get it. That meant alliances with those who bore some malice toward the Church or the Crown, and there were certain to be many such men.

  So what alliances was Ælfhelm forging? His elder son had been wed years ago to a girl from the Five Boroughs; the younger last spring to a widow with lands along the River Trent. Each marriage had extended the ealdorman’s influence northward, and now he had but one child left unwed—Elgiva, his beautiful witch of a daughter.