He rode beneath the wooden archway that marked the entrance to what the Londoners called the Æthelings’ Haga—usually an apt description, although since Ecbert’s death and Edmund’s immediate departure for Wiltshire, he had been the only ætheling in London. That was apparently no longer the case, he concluded, eyeing the lathered mounts in the yard. Edmund must be back.
He left his horse with a groom and moments later he entered the hall, where he found his brother waiting for him, still cloaked and grimed from travel. Edmund was seated at a table with an ale cup in his hand, and he wore an expression forbidding enough to keep the other men in the hall—slaves, men-at-arms, and trusted companions—at a healthy distance.
Even on a good day, Athelstan knew, Edmund could be forbidding. He had always been burly, but now, at seventeen, he had outstripped all his brothers in height. Athelstan couldn’t even remember the last time he’d won a wrestling match with Edmund. It had been years ago.
Going on looks alone, men took care not to cross Edmund.
The dark, silent one, their grandmother, the dowager queen, had named him. They are always the most dangerous. When he speaks, you would do well to listen.
At the moment Edmund was staring into his ale cup as if he could read the fate of the world there and he had just discovered that the world was about to end.
“You look like hell,” Athelstan said, sitting down opposite his brother. And no wonder, considering the tidings he had borne to the king. “How bad was it?”
Edmund took a long pull from his cup, then set it down and stared at it morosely.
“He wanted to know every detail,” he said heavily, “so I had to relive it in the telling.” He took a breath and ran a hand through the thick brown hair that set him apart from his Saxon-fair brothers. “One can’t blame him, I suppose, for wanting to make certain that all had been done for Ecbert that could have been.” He drained his cup, then pushed it away from him. “She came in while I was answering his questions. Hung on every word. Pretended to grieve for Ecbert. As if anyone would believe that she would mourn the death of one who might have stood between her son and the throne.” He scowled at Athelstan. “I am mistaken,” he corrected himself. “You would believe it.”
“Leave off, Edmund,” he said wearily.
Emma had ever been a sore point between them. To Edmund she was not a living, breathing woman but a tool of her ambitious brother, the Norman duke Richard, and so a threat to all the sons of the king’s first marriage. And as for him—but he thrust the thought of Emma away from him. She was on his mind far too often as it was.
“Was the king satisfied that we had done all we could to save Ecbert?” Had they done all that they could to save their brother? The question had been nagging at him like a toothache and would not go away.
“Do you mean does the king blame you for Ecbert’s death?”
Edmund’s penetrating eyes probed his own, and Athelstan admitted to himself that this was exactly what he’d meant. As the eldest ætheling he had always shouldered responsibility for his brothers’ welfare, at least when they were together. He had also been burdened with most of the blame whenever their father found fault with them.
He made no reply, though, and Edmund shook his head.
“Ecbert’s illness and death were no fault of yours, Athelstan, and the king knows that. When will you allow yourself to believe it?”
“I keep asking myself if there was something more—”
“The answer is no,” Edmund said. “He was treated, he was blessed, he was shriven, and he has gone to God. Now you must let him go.” He leaned across the table and his dark eyes were insistent. “You cannot bring him back.”
Athelstan rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. Edmund was right. He could not bring Ecbert back from death; could not change his wyrd. Yet since Ecbert had died, he had been unable to rid his mind of words that he had long tried to forget.
A bitter road lies before the sons of Æthelred—all but one.
That prophecy had been uttered two years before, within the shadow of a pagan stone dance by one who was said to be able to read the future. They were dismal words that he had repeated to no one. Why tell others a thing that he wished he had never heard himself? Even if he had shared the prophecy with Ecbert, it would not have changed anything; nor would it change Edmund’s fate, whatever it might be, if he were to speak of it now.
So he remained silent, and when he looked again at his brother he saw that there must be something more on Edmund’s mind, for he was tapping his fingers nervously against his empty cup while he chewed on his lower lip. When Edmund did not speak, Athelstan prodded him. “What are you not telling me?”
“It’s just that . . .” Edmund frowned, glanced away, then seemed to make up his mind about whatever was troubling him. “Ecbert’s death did not surprise the king. He already knew. When I entered the hall he looked up at me and nodded, as if he had been waiting for me. Before I said a single word he asked, Which of my sons is dead? Not sick or injured, but dead. He knew. I have been trying to explain it to myself all during the long journey back, but I cannot make sense of it. How could he have known?”
Edmund’s question hung in the air between them, and Athelstan was uncertain how best to answer it. Not with the truth, for the king had forbidden him to speak it.
The king is troubled in his mind.
It was Archbishop Ælfheah who had first alerted him to his father’s secret torment. And then he had witnessed it himself—had seen the king cower, gray-faced with horror from some invisible threat. Afterward, when his father was himself again, he had spoken of seeing signs and portents of disaster.
Had he, then, been given some warning of the death of a son?
Jesu. He did not want to believe it, did not even wish to discuss it with Edmund. To do so was to tread perilously close to what he had been forbidden to reveal.
“For fifteen years,” he said, “the kingdom has suffered one blow after another. Viking raids, lost battles, murrains, flooding, famine—it is no wonder that the king looks for calamities. And rumor, as you know, travels on the wind.”
Edmund gave him a dubious look.
“Aye,” he said slowly. “Rumor. That may explain it.” Then his face took on the shuttered expression that hid what he really thought.
Edmund would let it go for now, and Athelstan hoped that there would never be reason to speak of it again.
“While we’re on the subject of tale-telling, then,” his brother went on, “you should know that Archbishop Wulfstan arrived while I was at Calne. He bent the king’s ear for the space of a long meal, and whatever news he brought from the north, the king did not like it.”
That was no surprise. When their mother had died, the northern links that their father had forged through that marriage had been broken, and no measures had been taken to restore them. The northerners felt far more loyalty to one another than to a distant king who all but ignored them.
“There may be rebellion stirring among the Mercians and Northumbrians,” he said, “and Ealdorman Ælfhelm is likely up to his neck in it. The northerners’ allegiance to the king is no stronger than a chain made of straw.” And what would his father do to stem that unrest? Another massacre, like the one on St. Brice’s Day three years before, when so many Danes in England had been put to the sword?
“If our father had taken Ælfhelm’s daughter to wife instead of Emma,” Edmund growled, “there would be no trouble in the north. We need a more binding alliance with Ælfhelm or with one of the other northern lords to keep them loyal to us rather than to their Danish brethren across the sea. It should have been forged long ago.”
“A marriage, you mean.”
“Your marriage,” Edmund said, “to Ælfhelm’s scheming daughter, yes. It’s what the girl and her father have wanted since before you could grow a beard and not, as you know, because of
your comely face and bright blue eyes.”
Edmund was right about that. Elgiva, she-wolf that she was, had tried to worm her way into his bed for political gain—drawn to his status as heir to the throne. When that had failed she had opened her legs for the king instead, who used her as any king would. Despite that, he would take her to wife if it would ease the situation in the north—and if there was a chance that the king would approve. Which there was not.
“The king,” he said, “will never allow it.”
“Then you must do it without his permission.”
“Sweet Christ,” he muttered. “You know how the king would regard that. He would think that I was making a bid for his crown. I might gain the allegiance of the northern lords, but the king would see it as the blackest treachery. It would rip the kingdom in two.”
“Then you must reason with him. Convince him of the necessity of a marriage alliance with Ælfhelm’s daughter!”
“And you think he would listen to me?” Athelstan barked a bitter laugh. “When has he ever heeded any counsel that I have offered? For twenty years he has followed no one’s counsel but his own, and I have not the art to frame my words in a way that would convince him that they sprang from his own mind.”
“You have to try, Athelstan,” Edmund insisted. “We have to try, and we won’t be without support, I promise you. Ælfmær in the west and Wulfnoth in Sussex would welcome it. Most of the southern nobles would understand the necessity of such a move. At the very least, let us broach to Ælfhelm’s sons the idea of a marriage, and see what kind of response we get. We will have wagered nothing.”
He could guess the likely outcome of that. If his father heard of it, he would deem it a conspiracy led by his two eldest sons. The king already mistrusted him; this could only add to his suspicions.
Yet Edmund was right. Something must be done to prevent Ælfhelm from stirring up trouble in the north. Despite the king’s wrath, for the sake of the kingdom he and Edmund would have to take the risk and raise the possibility of a marriage. He did not see that they had a choice.
Chapter Five
March 1006
Calne, Wiltshire
The springtime sun was westering when Æthelred, satisfied with the day’s sport, beckoned his falconer. Before transferring his prize gyrfalcon from his own leather-clad arm to the keeper’s, he spoke a few soft words to the bird. The hawking season was nearly done, and this one had earned his summer’s rest.
All his raptors had done well today—seven cranes brought down. Clean kills, every one.
As he mounted his horse, one of his retainers gave a shout and pointed to a rider who had just topped a nearby ridge and was moving slowly toward them.
“Someone from Calne,” Æthelred said, “although whatever news he brings does not look to be urgent.”
Soon enough he saw who it was—Eadric of Shrewsbury—another kind of raptor that he had loosed months ago and who was now come back to the lure. What prey, he wondered, had Eadric brought to ground? He had set the young thegn a delicate task, and now he was about to find out if he had been successful.
He gestured to his men to follow at a distance while he spurred his horse toward Eadric. The journey back to the manor would take the better part of an hour, and he and Eadric had much to discuss.
As he drew near to the younger man, he studied Eadric’s handsome, bearded face with its thin, sharp nose and high brow. He’d chosen wisely with this one. Eadric’s dark good looks inspired trust, and he radiated a pleasing charm that worked on women and men alike.
At a glance, no one would guess how very dangerous he was. Eadric, he’d found, was the perfect tool—efficient, reserved, thorough, and, when necessary, casually ruthless.
“I hope you met with success,” he said as Eadric fell in beside him. “Word has reached me recently that Ælfhelm is planning to bestow his daughter upon a Danish warlord. Can you confirm it?”
“Indeed, my lord,” Eadric replied. His eyes, black as a raven’s wing, met Æthelred’s with brutal frankness.
“You’re certain?”
“Aye. For some time now, a man who serves Lord Ælfhelm has been carrying messages back and forth across the Danish sea. It is always the same man and he always takes ship from Gainesborough. That was where I spoke with him but seven days ago.”
“And he told you who is to claim Elgiva and all her lands?”
“He told me what he knew—that she is to wed someone very close to the Danish king.”
Æthelred gnawed on his lower lip. For the right price, a man might admit such a thing even if it were not true. He wanted assurance, beyond any doubt, that Ælfhelm was planning such an alliance. The man’s vague excuse for missing the Easter court because of pressing matters in Mercia rang as false as a whore’s promises of love. Still, he wanted to be sure.
“How can you be certain that he told you the truth?”
“I bartered the life of his wife and her two whelps for the information,” Eadric said. “It took a little bloodletting to get him to speak, but he cooperated eventually. And when, after the first babe was dead and I could get no more out of the vermin but howls, I felt certain that he had told me everything he knew. I had to kill them all, of course, in the end.”
Æthelred grunted. Treachery carried a high price.
“How long, think you, before Ælfhelm’s suspicion is aroused?”
Eadric shrugged. “Some weeks, at least. Anyone who asks after them will be told that they took ship for Denmark and have not returned.”
“Good,” he said. It gave him time to strike before his prey grew wary. “This marriage must not go forward.”
His greatest fear was that, with a Danish warlord at his side and with the support of King Swein, Ælfhelm would grow bold enough to attempt to wrest all the land north of the Humber from English rule. It had happened before. Fifty years ago Eric Bloodaxe had styled himself King of Jorvik, and although the upstart Viking had been driven from his makeshift throne, the memory of that Norse kingdom on English soil was still fresh and alluring in the minds of the men of Northumbria and northern Mercia. How they chafed under the rule of the ancient kings of Wessex!
“Will you bind the lady to someone loyal to yourself instead?” Eadric asked, his eyes alight with interest. “Someone who will stand with you against any Danish assault?”
Bind her! Æthelred allowed himself a grim smile. He would like to bind Elgiva in chains and shut her in some island tower so that he would never have to think on her again. She was like a lodestone that her father was using to draw men of iron into his plots against his king. Even now, in Eadric’s question, he could hear the man’s unspoken yearning to be the one to claim the lady’s hand—and wealth. But to wed the cunning Elgiva to any man with a thirst for power was to create yet another enemy.
He should have wed the girl himself, bound the restless northerners to him with blood ties as he had done with his first marriage. But he had chosen instead to forge an alliance with the Norman duke. He had taken Emma to wife hoping to deprive Danish raiders of the friendly ports that welcomed them along the Narrow Sea within striking distance of England’s coast. He had sealed the alliance by giving Emma a crown and a son—all for naught. His southern shores were still beset by Vikings, while in the north men plotted against him.
“There is no man,” he said at last, “with whom I would trust the Lady Elgiva.” He had a sudden vivid memory of Elgiva’s little bow of a mouth and the things that she could do with it—an agreeable memory, but alarming as well. “She is ambitious and shrewd,” he muttered, “and she would harry her husband until he set all of England at her feet.”
“Then can you not place her in a convent?” Eadric suggested. “Bestow her lands on the nuns at Shaftesbury or Wilton?”
“Her father would never agree to such a fate for his precious daughter. And if any man had a mind to wed her, con
vent walls would not prevent it. My own father got two children on a nun. No, a vow of chastity and even abbey walls made of stone would not deter a man determined to claim such a prize, and they certainly would not stop a Danish warlord.”
Both men rode in silence for a space, then Æthelred gave voice to the purpose that had been forming in his mind from the moment that he had received Elgiva’s plea for deliverance from a Danish marriage.
“Ælfhelm has become too powerful,” he said. “He has forged a web of conspirators throughout Mercia and into Northumbria. Nay, not a web but a hydra, and I must sever every head if I am to put an end to the plots. Were you able to learn the names of the men who have been a party to this enterprise?”
And for the first time, Eadric disappointed him.
“Forgive me, my lord, but I could not,” he said. “Surely, though, Ælfhelm’s sons must know his plans.”
Æthelred nodded. He would discover what the sons knew when they joined the court at Easter. His more immediate concern was Ælfhelm. He must be dealt with efficiently and—for now—in secret.
“Did you learn aught else from your Gainesborough messenger?”
“He carried nothing in writing. I could only wring from him the words he was meant to deliver to Ælfhelm: Look to Lammas Day.”
Lammas Day. August first, when men would be busy with the harvest and reluctant to answer a call to defend villages and fields that were not their own.
Still, it was months away. There was time yet to sever the bond between Ælfhelm and the Danes.
“Ælfhelm has ignored my summons to the Easter council. I would have you make certain that he never attends another one.” He cast a quick glance at Eadric, who was cocking an interested eyebrow. “You are newly come into your inheritance,” he continued, “and Ælfhelm is your ealdorman. Feast him. Flatter him. Invite him to your hall and make sure he brings his daughter with him.”
He glanced again at Eadric’s face, but—as he’d expected—he saw no shadow of hesitation or distaste.
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