Shadow on the Crown (19 page)

Some tiny corner of her mind recognized the stuff of nightmare, and with an effort of will she opened her eyes. The darkness of her curtained bed replaced the burning brightness of her dream, but the searing waves of pain still clawed at her, and the scream of anguish that had stuck in her throat loosened at last and tore free.

Instinctively she drew herself into a tight ball around her womb. The child was coming too soon. She screamed for Margot, and then felt the covers ripped from her. Strong hands grasped her shoulders, and Margot was there, calling her name—her voice commanding and her face hard.

“You must push, Emma! You cannot save the child. Do you hear me? There is nothing you can do to save the child. It belongs to God already. Now you must save yourself. If you want to live, you must push!”

Afterward she would remember it as part of the nightmare—the pungent smell of blood and the crescendos of pain that crested and broke and crested inside her womb over and over. With Wymarc on the bed behind her for support and Margot reaching between her bloody, naked thighs, she braced herself against them, straining and pushing until she had freed her body of the tiny burden that it had borne for so little a time.

Released from the worst of the pain, but aching and empty, Emma lay desolate as her women tended her. It was only when she saw Wymarc take up the tiny bundle and carry it toward the door that she roused herself.

“Wait,” she called. She would not have her babe disposed of like so much night soil. “Send for Father Martin. I want him to bless the child.” It could not be baptized, but she could send it to God with a blessing. “In the morning we shall bury it in the minster garden.”

It was such a little thing, this child, with no one to protect it but her. And she had failed at the one task that she had been given.

She turned to Margot, her vision blurring with tears that she wiped away with the back of a hand. “What did I do wrong?” she asked. “What did I do to hurt the babe?”

Margot sat at the edge of the bed and took her hand. “You did nothing,” she said gently. “Do not blame yourself.”

“But I am to blame! I told the king that I would hate this child because it was his.” She closed her eyes at the memory. “It was not true. You were right. I would have loved the babe, yet God punished me for speaking such evil.” She did not confess all of it. She did not speak of how she had raged at God for binding her to a man for whom she could feel neither respect nor love. In her heart she had wished her husband dead. God, hearing her, had taken the child instead.

Margot turned Emma’s face so that she looked into the familiar eyes of the woman who had cared for her for as long as she could remember.

“I do not believe,” Margot said, “in a God that punishes unborn children for a mother’s hasty words. Nor should you. Think you that the Lord cannot read your heart? Surely He knows that you loved this child. We shall never know why such an innocent was lost to us, nor should we ask to know the workings of God. We can only thank Him for your safe deliverance and pray that your womb quickens with child again soon.”

But God had, indeed, read her heart, and He had found wickedness there. She looked over at the tiny bundle still in Wymarc’s arms, and her anguish at her loss engulfed her yet again. What would happen now? What if her womb never quickened again? Or what if it did, but she gave birth only to dead children? Her life would have been a complete and utter waste.

She turned her face into the pillow to stifle her tears, and a moment later felt a gentle hand upon her head and heard Margot’s soothing voice.

“You must do your grieving now, my lady,” Margot whispered, “and then I beg you to let this babe go. You cannot cling to it, not even in your heart. There will be other babes.”

“But what if there are not?” She grieved for the babe, but it was not that loss that terrified her. It was her fear of what the future held that weighed upon her like a black cloud. She did not know how to dispel it.

“You will have more children,” Margot said, and her voice held a matter-of-fact certainty that Emma clutched at with hope.

She turned to face Margot, searching for reassurance. The age lines in that familiar face seemed deeper than usual. It had been a long, weary night for Margot, too, yet her eyes were clear and bright, and when Emma looked into their brown depths they did not blink. “How can you be sure?” she whispered.

“Because,” the old woman said, taking Emma’s hand into her own and squeezing it, “there is no reason on this earth why you should not.” She heaved a long sigh. “I speak to you as one who lost three babes, one after another, born before their time. Yet I saw six sons grow to manhood. Your mother, too, lost three babes in much the same way. Did you not know?”

Emma shook her head. She had been the youngest. All she knew of childbirth she had witnessed when Judith had presented Richard with a son after a labor so brief that even Margot had been astonished.

Margot was smiling now. “It will take no miracle for you to get with child again, my lady, so long as the king is willing. The miracle would be if you did not.”

So long as the king is willing.
And what of her willingness to give her body to the king? That duty was demanded of her by the laws of church and state, but she could not bear to think of it. Not now. With this child she had attained a small portion of the prestige that was due to her. Now all was lost.

She closed her eyes, numb with a weariness that she did not wish to master. She felt as though she had fallen into a deep well, and she could not convince herself that she had the strength or the will to climb out of it again.

On Easter Monday the Winchester market bustled with activity. Folk from nearby hamlets had been drawn to the spring faire to celebrate winter’s end, and the Ceap was filled with buyers, sellers, and a fair number of gawkers. Merchant stalls lining both sides of the street displayed goods that came from as near as London and as far away as Constantinople.

By midday Elgiva, escorted by several of her brother’s hearth guards, had been browsing the market for some time. Although the sun was bright, a chill wind blew from the south and was finding its way beneath her cloak. Elgiva felt cold to her very bones, but it had nothing to do with the breeze.

She had sent Groa to the palace close for news of the queen, and by her reckoning, Groa should have been back long before now. Any rumors about Emma would flash through the palace like wildfire. Groa had only to wander near the bread ovens or the brewing cauldrons to glean anything of interest, so where was she?

Nervously Elgiva fingered a length of gold-threaded silk, ignoring the mercer’s eager prattle. What if something had gone amiss? She picked up a length of russet silk and saw that the merchant—a tall, thin man with a beaky nose and the eyes of a hawk—watched her with inordinate interest. Her hands were trembling so badly that the silk rippled, and she set it aside for fear that the merchant would notice her distress. A moment later she saw Groa hurrying toward her from the direction of the palace.

“Put this aside for me,” she said to the mercer, pointing to the bolt of silk with as pleasant a smile as she could muster. She had been here too long; it might arouse suspicion if she left without a purchase. “I’ll send someone for it later.”

Gesturing at her brother’s men to walk several steps behind her, she grasped Groa’s arm and walked in the direction of Shieldmaker Street, where her brother’s town house lay.

“What is the news?” she demanded.

“The child is no more, my lady,” Groa murmured.

So it had actually worked. She breathed a long sigh of relief. The child was dead, and she would not be the only one in the kingdom to rejoice at the news.

“What of the queen?” she asked.

Groa shook her head. “I could learn nothing of the queen except that she had lost the babe. The king and his sons rode to the hunt today, so we can presume that she is well enough. It may be days before we learn if she has taken any hurt from the potion.”

“And if she does?” Elgiva whispered. “Will there likely be any suspicion about the wine?”

“Nay,” Groa murmured. “The queen’s new cupbearer was too dazzled by the courtly glitter to take any notice of what I did near the flagon. And even if suspicions were aroused, how could anyone determine who was responsible? There are many at court who have no desire to see this queen bear a child, and that includes the king’s own sons. Be assured that no one will question this loss, or even mourn it overmuch.”

“Then it has turned out as well as we could have hoped,” Elgiva said. “You have done very well.”

“I have other news,” Groa’s voice was smug. “You are to be summoned back into the queen’s service, perhaps as soon as today.”

Elgiva slowed her step a little.

“This must be the king’s doing.” She had seen him watching her yesterday when she had been so attentive to Wulfgeat and Leofwine. She had set out to make him jealous, and apparently she had succeeded.

“He still desires you,” Groa insisted.

Of course he desired her. She never doubted it. He would have her back at court, and Emma could do nothing about it.

How swiftly the queen’s ascendant star had fallen with the loss of the child, and how quickly her own, now, would rise again.

The spring weather held fair and mild, and on the downs of Wessex the sheep and cattle grazed on thick new grass. In the forests along the river bluebells carpeted the ground with blossoms, and it seemed that there was a kind of blessing upon the land. When storm clouds did come they shed their bounty upon the earth during the night, while the days were awash with sunlight. So April slipped away, and when southerly winds brought no sign of dragon ships from the harsh northern lands, folk began to hope that this year Æthelred’s realm might be free of fire and pillage.

For Emma, though, the beautiful spring days were almost intolerable. It seemed to her that she alone lived within a dark cloud. Her body had recovered quickly from the trial of miscarriage, but her spirit remained burdened with the pain of her loss. Each day she woke with a sense of despair and foreboding that she could not escape—a lassitude that bound her like a snare. She took little interest in the things that should have demanded her attention. Pleas for direction from Hugh in Exeter went unheeded; missives from her mother and her brothers went unanswered. She kept mostly to her chambers, imprisoned now by her own will rather than Æthelred’s. Even the children could not draw her out of her lethargy. She could no longer join in their play or be their confidante and comforter. Instead it was Hilde who, hardly more than a child herself, supervised their care.

Occasionally she would catch a glimpse of Athelstan in the midst of his brothers and retainers, and sometimes his eyes met hers before he looked away. His face, in those brief encounters, was always solemn, and if there was any silent meaning in his grave expression, she could not read it. He never attempted to speak to her or send her any message, and it was as if the companionship that had once existed between them belonged to another life. The child that she had carried for so short a time, she believed, lay like an invisible wall between them, and that only added to her despair.

She rarely saw the king, except at the evening meal in the great hall when she took her place beside him at the high table. True to her promise to him, she placed Elgiva beside her there. If Emma noticed that Elgiva seemed not so content with her favored position as before—for the king’s attentions to that lady had cooled considerably—Emma gave no sign. Her heart ached with such longing for the child she had lost that she paid little heed to the tempers and trials of the other members of the king’s court. She responded listlessly to the king’s inquiries about her health and dreaded his return to her bed, knowing that it must happen soon. As spring lengthened toward summer, Æthelred sent his own leech to examine her, and in spite of Margot’s protests, the man bled her, then pronounced her well enough to attend to her lord’s needs.

That evening Emma prepared herself for a visit from the king, but to her surprise and relief, he did not come. Instead, he sent word that the court would move to London within the week, and that she must prepare for the journey. It was a command, she knew, yet she did not see how she could obey it. She sent word to Æthelred that she did not yet feel strong enough to make such an arduous journey and begged to be allowed to remain in Winchester. Then she waited in an agony of suspense for his response. She had couched it as a request, but how Æthelred would interpret it would depend upon his mood at the time.