He kept his eyes focused on the distant darkness and did not meet her gaze.
“I leave for London at first light,” he said, as if she had not spoken. Then he turned to her, and the passion that flared in his eyes seared her to the depths of her soul. “You know why.”
Yes, she knew why. For a moment they stared at each other. They did not touch or speak, but she read in his face all the longing and despair that she knew he must see in hers.
“Go to your chamber, lady,” he said softly, “before we give my father good reason to distrust us both.”
Chapter Nine
Easter Monday, April 1006
Western Mercia
Elgiva could not remember ever being so cold. She rubbed her arms for warmth while Alric fumbled with flint and steel to light a fire. They were in a crumbling hovel of wattle and daub—a swineherd’s shelter she guessed, although she could not tell where. She had lost all sense of direction once the sun had gone down, but until then Alric had led her along narrow tracks, mostly through wide swathes of forestland. Sometimes, when they came to a clearing and she looked to her left, she could see the dyke that marked England’s border with the Wælisc kingdoms.
She edged nearer to Alric and the fire pit, away from the horses that he had insisted on bringing into the shelter with them, the two of them grooming the beasts with straw as best they could even before he would turn his hand to lighting a fire. She watched him coax the spark into life, a thick shock of brown hair falling over his eyes as he worked. What little she could see of his face, shadowed with a day-old beard, was pale and grimly set. His hands, as he fed twigs to the tiny flame, were trembling.
He was cold, too, then. Not from the night chill, though, any more than she was.
As the flames began to lick at the bits of wood and the stacked turf, he placed their saddles on the ground at the fire’s edge so that they made a kind of bench. He motioned for her to sit and she did so, wrapping her mantle about her and holding her hands to the smoky fire. She watched him take off his sword belt and lay it close. Then he sat beside her, handed her a skin of water, and from a satchel drew a half-eaten loaf and a block of cheese to share between them. She realized suddenly how thirsty she was, and she took a long drink of water.
Once, years before, she had traveled rough like this, when she and her brother Wulf had fled from Exeter with the Danes at their backs. They’d had a large group of armed men as escort then, had been well provisioned, too, for it was high summer and the land was bountiful. The Danes had been no more than a distant threat.
That had seemed like sport compared to this. She hadn’t been so afraid then.
She looked at the dry bread in her hand, but her stomach recoiled at the thought of food. She could think only of her father, and that he was dead.
Earlier, when they’d been forced to stop for a time to allow the horses to rest and graze, she had flung a question at Alric about what had happened. But he had clasped a hand over her mouth, listening for sounds of pursuit, hissing for silence. She had been frightened before, but it was worse after that, and she had swallowed all her questions.
Now, though, she had to know. However bad it had been, she had to know.
“How was my father killed?” She was hunched over, staring into the fire, bracing herself against whatever she was about to hear.
Beside her, Alric shifted forward as well.
“He took an arrow in the chest.”
“An arrow!” She straightened, gaping at him. “But he was hunting. It might have been an accident.” This could all be a misunderstanding. Her father might even still be alive. She could leave this stinking hovel in the morning and go back to Shrewsbury, discover how her father fared.
“It was not just your father,” he said, then took a long pull from the water skin, set it on the ground, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “It was all your father’s men, too—his falconer, his grooms, the four hearth companions, and the two retainers who rode with him. All of them dead.”
She stared at his face, sculpted into harsh angles by the firelight. No accident, then. And no chance that her father was still alive. The hope that had flickered in her mind shuddered and died, and she recalled Alric’s words in the chapel, that it had been a trap.
“Yet you escaped,” she whispered. “How?”
“I was late to the hunt, still mead-drunk from last night’s feast. When I awoke, the others were gone, but I knew they planned to loose the falcons on the heath below Shrewsbury. So I rode that way, thinking to join the hunt. I was still in the woods when I heard the shouting and realized that something was wrong.” He drew a breath, grimacing at whatever picture was in his mind. “By the time I reached the forest edge, your father and the others lay on the ground in a wide clearing with arrows in their guts. Eadric and his men were already inspecting the bodies, making sure that—”
He stopped abruptly, glanced at her, and began again.
“It was an ambush, and Eadric must have planned the whole thing. His archers had been hidden among the trees and they turned the meadow into a killing ground.”
She imagined how it must have been—horses and men confused by the onslaught of arrows, men cursing, crying out in pain, and after that, silence. In the end, it probably hadn’t been a feathered shaft that killed her father, but a knife or a sword blade. And still she could not believe that it was true. It seemed unreal, like a tale told by a scop who would change the ending to suit her if she commanded it.
But Alric wasn’t finished.
“The bastards never saw me,” he spat. “They were too bent on stripping the bodies and keeping the hounds from—” He cursed, then snapped his mouth shut. “I went back to the manor to find you. I climbed the palisade easily enough, but I would have been hard-pressed to know where to look if I hadn’t seen you going into the chapel.”
She closed her eyes. She was trembling so hard that her teeth were chattering, and she clasped her hands tight, trying to focus—not on what had happened, but on what she must do next.
“I must get to my brothers,” she said between shallow breaths. “I have to tell them what Eadric has done so they can demand a wergild. The king has to make Eadric pay for this.”
But Alric was shaking his head.
“Nay, lady,” he said, “Eadric would never have done this thing unless the king himself commanded it. Æthelred must have discovered the plots that your father was hatching with the Danes. He wanted your father dead. Eadric will be rewarded, not punished, for this day’s work.”
She felt suddenly dizzy, the walls around her spinning so that she had to drop her head to her knees to make them stop. This was Æthelred’s response to the message she had sent him. But she had never dreamed that the king would do something so savage. To cut down the premier ealdorman of England was an act that spoke of a hatred so fierce it was not likely to stop there.
And her brothers were with the king.
“What will he do to Wulf and Ufegeat?” she whispered.
“If they are still alive,” Alric said, “I doubt they will be so for long. You cannot help them, lady. You must look to your own safety.”
Suddenly the day’s events became too real, and she rocked forward and back, hands against her mouth to stifle the wail that was swelling in her throat. She felt Alric’s arms go round her, and she gave herself up to the terror of what she had set in motion. She had wanted her father punished, but not like this.
Why had the fool chosen to wed her to a Danish lord? It was a decision that made no sense to her, and now they must all pay for it. Even she must pay for it.
That thought made her pull away from Alric and wipe her eyes with her hands. She would not weep for her father. Had he treated her better he would still be alive, and she would not be here now.
You must look to your own safety, Alric had said. And he was right. She was still alive. And
although the world around her had changed utterly, she was still who she had ever been—the daughter of Ealdorman Ælfhelm, granddaughter of Wulfrun of Tamworth, and descendant of Wulfric the Black. She had lands and she had money, and there were men who would help her if she could but get to them.
“My father’s thegns in Northampton will protect me from the king,” she said. “You must take me there.”
Alric snorted. “That is exactly where Eadric and the king will expect you to go. There may already be king’s guards posted at the gates of your father’s manors, and by tomorrow they will be hunting for you all over Mercia.”
Of course; her father’s estates would be watched. Likely she could not even get a message to the men who might be of most use to her. In any case, many of her father’s closest allies would be with the king at the Easter court, and so at risk themselves.
She had no way of knowing how hot the king’s vengeance would blaze, or how far. If Æthelred should find her, what would he do to her? Would he murder her as well? Or would he merely imprison her, cast her into some black cell where she could never be found? He would certainly not wed her to any of his sons.
Yet that was where her destiny lay, she was certain of it. She had been promised that she would be queen, although how she was to make that come about she could not see. Not yet.
“I must get as far away from Æthelred as swiftly as I can. Go where he cannot reach me.” She must find a protector—someone with men and arms who would not be afraid to use them against the king if need be.
“Then you must go either west into the Wælisc lands,” he said, “or east to the Danelaw.”
“Not west,” she said. “I would be still within reach of Eadric, and I have no kinsmen there to protect me.” She must go into the Danelaw, then. They had little love there for Æthelred—or so her father always said. Whom could she trust, though, to resist the lure of gold if the king should put a price upon her head? She ran through the list of her father’s allies, and then she had the answer. “We will go to Thurbrand,” she said, “to the Lord of Holderness.”
Thurbrand had never been tempted by anything that Æthelred could offer him. She had once heard her father call him an old pirate, and chide him for shunning the rewards given to those who attended the king. But Thurbrand had vowed that he wanted neither the rewards nor the responsibilities that bending the knee to Æthelred would gain. So he remained in his fastness on the edge of the Danish sea, plotting against his English enemies in Jorvik, paying lip service to the House of Cerdic, and governing his people like a half king.
“We’ll have to take a ship, then,” Alric said, “for we could not hope to make it across Mercia with the king’s men after us. At first light we’ll go to Chester. The harbor there will have any number of vessels readying to make sail, and we can buy passage aboard the first one we find.”
“How long will it take us to get to Holderness?”
He shrugged. “Impossible to say. Much will depend on the weather and on how quickly we can get passage on ships bound where we wish to go. It may take us months, and if it does, what does it matter? It will do you no harm to disappear from England for a time. Let Æthelred wonder what has become of you.”
That prospect cheered her. She would be the missing piece on the game board that was England. They would probably search the abbeys for her, and the king would grow frantic when he could not find her. It was hardly recompense for her father’s murder, but it was a beginning.
“We must get word to Thurbrand,” she said, “that I am making my way there. Can it be done?”
“Yes, but”—he held up her hand and the gold and gems that covered each finger glittered in the firelight—“it may cost you some of these baubles.”
He turned her hand over and ran a fingertip across her palm, and she was astonished by her response—desire shimmering through her like summer lightning, the heat of it easing her fear. Her body remembered Alric well, it seemed, for he had pleasured her like this before, years ago, and she was sorely tempted to lose herself in the sensations that she knew he could arouse in her. But once she set her foot on that path there would be no going back, and she had no wish to knock at Thurbrand’s gate with Alric’s brat in her belly.
She clasped his hand between her palms and held it tight.
“I am your lord now, Alric,” she said, “and I expect you to serve me as you served my father.” He could rape her if he wanted to, she supposed. She would not have the physical strength to resist him, and even if she did, where was she to run? Her father had trusted Alric, though, had been generous with him; she hoped that she could do the same. She released his hand, slipped a ring from her finger, and placed it in his palm. “You have done well by me today,” she said, “and I give you this as a pledge of far greater favors to come. Will you protect me until we reach Holderness?”
She watched him closely, saw the cocked brow and the speculative look in his eye. Had any woman ever refused Alric’s attempt at seduction? Likely she was the first.
He nodded, and pocketed the ring.
“I am your man, my lady,” he said, “to Holderness and beyond, if need be.”
“Good.” She held up her hands. “The rest of these baubles we will use to get us there. And in Chester you will buy me a fine tunic and breecs. The king’s men will be looking for a woman and a man, not a young lord and his servant.”
They settled themselves to sleep then, on either side of the fire. For a long time, though, she lay awake, staring into the dying flames and pondering her future. If her brothers were dead, there was no man now who could command her except the king. And once she slipped free of whatever net Æthelred might throw out to snare her, she could claim her estates and marry. She could marry any man she wished.
She closed her eyes, and as she let herself drift toward sleep she wondered where Lord Athelstan was. She wondered if he realized just how valuable she could be to him.
April 1006
Near Saltford, Oxfordshire
Athelstan halted his horse beside the standing stone that pointed skyward like a gnarled finger. In the shallow valley in front of him, beyond the ring of stunted oaks, he could see the circle of stones and the figure seated at its center, waiting.
It was not too late to turn back; not too late to make his way to London as he had intended when he left his father’s hall. Even now he did not know if he had come here of his own free will or if he had been drawn by some force that he did not understand.
He knew only that he was afraid—for himself, for the king, for England.
A succession of grim possibilities had been coursing through his mind for days now in an endless, looping string. Any move that his father made against Ælfhelm might split the kingdom. Any action that he himself might take to avert such a split would add to the suspicions his father was already nursing against him. Any hint of discord between the king, his sons, and his thegns would bring Viking raiders to their shores like wolves drawn to a bleating lamb, and that might well destroy England altogether.
Below him, the woman seated beside the fire did not look up, but she must know that he was here. He could not shake off the sensation that she had called him—that she had some answer to give him, if he could but ask the right question.
That, too, made him afraid.
Above him the sky darkened, then brightened again, as clouds drifted across the face of the sun.
The sky was of two minds, he thought, just as he was. But he’d come this far already, three days’ ride in the wrong direction.
So he swung off his horse and led it down the hill, leaving it to graze while he walked into the circle to take his place across the fire from the seeress. As they regarded each other for a long, silent moment, it crossed his mind that she had suffered some wasting sickness, for her face was thinner than he remembered, her nose as sharp and pointed as a merlin’s beak, and her skin crea
sed with lines that had not been there two winters ago. He glanced past her, to the daub and wattle hut that was her dwelling. When last he was here he had left behind a purse of silver, but she had clearly not spent it on her comforts.
Finally she broke the silence.
“Twice before this you have come to me, lord, and twice you left here doubting the truth of the words I spoke to you. Will this time be any different?”
How did she know that he had doubted her? Perhaps it was not such a difficult thing to divine, though. No man wished to believe in a future that was bleak.
“Mayhap it depends on the question asked and the answer given,” he replied.
She nodded. “Ask your question, then, lord, and I will give what answer I can.”
He paused, and as he looked into her eyes the question that he would pose came to him at last.
“Is it possible for a man to change his fate?”
The black eyes flashed at him, or perhaps he was merely seeing the flames reflected there.
“Every man’s wyrd is set, my lord, for it is the fate of every man to die. That end is inescapable.”
“That end, yes,” he agreed. “But there is far more to any man’s life than just the leaving of it. Is there only one path that a man must follow to his life’s end?”
“One path only,” she said. “Yet not every step upon that path is carved in stone.”
It seemed to him that her words were a riddle set within a maze.
“Then how,” he asked, “can anyone read a man’s future?”
She dropped her gaze from his, frowning into the fire.
“The future of any man’s life is not a path that runs along a plain, my lord, but one that follows a trail over mountains and chasms that are hidden in mist. Sometimes, for a brief spell, the mist clears, and one who has the gift can see the way. Can you change the path? No. But no one, not even the most gifted, can perceive at a glance every valley or every mountaintop that a life will follow, nor every other life path that crosses it along the way.” She looked into his eyes again. “You have not asked me about the thing that concerns you the most, I think. There is something far greater than the fate of a single life that troubles you.”
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