Shadow on the Crown (14 page)

“My lord, these men live among us, but they remain outside the law,” he said. “They answer to no one. We fear, and rightly, the men of the dragon ships who steal our food, our goods, and our women. But we should fear even more the like-minded devils that dwell among us who do not have to cross the Danish sea to murder us.”

Æthelred nodded as cries of assent rumbled around the table. It was time for the final act. He signaled the door ward, and then he said, above the din, “My lords, I have myself been the victim of these godless men. They have gone so far as to raise their hands against your king.” There were shouts of shock and outrage, and before they could die down he cried, “The foreign devil that would have slain me stands there!”

He pointed to the ragged, black-clothed figure that stood in the doorway between two guards. The creature’s reddened, malevolent eyes searched the room, and when they found Æthelred the monster howled like an animal that scents his prey. Straining against his bonds, hands outstretched as he tried in vain to hurl himself at the king, he shouted the Danish curses that had been the only words to escape his lips from the moment he was taken.

The men seated around the table were struck dumb. The abbot made the sign of the cross.

Æthelred, assured that his prisoner had had the desired impact, gestured to the guards to remove him.

“You see the kind of vermin that we face,” he said. “His words touch all of us, I warn you, for he threatens death to me and to my council and promises that the Danes will take England for themselves.”

More shouts of protest and anger greeted this announcement, and Abbot Kenulf, seated next to Eadric, rose to his feet.

“These are not Christian men,” he said, in a voice that resonated with spiritual authority. “Men such as this worship pagan gods and practice pagan ways. They have sprouted among us like cockles among the wheat, and we must rid ourselves of their foul contagion before it grows too strong.”

The shouting began again, and Æthelred raised a hand to quell it.

“What you say is true, abbot, but the task must be carried out with care and with secrecy. If they suspect that we are preparing to move against them, they will meet us with force.” And it was all too likely, he thought, that the Danes would win such a fight. “It is why I have called you together tonight in such secrecy. I propose to send messengers to my reeves in every town and village where such men dwell. My men will bear writs branding this man and all men like him as traitors to the crown. On a day that I shall name, all across this land they will be arrested and put to the sword. Are we agreed?”

Eadric slammed the table again and shouted, “Aye, my lord! You have my support!”

In a moment, the rest had followed suit, and Æthelred nodded, satisfied. His prisoner, mad though he clearly was, had played his part well.

Æthelred turned to the clerk nearest him.

“How soon can this thing be done?” he asked.

The clerk pursed his lips, considering.

“We will need at least fourteen days to prepare the writs, my lord,” he said, “and several days after that to deliver them.” He ran his finger down the page of one of the books that lay open before him on the table, then looked up at Æthelred. “Friday, November 13,” he said. “St. Brice’s Day.”

Æthelred nodded his approval. On St. Brice’s Day he would be rid of the enemies who troubled his days and tortured his nights.

He dismissed the councilors and went to his bed—and to the embraces of the Lady Elgiva—well pleased with the night’s work.

A.D. 1002
The king gave an order to slay all the Danes that were in England. This was accordingly done on the mass-day of St. Brice, because it was told the king that they would beshrew him of his life, and afterwards all his council, and then have his kingdom without any resistance.

—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Chapter Fifteen

November 1002

Winchester, Hampshire

N
ovember was the blood month, the slaughter time, when stock were culled, butchered, and dressed in preparation for the lean days of the winter to come. In Winchester the short days turned cold and wet, but Emma took little note of the weather. She left the palace only to attend services in one of the two great churches nearby, always escorted by members of the king’s hearth guards, for her Norman folk had been sent away, scattered to her various properties across Wessex and Mercia. Hugh was gone to Exeter, and Emma missed him most of all, for he had given her good counsel about the management of her estates. Wymarc, she guessed, missed him even more, although she did her best to hide it.

“I could send you to Exeter as well, if you wish it,” Emma had offered several days before Hugh and his men had departed. She had seen the affection that had grown between Wymarc and Hugh, and although her heart was heavy at the thought of losing her friend, she had no wish to deny her the happiness that her queen would never have.

“Of what use would I be to you in Exeter?” Wymarc had demanded. “My place is at your side, my lady, not in some fortress at the kingdom’s edge. And if you are thinking I’ve a mind to follow Hugh, well, it will do him no harm to discover how dismal the world can be with only English women in it.”

Yet when Hugh took his leave of Emma, Wymarc had followed him from the chamber, and when she returned her eyes were bright with tears, and she had the rumpled look of a woman who had just been well and thoroughly kissed.

On the morning of November 13, the Feast of St. Brice, Emma’s English attendants clustered in her chamber in small groups like flocks of brightly colored birds. Emma sat to one side with Wymarc, Margot, and Father Martin—all that remained of her Norman retinue. They were eagerly sifting through a packet that had arrived from Rouen with news of the forthcoming marriage of Emma’s sister Mathilde to a Frankish count. A letter from Emma’s mother provided details, but Emma was disappointed to find no message from her sister.

Mathilde, she thought, still harbored resentment that she had not been the one sent to wed a king. She could have wept at the cruel irony of it, but weeping was for later, when she lay alone in her cold bed and recalled the nights she had shared with her sister in their chamber at Fécamp.

Father Martin began to read aloud what amounted to a sermon from her brother the archbishop, regarding a woman’s duty to her husband, and Emma was relieved when he was interrupted by a servant bearing news, until she heard what he had to say. A nameless Dane had been put to death that morning for crimes against the king.

She knew what the prisoner’s crime had been, and that his life had been forfeit for raising his hand against the king. There was wild speculation, though, among the ladies of her chamber about the execution.

Emma tried to ignore the threads of conjecture the women spun. None of them could know for certain what he had done or how close the poor mad wretch had come to murdering the king or his son.

She caught sight of Elgiva then, who was looking at her with an arch, insolent gaze. Elgiva, at least, did know what had happened that day in the minster square. Indeed, she must know a great many things, for Elgiva was sleeping with the king.

It was the greatest open secret within the court—that, and the fact that Æthelred had not visited the queen’s bed for many weeks.

The tiny flicker of fear that always burned within her flared brighter as she considered the problem of the Lady of Northampton.

If the king’s attentions to Elgiva continued to keep him from Emma’s bed, she would never conceive a child. That would matter little to Æthelred. He had sons enough; duty did not compel him to seek his wife’s embrace. Emma was the one who needed a son to guarantee her status within the court and to protect her should the king die.

And kings did die. Rulers sickened and died for no obvious reason. It had happened to her own father. It had happened to Æthelred’s father, as well, when he was younger than Æthelred was now.

Over the past weeks, stripped of her Norman protectors, Emma had come to realize how precarious her position really was. She had not heeded her mother’s advice.
Use your youth and your beauty to garner the king’s favor,
Gunnora had told her. Yet she had not merely lost the battle for the king’s favor, she had vacated the field before the battle began. The king had pushed her away, and she had gone willingly. Now it may already be too late. If she were branded as barren not even her status as queen would protect her. She would be locked away in some abbey, a bitter and disgraced bride trusting to her brother for her support.

The king no longer sought her bed. When she had first wed him she had at least been an unknown commodity, a mystery for him to unravel. Now he had become accustomed to her, and he had found her wanting where Elgiva was not.

She must find a way to entice Æthelred to her bed, no matter how distasteful the prospect. Yet she had not the least idea how to go about it.

The next day it was Father Martin who entered the queen’s apartment with news. Emma and her women were seated around a frame that held a length of linen upon which a motif of flowers and vines had been drawn in lampblack. Gradually their busy fingers were transforming the black into vivid, silken colors.

It was well past midday, and the light was fading when Emma saw the priest hesitating in the doorway. She smiled up at him, but her greeting died in her throat when she saw the agitated look on his face.

“What is it?” she asked.

“News is coming in from all across the land of a great killing,” he said, his voice taut with shock and his face stricken. “A massacre of Danes, at the king’s command.”

“A massacre?” Every tongue in the chamber had stilled, and Emma’s words seemed to echo in the silence.

“Men, women, and children put to the sword,” the priest said. “Merchants dragged from their businesses, farmers and wives taken from their homes, and all of them butchered. A monk from Oxford has brought a wretched tale of folk who sought sanctuary within a church only to have the doors chained shut and the church burned over their heads by a crowd mad with bloodlust. There were over fifty folk killed in Oxford alone, may God grant them rest.”

Beside Emma, Elgiva spoke up even as she continued to pierce the linen with her needle.

“They were the devil’s spawn,” she said placidly, “and the enemies of the king. They would have murdered us in our beds if given the chance. The king was wise to strike those foes that live amongst us, before they can cause us harm.”

Emma had dropped her needle and clasped her hands as the images of burning mothers and children filled her mind, and now she turned outraged eyes on Elgiva.

“What is it,” she asked coldly, “that makes them our foes? Rumor? Envy? Strange customs? A different language? What is it that they have done to deserve such a horrible death?”

“They attacked the king on his feast day,” Elgiva said. “The Dane who was executed yesterday tried to murder the king. It is his confederates who have been put to the sword, to prevent them from bringing an army against us.”

Emma heard again the mad howl that had promised death and destruction. But it had come from the mouth of a single man with a broken, twisted mind, one more to be pitied than feared.

“There was never any proof of an army,” she said.

“The king has no need of proof. You have not lived among us long enough, my lady, to understand the danger that the Danes are to us.” And now her eyes met Emma’s boldly. “We must be wary of them, for they are strangers among us.”

Just as you are a stranger among us.
The words remained unspoken, but Emma felt their force and their threat just the same.

She sat up late that night, disturbed by the day’s news and by the lack of Christian compassion that she had witnessed within her own household. She had sent word to the king that she was ill and had taken her supper in her chamber, for she did not think that she could bear to listen to the kind of discourse that was likely to go on at Æthelred’s table. By day’s end the murder of the Danes, even of innocent women and children, was being hailed as a great victory. Any who thought otherwise kept their thoughts to themselves.

She was seated with only Wymarc to attend her when the king strode into the chamber. He had apparently come straight from the feast hall, for he was garbed in a short tunic of rich scarlet wool, belted in gold, and with gold rings on his arms and thick, gold chains about his neck.

“Leave us,” he said to Wymarc, who, with a long backward glance at Emma, left the room.

When they were alone, Æthelred helped himself to a cup of wine. Emma, watching his unsteady hand as he poured, thought that he must have had a great deal to drink already.

“You are up late, my lady,” he said.

“I am unwell and cannot sleep.”

“Since you are wakeful,” he said, “then it is well that I have come to keep you company, is it not?”

She gazed at him and remained stubbornly silent. She should welcome him to her bed, for that was the duty she owed to her husband, lord, and king. She owed it to herself, for she had a desperate need to bear a child. Yet she could not do it. She could not rid her mind of the images of burning children, and it was all she could do to keep her anger and loathing from showing in her face.

Æthelred studied his lady wife in the candle glow. Seated in her cushioned chair she looked every inch the queen. Even garbed in just her nightdress she carried herself with a regal air in spite of her youth. The soft, thick shawl of fine-spun black wool that she had flung about her shoulders set off the whiteness of her skin. Her hair, loosened from its modest daytime braid, hung about her in soft waves that fell like a milky stream into her lap.

In the six months since their nuptials he had formed no particular fondness for her, but he felt an enormous pride in owning something so exquisitely beautiful.

Emma, though, did not fully appreciate her own good fortune at having been chosen as his queen. There was something lacking in her expression whenever she looked at him. Even now she regarded him with distaste, as if the daughter of an upstart duke considered herself better than an English king. He had thought to bend her allegiance to him by sending her people away, but still she kept herself apart. When she looked at him her glance was cold, with no glint of gratitude or approval. Christ, it galled him.

He tossed back a mouthful of wine and sat down on her vast, curtained bed.

“It was unwise of you to absent yourself from the hall tonight, lady,” he said, “for it was your duty as queen to be there. Surely you are aware that the Danish tide that would have engulfed us has been checked. God has made me the instrument of His Divine Will, and I have saved all of us, even you, from a terrible danger. Your voice should have been raised with all the others in prayers of thanksgiving. Yet you seem unmoved.”

“Indeed, my lord, you wrong me,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow at her, awaiting her excuse.

“How could one not be moved,” she went on, “by the slaughter of innocents?”

Good Christ. The girl was either mad or a fool to speak so to him.

“Innocents? Is that how you name them? A barbarous people with no regard for life or property? Folk who burn, pillage, murder, and rape, and who would teach their children to do the same? You would fear them if you had seen the destruction that they have wrought upon our towns and villages.”

Her eyes flashed at him now, and her mouth twisted in scorn.

“And with this act, have you not unleashed death and destruction upon your people? The church of St. Frideswide in Oxford should have been a place of sanctuary, yet it became a funeral pyre for women and children upon your order. If you fear the Danes so much, then you must fear me as well. My mother is a Dane, a barbarian as you say. Do you not tremble that I might slay all your children in their beds? I have heard it said that English princes have some cause to fear their stepmothers.”

As soon as the words left her mouth Emma knew that she had gone too far. The king’s anger toward her had been smoldering from the moment he entered the room, and now she had fanned the flames into fury. She knew, instinctively, that she should run, but she had nowhere to go. In an instant he had dashed his cup to the floor and covered the distance between them with a single step. He slapped her hard across the face, and before she could recover from the blow, he had grasped her roughly and pulled her to her feet.