Shadow on the Crown (16 page)

“Grant him the Sword of Offa, you mean? Designate him my heir and give him estates to manage?”

“If my lord Athelstan is taken up with his own responsibilities, he may spend far less time brooding over yours, my king.”

Æthelred rested his chin upon his folded hands and considered the suggestion. It had merit. Certainly his son deserved some recompense for his quick action that day in the minster square. To grant him the Sword of Offa would only confirm what was already commonly accepted—that the eldest ætheling would one day inherit the throne. As for the lands, it was perhaps time to give all three of his eldest sons more latitude in managing the estates they already held. It would keep them occupied and give them needed experience.

“At the next
witan
,” he said to Hubert, “we will bestow the sword upon my son and grant him other offices as well. Let him test his decision-making skills on his own men, and we shall see how well he does.”

Chapter Sixteen

February 1003

Wherwell Abbey, Hampshire

E
mma, wrapped in a warm, sable-lined woolen mantle and attended by Wymarc and Margot, walked slowly along one of the gravel paths of the abbey garden at Wherwell. This was her first venture out of doors for many weeks, and after covering only a short distance, Emma had to admit defeat. She was tired. She was always tired now. Her body, even her mind, was sluggish. Every movement, every thought, took enormous effort, as if her body and her brain fought against a buffeting gale. In the hushed darkness of the abbey chapel she had prayed for relief from this weariness of soul and of limb, but her prayers had gone unanswered.

She was grateful for the ministrations of the good sisters, and for the care that Wymarc and Margot had lavished upon her ever since the night they had found her as the king had left her—bloodied, bruised, and violated. They had tended to her physical hurts until she was well enough to leave Winchester, transported to Wherwell in a curtained litter, her ravaged face hidden behind a dark veil. The physical marks were gone now. Only this soul-numbing lethargy remained, so enervating that she could not remember how long it had been since she had come here. She had arrived well before Christmas, so it must be two months, she reckoned, at least. Time seemed to stand still, here within the abbey walls, but she knew that the little peace she had found here could not last. She could not continue to hide from the world like a frightened child, not least because the king had insisted that she make an appearance at the Easter court—for the sake of policy.

And so, for the sake of policy, she must return to Winchester. That disagreeable duty, however, still lay some weeks ahead of her. Ash Wednesday had come and gone, but Easter was yet weeks away. The garden around her, still winter bare, showed no promise of spring. The time of earth’s renewal hovered in the future like a distant dream.

She came to a bench beneath a tree whose naked branches splayed like skeletal fingers against a blue sky. Shafts of sunlight sifted through the boughs, and Emma sat down and turned her face up to their gentle warmth. She nodded to her companions to join her, and for a few moments they sat in silence, until Emma, turning to Margot, reluctantly picked up the thread of conversation she had abandoned only a little while before.

“Tell me,” Emma said, “how you can be so certain.”

“The signs, my lady, are all there,” Margot said gently. “One has but to read them.”

Emma closed her eyes. She had thought that she might be slowly dying of some wasting disease, some insidious enemy that robbed her of strength and would not let her eat. For a time she had even hoped that it might be so. But in the same way that she knew of the existence of the sun even when it was hidden by heavy clouds, she had known the truth of what ailed her: She carried the king’s child within her at last—the fruit of his cruelty and of her humiliation.

Opening her eyes, she looked steadily into Margot’s seamed and worried face.

“I do not want this child,” she said in a whisper, searching the old woman’s eyes for understanding. “I fear that I will hate it, that every time I see it I will remember how it was begotten.” There were ways to end it, she knew. Margot would know what to do.

The old woman returned her gaze, and her brown eyes did not waver for an instant.

“I know what you would ask of me, child,” she said. “I also know that if you truly believed that I would grant your desire, you would not ask it.”

Emma shut her eyes again. She was not certain that Margot was right. Nevertheless, she had her answer. She would have to carry this thing, bring it into the world and find some way to endure its existence. Others could tend it and rear it. She had but to bear it, yet that task would be onerous enough. Love it, she never could.

“Emma,” Wymarc’s voice, rough as broken glass, slashed across Emma’s brooding thoughts. Emma felt her friend clutch at her hand, as if she would rescue her from drowning in a sullen, black sea. “The child is not the father. The child is a miracle and the answer to your prayers. You have grown to love the king’s other children. Will you not love your own babe even more? Think of little Mathilda, if you doubt it.”

The image of a sunny, blue-eyed imp flashed into Emma’s mind. Mathilda, the royal daughter who had been dedicated to Wherwell at the age of two, had been Emma’s nearly constant companion from the moment that she arrived at the abbey. Fascinated by the brilliant newcomers who had entered her convent world, the child had attached herself to Emma with the loyalty and trust of an adoring puppy. Emma had done nothing to encourage her, but the girl’s devotion had been impossible to resist. Now they were all but inseparable, and Æthelred’s tiny daughter had been the only ray of light in the darkness that was Emma’s life.

And yet, she thought, folding her arms tightly beneath her cloak and rocking back and forth in her despair, she did not trust herself to love the child growing within her. The babe had been purchased at far too great a cost. She despised the brutal act that had planted the seed in her womb, despised the man who had perpetrated it, despised herself for submitting to it. How could she not despise the child who would result from it?

She placed her fingers against her closed eyelids, remembering the days of her girlhood in Normandy, wishing that she could return to that simpler time. Her mother’s image rose in her mind, but she banished it. It was Gunnora’s fault that she was here now, saddled with grief, fear, and an unwanted child. She would forever hate her mother for sentencing her to this wretched fate.

Yet for her own sake, as well as for the sake of those who depended upon her, she had to wrest herself from the black thoughts that engulfed her. The time for weeping was over. She could not change the past, and she could not continue to brood over her pain like a green girl. She must think like a queen now, for if she did not decide what to do and how to act, others would decide for her.

Emma dropped her hands to her lap and took a breath.

“The king must be told of the child,” she said slowly, planning her next move as if a battle lay before her, “but not yet. This will remain a secret until I can tell him myself.”

Somehow she must find the strength to face him—not as a supplicant but as a queen whose fertility had been proven. She would demand the status to which she was entitled. She would insist upon complete control over her properties and her household. She would claim the freedom to come and go as she pleased.

She would be a queen, and no longer a captive.

Before the week was out Emma had sent a message to Ealdorman Ælfric, asking him to wait upon her. When he arrived he answered all her questions regarding events at court, and he told her of the present concerns of the nobles and the common folk who were the lifeblood of the kingdom.

She learned that the king had settled in Bath for the Lenten season and had marked Athelstan as his heir by presenting him with the Sword of Offa. She learned that Elgiva remained the king’s favored companion in spite of the guarded disapproval of the prelates who traveled with the court.

“They fear the Lord’s wrath at this sin,” Ælfric said. “There are many, my lady, who would greet your return to court with rejoicing.”

Emma considered his words carefully, weighing the will of the bishops and abbots against the desires of a willful king. When Ælfric left he carried with him a message to Æthelred, bidding him to attend her at Wherwell on his return journey to Winchester. In the weeks that followed Emma planned and prayed, gathered her strength, and sought to accept the promise of life that was growing within her but that seemed like a dark burden too heavy to bear.

Chapter Seventeen

Holy Week, March 1003

Wherwell Abbey, Hampshire

E
lgiva rode on a plodding horse through a steady, drenching rain along a muddy track leading, she supposed, to Wherwell Abbey. She was miserable. It had started to rain at noontide, and now, three hours later, the waxed wool of her fur-lined cloak was sodden. Water dripped from the ends of her soaked hair, from her nose, from her elbows and fingertips. Her wet skirts clung to her legs, and she was bitterly cold. She longed to be tucked up, warm and dry, in a thick feather bed next to a blazing fire, but she had little hope that she would find such respite at the end of today’s journey. She had been to Wherwell once before, and unless things had changed greatly, she would likely be offered nothing more comfortable than a straw pallet in the nun’s guest dormitory.

At least they would not put her in a cell, she thought with a shudder. She had been afraid of small, dark spaces from the time she was a child—when her brother Wulf had lured her into her mother’s clothes coffer, fastened the lid, and then forgotten about her. It had been hours before she was missed and rescued, and for days after she had been wretched and ill. The very thought of spending even a single hour in a nun’s dark, tiny cell made her stomach heave.

She glanced at Wulf, riding at her side. Where, she wondered, would he sleep tonight? He would probably find himself a pretty girl with a welcoming bed somewhere in the village. The king, riding in front of her with the bishop of Winchester, would sleep in the chamber set aside for royal visitors. Sadly for her, she would not share it, for she was one of the pleasures that the king had forsworn during this last week of Lent.

Elgiva hated the Lenten season. The endless prayers of repentance bored her, and the Lenten rituals of bodily mortification drove her to near madness. She could understand why the priests would encourage it among the common folk. By the time Lent came around most of their winter food stores had been depleted. Urging them to fast for the sake of their souls was merely putting a good face on what they were forced to do in any case. But the king was wealthy enough to set a decent table even in the lean months, so why must his court live on a diet of boiled greens and fish?

Their rations on this journey from Bath to Wherwell seemed to Elgiva to be especially meager. She was hungry all the time, and the fasting did no more for her humor than did the wretched rain. Thank God that Lent was nearly done.

The past five weeks, however, unpleasant as they had been,
were not an utter waste of time. She had spent many hours at the king’s side, distracting him from the worrisome details of governance by telling him stories that she invented out of the thinnest air. She embellished tales that she had heard at her grandmother’s knee, and she made up stories about kings and battles set in strange lands peopled with terrible monsters.

Her favorite story was that of the king whose queen was barren. In it the childless queen begged her husband to allow her to enter a convent so that she could offer prayers for the safety of his kingdom, which was under attack by invaders from the far north. And so, reluctantly, the king agreed. He sent the queen to a convent and took another wife, who fought at his side to save his people.

She had spun this story one evening in Bath as the king sat in the hall with a score of his thegns. When the tale was finished she turned to Æthelred and arched her brows at him.

“Could a king set aside a barren queen in such a way?” she asked, feigning ignorance, for she knew the answer.

Æthelred’s face turned thoughtful.

“A king may follow his own desires where women are concerned,” he mused. “The emperor Charles Magnus took five queens to wife, replacing them one after another when he wearied of them. He did not even need the excuse of barrenness to repudiate them, although several of them, I understand, were childless.” He cocked his head at her. “Are you wheedling me for a crown, lady? Has your father set you on my lap to suborn me to his will?”

His face had darkened, and she hastened to reassure him.

“I wheedle you for nothing but your affection, my lord,” she said archly. Then, glancing up at him, she sighed and said, “But I would not have to share your affection with anyone, if your queen should choose to enter a convent and relinquish her crown.”

The king’s expression became thoughtful again, and she smiled to herself. She had sown the seed. With patience, luck, and some encouragement, she would make sure that it flourished.

Clothed in dry garments but still chilled from the day’s ride, Æthelred warmed his hands at the brazier in the abbey’s finest guest chamber. He was in no great hurry to see his queen. Let her wait upon his pleasure. He had bowed to her demand that he break his journey here in order to meet with her—a summons gilded by Ælfric in eloquent words, but a summons nevertheless.

He shouted for hot wine. It would do no harm to fortify himself before he faced Emma. The last time he had seen his queen she had dared to upbraid him for his actions against the Danes, imagining that she could school him in the duties of a king. He had thought that he had disabused her of the notion that she could advise him about anything, but apparently he was mistaken. She clearly had some matter of great moment that she wished to discuss with him. Certainly she had not summoned him for the pleasure of his company—he had no illusions about that.

Quaffing the wine, he considered the girl who was his wife. Was it possible that she had come to the same realization that he had reached—that she would be far better off living in a convent than at his side? The nuns might have had some influence upon her during her stay here. Certainly they would welcome her with open arms—and greedy hands—should she retire here. She might even become abbess someday, who could tell?

He tried to imagine Emma as an abbess, and he thought that she might do very well at it. Indeed, he might be willing to settle enough gold on her that she could found her own abbey and adorn it however she pleased. And if Emma were to agree to retire to a convent, he could take a more fitting consort. The bishops could have no argument against it, for surely Emma was barren. He had done his duty by her and she had not conceived. He could put her aside with the church’s blessing.

As he gazed at the coals in the brazier, they seemed to glow with a darkly malevolent light, and his thoughts, too, darkened. He must consider more than just Emma. Her brother Richard would have some say in his sister’s fate. Richard might object to her retirement, might even want her returned to him to see if he could peddle her elsewhere. He would want her dowry back as well—an unpleasant consequence. And there was the additional problem of the Danes and their easy access to Normandy’s harbors. Richard would have to be convinced, somehow, to keep those ports closed to the Vikings.

Æthelred frowned. There had been no coastal raids since Emma’s arrival, so Richard appeared to be keeping his end of the bargain. Still, if Emma did not produce a child, Richard’s goodwill would likely vanish.

He shook his head. This was a pointless exercise. First he must hear what Emma had to say. Then he could decide what to do about her.

The queen’s chamber at the abbey had been designed by Æthelred’s mother to meet her requirements, and her son was no stranger to its comforts. The embroidered hangings that lined the walls, the thick draperies around the massive bed, even the brass-bound garment chest at the bed’s foot were all familiar. As soon as he entered, though, Æthelred felt an old anxiety begin to gnaw at him, for this was a world of female power—as foreign to him as if it were another country. His glance swept over the servant who sat in a corner with distaff and spindle, past the abbess seated to one side of the low brazier, and at last settled upon Emma.

She was sitting in a cushioned chair, garbed in a saffron gown, its bodice embroidered voluptuously in all the colors of the rainbow. Upon her head she wore a creamy veil fastened with a circlet that flashed golden in the candlelight. The veil framed a face even more lovely than he remembered.

She did not look like any nun that he had ever seen.

To his surprise she held in her lap a golden-haired girl dressed in the plain brown robe of the novice. The child gazed up at him with solemn blue eyes, and it dawned on him that this must be his own daughter, Mathilda. She was the right age, and she had the flaxen hair that marked all his brood but Edmund.

Upon seeing him the women rose, and he acknowledged the abbess first, accepting the ritual cup that she offered him. He was relieved when, after murmuring a brief welcome and muttering something about his daughter and his queen, she excused herself and slipped away. One less female to deal with, he told himself, as he eyed his wife and the child who clung to her.

“Sit,” he said to Emma, going over to the chair that the abbess had vacated.

He glanced irritably at the child, who had curled up in Emma’s lap like a contented kitten. He had forgotten about this girl, although he had brought her here himself after her mother died. He had had little to do with any of his children until they reached the age of ten, and nothing whatever to do with his daughters. This one was his, certainly, with her limpid blue eyes and bright hair, but he had no idea what he was meant to say to her or do about her. Faced with the two of them now, the child gazing at him with wide eyes, he felt as if he were up against some female mystery that he did not comprehend. His irritation grew.

“Send the girl away,” he growled.

The servant scurried from her corner, plucked the now whimpering child from Emma’s lap, and left the room.

“Pardon me,” his wife said coldly. “I had forgotten that your children hold no interest for you. My own father took a great deal of pleasure in his children. Even his young daughters.”

“Did you summon me here to counsel me in my duties as a father? It is somewhat late for that. I’m not likely to change my ways, particularly when it comes to a child, such as that one, who belongs to God now rather than to me.”

“I have not summoned you to counsel you, my lord,” she said. “Indeed, you have made it clear that you have no wish to listen to my views upon anything.”

He had not expected penitence from Emma, and so was not surprised that he got none. Her eyes blazed at him, and she held her chin high and proud. She mystified him. She was but a powerless instrument, first in her brother’s hands and now in his, yet she did not seem to understand how weak she truly was.

Unable to resist goading her, he said, “Advise me about your brother’s dealings with Swein Forkbeard, and I promise you, lady, I will hang on your every word.”

He was perfectly aware that her brother had confided nothing to her. What missives she had received from Normandy had passed through his own hands first.

Her face bloomed red, and he knew that his barb had struck home. Her chin, though, remained high, and her face determined.

“I must disappoint you,” she said, “for I cannot speak to my brother’s intentions. Yet I hope that the news I have to impart will be of some interest.”

“Then I am eager to hear it,” he said, pouring a cup of wine from the flagon on the table next to her chair and holding it out to her. She shook her head, and he looked down at her in some surprise. “Ah, you are abstaining from wine. Is that because of your Lenten fast or something more significant? I have been speculating that you may have taken a liking to convent life, and that you summoned me here to announce that you have chosen to immerse yourself in a world of prayer and contemplation. Dare I hope that this is so?”

Clearly it was not. Her face went white now, and she rose slowly to her feet to stand before him, her hands fisted at her sides.

“I must disappoint you again, my lord,” she said, “for I have asked you here to tell you that I am with child.”

It was as if a veil had suddenly fallen from his eyes. He could see it now: the gravid thickening of her waist and the fullness of her breasts. This was the source, then, of the confidence that radiated from her like light, for she understood only too well what new power it could give her.

He scowled his surprise and disappointment, and he saw her mouth twist into a bitter smile.

“This is customarily a happy occasion,” she said, “but I see that you are not pleased. Did you think to set me aside so that you could wed your leman?”

He raised an eyebrow at that. He had been out of her company for some time and had forgotten just how clever the minx was—likely as clever as her damned brother. He would do well to bear it in mind.

Then a second revelation struck him, and he knew how much he had been deceiving himself. He could never be rid of Emma. Even if the child she carried died stillborn, even if the church should agree to his setting her aside, Richard would never stand for it. He would use such an act as an excuse to ally with the Danish king. They would carve England to pieces between them, something that his own weaker levies and fewer numbers would not be able to prevent. The great kingdom that he had inherited would disappear, devoured by a Norman-Danish tide, and his dead brother would have his revenge.