The Price of Blood

by Patricia Bracewell

  He had been neither heedless nor negligent, but he could not defend himself; he could tell no one the truth of it, least of all the archbishop.

  “So you will stay here rather than attend your court in London?” Wulfstan’s voice, laced with disapproval, needled him back to the present. “What pains you the most, my lord? Your injuries or your pride?”

  “What do you think?” he muttered. “The leeches told me it was only by God’s grace that I didn’t lose an eye.” And if that was true, it was the only favor that God had shown him in years. He touched the strip of linen that bound a noisome poultice to his forehead, where there would be a scar, he’d been told, above his right brow.

  Edward’s mark upon him.

  “I think it must be your pride that’s ailing, for you look well enough to attend your council if you wish it.” Wulfstan’s shrewd gray eyes glittered with reproach. “I understand that the last of the tribute payment is to be turned over to the shipmen in London after Easter. However much you may wish to distance yourself from that ordeal, you would be unwise to do so. Take up your pallet and walk, says the Lord.”

  Æthelred shifted on his pillows, uneasy under Wulfstan’s penetrating gaze.

  “The Lord is not here, Archbishop, and my leeches have forbidden me to walk or to ride. Would you have me carried helpless through the streets of London to be laughed at and mocked?”

  “I would have you be a king, and not shirk from your duty. You are neither wounded nor sick, my lord. You agreed to meet the enemies’ demands, and your place is in London to see the final payment carried out.”

  “My place is wherever I choose to be!” His brother’s fetch had beckoned him to London, and that was a summons he would not heed. “Eadric will act for me.”

  “Eadric is no king, nor ever will be. If someone must act in your place, then appoint your son to it.”

  His son! Yes, it would please Athelstan to give the nobles of England a taste of what they could expect with a vigorous young man on the throne.

  But he was not fool enough to give his son that opportunity.

  “Eadric is my chief ealdorman,” he said, “and the witan looks to him for leadership. Athelstan must wait until I am dead to take his place upon the dais.” He narrowed his eyes at Wulfstan. “Did Athelstan urge you to press this suit with me?”

  “He did not. I speak to you at Christ’s urging. Take heed, for He tells us that every kingdom divided against itself will be brought to desolation.” Wulfstan leaned toward the bed, his features softening. “My lord, you have the means to repair what is broken between you and your son, and if you—”

  “My son must bend to my will however distasteful he finds it! If he cannot do so, I have other sons—one even that I have not seen as yet. Emma’s child awaits his christening in London. I trust you will attend to it. He is to be called Alfred—after a king, you will recall, who purchased peace from the Danes when forced to it. Just as I have.”

  “And this peace that you have bought will last how long, think you?” Wulfstan scoffed. “Until the next shipload of devils makes its way across the Danes’ Sea?”

  Æthelred scowled at him. “Cease your harping, Archbishop. I could do nothing else, and you know it. Yes, I have ransomed England with silver, and I will do it again if I must. Your churchmen who were captured at Canterbury purchased their freedom with coin speedily enough. I see no difference.”

  For a time the archbishop made no reply, and Æthelred began to hope that he’d silenced the old man, until Wulfstan spoke again.

  “Ælfheah did not pay,” he said.

  No, his old friend had not paid, and was likely to find himself sold as a slave among the Rus if he did not meet the shipmen’s price soon.

  “Ælfheah is a fool!” he snapped. “He may be God’s anointed, yet still he lies at Greenwich in the keeping of devils. Would you have me hand them England as well?”

  “I would have you commit yourself to God, as Ælfheah has done!”

  “That is an archbishop’s office, not mine!” Christ, his head ached. Would no one come to rescue him from this implacable priest? Where was Edyth?

  “It is your office, as God’s anointed king! Can you not see that the Lord’s hand is at work in this strife? For two years we have been victoryless, and God’s anger lies at the root of it. Your people turn away from Him! All through your northern shires the crossroads are laden with offerings to false gods. Heathen beliefs have sullied your kingdom, and until we address that evil and the disloyalty it breeds, we shall remain weak while our enemies grow ever stronger. The trouble lies not with your sons, my lord, but in the wickedness of Godless men.”

  Æthelred was silent for a time, sifting through the archbishop’s words. Wulfstan’s preoccupation with petty offerings to heathen gods did not concern him, for they were church matters, best dealt with by the priests.

  Disloyalty, though; that was an evil that demanded royal action.

  “Treachery has ever found a foothold in the north,” he mused. “It is like a fire smoldering in thatch. You can smell it, but it is near impossible to find the source until it has become a blaze, and by then it is too late. I had hoped that in naming a new ealdorman for Northumbria I had put out that fire.”

  “I make no complaint against your ealdorman,” Wulfstan said. “Uhtred is God-fearing, and he honors his oaths. But the walls of his fortress are high, and the rumblings of discontent can seldom be heard through stone and mortar. It is your lesser lords who will have heard the things that I have—rumors of meetings held in secret, and of Danish ships lurking along your northern shores. Instead of lying here wallowing in your suspicions, do as I have said! Get you to London and discover what your northern thegns can tell you.”

  Æthelred exhaled a long, exasperated breath. Wulfstan was only confirming what he already knew. The rot that had begun with Ælfhelm and his sons had not been checked by their deaths. What he needed to discover now was how far the rot had spread. To question his northern nobles, though, would be useless, for he could not trust their answers.

  “Nothing awaits me in London, Archbishop, but wrangling and humiliation, half-truths and outright lies.” And something even more sinister, he feared. “I want none of it. But I will give thought to all that you have said, and when next I meet with my council we will address the evil in the north. And now”—he raised his hand to stem any further discussion—“you will leave me, for I am weary.”

  He closed his eyes to further signal that the interview was ended. Moments later, when the scrape of a chair and the sound of retreating footsteps told him that Wulfstan was gone, he opened his eyes again, for sleep was impossible now. His mind kept toying with the archbishop’s words. Meetings held in secret. Danish ships prowling the northern coast. The trouble lies not with your sons.

  Yet he could not be certain that his sons were blameless. The links that Athelstan had forged in his youth to the men of the northeast had grown ever stronger with the passing of years; and Eadric had warned him that Athelstan was not to be trusted.

  Had there been pledges exchanged between his son and the northern lords? As yet he had no proof of it, but there was no denying the corruption that was spreading through his kingdom. Before he could cut it out, though, he must determine how far it had spread, and how close it had come to his own family.

  As for London, some horror was waiting there—of that he was certain. His brother’s ghostly beckoning guaranteed it, and no power on earth—not even an archbishop—would move him to go there to meet it.

  Sunday, Easter Octave, April 1012

  Middlesex

  Athelstan rode with a small company toward Stebunheath, where his men were keeping watch on the movements of the enemy fleet. The last of the gafol demanded by the Danes had been delivered midweek, and by treaty agreement every Viking ship must raise sail by sundown today. Despite the thick fog that had settled on t
he Thames, the dragon ships were already on the move, or so he’d heard. He wanted to see it for himself and discover, too, if there was any news of Archbishop Ælfheah, who by all accounts was still a prisoner of the Danes.

  When they were as yet some distance from the outpost, Edmund, who had been riding ahead with Edrid, slowed his mount and fell in beside Athelstan.

  “I’ve just learned that you’ve put Godwin in charge of the posting out here,” Edmund said. “I thought you intended to find a place for him on one of your Sussex estates.”

  Athelstan had to bring his thoughts around from the imprisoned archbishop to Wulfnoth’s son.

  “Godwin had no wish to stay in Sussex after his mother died,” he said. “He’s looking for a chance to prove himself, and I’m willing to give it to him—for his father’s sake. If it hadn’t been for that meeting we had with him at Corfe, Wulfnoth would not have been exiled and might even still be alive today. We owe his son something.” The news of Wulfnoth’s drowning off the Hibernian coast was only a few weeks old, and it had come hard on the heels of the death of Godwin’s mother. He was parentless and landless now, and he was in need of friends.

  “Agreed,” Edmund said, but he was frowning. “You’d be wise to keep him away from London, though, while Eadric is holding court there. Godwin blames Eadric for his father’s banishment after that mess at Sandwich, and if the two of them come face-to-face there’s likely to be trouble.”

  Athelstan scowled. Jesu, when he’d been forced to watch Eadric playing king at the Easter court he’d been tempted to commit murder himself. He could hardly blame Godwin, who was younger and had even greater reason to hate Eadric, for wanting to do the same.

  “I’ll see to it that Godwin stays out of London,” he pledged, and Edmund nodded.

  When they arrived at the lookout, Athelstan could see ships under sail—too many even to count—making their way downstream toward the Thames mouth. For nearly six months the vessels had been moored along the river’s southern bank while the shipmen who manned them had set up their camps to the east of Greenwich. Peering into the shredding fog he could tell that the Vikings’ fortifications were no longer the vast scar across the landscape that they had once been. A great number of their tents were still in place, though, and there must be forty ships, he guessed, still lining the opposite shore.

  “It looks like some of them are in no hurry to leave,” he observed to Godwin, who had come forward to greet him.

  “I’m surprised that any of them made it to their ships this morning,” Godwin said. “They kept a bonfire going all night long, and they were making enough noise to wake the dead.”

  “Likely they were celebrating their triumph over us,” Edmund said.

  “If they were feasting, it ended in a brawl,” Godwin told them. “From here it sounded like Gog and Magog let loose upon the world.”

  Athelstan stared hard into the distance, and it seemed to him that there was some kind of activity taking place on one of the hythes beside the largest of the ships.

  “Edrid,” he said, “your eyes are better than mine. Can you make out what is happening over there?”

  His brother shaded his eyes against the sunlight just now beginning to break through the fog.

  “They’re loading something onto the ship, but there are too many men clustered there for me to make out what it might be.”

  “Treasure?” Edmund suggested.

  “It may be,” Godwin agreed. “That ship is flying Thorkell’s banner. How many pounds of silver do you suppose his vessel can hold?”

  “All the silver in England, if Thorkell had his way,” Edrid said.

  Athelstan was only half listening to them. He swept his gaze over the ships that were still docked across the river and decided that there were far too many to suit him. And he could see men moving among the tents now—once again, far too many.

  “I count at least forty dragon ships still moored over there,” he said. “Edrid?”

  After a few moments Edrid answered, “Forty-five.”

  Athelstan nodded. “Which means that there are more than a thousand men still in that camp, and they don’t look as though they’re planning to leave anytime soon. I don’t like it.”

  They watched in silence for a time as the vessels from upstream continued to sail past them, making for the open sea. Athelstan kept his eyes on Thorkell’s ship. He had half a mind to cross the river and nose around. But the nearest ferry was an hour’s ride east at Renaham, and from there another hour’s ride back to Greenwich. Still, it might be worth it to send someone over to have a look.

  He was about to give the order when Thorkell’s vessel, every oar manned, was maneuvered into the Thames with its prow facing upriver. Seeing this, he muttered a curse that was echoed by every man around him.

  “The bastards are going to London,” Edmund snarled.

  “They cannot mean to break the truce!” Edrid said. “Not with a single ship—sixty men at most. They’d have to be mad to attempt it.”

  Athelstan scowled and shifted uneasily in his saddle. “It doesn’t smell right, though,” he said. “And it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve bypassed city walls through some kind of treachery. It’s how they brought down Canterbury last year.” Jesu! Was it about to happen again?

  Gesturing to three of his hearth guards he said, “You men ride for the ferry at Renaham. I want to know what went on in that camp last night, and why those vessels are still moored at Greenwich. And be careful! We may have a truce with the Danes until sundown, but I don’t trust them to keep to it and nor should you. Discover all that you can, but stay in the shadows. Report to me tonight in London.”

  Edmund was shaking his head, his expression grim. “They’re rowing with the tide now. Whatever they’re planning, we’ll never reach London in time to—”

  “That’s no reason not to try!” Athelstan snapped. They would need a larger force than this, though, to take on sixty Danish shipmen. They would have to gather men along the way and it would slow them down, but he could see no help for it. Christ! He wished he knew what Thorkell was up to. “Godwin, I’m taking your men—all but three. If you see any more movement of men or ships toward London, light the warning beacons, then make for the city.”

  He chafed with impatience while horses were saddled and mounted. At last, with a final glance toward the river where Thorkell’s vessel was long out of sight, he led his men swiftly westward. All his instincts howled that this move by Thorkell was exactly what it looked like—a ploy to gain entry into London. It was the one city that had successfully repelled the Danes again and again. How they planned to take it now he could not imagine, but with every passing moment his conviction grew that they meant to break London at last, and that Edmund was right. He hadn’t a prayer of getting there in time to stop it.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sunday, Easter Octave, April 1012

  London

  There was silence in the tiny chamber where Emma, seated with her infant son in her arms, looked down into eyes that were the same brilliant blue as her daughter’s. She sang to him—one of the Norman lays she had learned in her girlhood and that she had sung to Godiva and to Edward.

  When his eyelids drifted shut she watched the child for a time in the silence, admiring what she could see of him amid blankets, swaddling bands, and a woolen cap. From the moment that she had first looked on this babe she had loved him, and she marveled at the miracle that was a mother’s heart, where there was room enough for each of her children, no matter how many God might send.

  Unlike his brother and sister, though, Alfred had never been hers alone, even for a little while. She had given him immediately into the care of others, for she had duties to perform, and journeys she intended to take—at the very least to her estates in East Anglia and Rutland to see for herself what havoc they had suffered at the hands of the Danes. The child
would come with her, of course, but she would not be able to respond to his needs. Even now there were letters awaiting her attention, requests from petitioners that she must grant or deny. Reluctantly, she kissed him once more, placed him, still asleep, in the arms of his wet nurse, and left him.

  In her outer chamber the women of her household were gathered around an embroidery frame set beneath a spill of midday sun that made the reds, greens, and blues of their silken threads gleam with jewel-like brilliance. Nearby, close beside the warmth of the brazier, Father Martin was bent over a table. In front of him lay a stack of letters and at his elbow two large books. Emma went to his side and ran her fingers over the fine leather volumes.

  “These are the books that Abbot Guillaume has requested for the abbey at Fécamp?” she asked.

  “Yes, and there is a third, as well, my lady, that is not yet finished,” he said. “The abbot at the Old Minster has written that it should be completed in a matter of weeks.”

  She nodded. “Let us wait, then, and send them all at once.”

  She drew her mother’s most recent letter from the pile on the table and sat down to read it again, for it was filled with news of Godiva. Her daughter, it seemed, was happy. She was prattling in French now, no longer the silent and frightened little girl she had been when she had first arrived in Rouen. She had become the great pet of her cousins, and she was fascinated by Richard’s daughter Eleanor, born just after Christmas.

  Be assured, though, that she has not forgotten you. She prays for you each night.

  Emma wondered if that was true. Did her daughter pray for her, or did she merely repeat words that were prompted by her nurse? Godiva was not yet three winters old. How much would she even remember of the mother she had last seen six months ago on a windswept shore at Benfleet?